Glossary

Painting or sculpture that no longer depicts objects but works with colour, form and line in their own right. Wassily Kandinsky is regarded as a pioneer around 1910–1913, although the Swedish artist Hilma af Klint was painting abstract pictures from 1906; they only became known decades after her death.

More on the period: Expressionism →

A state school for artists. The first was founded in Florence in 1563; the most influential was the Paris Académie royale of 1648. Munich has had its Academy of Fine Arts since 1808. For centuries, training followed strict rules: first drawing from plaster casts of ancient statues, then from the live model.

See also: Salon, Nude, Hierarchy of genres

A way of painting within Abstract Expressionism in which the act of painting itself becomes the subject. The term was coined by the critic Harold Rosenberg in 1952. Jackson Pollock laid his canvases on the floor and dripped and flung paint onto them from cans and sticks.

More on the period: Abstract Expressionism →See also: Colour Field painting, Tachisme, Art Informel

Italian for “at the first attempt”: painting a picture wet-on-wet in a single session, without underpainting or pauses for drying. The Impressionists used the technique to capture fleeting light in front of the subject.

More on the period: Impressionism →See also: Plein-air painting, Impasto

Art that deliberately takes over other people’s images, rephotographing or copying them, and so raises questions of originality and authorship. It became prominent from the late 1970s, for example with Sherrie Levine’s rephotographs of famous photographs. Legally, it is often contested.

More on the period: Pop Art →See also: Readymade

An etching technique for areas of tone rather than lines. The copper plate is dusted with fine resin powder and heated, then the acid bites between the grains; the longer it acts, the darker the tone. Francisco de Goya used the technique masterfully in his “Caprichos” of 1799.

See also: Etching, Drypoint

A current of abstract painting after 1945 that abandons fixed forms and emphasises the spontaneous, gestural process of painting. The French critic Michel Tapié popularised the term in the early 1950s. In Germany, K. O. Götz and Emil Schumacher were among its leading exponents. The Zero group saw itself as a counter-movement.

See also: Abstraction, Monochrome

A community of artists who settle in a rural place in order to work together in nature. The model was the village of Barbizon near Paris from the 1830s. In Germany, Worpswede near Bremen, founded in 1889, and Dachau near Munich became especially well known.

More on the period: Impressionism →See also: Plein-air painting, Secession

A three-dimensional work made from found everyday objects, in effect a collage in space. Jean Dubuffet popularised the term in the 1950s, and in 1961 the Museum of Modern Art devoted the exhibition “The Art of Assemblage” to it.

See also: Collage, Readymade

An object by which a depicted figure can be recognised. St Peter carries the key, St Catherine the wheel, Hercules the club and lion skin. Anyone who knows the attributes can identify many saints, gods and allegories even without a title.

See also: Iconography

The reasoned assignment of a work to an artist, workshop or period. It rests on stylistic comparison, painting technique, provenance and scientific analysis. Attributions can change in the light of new evidence, as research on Rembrandt has repeatedly shown.

See also: Catalogue raisonné, Provenance, Craquelure

Originally a military term for the vanguard of an army. In the 19th century it was transferred to artists who claimed to be ahead of their time with new forms. Today it refers above all to the experimental movements of modernism.

An art exhibition held every two years. The oldest and most famous is the Venice Biennale, held since 1895. Many countries present their artists there in national pavilions. Biennials modelled on it have since sprung up all over the world, for example in São Paulo since 1951.

More on the period: Contemporary art →See also: Salon, Installation

The visible handling of the brush in a painting: the direction, width and pressure of the strokes. Brushwork is regarded as a painter’s handwriting and helps with attribution. It is especially pronounced in Vincent van Gogh, whose swirling strokes are recognisable at first glance.

More on the period: Post-Impressionism →See also: Impasto, Alla prima, Attribution

Latin for “dark chamber”: light enters a dark room or box through a small hole and projects an upside-down image of the outside world onto the wall. Painters used it as a drawing aid. Whether Johannes Vermeer worked with one is debated by scholars.

See also: Linear perspective

A scholarly catalogue of all known works by an artist, recording dimensions, technique, provenance and exhibitions. A work’s inclusion strengthens its attribution and usually its market value too.

See also: Attribution, Provenance

Drawing with charred twigs, for instance of willow or vine, or with compressed charcoal. Charcoal is soft, smudges easily and gives deep blacks. It suits sketches and preparatory studies but has to be fixed. Around 1900 the charcoal drawing became an art form in its own right, for example with Käthe Kollwitz.

See also: Etching, Lithography

Italian for “light-dark”: strong contrasts of light and shadow that give bodies a sense of volume. Leonardo da Vinci used the principle with subtle gradations; Caravaggio heightened it into dramatic shafts of light against almost black backgrounds.

See also: Sfumato

From the French “coller”, to glue: a picture into which other materials such as paper, fabric or newspaper cuttings are pasted. Pablo Picasso’s “Still Life with Chair Caning” of 1912 is regarded as the first collage in the history of art.

More on the period: Cubism →See also: Papier collé, Assemblage

A tendency in abstract painting that emerged in New York in the 1950s. Large, calm fields of one or a few colours fill the canvas and are meant to envelop the viewer completely. Its leading figures include Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman and Clyfford Still.

More on the period: Abstract Expressionism →See also: Action Painting, Monochrome, Abstraction

The overall effect of the colours in a picture. A colourist is a painter for whom colour matters more than drawing. Around 1670 the Paris Academy argued over which counts for more: the followers of Nicolas Poussin championed drawing, those of Peter Paul Rubens colour.

More on the period: Baroque →See also: Glaze, Impasto

Colours that lie opposite each other on the colour wheel: red and green, blue and orange, yellow and violet. Side by side they intensify each other to maximum brilliance; mixed, they produce a muddy grey. Eugène Delacroix and later Vincent van Gogh used such contrasts deliberately.

More on the period: Post-Impressionism →See also: Pointillism, Colouring

All measures that preserve a work of art in its existing state and halt further decay, such as securing loose paint or keeping a stable climate. Restoration is distinguished from this: it goes further and makes a damaged work legible again, for instance through cleaning, filling and retouching. In practice the two overlap.

See also: Consolidation, Reversibility, Retouching

Re-attaching loose or lifting paint to its support. An adhesive, such as sturgeon glue or a synthetic resin, is introduced beneath the loosened flakes, which are then usually laid down with gentle heat and careful pressure. Consolidation is among the most urgent treatments, because it prevents the loss of original material.

See also: Cupping, Craquelure, Conservation

A stance in which the weight rests on one leg while the other is relaxed, so that hips and shoulders tilt in opposite directions and the figure appears alive. Contrapposto was developed in Greek classical sculpture, for example in Polykleitos’ Spear Bearer.

The fine network of cracks that forms over time in the paint layer and varnish of a painting, caused by ageing or movement of the support. Its pattern can help in assessing authenticity, and forgers have repeatedly tried to create it artificially.

See also: Varnish, Attribution, Lining

A form of damage in paintings: between the cracks of the craquelure, the paint layer lifts at the edges so that each flake looks like a small cup. It is usually caused by tension from ageing and fluctuating humidity. Without consolidation the flakes may break away.

See also: Craquelure, Consolidation, Loss

A propaganda term used by the Nazis against modern art. In 1937 they confiscated thousands of works from German museums, by artists such as Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Emil Nolde, Max Beckmann and Paul Klee. That same year they put a selection on show in Munich in the defamatory exhibition “Degenerate Art”, intended to ridicule them. Many works were sold or destroyed.

More on the period: Expressionism →See also: Avant-garde, Provenance

A picture made of two related panels, often joined by hinges. In the Middle Ages it mostly served private devotion, like the Wilton Diptych in the National Gallery, London. Andy Warhol took up the form in his “Marilyn Diptych” of 1962.

See also: Triptych

The depiction, within the work itself, of the person who paid for a religious work of art. Donors usually kneel at the edge of the picture, often smaller than the saints, commending themselves to prayer for ever. A well-known example is Joos Vijd and Elisabeth Borluut on the outer wings of the Ghent Altarpiece.

More on the period: Early Netherlandish Painting →See also: Winged altarpiece, Hierarchical scale, Patron

An intaglio technique in which lines are scratched directly into a copper plate with a hard steel needle, with no acid at all. A burr remains along the line, which prints as soft, velvety strokes. Because the burr wears quickly, only a few good impressions are possible. Rembrandt liked to combine drypoint with etching.

See also: Etching, Engraving, Print run

Painting with colours made from hot, liquid wax. The technique dates from antiquity; the best-known examples are the Fayum mummy portraits from Egypt, made roughly in the 1st to 3rd centuries. In modern art it was taken up again by Jasper Johns, among others, for his flag paintings.

More on the period: Classical Antiquity →See also: Tempera, Pigment

An intaglio printing technique in which the artist cuts lines directly into a copper plate with a burin. The ink collects in the grooves and is transferred to the paper under high pressure. A famous example is Albrecht Dürer’s “Melencolia I” of 1514.

More on the period: Renaissance →See also: Etching, Woodcut, Print run

An intaglio printing technique: the artist draws with a needle through an acid-resistant coating on a metal plate. Acid bites the exposed lines into the metal, which then hold the ink. Rembrandt was one of the great masters of etching.

See also: Woodcut

A Surrealist game: several people write or draw in turn on a folded sheet without seeing what the others have contributed. The name comes from the first sentence produced this way: “Le cadavre exquis boira le vin nouveau”, the exquisite corpse shall drink the new wine.

More on the period: Surrealism →See also: Frottage, Collage

A Paris movement around Henri Matisse and André Derain that worked with brilliant, unmixed colours from 1905. At the 1905 Salon d’Automne, the critic Louis Vauxcelles called the painters “fauves”, wild beasts. Fauvism is regarded as an important forerunner of Expressionism.

More on the period: Expressionism →

Building up a loss to the level of the surrounding paint, usually with a mixture of chalk and glue or with modern fillers. The surface of the fill is often textured to match the brushwork or canvas weave around it. Filling is normally followed by retouching.

See also: Loss, Retouching, Ground

The painted colour of skin in a picture, from the Latin “caro”, flesh. Convincing flesh tones were considered a touchstone of the painter’s art. Italian painters of the 14th century laid a greenish layer beneath the skin, which makes the pink appear more alive. Titian and Rubens achieved almost glowing flesh with many glazes.

See also: Glaze, Underpainting, Colouring

Wall painting on fresh, still damp lime plaster, from the Italian “fresco”, fresh. As it dries, the pigments bind firmly with the plaster. Because only damp areas can be painted, the painter works in daily sections. The most famous example is Michelangelo’s ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (1508–1512).

See also: Pigment, Tempera

From the French “frotter”, to rub. Paper is laid on a textured surface such as wood, fabric or leaves and rubbed with a pencil until the pattern appears. Max Ernst developed the technique in 1925 as a Surrealist method of letting images emerge from chance textures.

More on the period: Surrealism →See also: Collage, Exquisite corpse

The depiction of scenes from everyday life: people working, eating, making music or celebrating. It flourished above all in the 17th-century Netherlands, for example with Jan Steen and Johannes Vermeer. In the academies’ ranking it stood well below history painting.

More on the period: Baroque →See also: History painting, Hierarchy of genres, Still life

A thin, translucent layer of paint over a layer that has already dried. Several glazes on top of one another create deep, luminous colours, because light is reflected back through them. Early Netherlandish painters such as Jan van Eyck mastered the technique.

See also: Oil painting, Impasto

A background of gold leaf instead of landscape or space. It stands for heavenly light and lifts the figures out of the earthly world. It is typical of Byzantine mosaics and icons and of Gothic panel painting. In the Renaissance it gave way to painted skies and perspective; around 1900 Gustav Klimt took it up again.

More on the period: Byzantine art →See also: Mosaic, Icon, Tempera

A proportion of about 1 : 1.618, in which the smaller part relates to the larger as the larger does to the whole. Luca Pacioli devoted a book to it in 1509, illustrated by Leonardo da Vinci. The idea that artists composed their pictures according to it is, however, often exaggerated.

More on the period: Renaissance →See also: Linear perspective

A water-based paint with added white pigment or chalk. Unlike watercolour it is opaque, dries matt and can be used on dark grounds too. Henri Matisse used it to paint the papers for his late cut-outs.

See also: Watercolour

Painting entirely in shades of grey or brown, often resembling painted sculpture. It appears, for example, on the outer wings of late medieval altarpieces such as the Ghent Altarpiece, and also served as underpainting or as a model for engravers.

See also: Triptych

The layer between the support and the paint, made for example of chalk or gypsum and glue. It makes the surface smooth and absorbent. Its colour shapes the whole picture: the Old Masters often worked on dark grounds, the Impressionists on light ones.

More on the period: Impressionism →See also: Glaze

A printing technique in which tones are created from many small dots of varying size or density. Roy Lichtenstein enlarged the dots of cheap comic printing and made them a motif of Pop Art.

More on the period: Pop Art →See also: Screen printing, Pointillism

The unmistakable personal way in which an artist paints or draws. It includes their brushwork, choice of colour, typical motifs and small idiosyncrasies, such as how they shape hands, eyes or leaves. Style unites many artists of a period; handwriting tells them apart: Monet and Pissarro both painted in an Impressionist manner, yet they can be told apart. Handwriting is therefore the most important clue in attribution, and it is exactly what forgers try to capture. Wolfgang Beltracchi, convicted in 2011, did not copy pictures but painted new ones “in the spirit” of artists such as Max Ernst or Heinrich Campendonk.

See also: Brushwork, Attribution, Catalogue raisonné, Provenance

Parallel lines used in drawing and printmaking to create shadow and roundness. The closer the lines, the darker the area appears; when they cross, it is called cross-hatching. In his engravings Albrecht Dürer achieved almost painterly tones in this way.

See also: Engraving, Woodcut, Charcoal drawing

A way of depicting in which the size of a figure shows its importance, not its distance. Christ or the Virgin then appear far larger than saints or donors. It was common in the art of ancient Egypt and in the Middle Ages, before linear perspective prevailed.

More on the period: Romanesque →See also: Linear perspective, Donor portrait

The ranking of pictorial genres as codified by the French Academy in the 17th century: history painting at the top, followed by portraiture, genre painting, landscape and finally still life. The Impressionists and their forerunners challenged this order.

More on the period: Impressionism →See also: Salon, Still life

The 19th-century fondness for reviving the styles of earlier periods: Gothic Revival, Neo-Renaissance, Neo-Baroque. It shaped architecture and the applied arts above all, for example Vienna’s Ringstrasse or the completion of Cologne Cathedral in 1880. Art Nouveau and modernism deliberately turned against this mixing of styles.

See also: Academy

Pictures with subjects from history, mythology, the Bible and literature, often on a large scale. In the ranking of the European academies, it was considered the highest genre until the 19th century. Realists such as Gustave Courbet challenged this claim by painting everyday scenes on a historical scale.

See also: Hierarchy of genres, Genre painting, Salon

A devotional image of the Orthodox Church, usually painted in tempera on wood, often on a gold ground. Icons show Christ, the Virgin or saints after fixed models, because they are regarded as windows onto the sacred, not as the painter’s free invention. A famous example is Andrei Rublev’s Trinity icon from around 1420.

See also: Tempera, Iconography

The study of pictorial content and its symbols: what is depicted, and what does it mean? A skull, for instance, stands for transience, a key for the Apostle Peter. In 1939 Erwin Panofsky developed an influential model for interpreting images in several steps.

See also: Vanitas

Paint is applied so thickly that brushstrokes or palette-knife marks stand out in relief on the canvas. Rembrandt used it for highlights; Vincent van Gogh made the thick, textured stroke his signature.

See also: Alla prima, Glaze

An examination method that uses infrared light to see through many layers of paint. It shows underdrawing in carbon-based materials such as charcoal or black ink especially clearly. Design lines, corrections and pentimenti hidden beneath the finished painting can be revealed in this way.

See also: Pentimento, X-radiography, Ground

An artwork that shapes an entire space, which viewers enter and experience physically. Kurt Schwitters’ “Merzbau” in Hanover is regarded as a forerunner. Since the 1970s, installation has been one of the most important forms of contemporary art.

More on the period: Contemporary art →See also: Performance art

A depiction of an indoor space, usually with people engaged in quiet, everyday activities. Dutch painters of the 17th century such as Johannes Vermeer and Pieter de Hooch made the interior a genre in its own right. Around 1900 it became a favourite subject again, for instance with Vilhelm Hammershøi or in the Munich Secession.

More on the period: Baroque →See also: Genre painting, Still life

The enthusiasm for Japanese art in Europe after Japan opened up in the 1850s. Colour woodblock prints, with their flat colours, cropped motifs and unusual viewpoints, influenced Monet, Degas and Van Gogh, who copied works by Hiroshige.

More on the period: Impressionism →See also: Woodcut

Art that actually moves, driven by motors, air or the viewer’s touch, or that creates movement through light. Early examples are Naum Gabo’s “Kinetic Construction” of 1919–1920 and Alexander Calder’s mobiles. In the 1950s and 1960s, artists such as Jean Tinguely and the Zero group worked with it.

More on the period: Zero →See also: Monochrome, Installation

A citizens’ association for the promotion of art, typical of Germany. The first were founded in the early 19th century, for example in Munich in 1823 and Frankfurt in 1829. Members paid a subscription; in return the associations held exhibitions and raffled purchased works among their members. Hundreds of Kunstvereine still exist today, most of them showing contemporary art.

See also: Salon, Patron

Art made in the landscape itself, often far from museums and on a vast scale. The movement emerged in the USA in the late 1960s. The best-known work is Robert Smithson’s “Spiral Jetty” of 1970, a spiral of rock and earth in the Great Salt Lake in Utah.

More on the period: Minimal and Conceptual Art →See also: Installation

A method of representing space on a flat surface: parallel lines converge on a vanishing point, and objects become smaller with distance. Filippo Brunelleschi demonstrated it in Florence around 1420, and Leon Battista Alberti described it in 1435. Cubism was among the first to break radically with this system.

More on the period: Cubism →See also: Camera obscura

A technique in painting conservation: a second canvas is glued to the back of a weakened or torn canvas to support the original. Glue-paste mixtures were used in the past, later wax-resin compounds, and today mostly synthetic adhesives. Because lining can alter the surface, for instance by flattening thick impasto, and is difficult to reverse, conservators now use it more sparingly than a few decades ago. Often it is enough to reinforce only the edges, known as strip lining. Replacing an earlier lining is called relining.

See also: Craquelure, Varnish, Impasto

A planographic printing technique invented by Alois Senefelder in Munich around 1796–1798. The artist draws on limestone with greasy crayon or ink. Because grease and water repel each other, only the drawing takes up the ink during printing. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec made colour lithography famous with his posters.

See also: Etching, Screen printing, Print run

An area where paint, ground or even the support has been lost, for example through flaking, tears or earlier interventions. In conservation, losses are usually filled first and then retouched. How far they are closed is a judgement: small losses are often integrated discreetly, while large ones sometimes remain visible so that nothing is invented.

See also: Filling, Retouching, Tratteggio

A casting method for bronze sculpture used since antiquity. A mould of clay or plaster is made from a wax model, the wax is melted out and the cavity filled with molten metal. Because the mould is destroyed in the process, each cast is unique, even when several casts are made from the same model.

See also: Relief, Print run, Patina

Pictures and decoration in handwritten books, also called illumination: full-page images, decorated first letters known as initials, and border ornament. It was painted in opaque colours, often with gold, on parchment. In the Middle Ages most manuscripts were made in monastic scriptoria. With printing from the mid-15th century, illumination gradually lost its importance.

More on the period: Insular art →See also: Gold ground, Tempera

The combination of different painting media in one work. From the 15th century, artists often laid in an underpainting in tempera and applied oil glazes on top. In modern art the term usually means the free combination of very different materials, from acrylic and chalk to collage.

See also: Tempera, Oil painting, Collage

Painting in a single colour. Kazimir Malevich’s “Black Square” of 1915 is regarded as an early key work. In the 1950s and 1960s, the monochrome became a central means of expression, for example for Yves Klein with his own blue, for Piero Manzoni and in the Zero group.

More on the period: Zero →See also: Abstraction, Kinetic art

A print of which only a single impression exists. The artist paints onto a smooth plate and then presses the image onto paper. The process was invented in the 17th century by Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione. Edgar Degas made hundreds of monotypes and reworked many of them in pastel.

See also: Pastel, Print run

A picture made of many small pieces of stone, glass or ceramic, called tesserae, set in mortar. In antiquity mosaics mainly decorated floors; in Byzantine art they covered walls and domes. Gold tesserae contain real gold leaf between two layers of glass and, set at a slight angle, reflect the light. Famous examples include the Alexander Mosaic from Pompeii and the mosaics of Ravenna.

More on the period: Byzantine art →See also: Gold ground, Icon

The depiction of the unclothed human body, a central subject of art since antiquity. For centuries, drawing from the live model was the foundation of training at the academies. Where the nude was not disguised as mythology, it often caused scandal, as with Édouard Manet’s “Olympia” in 1865.

More on the period: Renaissance →See also: Contrapposto, Salon

Painting with pigments bound in drying oils such as linseed oil. The paint dries slowly and can be blended and layered. Contrary to a common claim, Jan van Eyck did not invent oil painting, but in the 15th century he brought it to a new level of perfection.

See also: Glaze, Tempera, Pigment

Paint applied over the original by a later hand, for example to hide damage, to adapt a motif to later taste or to make a picture easier to sell. Overpaint often extends far beyond the actual losses. Conservators detect it under UV light or in X-rays and remove it if the original beneath has survived. When the artist changes the picture themselves, it is called a pentimento.

See also: Pentimento, UV fluorescence, Retouching

French for “pasted paper”: a collage made only of pieces of paper glued on, often combined with drawing. Georges Braque made the first papier collé in September 1912, using wood-grain wallpaper.

More on the period: Cubism →See also: Collage

A card with a window cut into it that surrounds a drawing, print or photograph in its frame. It keeps the work away from the glass, protects the paper and gives the picture room to breathe. For valuable works, acid-free card is used.

See also: Conservation

Painting with pastel sticks: crayons of almost pure pigment with little binder, applied dry. The result is velvety, matt and luminous colour. Pastels are fragile and are therefore fixed and framed under glass. Famous examples are Rosalba Carriera’s portraits in the 18th century and Edgar Degas’s dancers.

More on the period: Impressionism →See also: Pigment, Gouache, Watercolour

The surface layer that forms on materials over time, especially the green or brown layer on bronze. Sculptors often create patina deliberately with chemicals. Figuratively, the word stands for the traces of age on an object.

A person who supports art and artists financially without directly demanding anything in return. In German, the word Mäzen derives from the Roman Gaius Maecenas, who supported the poets Virgil and Horace. Famous patrons of the Renaissance were the Medici in Florence.

More on the period: Renaissance →See also: Provenance

Italian for “repentance”: a change made by the artist during work, such as a shifted hand or a painted-out object. Because oil paint becomes more transparent over the centuries, such earlier versions sometimes show through to the naked eye. More often they are revealed by infrared reflectography and X-radiography. Pentimenti are taken as a sign of the artist’s own hand and play a part in attribution.

See also: Infrared reflectography, X-radiography, Attribution

Art in which an action performed before an audience is the work itself, usually involving the artist’s own body. Its roots lie in Futurism and Dada, for example at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich in 1916. Since the 1960s, performance has been an art form in its own right, with exponents such as Marina Abramović.

More on the period: Contemporary art →See also: Installation

A regeneration method presented by the Munich chemist Max von Pettenkofer in 1863: paintings with clouded varnish were exposed to alcohol vapour, which made the varnish clear again. It was widely used, above all in the Bavarian state collections, later often together with copaiba balsam. Because the balsam could soften the paint layer over time, conservators now view the treatment critically.

See also: Varnish, Conservation, Craquelure

A picture assembled from cut-out photographs. The Berlin Dadaists turned the technique into an art form around 1918/19, above all Hannah Höch, Raoul Hausmann and John Heartfield. Heartfield later used it for biting political satire against the Nazis.

More on the period: Dada →See also: Collage, Papier collé

A colouring powder that does not dissolve in the binder but is finely dispersed in it. Only the binder turns it into oil paint, tempera or watercolour. Ultramarine was once made at great expense from lapis lazuli; it has been produced synthetically since the 19th century.

See also: Oil painting, Tempera

Painting outdoors, directly in front of the subject, from the French “en plein air”, in the open air. Paint in tubes and portable easels made it possible on a large scale. The Barbizon painters paved the way; the Impressionists made it a method.

More on the period: Impressionism →See also: Alla prima

A painting technique using small dots of pure colour that only blend into mixed tones in the viewer’s eye. It was developed in the 1880s by Georges Seurat and Paul Signac; Signac himself preferred the term Divisionism.

More on the period: Impressionism →See also: Halftone dots

The depiction of a particular person, also called a portrait. It is meant to show likeness and often rank and character as well. Types include the head, bust, half-length and full-length portrait, as well as the self-portrait. Until the invention of photography, portrait commissions were the most important source of income for many painters.

More on the period: Renaissance →See also: Hierarchy of genres, Genre painting

The number of impressions of a print or casts of a sculpture. Prints often bear a numbering such as “12/50”, meaning sheet 12 of 50. “A. P.” (artist’s proof) or “E. A.” marks copies outside the edition. In France, no more than twelve casts of a bronze count as originals: eight numbered casts and four artist’s proofs.

See also: Lithography, Etching, Lost-wax casting, Signature

The origin of an artwork, that is, the complete chain of its owners from its creation to the present day. It matters for authenticity and value, and for whether a work was unlawfully taken, for example during the Nazi era. The 1998 Washington Principles, a non-binding commitment, call on museums to search for such looted art.

See also: Attribution, Catalogue raisonné

A work is in the public domain when it is no longer protected by copyright and may be used freely by anyone. In Germany and the EU, protection expires 70 years after the author’s death, counted from the end of the year of death. Since 2021, faithful photographs of public-domain paintings are not protected in Germany either.

See also: Provenance

A naked, chubby-cheeked child figure, often with wings. Putti go back to the love gods of antiquity and came back into fashion in the Renaissance, for example with Donatello. The most famous are probably the two putti at the bottom edge of Raphael’s “Sistine Madonna” in Dresden.

More on the period: Renaissance →See also: Attribute

A mass-produced everyday object that an artist declares to be a work of art. Marcel Duchamp invented it, for example with “Bicycle Wheel” of 1913 and the urinal “Fountain” of 1917. The readymade shifted the question of what art is from making to choosing.

More on the period: Contemporary art →See also: Assemblage, Appropriation art

A sculpture that remains attached to a background and projects from a surface. Depending on how far the forms project, it is called low or high relief. A Renaissance masterpiece is Lorenzo Ghiberti’s gilded bronze doors at the Baptistery in Florence, which Michelangelo is said to have called the “Gates of Paradise”.

More on the period: Renaissance →See also: Lost-wax casting

A dark object at the front edge of a picture, such as a tree, a figure or a curtain, that leads the eye into depth. The name comes from the French “repousser”, to push back. Claude Lorrain liked to frame his landscapes with trees on either side.

More on the period: Baroque →See also: Rückenfigur (figure seen from behind), Linear perspective

Applying colour to a loss so that it no longer disturbs the overall image. By current standards, retouching is confined strictly to the loss, covers no original paint and is carried out with paints that can be removed later. Depending on the aim, it is invisible at normal viewing distance or deliberately recognisable, as with tratteggio.

See also: Filling, Tratteggio, Overpaint

A principle of modern conservation: every intervention should be removable later without harming the original. Fillings and retouchings are therefore made with materials that differ from the original and remain soluble. Because complete reversibility is rarely achievable, conservators today often speak more cautiously of removability, or of keeping a work open to future treatment.

See also: Retouching, Filling, Lining

A figure who turns their back to the viewer and, like the viewer, looks into the picture. It invites us to put ourselves in its place. Caspar David Friedrich’s figures seen from behind are famous, for example in the “Wanderer above the Sea of Fog”.

More on the period: Romanticism →

The official art exhibition in Paris, named after the Salon Carré in the Louvre, where it was held from the 18th century. A jury decided on admission, and success at the Salon determined careers. In 1874 the Impressionists defied its power with an exhibition of their own.

More on the period: Impressionism →See also: Hierarchy of genres, Secession

A printing technique in which ink is pressed through a fine mesh on which a stencil blocks the areas that should not print. From 1962 Andy Warhol used it to transfer photographs onto canvas, turning an advertising process into an artistic technique.

More on the period: Pop Art →See also: Halftone dots

From the Latin “secessio”, withdrawal: artists’ associations that broke away from established academies and exhibition systems around 1900. The most important were founded in Munich (1892), Vienna (1897) and Berlin (1898).

More on the period: Expressionism →See also: Salon

Italian for “smoky”: soft, almost imperceptible transitions between light and shade, without any hard outlines. Leonardo da Vinci perfected the technique, most famously in the Mona Lisa.

See also: Chiaroscuro, Glaze

The name or mark with which artists identify a work. Albrecht Dürer turned his monogram “AD” into a kind of trademark. Many older works are not signed at all, and a signature alone does not prove that a work is genuine. Forgers often add one first.

See also: Attribution, Provenance, Catalogue raisonné

Small figures or animals that enliven a landscape or architectural view without being its subject. They give the picture scale and mood. In the 17th-century Netherlands, specialists often painted the staffage into other painters’ landscapes, Adriaen van de Velde for Jacob van Ruisdael, for example.

More on the period: Baroque →See also: Veduta, Genre painting

The depiction of motionless things such as flowers, fruit, food or vessels. The term comes from the Dutch “stilleven” of the 17th century, the genre’s heyday. In the hierarchy of genres it ranked lowest, yet it became a testing ground for modernism, from Cézanne to Cubism.

See also: Vanitas, Hierarchy of genres

The wooden frame over which a painting’s canvas is stretched. Unlike a fixed strainer, it has slots at the corners for small wooden keys. Tapping the keys in expands the frame slightly so that a slack canvas can be re-tensioned. Stretchers have been in common use since the 18th century.

See also: Lining, Ground, Oil painting

A form of abstract painting in France after 1945, named after the French word “tache”, meaning stain or blot. Paint is applied spontaneously in blots, splashes and gestural marks. Tachisme belongs to Art Informel; its exponents include Wols and Georges Mathieu.

More on the period: Art Informel →See also: Action Painting, Abstraction

Painting with colours whose binder is an emulsion, classically egg yolk. Tempera dries quickly and matt. Until oil painting spread in the 15th century, it was the main technique of European panel painting. Sandro Botticelli’s “The Birth of Venus” is painted in tempera.

See also: Oil painting, Pigment

The degree of lightness of a colour in relation to the colours around it, from the French “valeur”, value. Painting in values means building a picture from finely graded tones rather than strong contrasts. The term is especially associated with Camille Corot and the Impressionists.

More on the period: Impressionism →See also: Colouring, Chiaroscuro

A retouching technique in which a loss is filled with fine vertical strokes of pure colour. From a distance the strokes merge into a continuous surface; close up, the addition remains recognisable as such. The method was developed in the mid-20th century at the Istituto Centrale del Restauro in Rome.

See also: Retouching, Loss, Reversibility

A picture in three parts, usually a central panel with two side wings that can be closed. The form derives from the medieval winged altarpiece. A famous example is Hieronymus Bosch’s “The Garden of Earthly Delights” in the Prado, Madrid.

See also: Diptych, Grisaille

French for “deceives the eye”: painting so lifelike that the viewer takes what is depicted for real. Antiquity already told stories of it: according to Pliny, the painter Zeuxis tried to draw aside a curtain painted by his rival Parrhasius.

See also: Linear perspective

The first layer of paint on the ground, establishing the composition and the lights and darks, often in just one or a few colours. On top of it the painter builds up the finished picture layer by layer, frequently with glazes. Where the later paint stays thin, the underpainting shows through and shapes the overall effect.

See also: Ground, Glaze, Grisaille

An examination method in which a painting is lit with ultraviolet light in a darkened room. Aged natural-resin varnish then glows greenish, while later retouchings and overpaint on top of the varnish appear as dark patches. This shows, without any intervention, where a picture has been worked on before.

See also: Varnish, Overpaint, Retouching

Latin for “emptiness”, after the biblical phrase “vanity of vanities”. Vanitas still lifes use skulls, guttering candles, wilting flowers or hourglasses as reminders of transience. They were especially widespread in the 17th-century Netherlands.

See also: Still life, Iconography

A transparent protective coating applied to the finished painting. It makes the colours look richer but yellows over time, which is why restorers often remove aged varnish and replace it.

See also: Craquelure

A precise, true-to-life view of a city or landscape, from the Italian “veduta”, view. Its heyday was 18th-century Venice, with Canaletto and Bernardo Bellotto. Travellers on the Grand Tour took such pictures home as souvenirs.

More on the period: Baroque →See also: Linear perspective, Camera obscura

The ceremonial opening of an exhibition. The word comes from the French “vernir”, to varnish: before the Paris Salon, painters were allowed a day to varnish their already hung pictures once more and add finishing touches. This became a social event ahead of the official opening.

See also: Varnish, Salon

Painting with water-soluble colours bound with gum arabic. The colours are transparent, and the white usually comes from the paper itself. Masters of the technique include Albrecht Dürer and J. M. W. Turner.

See also: Gouache, Glaze

An altarpiece with movable wings that were kept closed on weekdays and opened on feast days, so that it shows different pictures through the church year. Famous examples are the Ghent Altarpiece by the van Eyck brothers of 1432 and Matthias Grünewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece.

More on the period: Gothic →See also: Triptych, Diptych, Donor portrait

The oldest relief printing technique: everything that is not meant to print is cut away from a wooden block. Albrecht Dürer raised the woodcut to high art around 1500; Japanese colour woodblock prints and the artists of Die Brücke later gave it new force.

More on the period: Expressionism →See also: Etching, Japonisme

Imaging the entire picture with X-rays. It mainly shows layers containing heavy elements, above all lead white, but also the canvas weave, nails, tears and losses. Painted-over earlier compositions come to light in this way, sometimes even an entirely different picture beneath the visible one.

See also: Pentimento, Infrared reflectography, Overpaint