Have you ever felt ignorant and uncultured while attending a museum of fine art? Here are some words you can drop.

“Pasta,” such as spaghetti, lasagna, etc., is named for Italian for paste, and that same paste-word gives us today’s painting-word.

impasto – laying on paint thickly so that it stands out from a surface

Impasto is a key plot point in Daniel Silva’s recent novel Moscow Rules. Protagonist Gabriel Allon is a word-class restorer of Old Master paintings and, on the side, a reluctant agent and assassin for the Israeli government.

. . .“Would you like to tell me why you’re forging a Cassatt?” asked Sarah Bancroft. …
. . .“You’re going to sell it to Elena Kharkov.
. . .“Ask a silly question.” she leaned forward and scrutinized the canvas. “Watch your brushwork on the hands, Gabriel. It’s a bit too impasto.”
. . .“My brushwork, as usual, is flawless.
. . .“How foolish of me to suggest otherwise.”

But Elena is too knowledgeable, and she spots the forgery. Nonetheless she buys the painting! Much later:

. . .Gabriel took the phone from her grasp and asked how she knew the Cassatt was a forgery.
. . .“It was the hands.”
. . .“What about the hands?”
. . .“The brushstrokes were too impasto.”
. . .“Sarah told me the same thing.”
. . .“You should have listened to her.”

Men! Always thinking they know best!

This message has been edited. Last edited by: wordcrafter,

Did the book actually say "to impasto"? It is right the second time.

Oops! Thank you, sir! Typo corrected.

Feel free to toss in today’s term when you can’t think of anything else to say about an old oil painting. It is certain to apply, for almost ever such painting displays it. How useful!

craquelure – fine cracks in surface of old paintings

Our two quotes, from the same source as yesterday, use this word in the contexts of restoration and forgery respectively.

So perfect was his mimicry of Poussin that it was impossible to tell where the painter’s work ended and his began. He even added faux craquelure, the fine webbing of surface cracks, so that the new faded flawlessly into the old.

. . . “Why are you baking the Cassatt?”
. . .Just then the kitchen timer chimed softly. Gabriel removed the canvas from the oven and allowed it to cool slightly, then laid it faceup on the table. With Sarah watching, he took hold of the canvas at the top and bottom and pulled it firmly over the edge of the table, downward toward the floor. Then he gave the painting a quarter turn and dragged it hard against the edge of the table a second time. He examined the surface for a moment, then, satisfied, held it up for Sarah to see. Earlier that morning, the paint had been smooth and pristine. Now the combination of heat and pressure had left the surface covered by a fine webbing of fissures and cracks.
. . . “Amazing,” she whispered.
. . .“It’s not amazing,” he said. “It’s craquelure.”

The delightful Ms. Kristin Lister, conservationist at the Art Institute of Chicago, has generously provided several conservation terms. All thanks to you, Kristin!

cleavage – separation of paint layers
It’s hard to find a picture, amid the many for another type of “cleavage”! Here’s tenting at bottom right.

You’ve seen cleavage on old house-paint. It may lie flat (blind or flat cleavage) or pop up in a bulge called a blister. And you can easily spot tenting cleavage or tenting on a painting, where the paint lifts up in little tents. Kristen notes, “Often the canvas beneath has shrunk slightly and there is no longer room to set the cleavage down, unless the canvas is stretched lightly.”

What causes cleavage? A source explains, “… the surface layer … completes the drying process relatively quickly. The dry upper paint then retards the process by denying sub-surface layers access to oxygen. The complete drying of thick oil paint may take several years. The unevenness of drying creates stress within the paint structure that can lead to cracking and cleavage where paint peels away from the priming.”

Interesting. Somehow a flat cleavage doesn't occur with the other kind of cleavage.

It must be an oxymoron, then.

This page has some excellent pictures of cleavage, as part of a description of the restoration of a painting.

A conservator can cause visible damage when he/she lines or relines a canvas (adds another layer of canvas behind it, for stronger support).

weave impression (or weave emphasis) – a damage (irreversible?) that frequently occurs with lining. During lining the paint is heated up and softened, and the weave of the canvas can be pressed into the paint, ruining the original texture of the brushwork.
moating – another type of damage during lining. The impasto can be flattened by the process, often pushed down with a moat around it.

From the web-announcement of this restoration (ellipses omitted):

The main priority for treatment of the nearly 200-year-old oil paintings was to undo a conservation treatment the paintings received in 1967. The cause for concern was what conservators call a "dramatically enhanced weave impression." This means that the canvas threads became too clearly visible from the presentation side of the paintings.

Records show that a conservator in 1967 lined the paintings because they were at risk of flaking. The flat surface of the [lining] pushed out the threads from the back side of the canvas, flattening the topography of the back of the canvas and creating the enhanced weave impression on the front.

Apparently cleavage also has a political meaning, too.

Imagine if you will a toddler with a smudged face. Mother wets her fingers at her mouth, and uses the wet fingers to wipe away the smudge.

Kristin informs me (if I understand her correctly) that professional art-conservators have a euphemism when they use the same solvent. They could hardly admit to it!

aqueous cleaning – when the conservator uses spit to clean grime from a painting

pentimento – a visible trace of the artist’s earlier version, showing through when the upper layers of the paint have become translucent with age. (In effect, the “painting behind the painting”, showing where the artist “changed his mind” and changed his work.)

The figurative usage is much more interesting than the literal one. I’ll give an example of each.

[Galway] is one of the fastest-growing urban centers in Western Europe. … Everything is fast, everything is changing, everything is growing. But in this vivacious town, the pentimento of an older Ireland shines confidently through the slick modernity.
– Washington Post, Apr. 8, 2001

Restorers were guided by the surviving pentimento of the Italianate Garden's symmetrical plantings.
– Boston Globe, Oct. 26, 2000

We take "pentimento" directly from Italian, and the etymology merits a note.

The peni- part refers to being sorry (as in “penitent” and “repent”), and is akin to “pain”.

the ment part: Is it:
––– "-ment" as an ordinary noun-making suffix (as in “refinement”), so pedimento means “sorry-ness”?
––– or “ment” meaning “mind” (as in “mental), so that “pedimento” means “sorry mind”?
The dictionaries mention only the former, but I incline to the latter. Does anyone know whether “ment” is a noun-making suffix in Italian?

quote:

Does anyone know whether “ment” is a noun-making suffix in Italian?

It certainly is, as it is in all other Romance languages. Perhaps even other Indo-European ones.

inpainting – “filling in” lost or faded areas, with new paint
(overpainting – when the restorer gets carried away and paints on top of original paint passages, instead of just where a piece of paint is missing)

Gabriel had completed a restoration of the painting [several years earlier]. His work had held up well. Only when he cocked his head to create the effect of raked lighting could he tell the difference between his inpainting and the original.
– Daniel Silva, The English Assassin

Bonus word:
raked – slanted; oblique; coming in at an angle