[pen-tuh-men-toh] 
[-tee] . Painting. | the presence or emergence of earlier images, forms, or strokes that have been changed and painted over. |
| pen·ti·men·to (pěn'tə-měn'tō) n. pl. pen·ti·men·ti (-tē) An underlying image in a painting, as an earlier painting, part of a painting, or original draft, that shows through, usually when the top layer of paint has become transparent with age. [Italian, correction, pentimento, from pentire, to repent, from Latin paenitēre.] |
pentimento
(from Italian pentirsi: "to repent"), in art, the reappearance in an oil painting of original elements of drawing or painting that the artist tried to obliterate by overpainting. If the covering pigment becomes transparent, as may happen over the years, the ghostly remains of earlier marks may show through. Pentimenti most commonly occur owing to slight repositionings by the artist of the outlines of figures or of their clothing. Many signs of such "repentances," or pentimenti, are found among the thinly painted Dutch panels of the 17th century. One of the most famous examples is a double hat brim in Rembrandt's "Flora" (c. 1665; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City).
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