CHIAROSCURO, or CHI AROOSCURO, ke-i-ro- (It. chiaro, clear; oscuro, dark), in painting the art of judiciously distributing the lights and shadows in a picture. A composition, however perfect in other re spects, becomes a picture only by means of the chiaroscuro, which gives faithfulness to the rep resentation, and therefore is of the highest im portance to the painter; at the same time it is one of the most difficult branches of an artist's study, because of the want of precise rules for its execution. Every art has a point where rules fail, and genius only can direct. This point in the art of painting is the chiaroscuro. The drawing of a piece may be perfectly cor rect, the coloring may be brilliant and true, and yet the whole picture remains cold and hard. This we find often the case with the ancient painters before Raphael; and it is one of the great merits of this sublime artist that he left his masters far behind him in chiaros curo, though he is considered not so perfect in this branch as Correggio and Titian, who were inferior to him in many other respects. The
mode in which the light and shade are distrib uted on any single object is easily shown by lines supposed to be drawn from the source of the light which is shed over the figure; but chiaroscuro comprehends, besides this, aerial perspective and the proportional force of colors, by which objects are made to advance or recede from the eye, produce a mutual effect and form a united and beautiful whole. Chiaroscuro re quires great delicacy in conception and skill in execution; and excellence in this branch of art is to be attained only by the study of nature and of the best masters. Chiaroscuro is also understood in another sense, paintings in chiar oscuro being such as are painted in light and shade and reflexes only, without any other color than the local one of the object, as representa tions of sculpture in stone or marble. There are some fine pieces of this sort in the Vatican, at Rome, by Polidoro da Caravaggio, and on the ceiling of the Paris Bourse by Meynier and Abel de Pujol.