Is there a textbook distinction between tenebrism and chiaroscuro?
I’m knee-deep in an art history paper, and, from what I’ve been reading, it seems like chiaroscuro and tenebrism are essentially the same thing.
Dictionary definitions:
chiaroscuro:
1. The technique of using light and shade in pictorial representation.
2. The arrangement of light and dark elements in a pictorial work of art.
tenebrism:
a style of painting especially associated with the Italian painter Caravaggio and his followers in which most of the figures are engulfed in shadow but some are dramatically illuminated by a beam of light usually from an identifiable source
If they are technically distinct, what are the telling cues that a painting uses one as opposed to the other? Is there a fine line between them?
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4 Answers
Chiaroscuro basically uses groups of shadows & highlights to create an image, by drawing or painting the shadows and/or highlights instead of drawing or painting a subject & then adding shadows & highlights. Tenebrism is different from chiaroscuro in that subject(s) are drawn or painted without highlights & then a focused highlight is used to emphasize the focus of the painting. They are two very different approaches to art.
The easiest way to remember the difference between the two is that tenebrism is a heightened form of chiaroscuro in which the shadows are darker and the highlights are lighter. Artists like Caravaggio and his followers (called Caravaggesti) like Gentileschi and others used tenebrism to enhance the drama of a scene, as Gentileschi often did in her representations of Judith and Holofernes. Gentileschi even went so far as to include a candle in her composition (tenebrism mimics the light/shadow effects of a candle), as did Georges de la Tour.
There’s a lot of work that is classified as Chiaroscuro-Rembrandt, Gentileschi etc. but of all these Caravaggio is most distinct.
The darks are really a total absense of light. There’s very little warmth in the shadows.
Caravaggio is almost synonymous with Tenebrism. His depiction of shadow and light is almost violent.
In the negative space one can almost see forerunners of Abstraction. The dark is almost a strict absence of light forming negative space as in this depiction of Narcissis.
They’re basically the same :)
<3 Caravaggio
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