Art History I / Painting II: Reading the Surface
Practice question · Fill in the blanks

Complete the vocabulary of formal analysis.

Modelling form by light and shade is ______, pushed to near-black grounds in Caravaggio's ______. The handling of the paint itself is its ______, and paint laid thickly enough to hold its own shape is ______.

Word bank: chiaroscuro · tenebrism · facture · impasto · sfumato · glazing

Hints
  1. The first pair is about light; the second about the paint surface.
  2. The term for thickly laid paint that catches real light is the last.
Show the answer

Modelling form by light and shade is chiaroscuro, pushed to near-black grounds in Caravaggio's tenebrism. The handling of the paint itself is its facture, and paint laid thickly enough to hold its own shape is impasto.

Why

The second pair points at something the first cannot: impasto catches real light in its ridges, so the painting is not only depicting illumination but physically responding to the light in the room. That is one of the ways a painting stops pretending to be a window.

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