Bacchus and Ariadne

1520–23

Oil on canvas, 176.5 × 191 cm. The National Gallery, London

Each of the strongest pigments then sold in Venice gets its own broad area of the canvas. Each is mixed only with white, and each is used at full strength.

Ultramarine, the strongest color in the picture, fills the sky, fading from deep blue at the top to a paler band above the horizon.
The distant hills are azurite, a slightly greener blue that keeps them apart from the sky.
The rust-brown tree at upper right is iron-oxide ochre, brown on purpose in a spring landscape; Titian may have wanted a warm contrast in that corner.

Skin tones, from pale Ariadne to a satyr's dark russet, recur across the canvas and tie the strong colors together.

Concepts

Where Pigments Come From

Image: Wikimedia Commons (from The National Gallery, London, NG35) · Public domain