Chiaroscuro is a painting technique that employs tones, shades, shadows, and highlights to create the illusion of depth on two-dimensional surfaces. Chiaroscuro is a Renaissance painting technique derived from the Italian words for bright or clear and dark or obscure. ‘Light-dark’ is the most common translation.
It’s hard to imagine how groundbreaking the concept and application of chiaroscuro techniques must have been when they were first developed. Painting as an art was what we now call ‘primitive’ prior to the Renaissance, with its flurry of intellectual activity. Shapes were defined outlines, and colors were flat planes that, today’s standards, were cartoonish.
Although chiaroscuro may appear simple, most people are unable to reproduce a colored object with a three-dimensional feel because the brain ‘overprocesses’ what the eyes see. On a sunny day, a black car will reflect blue hues from the clear sky as well as other colors from its surroundings, such as the colors of any nearcars. Despite this, most people will’see’ the car as black after removing the reflected lights and shadows.
On a blue tablecloth, a primitive painter might paint a shiny red bowl as a flat crescent of red, perhaps with a black outline. The painter skilled in chiaroscuro would use white or yellow highlights at the point of the bowl closest to the light source, and maroon, deepening to brown or black at the parts of the bowl not lit the light. The blue cloth would reflect a blue tint onto the bowl’s bottom, lighter on the light side and darker on the dark side.
The development of chiaroscuro techniques has influenced all artists since the Renaissance. Today, rather than being a radical departure, modeling three dimensions on flat surfaces via shading and highlighting is the norm, so the term chiaroscuro is usually reserved for very dramatic uses of contrasting light and darkness. Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio is the painter most often associated with chiaroscuro. He is usually referred to his ‘town-name’ Caravaggio, possibly to avoid confusion with another Michaelangelo.