chiaro-oscuro

That which on earth is called diffusion of light, that luminous matter which the air holds in suspension, which creates the twilight and the daybreak, which produces the umbrae and penumbrae, and all the magic of chiaro-oscuro, does not exist on the moon.

Round the Moon 2003

Mary Quince and I rambled on through the wood, till we reached the windmill itself, and seeing its low arched door open, we entered the chiaro-oscuro of its circular basement.

Uncle Silas 2003

A lunar landscape without the softening of the phenomena of chiaro-oscuro could not be rendered by an earthly landscape painter; it would be spots of ink on a white page — nothing more.

Round the Moon 2003

A soft and summery atmosphere, the warmth of which emanated from concealed furnaces, neutralized the chill of an autumnal night, and the mellow chiaro-oscuro of a vast astral diffused its lunar effulgence on all around.

Edmond Dantès Edmund Flagg

The bright moonlight now waning, was replaced for an instant or two only -- the transition was so short -- by a hazy, misty chiaro-oscuro, which, in another second, was dissolved by the ready effulgence of the solar rays, that darted here, there, and everywhere through it, piercing the curtain of mist to the core as it annihilated it.

Fritz and Eric The Brother Crusoes

He felt almost a hypocrite, and yet it seemed to him that any attempt at self-revelation would be useless, because the relative value, the _chiaro-oscuro_ of life, was so different to each.

Flint His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes Maud Wilder Goodwin

The light in the great hall was a pleasant chiaro-oscuro, the music-room opening out of it being brilliantly illuminated for the performers upon piano, violin, violoncello, guitar, and flute.

Marion Harland's autobiography : the story of a long life, 1910

In that impressionable age any effect of _chiaro-oscuro_ caught in the moonlight of history could find a philosopher to exalt it into the darkly luminous secret of the world.

The Life of Reason George Santayana 1907

His imagination flamed forth like an intenser sunlight, heightening and quickening all that was alive and alert in man and Nature; hers shot out superb or lurid volcanic gleams across the simplicity of natural chiaro-oscuro, disturbing the air with conflicting and incalculable effects of strange horror and strange loveliness.

Robert Browning Herford, C H 1905

Dan would draw his finger across one, producing chiaro-oscuro.

Paul Kelver, a Novel 1893