How Leonardo da Vinci Created a Metaphorical Battle of Light and Dark in His Brushstrokes

Exploring the cryptic techniques of the Italian master

Leonardo da Vinci painted Saint John the Baptist in about 1516. The figure appears to materialise — perhaps miraculously, certainly enigmatically — from a deep-black background.

The effect is achieved through a technique that Leonardo pioneered: the deliberate softening of lines and contours so that the figure seems to blend in with — or in this case, out of — the darkness.

The light in the painting has a measured quality, the sort of wavering glow that is reminiscent of candlelight. The shadows are gradual; they move from light to dark only serenely, even hesitantly.

What is Leonardo signalling to us through this faded light? Why did he choose to give the painting this particular feel?

Most of us are acquainted with at least some of the paintings of Leonardo. His images tend to have an air of foggy indistinctness, especially the later works.

It’s this misty quality that underlies the Mona Lisa’s famed ambivalence. The unresolved movement of her eyes and the tremulous shadows of her smile are made possible by the painting technique known as sfumato.

Many of Leonardo’s paintings have the same suggestive atmosphere. He described sfumato as “without boundaries or limits, in the way of smoke or outside of the focal plane.” The word translates in English as soft, vague, or blurred, deriving from the Italian fumo (“smoke”, “fume”).

The effect was achieved through applying layers of thin oil paint glazes, one on top of the other, to continually soften shadows and edges. Leonardo tended to use a unified range of mid-tone colours — especially earth colours, blues and greens — with similar levels of saturation, to further harmonise his paintings.

As a scientist, Leonardo made extensive studies of the effects of light and colour. For example, his studies in optics led…

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