Regrets, I've Had a Few

Perspectives from The Artist's Road

Have you ever started in on a painting, perhaps gotten partway done or completely finished, and then changed your mind about part of the work you had done? The fix to the problem is either to start completely over or to paint over the previous work. This repainting process is, undoubtedly, a fairly common situation among artists and if we are careful about the alterations, does no harm to the final picture. The Italian word for it, pentimento (meaning repentance), refers to an alteration to a painting resulting in a re-covering of a portion or all of a work.

However, there is a risk to painting over previous work. The underlying imagery may reappear over time due to aging or wear-and-tear, revealing the artist’s original work. Thin layers of paint can become more transparent as they age, revealing the ghost-like images of a previous painting. Art restorers and historians sometimes use x-rays and infrared scans to uncover the pentimento in a painting which can help in the authenticatio…