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Is this chiaroscuro?


David Edward Keen

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To post a picture within the post, it has to be a jpeg hosted on another site, and then you bracket the full url address with "img" in brackets at the front and "/img" in brackets at the end. Or you can just post the url and let the reader click on it.

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I suppose it vaguely could be considered chiaroscuro but generally the point is to use strong contrast in lighting to create a three-dimensional effect where the subject pops out in relief often against a darker background. In this case, if the subject is your face, it does not have a strong three-dimensional effect due to the light bringing you forward of the background, instead you sort of recede and there is sort of a flatness. But it does have a pervading feeling of darkness, just not a dark background, so it is semi-chiaroscuro.

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How isn't it? Im actually looking for an understanding of what is considered chiaroscuro in art

 

Chiaroscuro is 'light/shadow' or 'light/dark' and is used to create a 3-d effect, beyond simple perspective, as well as adding 'drama'. Your referenced image appears to be more of a silhouette than an example of chiaroscuro.

 

In the early modern era, painters developed 3-d perspective drawing, but in general the 'light' was often 'flat', without much contrast.

 

By the mid 1500s, for portraits, one finds heavier use of shadow to give a 3-d effect, when the portrait would not otherwise have significant 'perspective' to cue the 3-d effect.

 

For example, ca 1480s Memling Portrait

 

7793b7c31cf8cf11fa3daf704cdc6b37.jpg

 

 

About 100 years later a Bronzino portrait ca. 1541

 

Renaissance-women-portraits-paintings-of

 

And another 100 years... 1660 Rembrandt

 

Rembrandt-001.jpg?w=620&q=55&auto=format

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