BULINO. - It is the instrument with which the copper or steel plate intended as the matrix for prints is engraved directly, without the aid of acids, etching (v.) aquatint (v.).
It consists of a rod of the purest steel, with a rectangular, rhomboid, or oval cutting edge, which is frequently sharpened on an oilstone and fitted into a short mushroom-shaped handle. The lines, more or less widely spaced and more or less broad and deep, may be drawn in a single direction or crossed, and dots may be intermingled with them, made with the b. itself or with the drypoint, which is a b. with a conical tip.
Especially suited to the meticulous reproduction of models (it was much used for copies of works of art or for views: cf., for example, the prints of Marcantonio Raimondi), it was nevertheless employed with wholly creative intentions and results
by artists such as, for example, Antonio Pollaiuolo, Andrea Mantegna, Alberto Dürer.