Mezzotint is an intaglio technique that works from dark to light, roughening a copper plate and smoothing areas for tone. Learn its history from von Siegen to today.
Mezzotint works backwards. Every other printmaking technique starts with a blank plate and adds marks to create the image. Mezzotint starts with a plate that would print as a solid, velvety black, and then removes the black to create light. The printmaker roughens the entire surface of a copper plate with thousands of tiny pits, using a tool called a rocker. If you inked this roughened plate and printed it, you would get a sheet of pure, deep black, richer and darker than any other printmaking technique can produce. Then the printmaker takes a scraper and a burnisher and smooths areas of the plate. Smoothed areas hold less ink and print lighter. The more you smooth, the lighter the tone. Where you polish the plate completely flat, no ink is held at all, and the paper shows through as pure white. The image emerges from darkness into light, tone by tone, in a process that is closer to sculpting than drawing.
Mezzotint is an intaglio printmaking technique that produces continuous tonal gradations without the use of lines, dots, or hatching. The entire surface of a metal plate is roughened with a rocker, a fine-toothed tool that creates thousands of tiny pits and burrs. In this state, the plate prints as a solid black. The artist then scrapes and burnishes areas of the plate to reduce the amount of ink held, creating lighter tones. The word comes from the Italian "mezza tinta," meaning half-tone, referring to the technique's capacity for smooth gradations between dark and light.
This entry covers how mezzotint works, where it came from, which artists used it, and how to identify a mezzotint in a museum. If you want to understand how printmakers create the deepest, richest blacks and the smoothest tonal transitions in any printmaking medium, mezzotint is the answer.
The rocker is the defining tool of mezzotint. It is a broad, flat blade with a curved face and a finely toothed edge, resembling a small spade. The printmaker rocks the tool back and forth across the plate, pressing the teeth into the metal. Each pass of the rocker creates a row of tiny pits and raises a corresponding ridge of metal, called a burr. The process is repeated systematically across the entire plate: down, across, and diagonally, until the surface is uniformly roughened. This is physically demanding and time-consuming. A single plate can take many hours to rock, and printmakers historically handed this task to apprentices.
Once the plate is grounded, it would print as a solid black. The artist then works from dark to light using two tools. The scraper is a triangular-ended steel tool that removes burr and pits, reducing the plate's capacity to hold ink. The burnisher is a smooth, rounded steel tool that polishes the plate surface, compressing the remaining texture until it holds little or no ink. By varying the pressure and number of passes with the scraper and burnisher, the artist can create any tone from solid black through every gradation of gray to pure white.
The National Portrait Gallery in London describes the process: "The design itself is created by scraping down and polishing with a burnisher areas of the plate. These will hold less ink and so print more lightly than the unpolished areas." The Gallery notes that the technique is "particularly prone to friction during printing," meaning that "the earliest impressions are the finest and print very dark with strong definition whereas over the course of time the plate becomes worn and the resulting prints become paler." Read more at National Portrait Gallery.
The tonal range of mezzotint is what sets it apart from every other printmaking technique. In etching and engraving, tone is built through hatching: networks of lines whose density creates the visual impression of tone. Look closely at an etching and you will see the individual lines. In mezzotint, there are no lines. The transition from black to gray to white is smooth and continuous, produced by the gradual reduction of surface texture rather than any discrete mark. This gives mezzotint a quality of atmospheric depth and luminosity that no other intaglio technique can replicate.
Mezzotint was invented by Ludwig von Siegen (1609-c. 1680), a German soldier and amateur artist. His earliest known mezzotint, a portrait of Countess Amalie Elisabeth of Hanau-Munzenberg, dates to 1642. Von Siegen worked from light to dark, adding texture to create tone, which is the reverse of the method that later became standard. Prince Rupert of the Rhine, a cavalry commander in the English Civil War, learned the technique and took it to England. He is credited with inventing the rocker, which replaced the cruder tools used by von Siegen.
The technique flourished in England from the late 17th century through the 18th century. In France, mezzotint was called "la maniere anglaise" (the English manner), reflecting its association with British printmaking. Sir Peter Lely saw the potential for using mezzotint to publicize his portraits, and he encouraged Dutch printmakers to come to England. Godfrey Kneller worked closely with John Smith (1652-1743), who created about 500 mezzotints, some 300 of which were copies of portrait paintings. In the 18th century, over 400 mezzotints after portraits by Sir Joshua Reynolds are known, by various hands.
Mezzotint was the preeminent medium for reproducing oil paintings before the invention of photography. Its tonal qualities and its capacity for rich blacks and smooth gradations could approximate the chiaroscuro of paint more closely than any other printmaking technique. It was particularly suited for reproducing dramatic light effects, skin tones, and sumptuous materials like satin, silk, velvet, and gleaming armor.
From the mid-19th century, mezzotint declined as lithography and other techniques produced comparable results more easily. Sir Frank Short (1857-1945) was an important pioneer of the mezzotint revival in the United Kingdom, and Peter Ilsted (1864-1933) was a significant practitioner in Denmark. The technique went into further decline in the 20th century because rocking plates by hand was so time-consuming. A wider revival of interest occurred after the 1990 publication of The Mezzotint: History and Technique by artist Carol Wax, which was responsible for a substantial increase in the number of artists learning and using the technique.
Von Siegen invented mezzotint. His portrait of Countess Amalie Elisabeth of Hanau-Munzenberg (1642) is the first known mezzotint print. He worked from light to dark, adding texture to a smooth plate to create tone, which is the reverse of the dark-to-light method that became standard after Prince Rupert's invention of the rocker.
Prince Rupert, a famous cavalry commander in the English Civil War, learned mezzotint from von Siegen and took the technique to England. He is credited with inventing the rocker, which replaced the cruder tools used by von Siegen and made the process more systematic and efficient. His The Great Executioner (c. 1658) is one of the earliest and most accomplished mezzotints.
Smith was the most prolific mezzotint engraver of the golden age. He created about 500 mezzotints, including some 300 copies of portrait paintings by Lely, Kneller, and others. Smith refined and perfected the technique so that a print from 1688 is technically far superior to one from 1669. He lived in Kneller's house for a period, producing mezzotint reproductions of Kneller's portraits that were widely distributed and collected.
Whistler experimented with mezzotint as part of the etching revival of the late 19th century. His mezzotints are relatively rare but demonstrate the technique's capacity for atmospheric, tonal effects that complement his work in etching and drypoint.
Wax is the contemporary artist most responsible for the revival of mezzotint. Her 1990 book The Mezzotint: History and Technique led to a substantial increase in the number of artists learning and using the technique. Wax's own mezzotints explore the medium's capacity for rich tonal range and atmospheric depth, often depicting mechanical objects and everyday scenes with a surreal, luminous quality.
Hamaguchi was a Japanese printmaker who used mezzotint to create delicate, atmospheric images of fruit, fabric, and natural forms. His work demonstrates the technique's capacity for subtle tonal transitions and luminous darks, and he was one of the few 20th-century artists to make mezzotint a primary medium.
The signature of mezzotint is the smooth, continuous tonal gradation. If a print has areas of tone that transition from dark to light with no visible lines, dots, or hatching, it is likely a mezzotint. Look closely at the tonal areas. Unlike aquatint, which has a granular texture visible under magnification, mezzotint tones are smooth and continuous. The transition from black to gray to white is unbroken, produced by the gradual reduction of surface texture rather than any discrete mark.
Look for the deep, velvety blacks. The black of a fully roughened mezzotint ground is unlike the black produced by any other print process. It comes from the density and uniformity of the burr: thousands of tiny pits and raised edges across every square millimeter of the plate, each holding a small amount of ink. In combination, they produce a depth and richness of black that etching lines, engraved marks, or lithographic ink cannot replicate.
Like all intaglio prints, mezzotints have a platemark. Early impressions in an edition will be darker and richer than later ones, because the burr wears down under the pressure of printing. This fragility of the ground is one reason mezzotints are relatively rare and their early impressions particularly prized.
Mezzotint belongs to the intaglio family, which includes etching, engraving, drypoint, and aquatint. Aquatint is the other major tonal intaglio technique, but it produces a granular tone through acid biting around resin particles, while mezzotint produces a smooth, continuous tone through mechanical roughening and burnishing. The two techniques are often compared but produce visually distinct results: aquatint has a grainy texture, mezzotint has a smooth one.
For more on printmaking techniques, read our entries on etching and intaglio, or explore our post on how to read a painting to learn more about identifying printmaking techniques in museums.
The National Portrait Gallery in London holds an extensive collection of 18th-century mezzotint portraits, including works by John Smith after Kneller and Reynolds. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has mezzotints by Prince Rupert and later practitioners. The Tate in London holds works by Frank Short and other revival-era mezzotinters.
If you want to see mezzotint at its finest, look for 18th-century English portrait mezzotints at the National Portrait Gallery or the British Museum. The deep blacks and smooth tonal gradations reproduce the quality of oil painting with a fidelity that no other printmaking technique can match. For more on the broader context of printmaking, read our entries on aquatint and etching, or explore our guide to chiaroscuro and dramatic contrast to see how mezzotint reproduces the tonal effects of painting.
Discover other art terms you might be interested in
Aquatint is an etching technique that produces tonal areas using powdered resin and acid. From Goya's Caprichos to modern printmakers, learn how it works.
An artist's proof is a print pulled outside the numbered edition, traditionally reserved for the artist. From Picasso and Mourlot to today's 10 percent rule, learn how APs work.
Drypoint is an intaglio print made by scratching a metal plate with a needle. The burr creates a rich, velvety line that wears out fast. Learn how Rembrandt used it.
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