tenebrism
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thumb|John the Baptist (Caravaggio)|John the Baptist (John in the Wilderness), by [[Caravaggio, 1604, in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City ]]
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Tenebrism | Glossary | National Gallery, London
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thumb|John the Baptist (Caravaggio)|John the Baptist (John in the Wilderness), by [[Caravaggio, 1604, in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City ]]
Tenebrism, from Italian ('dark, gloomy, mysterious'), also occasionally called dramatic illumination, is a style of painting using especially pronounced chiaroscuro, where there are violent contrasts of light and dark, and where darkness becomes a dominating feature of the image. The technique was developed to add drama to an image through a spotlight effect, and is common in Baroque paintings. Tenebrism is used only to obtain a dramatic impact while chiaroscuro is a broader term, also covering the use of less extreme contrasts of light to enhance the illusion of three-dimensionality.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “tenebrism” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.