pentimento

pentimento

English

WOTD – 16 April 2022

Etymology

In this detail from Pablo Picasso’s The Old Guitarist (1903–1904), a pentimento in the form of a woman’s face can faintly be seen in the bend of the guitarist’s neck.

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,[1] 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”).

The plural form is also borrowed from Italian pentimenti.

Pronunciation

• Singular:
  • (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˌpɛntɪˈmɛntəʊ/

  • Audio (Southern England)

    (file)

  • (General American) IPA^(key): /ˌpɛntəˈmɛntoʊ/, [-ɾə-], [-ɾoʊ]
  • Rhymes: -ɛntəʊ
  • Hyphenation: pen‧ti‧men‧to
• Plural:
  • (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˌpɛntɪˈmɛnti/
  • (General American) IPA^(key): /ˌpɛntəˈmɛnti/, [-ɾə-], [-ɾi]
  • Hyphenation: pen‧ti‧men‧ti

Noun

pentimento (plural pentimenti)

1. (art, literature) 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.

   Synonym: pentiment

   • 2012, Lorraine T. Gilman, chapter 20, in Princeton Pentimento, Bloomington, Ind.: WestBow Press, Thomas Nelson, →ISBN, page 205:

     She thought of the painting in the shop, the pentimento. Her life, the one she had so carefully planned for herself had crumbled like the paint on the surface.

   • 2019, Timothy J. Benoy; William A. Edwards; Howell G. M. Edwards, “Evidence of Pentimenti for the Authentication of Paintings: A Challenge for Analytical Science at the Interface with Art History”, in Peter Vandenabeele and Howell Edwards, editors, Raman Spectroscopy in Archaeology and Art History, volume 2, London: Royal Society of Chemistry, →ISBN, page 33:

     [T]he presence of a pentimento is an extremely valuable entity which supports the conclusion that a painting is an original composition – so, by inference, therefore, refuting any later suggestion that the painting could be the work of a copyist, who would have been engaged upon copying an existing painting as seen! The identification of a pentimento in an artwork can occur in one of two ways: by analytical interrogation of the subsurface using penetrative radiation such as IRR or XRD, or by direct visual observation, where the overlaying paint has worn away […]

Derived terms

• pentimentoed

Translations

presence of traces of a previous work in an artistic or literary work

Basque: pentimento Dutch: pentimento French: repentir (fr) m German: Pentimenti pl (plural only), Pentiment, Reuestriche Italian: pentimento (it) m Norwegian: Bokmål: pentimento Polish: pentimento (pl) m Portuguese: pentimento Slovene: pentimento Spanish: pentimento m Thai: การแก้จิตรกรรม

See also

• palimpsest

References

1. “pentimento, n.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, March 2022; “pentimento, n.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.

Further reading

• pentimento on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

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Italian

Etymology

From pentirsi (“to repent, regret”) +‎ -mento.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /pen.tiˈmen.to/
• Rhymes: -ento
• Hyphenation: pen‧ti‧mén‧to

Noun

pentimento m (plural pentimenti)

1. penitence, penance, repentance
2. remorse

   Synonyms: rammarico, rimpianto, rincrescimento

3. (art, literature) a change between the old sketch/stub of a work from its final form

   un'opera eseguita senza pentimenti ― a work executed without changes (from the sketch/stub)

   Synonyms: cambiamento, rifacimento

Descendants

• → English: pentimento (learned)

Further reading

• pentimento in Treccani.it – Vocabolario Treccani on line, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana