Sfumato
It is one of the painting modes of the Renaissance. A second one was Chiaroscuro. It refers to a mode of painting in which the painter avoids extreme darks or lights, as the brightness values are grouped more or less tightly together around middle gray. There is a similarity of low-contrast between sfumato and photography. The Italian word sfumato comes from the Italian word (fumare, 'to smoke'), and captures the idea precisely. The finished painting appears as though a veil of smoke lies between the subject of the painting and the viewer. Sfumato added some brightness to the pure darks and blocked some of the pure brights of the subject.
It is not a difficult technique in practice. Of course it requires competence in brushwork and judgement of value (brightness), but does not necessarily require a high degree of skill. The painter uses a translucent dark such as asphaltum and then, while wet, paints back into this dark with an opaque light (e.g., some colour based on led white or titanium white). Some of the colour of the dark will now darken the opaque light and, simultaneously, the darks will be lightened. This operation can be repeated if necessary and, by so doing, very subtle blending effects may be achieved. It is not a technique using translucent layers as is sometimes supposed; it is obvious that there is a distinction between this technique and the straight-forward translucent painting of Titian. However the translucency of the darks, repeatedly applied and blended into the lights, does lend an enamelled character to the result which, in the hands of a competent practitioner, can be charming and can yield extremely subtle results.
Leonardo Da Vinci was the most prominent painter of sfumato and his famous painting of the Mona Lisa exhibits all the advantages of the technique. The historical value of this painting consists precisely in the subtle but accurate way in which emotions are expressed. This expression is due in no small part to the gentle shading that sfumato promotes. Leonardo da Vinci described sfumato as "without lines or borders, in the manner of smoke or beyond the focus plane.
