The Basics - Performance & Audio/Visual Techniques - UWTSD: Chiaroscuro

Chiaroscuro - the light, the dark, the drama of it all

An Italian term literally meaning "light-dark", chiaroscuro describes the use of strong tonal contrasts. The effect is one of heightened drama, an exaggerated depiction of form and an unforgiving focus on the subject.

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Salome receives the Head of John the Baptist (1607-10)

Image from: http://www.wga.hu/art/c/caravagg/09/57salome.jpg

Joseph Wright, An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump (1768)

Image from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Experiment_on_a_Bird_in_the_Air_Pump

Two famous paintings from two extremely accomplished artists. Over a century and a half separates them but they both employ the same trick of the light. The lighting is strong, highly directional and from a single source.

Caravaggio draws the eye to the face of the male figure with both strong lighting and composition (more on the golden mean another time). His eye-line directs us to the (strangely cold?) figure of Salome via his arm and the grotesque severed head of John The Baptist which is being thrust into the foreground.

Wright's use of lighting is unusual in that the single source of light is present and centre in the scene. The eye is drawn immediately to the light source and then whisked away to the children, visibly upset by the plight of the bird. The father figure comforts and explains. He literally points us towards the titular bird in an air pump (a vacuum vessel) and on to the scientist who now appears to be engaging directly with the viewer. His eyes are fixed on us and his hand extended in explanation.

All very effective. Why don't we do this all the time? What are the drawbacks?

In both of these images, the background is a casualty of the technique. Wright paints us a suggestion of a drawing room, much less fine in its rendering than the focus of the painting. Caravaggio loses any thought of a background. Who, after all, is looking at the scenery when there's a head on a plate in front of you?

It's also a question of subject and mood.

Mad Colonel in jungle hideout? I think that could work