Word.ws English Dictionary

chiaro-scuro

chiaro-scuro is the obsolete form of chiaroscuro.

Meaning of chiaroscuro

Noun

chiaroscuro (countable and uncountable, plural chiaroscuros or chiaroscuri)

  1. (painting) An artistic technique developed during the Renaissance, referring to the use of strong contrasts between light and dark in order to create the illusion of volume.
  2. (painting) A monochrome picture made by using several different shades of the same color.
  3. A woodcut technique in which several woodcut blocks are used to print different shades of a color, or a woodcut print made by this technique.
  4. A photographic technique in which one side of the subject, for example a face, is well lit and the other is in shadow.

See all 5 meanings of chiaroscuro

Origin of chiaro-scuro

From Italian chiaroscuro.

Questions about chiaro-scuro

What is chiaro-scuro the obsolete form of?
Chiaro-scuro is the obsolete form of chiaroscuro.

Words near chiaro-scuro in the dictionary

  1. Chiari-Frommel syndrome
  2. chiarivari
  3. chiarivaris
  4. chiaro-oscuro
  5. chiaro-oscuros
  6. chiaro-scuro
  7. chiaroscuri
  8. chiaroscurist
  9. chiaroscurists
  10. chiaroscuro
  11. chiaroscuroed

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: chiaro-scuro (page history and authors); chiaroscuro (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “chiaro-scuro.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/chiaro-scuro. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.