The Atlas / Techniques

Renaissance Painting Techniques

The technical innovations that made Renaissance painting recognisable as itself — linear perspective, sfumato, chiaroscuro, oil painting, fresco, tempera.

Linear Perspective

The geometric grammar of pictorial depth.

Formulated mathematically by Filippo Brunelleschi around 1413, linear perspective gave Renaissance painters a rigorous geometric system for representing three-dimensional space on a flat surface. It transformed painting from decorative surface to organised pictorial world.

Sfumato

Leonardo's veil of smoke.

Sfumato — from the Italian sfumare, to evaporate like smoke — is Leonardo da Vinci's technique of softening contours and transitions between tones, creating atmospheric ambiguity. It is the technique behind the Mona Lisa's unresolved expression.

Chiaroscuro

The architecture of light and shadow.

Chiaroscuro — from the Italian chiaro (light) and oscuro (dark) — is the use of strong contrasts between light and shadow to give painted figures three-dimensional form and dramatic intensity. Developed by Leonardo, it was pushed to theatrical extremity by Caravaggio.

Oil Painting

The Northern revolution in pigment.

Perfected by Jan van Eyck in the early fifteenth century, oil painting allowed translucent, deeply luminous colours built up in layers. The technique crossed the Alps in the late fifteenth century and transformed Italian painting, becoming the dominant medium of the Western tradition.

Fresco

Paint married to wet plaster.

Fresco painting — pigment applied to fresh, wet lime plaster — was the medium of the great Italian decorative cycles: the Sistine Chapel, Raphael's Stanze, the Arena Chapel. The technique requires speed, discipline, and absolute pre-planning, since each section must be completed before the plaster dries.

Tempera

The egg-bound colour of the quattrocento.

Egg tempera — pigment suspended in egg yolk — was the dominant painting medium of the Italian Renaissance before oil. Its quick-drying, non-blendable quality required a distinctive painting method of fine hatching and layering, visible in the work of Botticelli and early Leonardo.