¹ “The French Word Nuance,” lxx (March, 1955), 244–273, and “The Spanish Word Matiz,” Traditio, x (1954), 459–527.

² Il libro dell' arte, ed. Daniel V. Thompson, Jr. (New Haven, 1932), and The Craftsman's Handbook, trans. Thompson (New Haven, 1933 and 1936), passim.

³ Vocabulario etimologico della lingua italiana (Rome and Milan, 1907), s.v. sfumare.

⁴ See also Carlo Battisti and Giovanni Alessio, Dizionario etimologico italiano (Firenze, 1950—), s.v. sfumare: “sfumare (sfummare ant. xvi sec., Berni), intr., xiv sec., -aménto (xvi sec.), -ante, -ata, -ato (xiv sec.), -atézza (pitt., xix sec.), -atura (xviii sec., gradazione di colore o di stile); esalare, svanire; tr. (xvi sec.) affumicare; (xvi sec., Vasari) digradare i colori dolcemente; rifl. svignarsela; ‘fumo.‘”

⁵ (Leipzig, 1900—). Henceforth the abbreviation “ThLL” will be used for this work.

⁶ I have, however, found in a medieval painter's manual the word exfumigare ‘to expell as smoke’ (Recipe No. ccxcij of the tract Mappae Clavicula in the version of the 12th-century Phillipps MS., ed. Albert Way, Archaeologia, xxxii [London, 1847], 244). This form of the word effumigare is not mentioned in any dictionary of which I am aware.

⁷ Cf. also the V. Lat. form exlegere (>OSp. esleir Fr. élire) for the classic form eligere (>Sp. elegir); and the form of the Spanish word esforzar, which proves that the V. Lat. form must have been ∗exfortiare and not ∗effortiare (M. Pidal, Man. gram. hist. esp., par. 126; Meyer-Lübke, Gram. lan. rom., par. 604).

⁸ “Excerpta ex Glossis Aynardi” (codicis Mettensis saec. xi).

⁹ Emil Baehrens, “Appendix vergiliana,” Poetas latini minores, ed. Friedrich Vollmer (Leipzig, 1910), i, 157–195. See Vollmer's introduction, pp. 3 and 4, on the authorship of this poem.

¹⁰ Ibid., p. 187, ll. 498–504: “The rivers [of molten lava] come to a stop in banks and harden in the cold, and gradually the fires unite and the flaming surface is cast off in masses; then as soon as each mass stiffens it emits smoke and, dragged by its own weight, is rolled with tremendous resounding noise and dashed headlong against a solid form; it scatters agitated fires, and where it lies separated, gleams with glowing red.”

¹¹ The French word is also attested in the form effumer. Whether the form éfumer derives from V. Lat., or simply represents a French version of the Italian form sfumare is difficult to determine. It may be of significance that the attestation of the form éfumer occurs in the work of Baïf, who was well acquainted with Italy and Italian culture.

¹² See n. 9 above.

¹³ Leon Battista Alberti (1404–72), Della architettura, trans. Cosimo Bartoli (Florence, 1550), as cited by Gherardini: “Continuamente staranno fràdici [li edifizi posti fra due valli] e sempre sfumeranno assidue vapore, nocivo grandemente alla sanita degli uomini.” Gherardini supplies the corresponding passage of the Latin original: “et terrenum vaporem valetudini hominum vehementer noxium assiduo effumet.”

¹⁴ Lucca Pulci, Ciriffo Calvaneo e il povero avveduto (Venice, 1535), as cited by Gherardini: “Per gentilezza si trae qualche rutto, / E sfuma un poco il vin per la visiera.”

¹⁵ Ben Jonson, Every Man out of Humor (1599), as cited by the OED: “I can make this dog take as many whiffes as I list, and he shall retain or effume them, at my pleasure.”

¹⁶ Annibale Caro (1507–66), Lettere famigliare (Venice, 1581), as cited by Tommaseo and Bellini: “fin che sfume la memoria di questo vostro accidente.”

¹⁷ Paul de Montebourcher, Traicté des cérémonies et ordonnances appartenans à gage de batalle et combats … (Paris, 1608), as cited by Godefroy: “ainsy verroit on eslever, et avoir lieu la franchise de parler a un chaqu'un plusieurs s'effumeroient en paroles libres.”

¹⁸ Cited by Tommaseo and Bellini as an example of typical usage.

¹⁹ Cited by Tommaseo and Bellini. The reference to the text in which the passage is found is not clear: “Pigliavano acqua piovana e la serbavano cinque anni, ovvero ne sfumavano la terza parte al fuoco, aggiungendovi la terza parte di mele vecchio.”

²⁰ Ambroise Paré (1519–90), Oeuvres complètes (Paris, 1840) as cited by Huguet: “Le chaut attenue, rarifie, subtilie et fait évaporer, sortir et effumer les odeurs.”

²¹ Vannoccio Biringuccio, La pirotecnia (Venice, 1540), as cited by Tommaseo and Bellini.

²² Antoine de Baïf, Les mimes (Paris, 1581), as cited by Huguet.

²³ Since it could not well be imagined that in this usage the verb s'effumer could mean ‘to pass off (in free words) as if in smoke’ as it would in a reflexive usage derived from the causative of the verb of motion, the reflexive pronoun is taken here to represent the inner object conceived as some part of the self, as the emotions, anger, the passions, etc. Thus the pattern “j'effume mon émotion>je m'effume” would be analogous with the Latin pattern “animum explico>me explico (>Fr. je m'explique).” For an explanation of this pattern of reflexive usage see Anna G. Hatcher, Reflexive Verbs: Latin, Old French, Modern French, Johns Hopkins Stud. in Romance Lit. and Lang., xliii (Baltimore, London, Paris, 1942), 44–52, 86–92, 154–157.

²⁴ Cf. the English passage cited in the OED, s.v. shadow, as of 1272: “þus is þes world as þu mayht seo al so þe schadewe þ glyt away”; and of 1602: “the very substance of the ambitions is meerely the shadow of a dreame” showing the equivalence between the metaphor of “smoke” and that of “shadows” for expressing ephemeral, insubstantial qualities.

²⁵ I have described a number of these treatises in the article “The Spanish Word Matiz” (see n. 1 above). The earliest for which a definitely dated text exists is ascribed to the 8th century. Usually they are in Latin, although some late tracts are composed in the vernacular. An edition of a Neo-Greek work is available (see n. 29 below), and there is record of a 14th-century manual in Russian.

²⁶ See n. 2 above; Thompson (pp. ix and x) discusses the manuscript problem and the prior editions of the text. The original manuscript is presumably lost, but it is believed that the work was composed between 1396 and 1437.

²⁷ The most comprehensive edition is that of Albert Ilg, “Theophilus Presbyter ‘Schedula diversarum artium,‘” Quellenschriften für Kunstgeschichte (Vienna, 1874).

²⁸ C. R. Morey, “The Sources of Mediaeval Style,” Art Bull., vii (1924), 1–16, in a comprehensive summary, traces the origin of the basic styles dominant in the art of Western Europe during the Middle Ages to a bifurcation in the direction of Hellenistic art from the 1st century b.c. The one trend, stemming from the classic concepts of Greek sculpture of the 5th and 4th centuries b.c., led to what is known as the “Asiatic” style, which is characterized by an isolation of the figure from its ambience and a tendency toward abstract representation and decorative design. The opposite current, which centered in Alexandria, and which is generally known as the “illusionistic” style, tended toward realistic representation through an impressionistic rendering of form with the aid of chiaroscuro to create an illusion of life. The style of the great Middle Byzantine painting is essentially Asiatic, and it was into this tradition that Giotto and Cennini introduced their innovations. The Alexandrian illusionism, on the other hand, fared badly in the Latin West, for the style had no decorative principle on which to rely when its dramatic significance was misunderstood; but in the hands of northern artists its linear movement and vitality did contribute much to the linear dynamism of Romanesque painting.

²⁹ See “The Spanish Word Matiz,” p. 500, for passages from the Schedula, describing this method, and also pp. 502–503 for a passage describing the method as practiced in the monasteries of Mount Athos from a Neo-Greek tract ascribed to Dionysios of Fuma: Eρμηνεια της ζωγραϕτκηζ τεκνηζ: Manuel d'iconographie chrétienne, ed. A. Papadopoulo-Kerameus [sic] (St. Petersburg, 1909), p. 23. The Greeks used the noun λαμμα ατoς to designate the light color value and the verb λαμματιςειν in the sense ‘to put in the light relief.‘ This Greek verb passed into Latin, and ultimately, through the deglutination of a supposed Romance article (i.e., λαμματιςειν [8th century]>∗lamalizare >∗lamalizatura >l'amatiqalura, emalicalura, matizatura >amatiqare, ematiqare, matizare [12th century]), produced Sp. Pg. Cat. matizar and matiz, the equivalent in the languages of the Iberian Peninsula today of Fr. nuance and It. sfumatura.

It is significant that this technique achieved an effect of roundness by building up the successively lighter values of the relief in a manner that could almost be described as “painting in light.” The depiction of the shadows consisted mainly in leaving the ground color exposed and drawing in a kind of outline with a few dark accents, as is indicated by the expressions tractos facere, incidere, and ανoιγειν, which are suggestive of incising or cutting with a stylus. This conception of representing objects in painting, stemming from the Asiatic style (see n. 28 above) is sharply contrasted by that of the σκιαγραϕια or “shadow painting” of the illusionistic type for which Apollodorus was famous. Essentially it was in the context of the σκιαγραϕια, with its deceptive illusions that the “shadow” metaphor of the Latin adumbrare ‘to shadow forth,’ ‘to portray,’ ‘to create an illusion by means of shadows,’ ‘to deceive, insinuate, suggest,’ etc., had the extensive development which is reflected today in the equations for the Fr. nuance such as the Eng. shade, Ger. Schattierung, Rus. ОТТЬНОКБ, etc. (See n. 60 below, and also Gianfranco Folena, “Chiaroscuro leonardesco,” Lingua nostra, xii [Sept. 1951], 57–63, for a discussion of the early expressions for “light and shade.”)

³⁰ Mappae Clavicula, p. 187 (see n. 6 above). According to the tabulation of R. P. Johnson, “Notes on Some Manuscripts of the ‘Mappae Clavicula,‘ Speculum, x (Jan. 1935), 75–81, this is the earliest extant version of the recipe. Johnson's listing shows that it is to be found in as many as 38 different MSS dating from the 12th to 15th century. Cf. a 15th-century Italian version (Mrs. Merrifield, Original Treatises on the Arts of Painting, London, 1849, ii, 481): ”e quando tu vederaì lo fumi giallo continua lo foco per infino che vederaì uscire el fumo rosso o vermeglio alora tolj via lo fuoco et quando sera freddo trove ai bello cinabro.“

³¹ Cf. analogous expressions in the metaphor of shadows: (1) English: to shade off, away (of colors, anything), i.e.: “a touch of coarseness … about the manners of the times, which has … been softened and shaded away” (OED, s.v. shaded, 1818); Latin: adumbratim (<adumbrare ‘to cast shadow on’ = επισκιαἁζω, ὑπoσημειoûμαι effiingere, designare), i.e.: “(of corners and towers) non … ut coram quae sunt vereque rotunda, sed quasi adumbratim paidum simulata videntur” (Lucretius, 4, 362).

³² Cf. “the colour of the skin is a golden yellow shading into green” (OED, s.v. shading, 1845).

³³ An analogy is offered in the archaic Fr. nuer (> nuance) ‘to cloud patches of color together’ which is discussed at length in my article “The French Word Nuance” (see n. 1 above). As a term of heraldry the word nué was used to designate a kind of line by which the field of armorial bearings was partitioned (called “the old clouded line” in the Encyc. Brit.). As a term of tapestry weaving the word nuer was used to indicate the blending of contiguous patches of color. In both cases the “clouding” or blending was accomplished by an interpenetration of the adjacent color areas in a kind of convoluted or serrated line which stems from the stylized convoluted forms used by early painters to represent clouds.

³⁴ Trattato della pintura, ed. Classici italiani, xxxiii (Milan, 1804), 15.

³⁵ Cited by Tommaseo and Bellini from the edition of Florence, 1568. Other passages are: “Sequitò dopo lui… Giorgione da Castel Franco, il quale sfumè le sue pitture, e dette una terribil movenza alle sue cose, per una certa oscurità di ombre bene intesa,” and “Guglielmo … conduce le sue pitture sfumate, e tutte piene di dolcezza e di grazia. E se bene non ha la fierezza, e facilità, e terribilità del suo condiscepolo Froro, ad ogni modo è tenuto eccellentissimo.”

³⁶ Françoise-Antoine Pompey, Dictionnaire royal des langues françaises et latines (Lyon, 1664). This work was not available for examination.

³⁷ Dictionnaire de l'ameublement et de la décoration depuis le XIII^e siècle jusqu'à nos jours (Paris, 1894), s.v. effumer.

³⁸ The Russian Icon, trans. Ellis H. Micks (Oxford, 1927).

³⁹ Sankir is the dark, greenish-olive color which forms the first coat underlying the flesh tint and which Cennini (passage E above) calls verdaccio.

⁴⁰ Opere, xii, ed. Classici italiani, ccxvi (Milan, 1811), 166. For date of composition see p. 155.

⁴¹ Osservazioni intorno agli animali viventi, che si trovano negli animali viventi (Florence, 1684), as cited by Tommaseo and Bellini.

⁴² Della natura delle comete, letter to Francesco Redi (Florence, 1684), as cited by Tommaseo and Bellini.

⁴³ I discorsi di anatomia (Florence, 1741–44), as cited by Tommaseo and Bellini. The use of the word adombramento here is analogous with that of the obsolete English usage of the word shadow which the OED defines ‘an outline for a picture,‘ citing as of 1656: “painters, whose first rude or imperfect draught is termed a shadow or adumbration.”

⁴⁴ Relazioni d'alcuni viaggi fatti in diversi parti della Toscana (Florence, 1768) v, 266, and iv, 87.

⁴⁵ Cf. Meyer-Lübke, ii, par. 604: “s- devint souvent un préfixe presque dépourvu de sens, ce qui s'explique aisément par des cas tels que nudare et snudare.” Alfred Hoare notes, in the article on the letter S in his Italian dictionary: “In composition S is usually privative, representing the Latin preposition ex, out, or sometimes the Latin prefix dis-, but it is frequently intensive, representing the Latin ex in the sense of thoroughly, and also occurs as a mere idle prefix with no real force … It thus happens that the same word may have two opposite meanings, e.g. Sgonfiare … ‘to deflate’ … ‘to pufi out.‘”

⁴⁶ See n. 21 above. The passage is cited by Tommaseo and Bellini.

⁴⁷ A Worlde of Wordes, or Most Copious and Exact Dictionarie in Italian and English (London, 1598).

⁴⁸ Cf. the French word nuance in sense 1: the action nuer conceived as in progress ‘to blend the colors of adjacent areas in tapestry weaving,‘ and in sense 2: the result of the action nuer, i.e., the color from which or into which the blending was performed. Sense 2 of the word nuance differs from that of the word sfumatura in that the action nuer achieved the effect of a smooth transition through the juxtaposition of colors arranged in graded series rather than through their amalgamation, as would be the case in painting. Thus the changed color resulting from the blending action was in reality a thread of dyed wool, and as such possessed at the same time the autonomy of an independent entity and the contingency of a member of a graded series. It is significant that the word nuance was not generally used as a painter's term, either in sense 1 or sense 2: the word passage was the technical term for the blending of paint in the action of the verb sfumare conceived as in progress.

⁴⁹ Museo di fisica e di esperienze (Venice, 1697): “He will be observing the rather marvelous vaporous emission which is perpetually produced from the soil of the earth, when in tranquil weather and in the presence of the burning sun, turning the head to the horizon, he will perceive the objects interposed between the eyes and the sun all tremulously moving as if they were behind waves, and in the same way that when the summit of a burning furnace or of a caldron of boiling water is interposed between the things seen, they appear tremulous.”

⁵⁰ Cf. V. Lat. amatizatura, Sp. matizadura ‘embellishment with colorful flourishes and patterned figures’ <Lat. matizare, Sp. matizar (>maliz). See n. 29 above.

⁵¹ Rime burlesche del Berni e d'altri (Firenze, 1548), i. Tommaseo and Bellini cite the passage as from p. 41 of “la ristampa di Napoli con la falsa data di Londra e Firenze, 1723.”

⁵² The usage of the metaphor of “smoke” here seems to be a humorous variation of the “shadow” metaphor of the Lat. adumbrare, adumbratio, Eng. shadow, and Ger. A bschattung, where the shadow of an object is understood as an advance indication of its presence. This usage was extensive in patristic literature as an expression of the Christian concept of prefiguration. Cf. Ambrose, Exameron, i, 5, 18: “Mundum volunt esse quasi adumbra-tionem virtutis divinae,” Augustine, Civitas dei, 16, 3: “Dei civitas … in omnibus sacramento adumbrata” (ThLL, s.v. adumbratio, adumbratus); OED citation s.v. shadow of 1382: “The wiche ben schadowe of things to come; forsoth the body is of Christ,” of 1526: “But all these were but figures and shadowes of thinges to come”; Joh. Hein. Voss, Sämtliche Gedichte (Königsberg, 1802), i, 91: “Der Natur und der Menschlichkeit, weiser Verkünder, die Abschattungen sind uns endlichen endloser Gottheit.”

⁵³ Traveler, man of letters, and correspondent of Voltaire. See Lorenzo Manini, Opere del conte Algarotti (Cremona, 1778).

⁵⁴ Ibid., vii, 192. Cf. Leibniz, La monadologie (1714) in Opera philosophica, ed. Erdmann (Berlin, 1840), p. 706-a: “Car tout changement naturel se faisant par dégrés, quelque chose change et quelque chose reste: et par conséquent il faut que dans la substance simple il y ait une pluralité d'affections et de rapports quoi qu'il n'y en ait point de parties” and Charles Bonnet, La palingénésie philosophique, xv, 5, in Œuvres d'histoire naturelle (Paris, 1782), vii, 402: “La nature est comme cette image que présente le prisme: tout y est nuancé à l'infini.” In the article “The French Word Nuance ” I have discussed in some detail the role of the term nuance as an expression of the gradations corollary to Leibniz' “law of continuity.”

⁵⁵ Cf. the French word passage (see n. 48 above).

⁵⁶ Dizionario universale critico: Enciclo pedico della lingua italiana (Lucca, 1797), s.v. sfumatezza.

⁵⁷ “La Nuance,” Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie, lxx (Heft 3/4, 1954), 233–248.

⁵⁸ Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, Histoire naturelle, in Oeuvres … (Paris, 1853), iii, 136.

⁵⁹ Hans Schulz, Deutsches Fremdwörterbuch (Strassburg, 1913—), s.v. nuance; Ordbok Over Svenska Språket utgiven av Svenska Akademien (Lund, 1948—), s.v. nyansera; OED, s.v. nuance.

⁶⁰ In Greek the idea “to portray or create an illusion of reality by painting the shadows of an object” was expressed by the word σκιαγραψια, i.e.: “έσκιαγραψημἑνoις ἐπιβαλὠν χρὠματα” (Philostratus, Vita Apollonii, i, 2). Apparently the deception inherent in this action was felt very strongly and Plato and others frequently used the terms σκιαγραψια and σκιαγρἀψειν for images evoking the idea of deceptive illusion, as for example: “σκιαγραψιαν ἀρετης πειγραπτἐoν ” (Republic, 365c); [with reference to scene painting] “σκιαγραψια άσαψι καιάπατελω χρωμἑθα ” (Critias, 107d); and “ἐπειθἠ ἐγγὐςὢσπερ σκιαγραψήματoς γἐγoνα τoὑ γεγoμἐν”oυ, συνιμι oιὁἑ σμικρὀν” (Theatetus, 208e). In Latin the words adumbrare and adumbratio were used to convey the idea of portrayal or representation by means of art, i.e.: “quis pictor omnia quae in rerum natura sunt, adumbrare didicit?” (Hieronymous, Isaiam, 49, 8) (cf. the English passage of 1580 in Euphues: “for Appelles shadowes are to be seen of Alexander, but not Alexander's of Appelles” and also that of 1591: “How faine would I paint thee to all men's eyes, / Or of thy gifts at least shade out some part”), and these words frequently retained the Greek ideas of illusion and deception, to some extent in the context of painting, i.e., “scaenographia est frontis et laterum abscedentum adumbratio” (Vitruvius, i, 2, 2), and quite generally in the context of language and other forms of human expression. As is evident from English, the concept of illusion or artful deception is still expressed in the metaphor of shadows. Thus, for example, “σκιαγραϕήματα της διανιας” (Diogenes Oenoandensis, 7): “tanti beneficii insidiosa adumbratio eius” (Valerius Maximum, vii, 3, 8): 1596: “calling him [justice] great Osyris … with fayned colours shading a true case”; and also “ἠ δημηγoρικἠ λἐξις ἒoικε τη σκαγραϕια ” (Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1414a, 8): “in articulis vis adumbrata est analogia et magis rerum quam vocum, in nominatibus magis expresa” (Varro, De lingua latina, 10, 19): 1603: “lend me art (without any counterfeit shadowing) to paint the whole story”: 1632: “under the shadow of invented lies”; etc. (The citations are from Liddell and Scott, the ThLL, and the OED.)

⁶¹ For later usages of the word shade in the sense of nuance, cf. citations in the OED as of 1710: “the artificial nosegay and shaded furbelow”; of 1749 (in Smollett's translation of Gil Blas): “he put (to use the expression) different shades of consideration in the civilities he shewed”; of 1766: “the business of shading with the needle is now … seldom thought of but at school”; of 1781: “among the different branches of the human race the Sarmatians form a very remarkable shade”; of 1791: “without any shade of sorrow”; of 1818: “the circumlocutions, shadings, softenings, and periphrases, which usually accompany explanations betwixt persons of different sexes in the higher orders of society”; and of 1850: “whatever shadings of mortality … had come among these objects heretofore”; and so on.

⁶² Fünf Hundert Sinnen- Geist- und Lehr-Reiche Reden und Gemüths-Hebungen: Zu der Hochdeutschen Kanzelley (Breslau, 1666), p. 815; Patmos enthaltend sonderbare Reden und Betrachtungen (Leipzig, 1677), p. 449.

Butschky's lucid prose, influenced by his studies and translations of Seneca, are felt to have contributed greatly toward the advancement of German style. He was strongly opposed to the tendency of his period toward the excessive usage of foreign terms (Allgemeine deutsche Biographie).

⁶³ Felsenburg, Wunderliche Fata einiger Seefahrer, dem Drucke übergeben von Gisandern (Nordhausen, 1744–45), i, 28; H. L. Wagner, Frohe Frau, 6 (as cited by Grimm).

⁶⁴ Calderón, La vida es sueño, ii.xviii.

⁶⁵ Luis del Marmol Carvajal, Rebelión y castigo de los Moriscos de Granada, Biblioteca de autores españoles, xxi (Madrid, 1852), 132. Cf. a usage of the word sfumatura by Tozzetti which Gherardini defines “lieve striscia come di fumo': ”[rock salt which] ha tutte le apparenzi di una massa di spato trasparente, ma con sfumature bianche o marmorose“ (iii, 205), and ”[marble] diversamente macchiato di bianco, cioè a vene, a linee, a pezze, a sfumature.“ It is suggested here that as the Italian word was compared with the means of expressing the ”nuance“ concept in other languages, some of the connotations peculiar to the Spanish term were attracted into its orbit.

⁶⁶ Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Madrid, 1726–39): “Matiz: La mixtura, o union de colóres diversas, que se mexclan en las pinturas, texidos, bordados, y otras cosas, con tan admirable proporcion, que las hermosean y hacen resaltar. Lat. Tonus. Splendor. Metaphoricamente se aplica al estilo de una oracion o discurso, en que se entretexen erudiciones para hermosearle. Lat. Color. Matizar: Unir y mexclar, con hermosa proporcion, los colores diversos entre si, entretexiendolos, y enlazandolos de suerte que sean agradables a la vista. Lat. Coloribus illustrare, variare. Por extension vale manchar con algun colór alguna cosa à trechos salpicandolo: como Matizar con sangre. Lat. Varie aspergere. Metaphoricamente significa adornar, vestir y engalanar alguna cosa no material: como una oracion, discurso, etc. Lat. Coloribus rhetoricis exornare.”

⁶⁷ Diccionario nacional 6 gran diccionario clásico de la lengua española (Madrid, 1849): “Matiz … Cada una de las gradaciones por que pasa un color, sin suffrir una alteracion radical que le haga perder el nombre,—Mezcla, combinacion, union de dos ó mas colores de que resulta un tercero que se aproxima mas ó menos á alguno de los componentes, segun las proporciones. Es voz usada entre pintores, bordadores, tintoreros, dibujantes, etc.—Mezcla natural de varios colores que se observa en algunas flores.—Transicion insensible de un color pasando de claro á oscura, ó vice versa.—Fig. Modificacion, tomada esta voz en un sentido moral, intelectual ó material.—Cada una de las gradaciones, modificaciones ó diferencias por que pasa alguna cosa; cada una de las diversidades de un mismo género, que guarda cierta relacion ó analogia con la que le antecede y con la que le sucede, siempre que se considéran ordenadas de mas á menos ó de menos á mas, y en este sentido se dice: se reúnen alli hombres de todos los matices políticos; es á saber hombres de todas las modificaciones, diferencias, gradaciones ó variedades que se obsérvan en opiniones de politica.“

⁶⁸ “Los viajerillos,” Biblioteca de autores españoles: Poetas liricos del siglo XVIII (Madrid, 1871) ii, 605–606.

⁶⁹ Curiosidades verbales (São Paulo, 1927), p. 46.