Detail of a reclining woman painted almost entirely in grays, her back and turbaned head turned toward the viewer against a dark wall.

Concept · Light in Painting

Grisaille

Grisaille is painting in shades of a single color, usually gray.

Used as an underpainting, it sets the values before color goes on; Leonardo's figures in the Virgin of the Rocks were built this way, over black and white.

  • A grisaille can also stand on its own as a finished work.

See

Image: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York · Public Domain (Met Open Access)

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