pittura

Forms

pittura f (plural pitture)^[1] Old forms include Old Italian pintura, Old Italian pentura, Old Italian penchiura, Old Italian pitura and the Latin spellings pictura and pinctura.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is learned: it is borrowed from Latin pictūra (“painting”), from pictus (“painted”), the past participle of pingō (“to paint”).^[4][5][6][1] The Latin noun is formed from the verb with the suffix -tūra.^[7]

The learned form won out over the older Old Italian pintura, which Dante also uses.^[5][3] That is the direct outcome of Vulgar Latin *pinctūra, with the ⟨n⟩ of the present stem of the verb, and the other Romance languages kept it: French peinture, Occitan penchura, Catalan pintura, Spanish pintura, Portuguese pintura and Sardinian pintura.^[5][8][9]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLIO's first record is in Giacomo da Lentini (c. 1230–1250, in a Tuscan copy). Its first sense is the practice of making lasting images on a surface, mostly with colouring matter.^[2] DELI dates the sense “art of painting” to Dante, 1313–1319: Credette Cimabue ne la pittura / tener lo campo, e ora ha Giotto il grido (Cimabue thought he held the field in painting, and now Giotto has the fame).^[4][10]

Semantic evolution

Dante also uses the word for a single painted work, before 1321.^[4] In Old Italian it could also mean a layer of colour, an outward look with nothing real behind it, paint for the face, and the treatment of a ship's hull to make it watertight.^[2] Petrarch speaks of something quasi lunga pittura in tempo breve, “like a long painting in a short time”.^[11]

The verb pitturare meant “to adorn with garlands” in Boccaccio.^[4] Pietro Giordani used it in 1821 for covering with paint, and Molossi wrote in 1839–1841 that it had long been out of fashion and that one should say dipingere.^[4] Tommaseo noted that it was alive only for painting walls and woodwork with oil or other paint.^[4]

Today the word also covers house painting and the paint itself, and in familiar use make-up.^[6][12][13]

Timeline

• c. 1230–1250 – Giacomo da Lentini has the TLIO's first record.^[2]
• 1313–1319 – Dante uses pittura for the art of painting.^[4][6]
• Before 1321 – Dante uses it for a painting.^[4]
• 14th century – Boccaccio uses pitturare.^[4][5]
• 1821 – Pietro Giordani uses pitturare for “to paint, varnish”.^[4]

Meanings

Noun

1. painting, the art of representing things with lines and colours, and the technique used: pittura a olio, pittura a tempera.^[6][14][12]
2. The paintings of a period, a place or a school taken together: la pittura veneta del Settecento.^[6][15]
3. A single painting or fresco.^[6][13]
4. (figurative) A vivid description in words or on the stage.^[6][14][12]
5. (uncommon) A mental picture, an image.^[6][15]
6. The painting of walls, railings and the like.^[6][15]
7. paint, varnish.^[6][12][13]
8. (familiar) make-up.^[6][12][13]

Word family

• pitturare
• pitturale

Related words

• pittore
• dipingere
• pingere
• dipinto
• Latin pictura
• French peinture

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (1997–), Opera del Vocabolario Italiano, CNR, Firenze; tlio.ovi.cnr.it
3. ^ a b Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 2958
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
5. ^ a b c d Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
7. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
9. ^ Körting, Gustav (1907), Lateinisch-romanisches Wörterbuch: etymologisches Wörterbuch der romanischen Hauptsprachen, 3rd ed., Paderborn: Schöningh
10. ^ Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca
11. ^ Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
12. ^ a b c d e Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
13. ^ a b c d Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
14. ^ a b Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier
15. ^ a b c Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana