pentimento

American  

[pen-tuh-men-toh] / ˌpɛn təˈmɛn toʊ /

noun

Painting.

• pentimenti
  plural

1. the presence or emergence of earlier images, forms, or strokes that have been changed and painted over.

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pentimento British  

/ ˌpɛntɪˈmɛntəʊ /

noun

1. the revealing of a painting or part of a painting that has been covered over by a later painting

2. the part of a painting thus revealed

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• pentimenti
  plural

Etymology

Origin of pentimento

1900–05; < Italian, equivalent to penti ( re ) to repent (< Latin paenitēre to regret) + -mento -ment

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

pentimento pentimenti

Like a pentimento, their brilliance began to gradually appear from beneath the tarnish, reflecting my face in their mirrored surfaces.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 1, 2026

The yellow title casts a grayish shadow within the turquoise, a pentimento whose sign of an earlier paint layer signals a stratum of history.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 1, 2022

There are holes drilled into the top and the pentimento outline of where the displaced sculpture once stood.

From Washington Post ● Aug. 23, 2022

It's so common that art historians and conservators have a word for it: pentimento.

From Salon ● Nov. 11, 2021

The first baby Vincent is a pentimento, a ghostly image under the second Vincent's portrait, the picture of a child who might have been.

From "Vincent and Theo: The Van Gogh Brothers" by Deborah Heiligman

Albertinelli, on the contrary, when he painted and repainted his Annunciation, washed out the under layer with essential oil before making his "pentimenti" or corrections, and in this way the thinness was kept.

From Fra Bartolommeo by Flora Kendrick

There are many pentimenti on the marble parapet, which seems to have been painted over the dress.

From Giorgione by Herbert Cook

The unfinished figure of the executioner evidently caused the artist much trouble, for pentimenti are frequent, and other outlines can be distinctly traced through the nude body.

From Giorgione by Herbert Cook