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Venetian Grisaille Painting

The Old Master Venetian method of painting in gray tone values was developed in Venice, Italy, at the beginning of the Renaissance and was perfected by Titian.

Sometimes in Southern Italy, the portrait masters used a combination of green and red to create neutral grays, allowing the warm pinkish gray tones to dominate the sunlit areas, and the cooler greenish gray tones to find their place in the shaded areas of flesh.  This was called verdaccio (greenish gray). 

Since Caucasian flesh contains both cool and warm tones, this process worked like a charm!   The verdaccio underpainting was brought to life through velaturas (veils of color) of pinker fleshy tones.  The contrast yielded exquisite results! 

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