Sfumato

The sfumato is one of the pictorial techniques which produces, by glazes of a smooth and transparent texture, a vaporous effect which gives to the subject imprecise contours. “It consists of a way of painting extremely soft, which leaves a certain uncertainty on the termination of the outline and on the details of the forms when one looks at the work closely, but which causes no indecision, when one places oneself at a just distance (EM) “. The sfumato, in Italian “as the smoke”, opposes the vigor and the accentuation of the line that is called, in classical painting, “feeling”.

The sfumato is one of the four canonical painting effects of the Renaissance. The other three are union, chiaroscuro (or chiaroscuro) and cangiante. It should not be confused with the atmospheric perspective, which is the subject of quite another theoretical reflection and is not generally obtained by the same means. However, the technique allows another interpretation: Leonardo, a scientist as much as a painter, has studied with a physicist the acuteness of the phenomena of lighting and, in particular, on the question of the insensitive passages of the shadow to light and the abolition of outlines (which do not exist in nature). The translation of such observations on the pictorial plane produces the vaporous envelopment of the forms (sfumato) and ipso facto suggests the atmosphere that surrounds them.

Leonardo da Vinci theorized the use of sfumato. “Make sure your shadows and lights blend without lines or lines like smoke”. Combined with the chiaroscuro, it simulates the volume, also devoid of exact contour, since changing from one eye to another and with each movement.

The gradient applied to the landscape, in particular to the distancing of objects through blurring and blurring by the effect of mist, is referred to as the aerial perspective.

The technique is a fine shading meant to produce a soft transition between colours and tones, in order to achieve a more believable image. It is most often used by making subtle gradations that do not include lines or borders, from areas of light to areas of dark. The technique was used not only to give an elusive and illusionistic rendering of the human face but also to create rich atmospheric effects. Leonardo da Vinci described the technique as blending colours, without the use of lines or borders “in the manner of smoke”.

Leonardo da Vinci became the most prominent practitioner of sfumato, for instance, in Virgin of the Rocks and in his famous painting of the Mona Lisa. Leonardo da Vinci described sfumato as “without lines or borders, in the manner of smoke or beyond the focus plane”.

Apart from Leonardo, other prominent practitioners of sfumato included Correggio, Raphael and Giorgione. Raphael’s Virgin of the Field is a famous example (look especially at her face). Students and followers of Leonardo (called Leonardeschi) also tried their hands at sfumato after Leonardo: artists such as Bernardino Luini and Funisi.

In the painting of the fifteenth century, the use of the line prevails, especially that of the contours of the figures, with precise shadows and glazed colors. It is the school of the “primacy of the drawing”, to mention the definition of Giorgio Vasari, which distinguishes the Florentine Renaissance and which creates figures from graphic values.

Even though he was Florentine for training and although he was one of the greatest designers of all time, he was still very young from this tradition, preferring dimmed tones, subtle bright gradations and lateral veils that gave the paintings a particularly soft and curious effect, where it was impossible to see any traces of the brushstroke.

The first blur experiments took place in the backgrounds, where the atmosphere of vapors, clouds and humidity makes the contours vague, as in the Annunciation of the Uffizi. Later, Leonardo came to apply these values ​​even to subjects, not infrequently coming up the colors with the fingers, to obtain that soft light and the enveloping atmosphere typical of the masterpieces such as Monna Lisa or St. John the Baptist. Vasari described this style and “very humorous” and “terribly dark”, that is, clearly introspecified.

Leonardo’s indications are collected by Lombardy leonards, but also by other painters such as Correggio and the Venetians. The latter apply the way to make the contours blurred and to make the circulation of atmospheric air with amalgam effects that bind landscape figures; this is evident in the works of the last phase of Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione and his students, such as young Tiziano, Lorenzo Lotto and Sebastiano del Piombo. This technique, coupled with the vivacity of the palette of Venetians, gave rise to tonalism, another of the fundamental currents of 16th century painting.

The presence of Albrecht Dürer in Venice gives the opportunity for an international reflection on the novelties of tonalism.

The Romantics, the realist current (Courbet), then the Impressionists then abandoned or simplified this long and meticulous technique (it takes between each layer a few days or weeks of drying) to adopt a painting that gives more emphasis to the spontaneity of the touch, left visible, as well as the effect of pasted material says impasto (as opposed to the smooth bill of the painters of Quattrocento and the beginning of Cinquecento). Producer of an extremely thin material and smooth in the flesh, Leonardo da Vinci worked at least four years assiduously on the Mona Lisa, according to the testimony of Vasari.

The manner of Leonardo, and the material modalities of his writing, have always been singular, which is why the physical study of the materials used in Leonardo da Vinci’s paintings has long been limited. The authorities of the Louvre Museum, concerned by the conservation of the Mona Lisa, began from 2004 extensive analyzes of its subject, by various methods of examination without sampling. The analysis of the paint layers and the composition of pigments by X-ray fluorescence spectrometry, by scientists from the Center for Research and Restoration of the Museums of France (Louvre) and the European synchrotron radiation facility in Grenoble lasted six years. . She concluded in 2010 that the picture is covered with dozens of layers of 1 to 3 microns. This is not the case with all of Leonardo’s works; La Belle Ferronnière, for example, is painted much more habitually and quickly, while Saint John the Baptist and Saint Anne of the Louvre are painted according to this process and according to the ultra-meticulous technique of “complex fade”, one of the decisive phases is micro-divisionism.

The analysis showed the surprising use of manganese oxide, specific to Leonardo. This pigment, very siccative, is usually not recommended for oil painting; but it could be an advantage for many very thin layers. However, it was necessary to grind it much more finely than usual. It is supposed that sketches of mills found in the manuscripts of Leonardo correspond to a machine to grind the pigments, necessary to arrive at this result. The paint layers have no brush marks. According to some scientists, Leonard painted with the fat fingers; others note that a binder with an adequate proportion of solvent can allow the disappearance of the marks of the brush. The Vincentian technique of “complex melting” is nevertheless proven: traces of micro-keys, covered or not with thin translucent layers, can be observed in the Mona Lisa of the Prado and in the Sainte Anne (Inv 737) of the Uffizi Gallery. in Florence, studio copies executed under the very direction of Leonard (Franck, 2014).

For other painters, Leonardo could not sell and work for long, so his extreme care for the Mona Lisa was impossible. The sfumato is realized in fewer layers, thicker, with a different visual effect, getting only a slight blur, without the brightness of the process of Leonardo. Raphael thus paints in three layers, which requires only two drying periods, and this is undoubtedly the case of most artists afterwards.

From the Baroque period, the insistence given to drawing by the mainstream forces artists to give up sfumato, in favor of a marked line that emphasizes the outline and accentuates the expression, while highlighting the line control. This effect is denominated, in the words of the time, the “feeling”.