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.
de la Tour
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.
Developed in the mid 1600s, pastels are often considered to be the ‘purest’ form of painting, in which pure pigment is applied to the ground.
A whirlwind trip through the history of compositional chiaroscuro, from the Renaissance, through Caravaggio and Artemisia Gentileschi, to Rembrandt.
Tracing the social history of gambling in paintings by Bosch, Caravaggio, de La Tour, Salvator Rosa, Murillo, Hogarth, and others.
The world looks very different now, compared with the past. This explores differences in lighting, from candlepower to the excesses seen in modern cities, and their effects on painting.
The early history of pastel, from Robert Nanteuil, through the brilliant portraits of Rosalba Carriera, to Maurice Quentin de La Tour, and the hyperrealism of Liotard.
The Eclectic Light Company 