In painting, a pentimento ( Italian for 'repentance'; from the verb pentirsi , meaning 'to repent'; plural pentimenti) is "the presence or emergence of earlier images, forms, or strokes that have been changed and painted over". [1] Sometimes the English form "pentiment" is used, especially in older sources.
Pentimenti may show that a composition originally had an element, for example, a head or a hand, in a slightly different place, or that an element no longer in the final painting was originally planned. The changes may have been done in the underdrawing of the painting, or by the visible layers of paint differing from the underdrawing, or by the first painted treatment of the element having been over-painted.
Some pentimenti have always been visible on the final painting with careful inspection; others are revealed by the increasing transparency that some paint acquires after several centuries. Others, especially in the underdrawing, can only be seen with modern methods such as X-rays and infrared reflectography and photographs. These are able to record photographically some pigments, depending on their chemical composition, which remain covered by later paint layers. For example, white lead, a common pigment, will be detected by X-ray, and carbon black underdrawings can often be seen with great clarity in infra-red reflectograms. [2] These methods have greatly expanded the number of pentimenti art historians are aware of, and confirmed that they are very common in the works of many old masters, from Jan van Eyck onwards.
Pentimenti are considered especially important when considering whether a particular painting is the first version by the original artist, or a second version by the artist himself, or his workshop, or a later copyist. Normally, secondary versions or copies will have few if any pentimenti, although this will not always be the case, as in The Lute Player by Caravaggio. Like Rembrandt, Titian and many other masters, Caravaggio seems rarely to have made preliminary drawings but to have composed straight onto the canvas. The number of pentimenti found in the work of such masters naturally tends to be higher.
Marks revealing a totally different subject, for example in The Old Guitarist by Picasso, are not usually described as pentimenti – the artist has abandoned his "earlier composition" to begin a new one. In cases where a composition has been changed by a later painter or restorer, marks showing the original composition would not be described as pentimenti either; it must be the original painter who has changed his mind.
Evidence of pentimenti may also help experts determine that the work was not created by a copier or forger since they are more likely to reproduce the original without making changes. [3]
The term is usually treated as an Italian word and therefore written in italics, depending on the style used in the individual context. The fully anglicised word pentiment (plural pentiments) is much rarer, though included in the Grove Dictionary of Art. The distinction between singular and plural is also rather flexible; some writers refer to a change of just one outline as pentimenti, whilst others treat each area that has been changed as a single pentimento. The word pentimento is occasionally used synonymously with palimpsest , but strictly the latter is used for documents and parchments which, due to fading, have been reused.
A portrait of Jacques de Norvins was painted by Ingres in 1811–12, when the sitter was Napoleon's Chief of Police in Rome. Originally, instead of the curtain at the left, there was a fully painted bust of a boy's head on top of a small column. Probably this was a bust of Napoleon II, Napoleon's son, who was known as the King of Rome. The presumption is that this was overpainted with the curtain after the fall of Napoleon, either by Ingres himself, or another artist. [4] The bust can just be made out in the enlarged online photo, with its chin level with the sitter's hair-line; the top of the column was level with the middle of the sitter's ear. These may always have been (just) visible, or have become so by the paint becoming transparent with age. Few viewers of the painting would notice the bust without it being pointed out. Strictly speaking, these alterations might not be described as pentimenti, because of the presumed lapse of time, and because another artist may have made the change. [5]
Several examples by Leonardo da Vinci can be found in his Salvator Mundi , which was sold to a private collector for more than $450 million at Christie's. [6] In particular the pose of Christ's right thumb was altered.
A work by Caravaggio, The Cardsharps has a number of typical minor pentimenti, altering the position of the figure on the right, which are revealed by infra-red reflectograms. These are used in discussing the painting and comparing it to another version of the subject in Bari. [7]
Zurbarán's "Christ and the Virgin in the House at Nazareth" shows that the size of a white cloth was expanded after the dark background underpainting had been applied; the expanded area is a darker white. [8]
An example by Rembrandt can be found in his 1654 portrait Flora. [9] [10] The painting depicts the Roman goddess of spring, thought to be modelled on his deceased wife Saskia, and has elements of pentimento, in a double hat brim where the artist overpainted. [11]
In 2016, as a result of the discovery of pentimenti after conservation and cleaning, the Courtauld Institute changed its opinion on its version of Manet’s Le déjeuner sur l'herbe from that of it being a copy to it being a preparatory painting that predates the version in the Louvre. Pentimenti were visible once the old varnish was removed, including alterations to the curve of the back of the female nude and one of the male figures' cap, suggesting that the Courtauld picture is a preparatory work. [12]
The term has sometimes been used in a modern sense to describe the appearance of the sides of buildings with painted advertising. Often old ads are painted over with newer ads and the paint wears away to reveal the older layers. Examples in Amsterdam, New York City and elsewhere have been photographed. [13] [14]
The Virgin of the Rocks, sometimes the Madonna of the Rocks, is the name of two paintings by the Italian Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci, of the same subject, with a composition which is identical except for several significant details. The version generally considered the prime version, the earlier of the two, is unrestored and hangs in the Louvre in Paris. The other, which was restored between 2008 and 2010, hangs in the National Gallery, London. The works are often known as the Louvre Virgin of the Rocks and London Virgin of the Rocks respectively. The paintings are both nearly 2 metres high and are painted in oils. Both were originally painted on wooden panels, but the Louvre version has been transferred to canvas.
The Taking of Christ is a painting, of the arrest of Jesus, by the Italian Baroque master Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. Originally commissioned by the Roman nobleman Ciriaco Mattei in 1602, it is housed in the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin.
The Lute Player is a composition by the Italian Baroque master Caravaggio. It used to exist in two versions, one in the Wildenstein Collection and another in the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg. A third version, which was kept for 275 years at Badminton House, Gloucestershire, came to light in 2001, and which today is understood to be the original version. The Hermitage and the Badminton House versions were exhibited together in 2020 at the Galleria Borghese.
The Incredulity of Saint Thomas is a painting of the subject of the same name. It is one of the most famous paintings by the Italian Baroque master Caravaggio, c. 1601-1602. There are two autograph versions of Caravaggio's The Incredulity of Saint Thomas, an ecclesiastical "Trieste" version for Girolamo Mattei which is now in a private collection and a secular "Potsdam" version for Vincenzo Giustiniani that later entered the Royal Collection of Prussia, survived the Second World War unscathed, and can now be admired in the Palais at Sanssouci, Potsdam.
Ecce Homo is a painting by the Italian Baroque master Caravaggio. It is housed in the Palazzo Bianco, Genoa. Contemporary accounts claim the piece was part of a unannounced competition between three artists, and that the Caravaggio version was eventually sent to Spain.
Cornelis de Vos was a Flemish painter, draughtsman and art dealer. He was one of the leading portrait painters in Antwerp and is best known for his sensitive portraits, in particular of children and families. He was also successful in other genres including history, religious and genre painting. He was a regular collaborator with Rubens.
Dutch Golden Age painting is the painting of the Dutch Golden Age, a period in Dutch history roughly spanning the 17th century, during and after the later part of the Eighty Years' War (1568–1648) for Dutch independence.
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, usually simply known as Rembrandt, was a Dutch Golden Age painter, printmaker, and draughtsman. An innovative and prolific master in three media, he is generally considered one of the greatest visual artists in the history of art. It is estimated Rembrandt produced a total of about three hundred paintings, three hundred etchings, and two thousand drawings.
Landscape with the Fall of Icarus is a painting in oil on canvas measuring 73.5 by 112 centimetres now in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels. It was long thought to be by the leading painter of Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting, Pieter Bruegel the Elder. However, following technical examinations in 1996 of the painting hanging in the Brussels museum, that attribution is regarded as very doubtful, and the painting, perhaps painted in the 1560s, is now usually seen as a good early copy by an unknown artist of Bruegel's lost original, perhaps from about 1558. According to the museum: "It is doubtful the execution is by Bruegel the Elder, but the composition can be said with certainty to be his", although recent technical research has re-opened the question.
Mickalene Thomas is a contemporary African-American visual artist best known as a painter of complex works using rhinestones, acrylic, and enamel. Thomas's collage work is inspired from popular art histories and movements, including Impressionism, Cubism, Dada, the Harlem Renaissance, and selected works by the Afro-British painter Chris Ofili. Her work draws from Western art history, pop art, and visual culture to examine ideas around femininity, beauty, race, sexuality, and gender.
Working in layers is a system for creating artistic paintings that involve the use of more than one layer of paint.
Underdrawing is a preparatory drawing done on a painting ground before paint is applied, for example, an imprimatura or an underpainting. Underdrawing was used extensively by 15th century painters like Jan van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden. These artists "underdrew" with a brush, using hatching strokes for shading, using water-based black paint, before underpainting and overpainting with oils. Cennino D'Andrea Cennini describes a different type of underdrawing, made with graded tones rather than hatching, for egg tempera.
A tronie is a type of work common in Dutch Golden Age painting and Flemish Baroque painting that depicts an exaggerated or characteristic facial expression. These works were not intended as portraits or caricatures but as studies of expression, type, physiognomy or an interesting character such as an old man or woman, a young woman, the soldier, the shepherdess, the Oriental, or a person of a particular race.
Jacques Marquet de Montbreton, baron de Norvins was a French politician and writer, also a soldier, lawyer and administrator. Born into a wealthy family of tax farmers, after Napoleon came to power, Norvins became and remained a firm supporter, serving as Napoleon's Chief of Police in French-occupied Rome from 1810-14.
A Man with a Quilted Sleeve is a painting of about 1510 by the Venetian painter Titian in the National Gallery, London, measuring 81.2 by 66.3 centimetres. Though the quality of the painting has always been praised, there has been much discussion as to the identity of the sitter. It was long thought to be a portrait of Ariosto, then a self-portrait, but in 2017 is called Portrait of Gerolamo (?) Barbarigo by the gallery, having also been called merely Portrait of a Man, the title used here, The Man with the Blue Sleeve, and no doubt other variants.
The Magdalen Weeping is an oil on oak panel painting attributed to the workshop of the unidentified Early Netherlandish artist known today by the notname the Master of the Legend of the Magdalen, active in Brussels. Although beautiful, the painting is significantly damaged and has been restored and overpainted a number of times since the 19th century; not always successfully and the impact of the image is considered to have been lessened as a result.
In the art world, if an artwork exists in several versions, the one known or believed to be the earliest is called the prime version. Many artworks produced in media such as painting or carved sculpture which create unique objects are in fact repeated by their artists, often several times. It is regarded as a matter of some importance both by art historians and the art market to establish which version has "priority", that is to say was the original work. The presumption usually is that the prime version is the finest, and perhaps the most carefully done, though some later versions can be argued to improve on the originals.
Self-Portrait at the Age of 63 is a self-portrait by the Dutch artist Rembrandt. One of three dating to 1669, it was one of the last in his series of around 80 self-portraits, painted in the months before his death in October 1669. Despite the closeness of his death, and the concentration on his aging face, Rembrandt makes an impression of a self-assured and confident artist. It was bought by the National Gallery, London in 1851.
The radiography of cultural property is the use of radiography to understand intrinsic details about objects. Most commonly this involves X-rays of paintings to reveal underdrawing, pentimenti alterations in the course of painting or by later restorers, and sometimes previous paintings on the support. Many pigments such as lead white show well in radiographs.
The Girl in a Picture Frame is a 1641 oil on panel painting by the Dutch artist Rembrandt. It is also known as The Jewish Bride and The Girl in a Hat. With The Scholar at the Lectern and Landscape with the Good Samaritan, it is one of three Rembrandt paintings in Polish collections. It is currently located at the Royal Castle in Warsaw.
