sfumato
sfumato noun: a painting technique, prominent during the Italian Renaissance, involving the application of subtle layers of translucent paint, blurring the transition between colors, tones and often objects and creating the illusion of depth.
Noun
sfumato (usually uncountable, plural sfumatos)
- A painting technique, prominent during the Italian Renaissance, involving the application of subtle layers of translucent paint, blurring the transition between colors, tones and often objects and creating the illusion of depth.
- Another quality which was adopted from Leonardo, and of which the Florentines were especially enamoured, was the ‘sfumato’ system—the imperceptible softening of the transitions in half-tints and shadows.1869, Charles Lock Eastlake, Materials for a History of Oil Painting, Volume II, Longmans, Green & Co., page 206
- The interpretation of ‘sfumato’ is equally wrong. In ‘sfumato’ there is no blurring of the outlines which delineate the contours of figures and there is no blending or diminution of the definition of forms or for that matter any mellowing of colours.1960, Helmut Ruhemann, Leonardo's Use of Sfumato, in The British Journal of Aesthetics, Volume 1, British Society of Aesthetics, page 233
sfumato meaning in Tamil
sfumato in Tamil
- ஒவிய வகையில், தெளிவற்ற புறக்கோடுடைய
Examples of sfumato in a sentence
- It could be said that sfumato is less exact than line and that its forms are less precisely defined, but with these apparent omissions comes a sense of atmosphere.1991, Philip Sohm, Pittoresco, Cambridge University Press, page 4:
- In baroque painting, sfumato is the blurring of outlines and colors amongst objects, as clouds and mountains, or the sea and the sky.2002, Scott Lash, Mike Featherstone, editors, Recognition and Difference, SAGE Publications, page 200:
- As I was saying, I was worried because my sfumatos didn't look anything like they did in the original.2022, Ave Barrera, translated by Ellen Jones and Robin Myers, The Forgery, Charco Press, unnumbered page:
Forms of sfumato
| plural | sfumatos |
|---|
Origin of sfumato
From Italian sfumato (“shaded, toned down”).
Questions about sfumato
- What does sfumato mean?
- Sfumato means a painting technique, prominent during the Italian Renaissance, involving the application of subtle layers of translucent paint, blurring the transition between colors, tones and often objects and creating the illusion of depth.
- What is sfumato in Tamil?
- Sfumato in Tamil is ஒவிய வகையில், தெளிவற்ற புறக்கோடுடைய. See Sfumato meaning in Tamil.
- How do you use sfumato in a sentence?
- It could be said that sfumato is less exact than line and that its forms are less precisely defined, but with these apparent omissions comes a sense of atmosphere.
- What part of speech is sfumato?
- Sfumato is a noun.
- What is the plural of sfumato?
- The plural of sfumato is sfumatos.
Words near sfumato in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: sfumato (page history and authors); sfumato (Tamil Wiktionary) (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: “sfumato.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sfumato. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.