Vocabulary

Tenebrismo

Extreme form of chiaroscuro (this is not from the dictionary)

Quadratura

Illusionistic painting in which the architectural elements of a wall or ceiling painting appear to be part of the real architectural setting.

Mannerism [It. maniera]

Name given to the stylistic phase in the art of Europe between the High Renaissance (see Renaissance, §4) and the Baroque, covering the period from c. 1510-20 to 1600. It is also sometimes referred to as late Renaissance, and the move away from High Renaissance classicism is already evident in the late works of Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael, and in the art of Michelangelo from the middle of his creative career. Although 16th-century artists took the formal vocabulary of the High Renaissance as their point of departure, they used it in ways that were diametrically opposed to the harmonious ideal it originally served. There are thus good grounds for considering Mannerism as a valid and autonomous stylistic phase, a status first claimed for it by art historians of the early 20th century. The term is also applied to a style of painting and drawing practiced by artists working in Antwerp slightly earlier, from c. 1500 to c. 1530

Di sotto in sù [It.: 'from below upwards'].

Term applied to extreme foreshortening and perspective in a ceiling or fresco painting. It creates the illusion that figures and objects are suspended above the viewer in space and not confined to the picture plane (see ). Andrea Mantegna first made sophisticated use of this convention, which was later used by many artists of the 16th-18th centuries.

Quadro riportato

Term for an easel painting, usually on canvas, inserted into a ceiling decoration.

Aerial perspective

The illusion of distance in the landscape in a painting achieved by making objects paler and bluer the further they are from the viewer. The term was invented by Leonardo da Vinci, though aerial perspective had been known since antique mural painting. Among its most famous later exponents were the landscape painters Claude Lorrain and Turner.

Cangianti [It.: 'colour changes', from present participle of cangiare: to change; Fr. changeant; Eng. changeables].

The practice of using two or more hues of different lightness to imitate the effects of light and shadow on a surface. Cangianti often imitate the appearance of shot silk where the woof and the warp are two different colours, a weaving practice that causes the fabric to appear to change in colour with its orientation to the light. Cangianti modeling emerged in 14th-century Italian painting as an alternative to Chiaroscuro modeling. Its greatest exponents in later centuries were Michelangelo and Federico Barocci.

Alla Prima

[From the Italian, 'at first'] used to describe painting directly on to the canvas without preliminary underdrawing or underpainting (i.e. building up successive layers of paint). Synonymous terms are 'wet on wet', 'direct painting', and the French au premier coup

Pentimento

[From the Italian, 'repentance'] part of a picture or drawing which has been painted or drawn over after the artist has changed his mind about a particular motif, for example the pose of a figure. In paintings these earlier thoughts can become visible, either to the naked eye on account of the upper layer of added paint becoming more transparent with time, or through scientific examination by x-ray photography or infra-red reflectography. The existence of pentimenti in a painting is often thought to increase the likelihood of its authenticity, the theory being that only the original artist would make such changes, whereas a copyist would merely reproduce the final composition.

Decorum

[From the Latin decorus, 'seemly'] originally a literary term, it is first used in relation to the visual arts in the Renaissance in the writings of Leonardo da Vinci. According to Leonardo's theory of Decorum, the gestures which a figure makes must not only demonstrate feelings, but must be appropriate to age, rank, and position. So must also be dress, the setting in which the subject moves, and all the other details of the composition. Such thinking greatly influenced academic art, in particular history painting, from the Renaissance through to the 19th century.

Disegno

[Italian, 'design or drawing'] in Italian Renaissance theory disegno referred to the total concept or design of a work of art. Some Mannerist theorists wrote of the disegno interno, the artist's ideal visualization of an object or scene, as opposed to its actual appearance. Less specifically, disegno referred to drawing in general, the very basis of a visual artist's training. In the Renaissance, Florentine artists were perceived as being more concerned with drawing, whereas those from Venice attached greater importance to colour...

Chiaroscuro

[Italian, 'light-dark'] a term used to describe the effects of light and dark in a work of art, particularly when they are strongly contrasting. Leonardo da Vinci was a pioneer of chiaroscuro but it is most frequently discussed in relation to the paintings of the 17th-century artists Caravaggio and Rembrandt. The English landscape painter John Constable (1776-1837), mindful of the effects of contrast he wished to achieve in his work, wrote of the 'Chiaroscuro of Nature'.