A technical dictionary of printmaking, André Béguin.

Line engraving done with a burin or graver is an intaglio technique used on metal (similar work done on wood is called wood engraving). The most commonly used metal is copper. The graver (also called burin) is a sharp steel tool which is used to cut lines into the plate. This tool permits the line engraver to make very precise lines without swelling or pushing out the plate surface on either side of the line.
These lines may either be very fine or considerably deep and wide. The lines cut into the plate become the lines of the image itself and can be modulated by crossing as well as by accentuating or superimposing them. In this way the cut lines can express the most subtle values as easily as the most intense blacks.
The term "line engraving" is often used to designate both the plate and the impressions made from such plates. Line engravings are printed on an intaglio press which is used for all of the intaglio techniques.
As with all intaglio techniques, the cuts in a line engraving plate are stuffed with ink when printed (as opposed to relief plates in which only the surface is inked and whose intaglio areas must be kept free of ink). In printing, pressure is applied to the paper destined to receive the impression so that the paper is pushed into the intaglio areas where it picks up ink in proportion to the width and the depth of the intaglio lines. The pressure exercised by the rollers of the intaglio press forces the paper to take on a relief design which corresponds to the intaglio areas of the plate. To facilitate this process the paper is usually dampened before printing. The pressure of the rollers also causes a plate mark (an indention in the paper, of the same size of the plate being printed).
Line engraving must be differentiated from other types of engraving done on metal such as dotted manner and punch engraving, both of which only partially use a burin or a graver. It may also be pointed out that relief engravings on metal can also use a burin or a graver but these distinguish themselves from line engraving both by their printing technique (the surface is inked rather than the lines) and by the fact that, upon impression, the lines appear white on a black background (white line work) [white].
Line engraving most certainly developed from jewelry making. As a matter of fact, jewelry making was responsible for the development of the greatest line engraver ever known. The two grandfathers and the father of Albrecht Dürer were jewelers and even Albrecht himself began his career as a jeweler.
The tools used in line engraving were the same tools that jewelers used before the invention of line engraving. In tact, these tools are mentioned in the treatise "Diversarium artiuni schedula" written by the monk Theophilus around the 12th century. Prints must have been first invented as a variation on the prints that jewelers made of their niello work in order to keep a record of it and to check up on work in progress. In 1550 the painter, architect, and historian Vasari wrote in his Lives of the Artists, that the Florentine Maso Finiguerra practiced a kind of line engraving as of 1460. "Each time Finiguerra chased a silver plate he made sure to make a clay impression before doing the niello work. The clay impression was then used to make a sulphur print whose intaglio areas were filled with lamp black and whose surface was rubbed with some oil. He then thought to "print" the sulphur plate onto a dampened sheet of paper. The impression was made by passing the sulphur plate and the sheet of paper under a cylinder that applied the necessary pressure. The result was a printed drawing that looked as if it were a hand made drawing." Vasari declared that Finiguerra should thus be considered the inventor of intaglio engraving. Maybe this was true, at least in Italy, but it must be said that engravings (and not just niellos) had appeared before 1460. The earliest surviving intaglio print is dated 1446. The print in question is a Flagellation, probably made somewhere in Holland or Germany and is now kept in Berlin. Nevertheless, there exist other prints which are not dated and which are probably even older. For example: a print representing a scene from the Passion of Christ is known to have been copied several times (one drawing and two manuscript illuminations) as of 1441. These two early dates are even bypassed by several specialists who believe that line engraving began around 1430 in Northern Europe, probably in the area that is now Holland or Northern Germany.
The year 1440 is the date attributed to the malor work of the so called Master of the Playing Cards. Around 1450 the custom arose of incorporating a signature into the design but often this signature was no more than a monogram. Much at the same time appeared the first signatures on woodcuts. The practice of signing works was probably due to a reaction against the anonimity of early engraving. The middle of the 15th century was also when printing with mobile letters first began. This technique was to greatly influence woodcutting. In fact, woodcuts could easily be adapted to the printing press and even be printed at the same time as a text. In order for a text and a block to be printed at the same time the two bad to be equally high. The first illustrated books using woodcuts (block books) were printed as early as 1461. These books soon caught on and became the "best-sellers" of their time. Intaglio engraving on copper plates did not lend itself to book illustration at this time since metal plates required another kind of press. On account of this the text and the image had to be printed separately, thus necessitating two runs. Such a drawback limited considerably the use of intaglio illustrations. The earliest known book illustrated with copper plates, a book by Boccaccio illustrated by an unknown engraver, is dated 1476. The book was published in Bruges. The following year Bettini engraved the illustrations of a book printed in Florence but it was not until 1481 that Dante's Divine Commedy was printed with illustrations by Botticelli probably engraved by Baldini. In the meantime, the techniques of print making had evolved: line engraving had acquired greater agility and had abandoned the cumbersome dotted manner although many had originally thought that the dotted manner was the future of relief engraving. Two artists exercised a strong influence on their contemporaries: the enigmatic Master E.S., who lived somewhere along the Rhine, and Pollaiolo in Italy. Mantegna who engraved in the 1470's, invented the technique of parallel lines and incisions. After him came Martin Schongauer who was much admired by the young Dürer (the latter recognized the fact that Schongauer had given his own particular style to North European engraving). Somewhat later the Master of the Hausbuch introduced a new delicacy to the art of engraving by syste-matically using dry point work. More precisely, he introduced the use of the velvety lines made with the burr of dry point work as opposed to the clean and hard lines cut by a graver.
The 15th century saw, in both Italy and in Northern Europe, the establishment of line engraving. It may be said that line engraving inherited a taste for fine, subtle, and delicate work from its ancestor, jewelry making. On the other hand, the distinctive traits of line engraving have no ancestors. The nuances, the halftones, and the brilliance which woodcuts cannot equal (due to their fragile and fibrous nature) were, without precedent. When the technique had developed this far it was taken over by Dürer who used technical perfection to translate his deepest feelings.
Dürer cut some one hundred engravings which were known all over Europe. Dürer exercised considerable influence on engravers of his time who not only imitated him but also copied his work (as did Marcantonio Raimondi) and counterfeited his distinctive monogram. Dürer managed to put a stop to such plagiarism (one of the first cases of enforced copyright) and Raimondi (an extraordinarily gifted engraver) began to reproduce Raphael's work - this time under supervision of the master himself. Raimondi may thus be considered the ancestor of reproductive engraving, an art that was to be exercised by many other engravers. Raimondi's contribution was, above all, to show to what extent the tones achieved in engraving can be similar to colours of a painting.
Around 1510, when Raimondi was establishing the base of Italian engravlng, a friend and follower of Dürer, Lucas of Leyden, was laying the foundations of Flemish engraving. Vasari says of Lucas of Leyden that his engravings "opened the eyes of many a painter". This comment is important because until then engraving had been somewhat separate from painting. The efforts and success attained by Dürer had not elevated the art of engraving to the rank of painting. On the contrary, Dürer's perfection as an engraver had accentuated the backwardness of his paintings which were still attached to the Gothic past (this being a criticism often leveled at him and which made him suffer more than once). Raimondi had first introduced the generousness associated with painting and it was this quality that was to be greatly developed in the 17th century with the apogee of classical engraving. The 17th century was also the century of portraits. These portraits were almost photographic at times since the artists tried to be perfectly faithful to their subject including details, reflections, and halftones that only line engraving could manage, Reproductive precision in portraits continued to be developed in the 18th century and even in the 19th century until the invention of photography made excessive fidelity a somewhat useless exercise.

2. WORK AREA AND MATERIALS

3. ENGRAVING A PLATE

4. PRINTING A LINE ENGRAVING