Pentimento

//ˌpɛntɪˈmɛntəʊ// noun

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The presence of traces of a previous work in an artistic or literary work; especially (painting) an image which has been painted over but is still detectable.

    "The companion of this picture is the Madonna dressing the Infant, with Joseph planing a board in the back-ground; a performance though inferior in style to the former, not less original from the pentimenti still discoverable in the two principal figures."

  2. 2
    the reappearance in a painting of an underlying image that had been painted over (usually when the later painting becomes transparent with age) wordnet

Etymology

[Alt: A blue-tinted painting of a man's bent neck, with a faint image of a woman's face in its background] Learned borrowing from Italian pentimento (“repentance, penance, penitence; remorse; change of opinion; correction; traces of a previous image or work in an artwork”), from pentìrsi (“to repent; to regret”) + -mento (suffix forming nouns representing the actions of verbs to which it is attached). Pentìrsi is derived from Latin paenitēre, the present active infinitive of paeniteō (“to cause to repent; to repent; to be sorry, regret”), from Proto-Indo-European *peh₁- (“to hate; to hurt”).

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