pentimento

1. (art, literature) The presence of traces of a previous work in an artistic or literary work; especially (painting) an image which has been painted over but is still detectable.Examples: "She thought of the painting in the shop, the pentimento. Her life, the one she had so carefully planned for herself had crumbled like the paint on the surface."; "[T]he presence of a pentimento is an extremely valuable entity which supports the conclusion that a painting is an original composition – so, by inference, therefore, refuting any later suggestion that the painting could be the work of a copyist, who would have been engaged upon copying an existing painting as seen! The identification of a pentimento in an artwork can occur in one of two ways: by analytical interrogation of the subsurface using penetrative radiation such as IRR or XRD, or by direct visual observation, where the overlaying paint has worn away […]"Synonyms: pentiment