# Question regarding the translation of "sfumato" **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 30, 2016, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-regarding-the-translation-of-sfumato/756052 "2016-05-30T02:41:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![davidmich](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e56c9b/32.png) [@davidmich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidmich)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2016, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-regarding-the-translation-of-sfumato/756052/1 "2016-05-30T02:41:05Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2016, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-regarding-the-translation-of-sfumato/756052/2 "2016-05-30T02:54:13Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2016, 3:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-regarding-the-translation-of-sfumato/756052/3 "2016-05-30T03:16:43Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![davidmich](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e56c9b/32.png) [@davidmich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidmich)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2016, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-regarding-the-translation-of-sfumato/756052/4 "2016-05-30T04:16:45Z")
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. > **[Sfumato](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:lU2G-JRLBxoJ:https:%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FSfumato%2B&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=hk)** > > Sfumato (Italian: \[sfuˈmaːto\], English: /sfjuːˈmeɪtoʊ/) is a painting technique for softening the transition between colours, mimicking an area beyond what the human eye is focusing on, or the out-of-focus plane. It is one of the canonical painting modes of the Renaissance. Leonardo da Vinci was the most prominent practitioner of sfumato, based on his research in optics and human vision, and his experimentation with the camera obscura. He introduced it and implemented it in many of his works, inc... “Leonardo da Vinci described sfumato as “without lines or borders, in the manner of smoke or beyond the focus plane”.[2]” > **[What Is the Sfumato Painting Technique?](https://www.thoughtco.com/sfumato-definition-in-art-182461)** > > Sfumato is a painting technique—used by Leonardo da Vinci in the Mona Lisa and other paintings—to provide a hazy but realistic flesh tone. " 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 [https://www.boundless.com/art-history/textbooks/boundless-art-history-textbook/the-italian-renaissance-23/the-high-renaissance-158/leonardo-da-vinci-612-5755/](https://www.boundless.com/art-history/textbooks/boundless-art-history-textbook/the-italian-renaissance-23/the-high-renaissance-158/leonardo-da-vinci-612-5755/) In painting, the application of subtle layers of translucent paint so that there is no visible transition between colors, tones, and often objects. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2016, 7:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-regarding-the-translation-of-sfumato/756052/5 "2016-05-30T07:22:06Z")
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](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=723898). ---
**Author:** ![davidmich](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e56c9b/32.png) [@davidmich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidmich)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2016, 7:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-regarding-the-translation-of-sfumato/756052/6 "2016-05-30T07:44:09Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > 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](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=723898). Sorry MrDibble. I couldn’t open the link you posted. ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2016, 7:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-regarding-the-translation-of-sfumato/756052/7 "2016-05-30T07:54:01Z")
> [@davidmich](#): > > 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. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2016, 11:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-regarding-the-translation-of-sfumato/756052/8 "2016-05-30T11:04:03Z")
> [@UDS](#): > > 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”.) 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. ---
**Author:** ![davidmich](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e56c9b/32.png) [@davidmich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidmich)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2016, 12:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-regarding-the-translation-of-sfumato/756052/9 "2016-05-30T12:08:31Z")
> [@UDS](#): > > 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. 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.” " ---
**Author:** ![Gotterfunken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/58956e/32.png) [@Gotterfunken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gotterfunken)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2016, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-regarding-the-translation-of-sfumato/756052/10 "2016-05-31T18:08:46Z")
> [@davidmich](#): > > 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. 😉