metal point

metal point, descendant of the stylus of classical times and ancestor of the modern pencil, a small, sharpened metal rod used for drawing precise compositions on paper or parchment. The metal could be lead, silver, copper, or gold, but silverpoint was the most common choice because it is the most suited to permanent drawing, its stroke adhering unerasably. The silverpoint was of great value in producing the hard, clearly defined line required, for instance, by miniaturists; modelling, emphases, and light phenomena, however, had to be rendered either by means of repetitions, dense hatching, or blanks or else supplemented by other mediums.

Silverpoint achieved great popularity with such 15th-century Flemish artists as Hubert and Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden, and Hans Memling, to whose styles it was perfectly attuned. The German artist Albrecht Dürer too used it with great effect, notably in the Self-Portrait (1484). The silverpoint lost favour in the 17th century but was revived by 18th-century miniaturists and was still occasionally used by modern artists, most notably by Pablo Picasso and Ivan Albright, though in a manner that defied the convention for precision established early on.