MEZZOTINT (It. mc.-_-;:otinto, half-black). A style or method of engraving on a copper or steel plate. which is at first prepared by making on it it ground with an instrument called a or a mezzotint grounder. This instru ment is a flat plate of hardened steel, of which one side is brought to a segment of a circle with a sharp cutting edge, the bevel of which is so engraved with fine parallel lines that it re sembles a file, and the edge itself is brought to a ridge of very fine points. This has to he rocked across the plate many times, in four or more directions, until, by this operation, the whole surface is reduced to a close-set mass of small teeth or points. The plate thus pricked by this grounder oilers a uniformly roughened surface, and upon this surface the en graver begins his proper work. Now, this pre pared plate. if covered with printers' ink. would yield on entirely black impression; so it is the business of the engraver to work from dark to light. or from black to Nvhite. This he does with various instruments adapted to the pur pose, such as scrapers and burnishers: the scraper employed to diminish the burr and such asperity of surface as tends to retain too much ink. and the burnisher to remove all surface roughness when the highest light or pure white is required in the design or picture he is producing.
31ezzotint is admirably adapted to the repro duction of those works in which broad effects of light and shade are dominant, as opposed to those where close line, contour. and small detail are demanded.
Among the greatest mezzotint engravers may be mentioned: James .NIcArdell Id. 17651. Wats(al, -I. Raphael Smith, and Valentine Green. David Lucas was very successful in reproducing the landscape* of Constaldle. Besides its com parative inadequacy in depicting great detail, mezzotint has another limitation—its failure to hear notch printing. The burr is soon destroyed in the eopper plates, and although steel is more enduring, mezzotint on this medium is still far behind line engraving in reproductive posAildle 1 it's. From twenty-live to thirty impressions of the first are all that may be drawn from copper plates. The original inventor or dis coverer of mezzotint engraving was Louis von Siegen, a lieutenant-colonel in the service of the Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel. and his first published work was a portrait of the Princess Amelia-Elizabeth of Hesse. proofs of which are dated 1642, fifteen years anterior to the earliest date on the plates of Prince Rupert. to whom a charming legend ascribes the invention of the art. In the United States the mezzotint style was a favorite with magazine publishers in the early days of magazines, being introduced from England by John Sartain (q.v.), an expert mezzo tint en7raver, in 1830. He published Xartain's Maga:inc. illustrated after this fashion. Con sult: Wedmore's Studies in English Art (Lon don, 1876-80) ; Hamerton, The Graphic Arts (London, 1S82). See ENGRAVING.