The French use of the term, clair-obscur, was introduced by the seventeenth-century art-critic Roger de Piles in the course of a famous argument (Débat sur le coloris), on the relative merits of drawing and colour in painting (his Dialogues sur le coloris, 1673,[REF] was a key contribution to the Débat).
In English, the Italian term has been used since at least the late seventeenth century.