Chiaroscuro Facts for Kids

Giovanni Baglione. Sacred and Profane Love. 1602–1603, showing dramatic compositional chiaroscuro

Chiaroscuro in art is the use of strong contrasts between light and dark.

This is usually done to make the composition a lot more dramatic. It is also a technical term used by art historians and artists for the contrast of light. It gives a sense of volume when modelling three-dimensional (or 3D) figures. Similar effects used in photography and cinematography are also called chiaroscuro.

Images for kids

Christ at Rest, by Hans Holbein the Younger, 1519, a chiaroscuro drawing using pen, ink, and brush, washes, white heightening, on ochre prepared paper
Chiaroscuro woodcut of the Virgin and Child by Bartolommeo Coriolano, created between 1630 and 1655 (digitally restored)
Nativity at Night by Geertgen tot Sint Jans, c. 1490, after a composition by Hugo van der Goes of c. 1470; sources of light are the infant Jesus, the shepherds' fire on the hill behind, and the angel who appears to them.
Peter Paul Rubens's The Elevation of the Cross (1610–1611) is modelled with dynamic chiaroscuro.
Joseph Wright of Derby painted several large groups with strong chiaroscuro, such as A Philosopher Lecturing on the Orrery, 1766
Fra Angelico c. 1450 uses chiaroscuro modelling in all elements of the painting
Saint Sebastian by Botticelli, 1474
Portrait of Juan de Pareja, c. 1650 by Diego Velázquez, uses subtle highlights and shading on the face and clothes
The Milkmaid c. 1658, by Johannes Vermeer, whose use of light to model throughout his compositions is exceptionally complex and delicate
Delicate engraved lines of hatching and cross-hatching, not all distinguishable in reproduction, are used to model the faces and clothes in this late-fifteenth-century engraving
Drawing by Leonardo da Vinci
Annunciation by Domenico Beccafumi, 1545–46
Allegory, Boy Lighting Candle in Company of Ape and Fool by El Greco, 1589–1592
Crucifixion of St. Peter by Caravaggio, 1600
The Flight to Egypt by Adam Elsheimer, 1609
St. Peter in prison by Rembrandt, 1631
The Proposition by Judith Leyster, 1631
Magdalene with the Smoking Flame, by Georges de La Tour, c. 1640
Landscape chiaroscuro, Jan Both, 1646
Adoration of the Shepherds by Matthias Stom, mid-17th century
Antoine Watteau – La Partie carrée, c. 1713
An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump by Joseph Wright of Derby, 1768
The Bolt by Jean-Honoré Fragonard, c. 1777
Christ on the Mount of Olives by Francisco Goya, 1819
Saint Jerome by José de Ribera, 1652
An Old Man in Red, by Rembrandt, 1652–1654
The Knitting Girl by William-Adolphe Bouguereau, 1869
Self-Portrait by John Everett Millais, 1881
Man of Sorrows, chiaroscuro drawing on coloured paper, 1516, by Hans Springinklee
A nineteenth-century version of the original type of chiaroscuro drawing, with coloured paper, white gouache highlights, and pencil shading
Saturn, anon. Italian, sixteenth-century?, Italian style chiaroscuro woodcut, with four blocks, but no real line block, and looking rather like a watercolour
Ludolph Buesinck, Aeneas carries his father, German style, with line block and brown tone block

Chiaroscuro facts for kids

Images for kids

See also