A painting technique in which tones and colours blend seamlessly into one another without clear lines or borders, creating a hazy, atmospheric effect.

From the Italian sfumare, meaning to evaporate or tone down, evoking the way forms dissolve into each other like smoke.

Perfected and most famously used by Leonardo da Vinci, particularly in the Mona Lisa and The Virgin of the Rocks.

Requires building up many thin, almost transparent layers of paint — Leonardo is believed to have applied over forty individual glazes in some passages of the Mona Lisa.

Michelangelo derided sfumato as a coward's technique in letters to his students, arguing that strong contour lines were the mark of true mastery.