The Spanish Word ‘Matiz': Its Origin and Semantic Evolution in the Technical Vocabulary of Medieval Painters

In the Romance languages of the Iberian peninsula, the French wordnuancein the meaning ‘a gradation, a barely perceptible degree of difference in a color’ is translated today by the wordmatiz(Catalanmatis),a term which has enjoyed continuous usage since the early fifteenth century. Until now, the origin of the wordmatizhas remained unsolved: none of the several etymologies which have been suggested for it are convincing, and no comprehensive attempt has ever been made to analyze its meaning or to trace its semantic evolution. It is the purpose of the present work to determine the etymology of this word and to describe its history.