Hi
I’ve seen the word “sfumato” translated variously as “soft” or “pale”, “vanished” or “smoky” and “blurred”. Are all of these translations acceptable?
I look forward to your feedback.
In traditional painting, the term *sfumato *refers to the technique of blending one color or shade into another, without being separated by a hard edge. So each of your words would describe one aspect of that blending.
The verb sfumare means to soften soften or shade off, or cause to fade or show as fading. Sfumato is the past participle, so it means softened, shaded off, faded. It’s ultimate from fumare, to smoke, and the strictly literal meaning would be something like “smoked” or “gone up in smoke”.
In the technical artistic sense, the word is usually borrowed into English, not translated. English borrows liberally from Italian for musical and artistic terms - piano, forte, andante, aria, coda, finale, belvedere, fresco, cameo, patina, studio. If you’re writing for a readership that won’t be familiar with the term, it’s probably not going to be helpful to translate it with just one word, since there is no English word which means sfumato in the artistic context. (If there were, we wouldn’t have to use sfumato). You’ll need to explain it, perhaps with a parenthesis or a footnote.
Thanks panache 45 and UDS. I think the fact that “sfumato” is untranslatable in an artistic sense leads to different interpretations. I was searching for the most comprehensive one.
“Leonardo da Vinci described sfumato as “without lines or borders, in the manner of smoke or beyond the focus plane”.[2]”
" Areas blend into one another through miniscule brushstrokes, which makes for a rather hazy, albeit more realistic, depiction of light and color. An early, wonderful example of sfumato can be seen in Leonardo’s Mona Lisa."
"sfumato
In painting, the application of subtle layers of translucent paint so that there is no visible transition between colors, tones, and often objects.
I always think of it as “soft focus, but with paint” which jibes very well with da Vinci’s phrasing of “beyond the focus plane”.
Yes, I said da Vinci.
Sorry MrDibble. I couldn’t open the link you posted.
It’s a link to a thread we had on the board about two years ago, discussing whether “da Vinci” could be considered to be Leonardo’s surname or not. I don’t know why the link doesn’t work for you; it works for me.
The background to this is that, in circles where they use sfumato without explaining or translating it, they also refer to Leonardo da Vinci as “Leonardo” or, if disambiguation is needed, as “Leonardo da Vinci”, but never as “da Vinci”, on the basis that “da Vinci” is not his name. (“You wouldn’t call Philip of Spain ‘of Spain’, would you?”).
Alternatively, if da Vinci is a surname, you still don’t use it because it’s not correct to refer to Italians of that period by surname alone. (That’s why we talk about “Michelangelo”, not “Buonarotti”.)
Alternatively, you could care less.
I think that really depends on the guy. Essentially only the very, very famous/great artists got to be called by just their first name because they’d become “THE Rafael” or similar.
But Lorenzo Lotto is just “Lotto” for example (he signed “Lotus pictor”). Bellini, Mantegna, Boticcelli, Vasari… are all referred to by their last name. And others are, indeed, just called the equivalent of “da Vinci” - Parmigianino for example.
Finally opened the thread. Fascinating.
"However, this usage (of calling an individual by their Christian name alone) is based on 15th-16th century Italian conventions, which weren’t always consistent. “Michelangelo” as a name and a person is an interesting example of this inconsistency. THE Michelangelo–the guy who painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling, of course–was unlike most of his artistic peers in the fact that he could claim noble ancestry, so you could make a case for calling him “Buonarotti” as a surname, instead of simply “Michelangelo.” But by convention, he became known as just “Michelangelo,” of such fame that no patronymic or (in his case) surname was needed to distinguish him from anyone else named Michelangelo.
Funny thing is, by the end of the sixteenth century, another artist called Michelangelo became active in Rome–his name was Michelangelo Merisi (like Michelangelo Buonarroti, this Michelangelo came from a family that claimed descent from lower nobility). However, the Romans didn’t call this artist “Merisi,” nor could they bring themselves to call him “Michelangelo” (and risk conflating him with the established legacy of the most famous artist by that name). So, Michelangelo Merisi became known by the nickname “Caravaggio,” referring to the northern Italian town that his family called home. In the case of Caravaggio, then, the patronymic (“from the town of Caravaggio”) is used instead of the Christian name “Michelangelo” or the surname “Merisi.”
"
Hey, that’s what I was going to say…! Oh wait, I already did. 