Pentimento is traces of earlier painting showing through the final surface.
Pentimento (Italian: 'repentance') refers to traces of an earlier, altered composition that have become visible through the upper layers of paint as the medium ages and grows more transparent. Oil paint gradually becomes semi-translucent over centuries, allowing earlier versions — changed poses, rearranged objects, removed figures — to ghost through the surface. X-radiography and infrared reflectography have made the study of pentimenti into a science: beneath Holbein's portraits lie different hand positions; beneath Rembrandt's canvases, whole figures were painted over. For art historians, pentimenti are evidence of the artist's working process, hesitations and second thoughts. For poets and writers, they have become a metaphor for memory's layered nature — Lillian Hellman used the term as the title of her memoir.