Pentimento
Etymology
From Italian "pentimento," "repentance," from pentirsi, "to repent," ultimately from Latin paenitere, "to cause regret." Art historians borrowed the moral word for a physical fact: the painter, in effect, repents of a first choice, and the correction later bleeds back into view. The plural, pentimenti, is common in conservation writing.
noun · /pen-tee-MEN-toh/
A trace of an earlier composition showing through the surface of a painting where the artist changed their mind.
What it names
The ghost of a repositioned arm or a painted-over object that resurfaces as pigment thins with age, giving you a word for the visible record of an artist second-guessing themselves.
Example
X-rays revealed a pentimento beneath the portrait — a second hand the painter had abandoned still hovers faintly at the sitter’s waist.
Related idea
A pentimento is the artist’s own revision surfacing; craquelure is damage from age alone, unrelated to any change of mind.