Featured on PDR in the collection An Iconic Line: Claude Mellan’s The Sudarium of Saint Veronica (1649)

Christ gazes out of the page dolefully, head canted and haloed. He seems to float, disembodied, between our world and the next. And, at first, we could step back in sympathy, shocked by the blood that drips like teardrops from those baleful thorns. But something else soon catches light. It might be the ringed texture of his eyeshine or that fingerprint whorl on the nose's tip. Then we notice the print's corners, where curves recede as waves do from a skipping stone. It can't be, we think — but it is. This image was made with a single line.