The Large Horse, by Albrecht Dürer, is among the engravings on exhibit at the RISD Museum beginning Friday. The show includes images taken with a digital microscope to show in detail the complexity of the artwork.

PROVIDENCE It began, humbly enough, as a way for metalworkers and other artisans to make paper copies of their favorite designs. Yet it quickly became one of the world’s great art forms, winning admirers such as the great German artist Albrecht Dürer and the Italian Renaissance master Agostino Carracci. By the end of the 17th century, it had achieved something akin to rock star status.

Now, an exhibit at the RISD Museum will try to bring the venerable art of engraving into the digital age.

On Friday, the museum opens “The Brilliant Line: Following the Early Modern Engraver, 1460-1650,” an exhibit that explores the history of engraving through a combination of outstanding original artworks and cutting-edge technology. In particular, the show seeks to demonstrate how artists such as Dürer, Carracci and famed French engraver Robert Nanteuil gradually developed a set of techniques that allowed engraving — a paperbound black-and-white medium — to rival the best of painting and sculpture.

Organized by the museum’s associate print curator, Emily J. Peters, the show features more than 80 works, including loans from New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Houghton Library at Harvard University. Still, it’s the way the show incorporates high-tech elements, including images taken with a digital microscope and state-of-the-art graphics software, that may be the biggest surprise.

“The high-tech aspect was there from the beginning,” says Peters, who began planning the exhibition more than two years ago. “What we didn’t realize when we started was how far the technology had come just the past few years. When we started looking at what we could do, it was amazing.”

As an example, Peters points to a computer program that allows viewers to peel back layers of detail, revealing each step in the engraving process. In the past, unraveling a work like The Fight Between Ulysses and Irus, an action-packed mythological scene by the 16th-century Dutch artist Jan Muller, might have taken a trained print expert several hours. Now it takes just a few mouse clicks.

“I think people will be surprised at how complex some of these works are,” Peters says. “Even something that looks pretty simple at first glance can turn out to be incredibly complicated.”

Another innovation: close-ups of individual engravings taken with a digital microscope.

“Again, I think people will be surprised at the level of detail in some of these works,” Peters says. “In some cases, you have artists making marks that are virtually invisible to the naked eye. Rather than seeing the marks, you were supposed to experience them on a subconscious level.”

At the same time, Peters insists that the show’s high-tech touches exist to enhance the engravings, not upstage them. In fact, she says, the show could easily get along without them.

“When we were putting the show together, we really made an effort to seek out the very best versions of each work,” she says. “As far as engravings go, these are the best of the best.”

In making her selections, Peters got help from Andrew Stein Raftery, a master printmaker who teaches at the Rhode Island School of Design. Raftery, whose own engravings have won wide acclaim, also helped develop some of the technology used in the exhibit — notably the computer program that allows viewers to reconstruct how individual engravings were created. (In fact, it’s Raftery’s handiwork that you see when you click through the early stages of a work. Only the final images are original.)

Raftery says that working on the project gave him a deeper appreciation for printmaking skills — and the patience — of master-engravers such as Dürer and Carracci.

“Sometimes you really can’t believe the level of detail,” he says. “For example, a line that looks fairly solid from a distance might turn out to be made up of dozens of smaller lines, each working together to form a larger outline. You also see how artists deliberately varied the depth or width of their lines in order to create subtle tonal and textural effects. Some of the stuff is just mind-boggling.”

Beyond its technological trappings, “The Brilliant Line” also has a more conventional scholarly goal — namely, to trace the history of engraving from its modest beginnings in the 15th century to its ultimate heyday in 17th-century France. In fact, scholars now believe that the first engravings were probably made by skilled metalworkers, including goldsmiths and armor-makers. The goal: to produce low-cost copies of designs that could be stored in a workshop or shopped around to potential clients.

“Basically, it started a documentary process,” Peters says. “It was only later that artists realized that engraving offered a range of effects that they couldn’t get anywhere else.”

At its most basic, engraving involves gouging lines in a sheet of metal (usually copper) with a sharp-tipped tool, known as a burin or graver. By varying the depth, width and direction of each cut, artists can achieve a dizzying range of effects, from boldly graphic to finely nuanced. In the hands of a skilled engraver, the lines and shapes produced by a burin almost seem to jump off the page.

By the early 1500s, some of Europe’s best-known artists were experimenting with the new process. Dürer, for example, produced dozens of engravings, ranging from religious scenes to nudes and animal studies. Other notable engravers include the German artist Martin Schongauer, the Frenchman Gregoire Huret and the Italians Giorgio Ghisi, Marcantonio Raimondi and Enea Vico.

All are represented in the RISD show.

Ironically, despite its past glories, engraving is little practiced today. In fact, its best known contemporary use is more economic than artistic: it’s the primary process for printing paper currency, including the money most of us carry around in our wallets and purses every day.

“The Brilliant Line: Following the Early Modern Engraver” opens Friday at the RISD Museum, 224 Benefit St. in Providence.

bvansicl@projo.com