This document discusses the artistic techniques of chiaroscuro, pictorial balance, emphasis, and focal point. It analyzes five paintings that effectively use chiaroscuro to create depth and highlight important elements through the use of light and shadow. All five paintings have religious themes and create a sense of emotion. The document proposes displaying the paintings together chronologically to demonstrate how chiaroscuro remained an impactful technique over time.

1. Malcolm Floyd

2.  Chiaroscuro: The gradual shifting from light to dark
through a successive gradation of tones across a curved
surface.
 Pictorial Balance: The Distribution of the apparent or
visual weight of the elements in works that are basically
two-dimensional.
 Emphasis: To focus the viewer’s attention one or more
parts of a composition by accentuation certain
shapes, intensifying value or color, featuring directional
lines, or strategically placing the objects and images.
 Focal Point: Specific parts of the work that seize and hold
the viewer interest.
 All these principle and elements are what helped to
compose this gallery.

4. This image is a great example of chiaroscuro, you
can see the artist create the rounded surfaces on
the rail to give the image that 3-d effect. Also
because of the ways the light shift throughout the
picture to bring the woman to the viewers focus.

6.  The image continues with the theme of
chiaroscuro, and the theme of religion. When
you look at the way the light hit’s the room and
some of the characters are and dark in parts
and light in others this effect really makes the
picture kind of jump out to you.

8.  Here you see the light in the sky and as the
viewer eyes wonder down the painting the
light gradually fades away. I look at this as
play on the theme of heaven and hell. This
artist also included key principles of design.
The Balance of this piece for example, though
the image obviously has no actual mass; the
weight of this picture is evenly distributed so I
would say this is and example of “Pictorial
Balance”.

10.  The Shading of this picture goes with the
theme of chiaroscuro, but what really drew me
to this image was the was the artist used the
principle of emphasis. The way that this
principle was used was by the way the artist
chose to have the light on David, and by doing
this he accentuated or emphasized David’s
victory over Goliath.

12.  In this image the artist chose to use the
principle of design known as “Focal Point”, to
do this the idea of chiaroscuro was used as
well. I say this because when you look closely
at the image you can see the other people in the
shadows, but the light is focused on their
embrace to emphasize the what is actually
going on.

13.  I picked these painting because of their incredible uses of
chiaroscuro, which is, the gradual shifting from light to dark
through a successive graduation of tones across a curved
surface. These paintings were aesthetically appealing and
each respective work held a deep meaning. The paintings
evoked feeling through the artist’s emphasis on light and
shadow. The play on shadows and lighting created great
focal points to attract direct attention to the main point of
the paintings. All five of these paintings are both visually
and thematically similar. Visually, they are all painted using
chiaroscuro, with deep and meaningful focal points.
Thematically, all of these works have the same base of
religion, using Jesus, angels, or important biblical situations.
They all have the recurring theme of religion through
sorrow, triumph, and pure belief.

14.  I would present these paintings on one wall in
chronological order. The first painting in the sequence
would be Penni’s The Transfiguration of Our Lord,
painted in 1523. Second would be Carvaggio’s David
Victorious Over Goliath, painted in 1599. The next
work would be Strozzi’s Saint Veronica, speculated to
be painted from 1620 to 1625. Fourth, Ribalta’s Christ
Embracing Saint Bernard of 1626. The last painting in
the sequence would be Rosales Gallinas’ The Death of
Lucretia, painted in 1871. By hanging the works on the
same wall, in chronological order, would show that
chiaroscuro was a lasting technique. Artist’s used it
effectively through time to create a visual impact on
viewers, while still making an impact on present day
viewers of the works.