An area of thick paint, or texture, in a painting. First noticeable in Venetian Renaissance painters Titian and Tintoretto, then in Baroque painting, for example Rubens. Increasingly notable in nineteenth-century landscape, Naturalist and Romantic painting. Use of impasto became more or less compulsory in modern art as the view took hold that the surface of a painting should have its own reality rather than just being a smooth window into an illusionistic world beyond. With this went the idea that the texture of paint and the shape of the brushmark could themselves help to convey feeling, that they are a kind of handwriting, that they can directly express the artist's emotions or response to the subject. (See also gestural.) A painting in which impasto is a prominent feature can also said to be painterly. This term carries the implication that the artist is revelling in the manipulation of the oil paint itself and making the fullest use of its sensuous properties. The idea that the artist should foreground the innate qualities of the materials of the work as part of its content is a central one in modern art, and is summarised in the phrase truth to materials (see also Direct carving).