Painting 1 The Practice of painting
PART 1 What paint can do
Project 3 Working on different coloured grounds
Exercise 2 Research point
Chiaroscuro is a very tricky subject to research because everyone writes very little about it and those that do often contradict each other I set to with a will and consulted four major art history books, only one of which mentioned the word and this is what the learned Gombrich (1995 p.37) had to say:
People who have acquired some knowledge of art history are sometimes in danger of falling into a similar trap. When they see a work of art they do not stay to look at it, but rather search their memory for the appropriate label. They may have heard Rembrandt was famous for chiaroscuro – which is the Italian technical term for light and shade-so they nod wisely when they see a Rembrandt, mumble ”wonderful chiaroscuro” and wander on to the next picture.
Twice on the one page then nowhere else in nearly seven hundred pages, still it was a start of sorts, one that prompted quite a lot of questions. It is an Italian technical term for light and shade, what kind of light and shade? Being a firm believer that art history is about pictures I decided to chose an Italian picture with light and shade in it to see If I could discern what this was all about Maybe my choice of picture was unfortunate but maybe not because this feels like the beginning of a long story.
I chose figure 1, an early Italian Fresco painting of a man and a woman on a wall in Pompeii, I was trying to spread the narrative out so that you would be shocked when you turned to page 2 but now I’ve remembered that blogs don’t work like that so here is figure 1.
Figure 1 (1.3.2.1) unknown(C1st) Portrait of the baker Terentius Neo and his wife [fresco on plaster] Location:Museo Arceologico Nazionale, Naples, (image source)
In real life, I am now on page 2 but in the virtual blog I am just droning on, anyway back to the research. The background is quite bland, background is pretty important in the study of chiaroscuro; it seems to represent the corner of a room but the figures, have light and shade, both in the features and in the clothing. So Italian, light and shade, seems like chiaroscuro, wrong, it’s far too early the word chiaroscuro hadn’t even been invented yet.
The Open College of the Arts(OCA p 44) states:
The term chiaroscuro originated during the Renaissance when it referred to a technique of drawing on coloured paper by building light tones with gouache and working down to dark tones with ink. It later came to refer to modelling of light in paintings, drawings and prints. The extreme contrast between dark and light areas allowed subtle gradations of tone to create illusions of volume, most notably that of the human form.
Drawings of the type described in the OCA text were certainly being produced from about 1450 onwards by Botticelli and his contemporaries and the earliest Chiaroscuro woodcut print was produced in 1510 by Hans Burgkmair (Gregory 2012 p.35) in Germany. The word chiaroscuro probably remained an artist’s technical term and did not pass into common usage until the writing of Vasari in about 1550 in the post Renaissance Mannerist period.
Chiaroscuro as we have seen was a technique practiced in the ancient times by the Romans and although there are no surviving Greek paintings we can tell from surviving Greek mosaics that the ancient Greeks understood and practiced the technique of modelling the form of objects using light and shade. Chiaroscuro had survived from ancient times in icon painting but during the renaissance it was developed as one of the key concepts in achieving realism in art. The fresco painting by Giotto (Figure 2 ) is generally considered to be the first renaissance painting, note the use of chiaroscuro
Figure 2 (1.3.2.2) Giotto (1325) Death of St Francis [Fresco] Location: Santa Croce, Bardi Chapel Florence (image source)
in the modelling of the figures, particularly the central monk, note also the lack of cast shadows falling from one figure to the next, this will become more important as we progress and of course the background has no modelling by chiaroscuro because this painting is about the figures. Fresco painting, using a water-based paint onto fresh plaster is probably several times more difficult to do than watercolour painting and the modelling in the figures that Giotto has achieved using the chiaroscuro technique is testament to his greatness. On the Sistine Chapel ceiling Michelangelo used the technique of cangiantism rather than chiaroscuro to achieve the modelling of his forms most probably to ease the problems with the quick drying water based paint on fresh plaster but that is a whole other line of inquiry.
The next example, again painted in a water-based medium, is by Fra Angelica (figure 3) note the increase in depth of the modelling in the figures and their clothing, this shows the development in
Figure 2 (1.3.2.2) Fra Angelico (1452) Flight into Egypt [Tempera on panel] Location: Museo di San Marco, Florence (Image source)
the technique of chiaroscuro. Fra angelica has also used chiaroscuro to model the features in the background landscape but to a limited extent so as not to detract from the figures and the lack of cast shadows gives the figures a floating other-worldly effect.
Figure 4 (1.3.2.4) Raphael (1507) The Madonna of the pinks [oil on panel] Location: National Gallery London. (Image source)
Moving forward another fifty years we have this example by Raphael (figure 4) the use of oil paint has, as you can see, allowed the graduations in the modelling of the forms to become much more subtle enabling the technique of chiaroscuro to become more important in achieving a feeling of realism. Again the background is subdued so as not to detract from the figures but Raphael has put just enough modelling into the curtain and the stone column by the window to create a believable space. At last we have shadows, but only where Raphael chooses to include them to define the form.
Step forward Leonardo, (figure 5) if you like chiaroscuro then this is the painting for you. In my opinion Leonardo was one of the greatest practitioners of chiaroscuro note especially how the rocks in the background lighten and darken in contrast to the lights and darks on the foreground figures.
Figure 5 (1.3.2.5)Da Vinci L. (1508) Virgin on the rocks [oil on panel] Location National gallery London (image source)
Leonardo has painted the lights in his figures far lighter than they appear to the eye to give his chiaroscuro the widest tonal range giving greater roundness in his forms. The background forms have a narrower tonal range partially to distance them and partially not to detract from the renaissance cult of the figure, yet again the cast shadows are omitted in part either for compositional reasons or so as not to confuse the form shadows
As the renaissance drew to a close the focus of paining turned away from the figures and became more concerned with the whole picture space. You have probably noticed that the renaissance painting’s we looked at were all painted in daylight, now comes the turn of the night paintings and of course the indoors paintings.
I am a city dweller and I suppose a child of the light, the streets are light 24 hours a day and I even sleep with the light on to keep the darkness at bay but when I travel in rural areas I am always amazed at how dark it all is, how dark the pub is at night when you step outside for a cigarette with the pool of electrical light ending just beyond the door threshold, how different the internal light seems without the ambient light from the streetlights. That is now, time travelling back a hundred years or more when the night was lit only by candles and firelight the nights must have been very gloomy indeed. I like to think that the setting for El Greco’s painting (figure 6) is out of doors as there is nothing catching the light in the background.
Figure 6 (1.3.2.6) El Greco (1590) Allegory, boy lighting a candle in the company of an ape and a fool-Fabula [oil] Location: National Gallery of Scotland (image source)
There are cast shadows in this work, such as the shadow cast by the boy’s collar on the fools face but these are kept small so as not to interfere with the form shadows. This technique of exploiting the light with almost stage lighting is an extreme form of chiaroscuro known as tenebrism, and is probably when the word chiaroscuro began to refer to the lights and darks across the whole picture plane. On its website the Tate gallery uses an almost notan like watercolour by Turner to illustrate the term chiaroscuro.
The grand master of tenebrism was of course Caravaggio, (figure 7) whose painting style was exported to Holland and used to form almost the whole of the Dutch Golden age of painting
Figure 7 (1.3.2.7) Caravaggio (1601) The supper at Emmaus [oil on canvas] Location National Gallery London (image source)
There are cast shadows on the table, the figures and the background wall it is easy to say background wall, because that is exactly what it is, catching the shadows and drifting away from the light source. The chiaroscuro modelling in the figures is all but sculptural, thrusting out from the picture plane. The tenebrism stage lighting effect does exactly what stage lighting does and add drama to the scene.
Figure 8 (1.3.2.8) Velasquez D. (1623) El Aguador de Seville[oil on canvas] Location Apsley House, London (image source)
I have included the Velasquez (figure 8) because it is a superb example of the techniques, and of course the Rembrandt (figure 9) to remind you to say “ah tenebrism” as you walk past it in the Rijksmuseum and the Wright (figure 10) as an example of how far the technique can be pushed
Figure 9 (1.3.2.9) Rembrandt (1642) The night watch [oil on canvas] Location; Rijksmuseum Amsterdam. (image source)
Figure 10 (1.3.2.10) Wright J. (1768) An experiment on a bird in an air pump [oil on canvas] Location: National Gallery London. (image source)
To finish, two rather more modern examples that are centuries away from Giotto, the Van Gogh (figure 11) which is an unusual example of the techniques because it includes the light source, which is painted in a far lower key than it would appear in real life, to avoid it dominating the picture.
Figure 11 (1.3.2.10)van Gogh V. (1885) The potato eaters [oil on canvas] Location: Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam (image source)
Last but not least the Picasso (figure 12) asking you to note the chiaroscuro modelling on the central horse head, the stage lighting effect of the tenebrism background and the chiaroscuro of the whole painting surface, by the way is that Van Gogh’s light above the horses head converted to electricity for the modern age?
Figure 12 (1.3.2.12) Picasso P. (1937) Guernica [oil on canvas] Location: Museo Reina Sofia Madrid. (image source)
Reference
Gombrich E.(1989) The story of art.15th Edition. London: Phaidon Press Ltd.
Gregory S.(2012) Vasari and the Renaissance print. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Ltd.
OCA(2011) Painting 1 the practice of painting document control number p1pp250111 [s.l.] [s.n.]
Bibliography
Barolsky P.(1991) Why Mona Lisa Smiles and other tales by Vasari. USA: Pennsylvania State University Press.
D’Alleva A.(2012) Methods and theories of art history. London: Lawrence King Publishing Ltd.
Hatt M. and Klonk C.(2006) Art History a critical introduction to its methods. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Pooke G. Ann Newall D.(2008)Art History the basics. Oxford: Routledge.
Vasari G.(1550) Lives of the most eminent painters, sculptors and architects. Florence: Lorenzo Torrentino
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