Cangiante is one of the four canonical painting modes of the Renaissance (the other three being Unione, Chiaroscuro

Chiaroscuro

Chiaroscuro in art is "an Italian term which literally means 'light-dark'. In paintings the description refers to clear tonal contrasts which are often used to suggest the volume and modelling of the subjects depicted"....

, and Sfumato

Sfumato

Sfumato is one of the four canonical painting modes of the Renaissance .The most prominent practitioner of sfumato was Leonardo da Vinci, and his famous painting of the Mona Lisa exhibits the technique. Leonardo da Vinci described sfumato as "without lines or borders, in the manner of smoke or...

). The word itself derives from the Italian cangiare ("to change").

Cangiante is characterized by the painter's changing to a different, lighter, hue when the original hue cannot be made light enough or, on the converse, changing to a darker hue when the original hue cannot be made dark enough. The painter may change, for example, from the color yellow to the color red (regardless of the object's actual color) when painting shadows on a yellow object simply because the yellow he has to work with cannot be made dark enough to render shadows on that object (and the red can). There are, to be sure, other methods of rendering shadows (or highlights), but, often, the procedures available (mixing the original hue with black or brown) will render the shadow color dull and it may be the painter's intention to render even shadows in more pure colors. One must also keep in mind that, in the Renaissance, the available colors were severely limited in number and kind.

The greatest practitioner of this technique was Michelangelo

Michelangelo

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni , commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art...

, and it is illustrated in many parts of the Sistine Chapel ceiling

Sistine Chapel ceiling

The Sistine Chapel ceiling, painted by Michelangelo between 1508 and 1512, at the commission of Pope Julius II, is a cornerstone work of High Renaissance art. The ceiling is that of the large Papal Chapel built within the Vatican between 1477 and 1480 by Pope Sixtus IV after whom it is named...

. In the image of the prophet Daniel

Daniel

Daniel is the protagonist in the Book of Daniel of the Hebrew Bible. In the narrative, when Daniel was a young man, he was taken into Babylonian captivity where he was educated in Chaldean thought. However, he never converted to Neo-Babylonian ways...

, for instance, the use of cangiante can be clearly seen in the transition from green to yellow in the Prophet's robes. After Michelangelo's time, the technique found widespread acceptance and is now a standard painting technique.