(bright piano music) - [Beth] If you want your
painting or your drawing, to look realistic, to look naturalistic, to look like the observable world, then a technique that art
historians call modeling or chiaroscuro, is critical. - [Steven] Chiaroscuro
means simply light and dark. And what we're talking
about is the modulation or the transition from light to dark. When we look at a round object in space, parts of it will be more
brightly illuminated, and parts of it, especially
as they move away from us will be more in shade, and the ability to render that
on a two-dimensional surface on a canvas can create the
illusion of volume and mass, of a thing in space. - [Beth] And here we're looking
at Titian's Venus of Urbino, this lovely nude reclining
on a bed and we immediately get the sense that this is
a three-dimensional body. - [Steven] Look for
instance at her right thigh. It's bright at the top, but
as the knee turns, it turns to shadow. It doesn't do it sharply,
but as a result her shin seems to recede into space. - [Beth] Or we can even
follow the line of her thigh down toward the bed, and see how it moves from
brighter illumination into shadow. - [Steven] Now Titian
was able to achieve this with such delicacy because
he is using oil paint, which allows for a very
find modulation of tone. - [Beth] But we see this
with Renaissance artists going back for example, to Giotto, all the way through the artists
of the high Renaissance, the artists of the Venetian
Renaissance like Titian. - [Steven] If we looked back at earlier medieval representations in Italy, we would often see line
used to define the folds or the bunching of drapery. But here, if you look at
the sheet under the figure, you can see that he's
used only light and shadow to create the folds and
creases in that cloth. - [Beth] And that older
linear way of representing the three-dimensions of
drapery is not as naturalistic as this use of modeling or
chiaroscuro that we see in the Renaissance. - [Steven] And there you
have it, chiaroscuro. (bright piano music)