se complete in itself. More important, the picture lacks
all the rich contrasts of light and shade which distinguish this print
and most of Rembrandt's finished work.

[Illustration: FIGURE 12

Traced sketch by the author, showing only the etched lines in
Rembrandt's print, _Landscape with a hay barn and a flock of sheep_.
(Smithsonian photo 59398.)]

It has been generally assumed that Rembrandt went through a fairly
normal process of stopping-out and also re-etching in the course of his
print-making. The visual evidence would indicate that he did not follow
this procedure here. Stopping-out is, of course, a means of creating
variations in the printed intensity of etched lines. After a plate has
etched for a certain time--depending on the artist's inclination--it may
be removed from the acid and some of its lines covered with a stop-out
varnish, similar in texture and acid resistance to the basic ground. The
plate is then put back in the acid and the remaining lines etched more
deeply. This can be repeated any number of times, giving a wide range of
intensity to the various etched lines. No such wide range of etched
lines appears in the finished print. Further, where the edge of applied
stop-out varnish crosses a single line, the change in depth of acid
biting at that point is readily visible. Again, no such change of depth
of a single line is visible here. The inference, unless attributed to
very long coincidence, seems probable that Rembrandt used only a single
acid etch on the entire plate, with no stopping-out.

Re-etching also seems unlikely. If the original ground has been removed
from a plate, the entire plate must be re-grounded, without smoking or
whitening, so that the previously etched lines show through. Noticeably
heavier etched lines appear at only a few places on this plate,
principally in the grass at the lower right. It is probable that
Rembrandt used a number of etching needles of different widths. We do
not see the typical changes in the lines produced by stopping-out or
re-etching. Re-etching of new lines crossing previously etched lines
often causes a slight penetration of acid under the ground into the old
lines. This shows in the printing as a dark spot at the point of
crossing. Such an effect is not found in this print. A similar result in
the cross-hatching at the lower left is caused instead by drypoint lines
crossing etched lines.

No direct evidence has been found concerning the acid cor