Collection: Tenebrism

Tenebrism is an extreme form of chiaroscuro developed by Caravaggio in the Roman altarpieces of the late 1590s and the first decade of the seventeenth century. The term derives from the Italian tenebroso, meaning dark, gloomy, or mysterious. Where chiaroscuro modulates light gradually across the figure to model volume, tenebrism plunges most of the composition into near total darkness so that a single shaft of illumination, often unmotivated by any visible source, carries the entire moral and dramatic weight of the picture.

The technique passed from Caravaggio's Roman followers to the Spanish, Dutch, and French branches of seventeenth century painting. Jusepe de Ribera carried it to Naples, where it shaped a generation of southern Italian painters. Georges de La Tour applied it to candlelit night scenes in Lorraine, while in Spain Francisco de Zurbarán and Francisco Ribalta used it in monastic religious painting. Gerrit van Honthorst and the Utrecht Caravaggisti brought it back to the Dutch Republic, where it influenced the young Rembrandt van Rijn.