Talk:Chiaroscuro

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• Augustine also talks about this concept in Confessions. It may be worth mentioning.

• This cries for an example image.

Done.

• What about the German use of the chiaroscuro technique in in films? Didn’t they take it to a new “level” incorporating it into many of their silent films? Ex: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (where we see a heavy use of hard lights creating enormous amounts of shadows for the unimportant elements of the scene to hide in)

• (second comment)

I disagree that this concept should be mixed with Tenebrism. I disagree that Chiaroscuro is a "bold" contrast between light and dark. While it can, of course be bold I think a better description would be "an effective" contrast between light and dark. In this technique the contrast, either gradual or quick is used to create a sense of volume in the image.

• (third comment)

As far as I can tell, tenebrism is a style, and chiaroscuro is more of a technique. That is, one can engage the use of chiaroscuro without engaging in tenebrism. Thus, they are separate.

However, can one engage in tenebrism without engaging in chiaroscuro? This could pose a long-living argument. In my personal opinion, one can, and a number of tenebrous paintings I have seen do not engage in the technique of adding exposure to lighted darkness. In fact, many engage in adding shadows to the subject.

-Blutwulf

• (fourth comment)

Both are realitive terms under value in the principals of design. However Tenebrism is also a style of painting where as chiaroscuro is a fundamental of value in color theory. So one could merge them under one category of color theory could they not.

-Quintin Addelbrook

• (Fifth comment.)

I think they should not be merged. Tenebrism is an obscure, specialised term denoting a technique, school, manner or tendency—like, say, manierism. Chiaroscuro is a word from standard Italian that is merely descriptive, like, say mannerism.

It also has many other applications besides simply a value, fundamental or not, in what is here called "colour theory". Like impasto, it has entered the general language and is not merely a term of art.

Tantris 18:06, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

don't merge, for reasons given above. Plus Tenebrism is a rather old-fashioned term - more likely to be called Caravaggism or however its spelt nowadays. I need to do an article on the chiaroscuro woodcut, which is nothing to do with Tenebrism, predating it by 90 years or so. Johnbod 20:16, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

What does all this mean?:

The term chiaroscuro has been applied since the later 18th century to a printmaking technique which finds its best expressions in aquatint and in xylography, and in china (ink) drawing. The technique requires a skilled knowledge of the perspective, the physical effects of light on surfaces, the shadows. Chiaroscuro defines objects without a contouring line, but only by the contrast between the colours of the object and of the background.

Despite a frequent confusion, chiaroscuro technique in printmaking is different from German camaieu, in which the graphical effect is prevalent on the plastic effect (obtained with chiaroscuro to recall basrelief and painting "feeling"), and which more often uses coloured paper.

- I'm dubious about this, as the term in anything like this meaning is not mentioned in the 20 page glossary of print terms in A Griffiths "Prints and Printmaking", and I have never seen it so used about prints of this date & technique. What does it mean anyway? Johnbod 20:42, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

I simply googled "chiaroscuro woodblock print" and found these statements at the head of the finds (Wetman 00:54, 7 November 2006 (UTC)):

• "Beccafumi's renowned chiaroscuro wood-block prints represented a specifically Sienese style." (Pamela O. Long's review of The Invention of the Italian Renaissance Printmaker in Technology and Culture 42 (July 2001) pp. 559-561.
• Exhibition "A Matter of Tone: Chiaroscuro Woodblock Prints, 1520-1800", Rhode Island school of Design Museum of Art, 2004. ([ http://intranet.risd.edu/pdfs/Chiaroscuro.pdf pdf file)]
• (Metropolitan Museum of Art) The printed Image in the West: Woodcut: see subsection "Chiaroscuro Woodcuts"

- exactly my point; these are chiaroscuro woodcuts of 1510 on (I had added something on these to the article), not the aquatint & drawings the passage quoted is about "since the late C18". Johnbod 17:17, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

- well i've cut it out now - just too confused Johnbod 18:50, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Tenebrism and Chiaroscuro should not be merged, they are related but should be understood independantly.