Pentimento

This article is about the underlying marks in paintings. It is also the title of a book by playwright Lillian Hellman

A pentimento (plural pentimenti) is a mark in a painting showing that the artist has changed his mind as to the composition during the process of painting. The word derives from the Italian pentirsi meaning to repent.

Pentimenti may show that a composition originally had an element, for example a head or a hand, in a slightly different place, or that an element no longer in the final painting was originally planned. The changes may have been done in the under-drawing of the painting, or by the visible layers of paint differing from the under-drawing, or by the first full treatment of the element having been over-painted.

Some pentimenti have always been visible with careful inspection; others are revealed by the increasing transparency that some paint acquires after several centuries. Others, especially in the under-drawing, can only be seen with the modern methods of X-ray and infra-red reflectograms, which are able to record photographically pigments, depending on their chemical composition, which remain covered by later paint layers. For example white lead, a common pigment, will be detected by x-ray.

Pentimenti are considered especially important when considering whether a particular painting is by the prime version by the original artist, or a second version by the artist himself, or his workshop, or a later copyist.

The term is being used in a modern sense for the fading sign on the sides of buildings. Many times they are painted over with newer ads and the paint wears away to reveal the layers.

Examples of this can be found at http://www.fadingad.com and http://www.frankjump.com that had been taken by Frank H. Jump in Amsterdam, 1998. The caption was "Amsterdam August 1998- This an example of what I call "ediglyph" - where fading ads and graffiti intersect". http://www.fadingad.com/009.html

Another example is the Coca-Cola-Mecca Smokes Pentimento at http://www.frankjump.com/020.html