Made of almost pure pigment, soft pastel painting didn’t start until after 1650. They excel in representing flesh, so became popular for portraits, and have since extended to other genres.
de la Tour
Gambling as a sure road to Hell, with Bosch, Caravaggio, Georges de la Tour, Hogarth, Géricault, Courbet, Rossetti, and others.
Readily an obsession, as with Titian, de la Tour, Murillo and others, she’s a penitent, while legends take her to France and even Finland.
the personification of vigilance, Mary Magdalen, in shadowplay, held by Florence Nightingale ‘the lady of the lamp’, and associated with overwork and tiredness.
The sign of (human) death. Lots of skulls means mass death or apocalypse. Held by Hamlet, featured in vanitas paintings, and with Mary Magdalene.
Grisaille – grey underpainting used to set the tone for a finished work – is like underwear, waiting for richly coloured clothes to go on top. Not in these paintings, though.
Dubbed the King of Pastels for his court portraits, he went on to paint Louis XV and his mistress Madame de Pompadour, among many others.
“A human observer is able to recognise the colour of objects irrespective of the light used to illuminate the objects.” “Colour constancy does not exist in humans.” Which is right?
Should chiaroscuro paintings show much in the way of colour, given that in the dark only the rods in our retinas function, giving us monochrome vision?
Titian seems to have understood exactly what Vittoria Colonna wanted, and in doing so changed art.
The Eclectic Light Company 