In the late 17th century, Dutch painting became hyper-refined in both technique and subject matter. Here, this smooth-limbed Pan's identity is almost completely obscured, except for a hint of his elongated ears. Paintings with enamel-like surfaces barely showed a brushstroke; so, printmakers such as Jan Verkolje developed to a high degree of perfection the non-linear technique of mezzotint-halftones-which could produce almost seamless gradients of shading.
