A pentimento (plural pentimenti) is an alteration in a painting, evidenced by traces of previous work, showing that the artist has changed his or her mind as to the composition during the process of painting. The word is Italian for repentance, from the verb pentirsi, meaning to repent.
Pentimenti may show that a composition originally had an element, for example a head or a hand, in a slightly different place, or that an element no longer in the final painting was originally planned. The changes may have been done in the underdrawing of the painting, or by the visible layers of paint differing from the underdrawing, or by the first painted treatment of the element having been over-painted.
Some pentimenti have always been visible on the final painting with careful inspection; others are revealed by the increasing transparency that some paint acquires after several centuries. Others, especially in the underdrawing, can only be seen with modern methods such as X-rays and infrared reflectography and photographs. These are able to record photographically some pigments, depending on their chemical composition, which remain covered by later paint layers. For example white lead, a common pigment, will be detected by X-ray, and carbon black underdrawings can often be seen with great clarity in infra-red reflectograms. These methods have greatly expanded the number of pentimenti art historians are aware of, and confirmed that they are very common in the works of many old masters, from Jan van Eyck onwards.
Pentimento: A Book of Portraits is a 1973 book by American writer Lillian Hellman. It is best known for the controversy over the authenticity of a section about an anti-Nazi activist called "Julia", which was later made into the film Julia. Muriel Gardiner, a wealthy American who went to medical school in Vienna before World War II and became involved in anti-Fascist resistance there before her return to the US in 1939, suggested that her life story was fictionalized as Julia.
The Oscar-winning film Julia was based on one chapter of Pentimento. Following the film's release in 1977, New York psychiatrist Muriel Gardiner claimed she was the basis for the title character. The story presents "Julia" as a close friend of Hellman's living in pre-Nazi Austria. Hellman helps her friend to smuggle money for anti-Nazi activity from Russia. In fact Hellman had never met Gardiner. Hellman denied that the character was based on Gardiner, but never identified a real-life alternative. Hellman and Gardiner had the same lawyer (Wolf Schwabacher) who had been privy to Gardiner's memoirs. The events depicted in the film conformed to those described in Gardiner's memoirs.
Pentimento is the 2002 debut album by singer Jessica Molaskey performing standards of the 1920s and 1930s. She is joined by an all-star cast of musicians, including her husband John Pizzarelli, father-in-law Bucky Pizzarelli, violinist Johnny Frigo and her brother-in-law, Martin Pizzarelli.
I'm making excuses to justify my conclusions
and bypass convictions that I have.
I'm not ashamed to admit my feelings
Until it comes down to someone who counts.
I'm acting like I'm supposed to save the world,
but I just want to seem real to other people.
It's in the way that my brain tells my mouth to say
something relevant
to get a laugh and feel approved.
I still imagine how often old dead trees show the wind
just to prove they have the worth.
Like how much we disregard ourselves
just to treasure someone else.
And I'm still speaking like it's possible to change.
But it's not possible to wait.
As the days and nights continue, you can see it taking
shape.
It's nothing into nothing, always running in place.
So I talk to all my friends about the quicksand that
I'm in
As if it'd change the way I live.
(I can't stay stuck like this forever)
There's been so many autumns since then
And many "others" that have came and went.
I'll never look at anything that we once had the same
way again.
I can't stay stuck like this.
I'll never look at this the same way again.
I can't stay stuck like this forever.