TUTORIAL: James Otto Allen, Monday 28th March 2022
INTRODUCTION: I researched Veronese’s methods while travelling around northern Italy last year. I watched a good youtube video on his methods and pigments that I've linked in the bibliography at the end of the tutorial. The final piece took me 5 days to paint, but I had to leave about 5 days after the first session of only painting in the whites.
CATEGORY: Art
SKILL: Oil History Painting
MOVEMENT: Renaissance Venetian School
REQUIREMENTS: Anatomy knowledge, Gridding up
Veronese, at this time he painted 'Saint Helena', had already been figure drawing for years and had executed a number of commissions. He would have had a very good understanding of human, not to mention horse anatomy. Below are some examples of his sketching to invent compositions. I would imagine these would've been done from a mixture of direct observation from a model and imagination.
TOOLS:
1. Easel
2. Palette
3. 2 Palette knives
4. Palette Dipper
5. Hog's hair brushes
MATERIALS:
1. Graphite
2. Paper
3. Canvas support
4. Turpentine
5. Oil Paints a) Lead white (I replaced this with 'mixed white' for safety) b) Yellow Ochre c) Iron oxide (I replaced this with Burnt Sienna) d) Cinnabar (possible modern equivalent 'vermilion') e) Malachite (I replaced this with 'Terre verte') f) Ultramarine Blue g) Raw Umber
STUDIO REQUIREMENTS:
A studio with a north facing window to allow the sunlight to be constant with no changing direct sun beaming into the room.
PROCEDURE:
1) Veronese, as Titian considering they were contemporaries, would've started by making a 4-20 thumbnail sketches in graphite pencil and paper to stimulate the imagination and formulate a composition.
2) After the thumbnails were produced, he would've chosen one to develop into the final image. He probably would've done a larger 'cartoon' or monochromatic drawing. In the Italian renaissance this was often the same size as the final painting. From this cartoon he would've either gridded it up, or used 'prick and pounce' to transfer onto the final canvas.
For this copy I applied a ground onto the linen canvas of raw umber mixed with mixing white diluted with some sansodor. From studying the original at the National Gallery, London and looking on google arts and culture zoomed in very close, I can't really see a coloured ground which makes me think the colour on which he painted was more or less the colour of linen. You can imitate this colour by mixing raw umber and white. It's a good mid-toned ground to work on top of. Once the ground was dry, I then painted all the whites only in order to establish the highest value in the picture straight away. At this point I was aiming at producing something like an over exposed photograph because after this I knew I would be glazing over the dry white which would've lowered the values of the white.
3) I left the 'mixed white' to dry for about 5 days until it was dry to the touch. This is very important because if you try to glaze over even tacky white paint you'll collect the wet white into your glaze and the glaze will become misty and lose the stain glass window effect. Over the dry white I glazed some yellow ochre mixed with terre verte thinned with 1 part linseed oil to 3 parts sansodor. After that I glazed some raw umber and ultramarine blue into the stone wall surrounding the window. From looking at x-rays of some of Veronese's paintings he have glazed over grounds. This would've allowed him to get those highly saturated and dazzling colours he was so famous for.
4) I then started to glaze vermilion onto the dress thinned with a mixture of 1 part linseed oil to 3 parts sansodor. I glazed burnt sienna over the flesh of the female figure, her hair and the two cherubs, and some yellow ochre and raw umber over the wooden cross. Over the white of the sky I glazed yellow ocher and terre verte. Straight into the wet glaze I then started to model some of the folds in the yellow cloth she's sitting on with burnt sienna.
5) While still wet, I continued to work into the yellow components of the picture by adding shadows of burnt sienna mixed with 1 part linseed oil and 3 parts sansodor. At this point I could determine the highest value on the yellow dress by applying a very thin glaze over the white underpainting. After this stage I left if overnight to dry.
6) At this point I started to add lighter and darker values to each component (a component or 'colour group' being a red dress, flesh, wood, sky, stone etc.). I did this by adding some raw umber and terre verte to the shadows of the wooden cross, some raw umber and burnt sienna to shadowed flesh and hair of the cherubs, more terre verte and yellow ochre glazing into certain parts of the sky and I then applied a white stumble over the lower left part of the sky to try to achieve more brilliance.
7) Below is my copy (on the left) and an image of the original (on the right). I wasn't able to get the same brightness as the bottom left of the sky and the lit flesh of one of the cherubs probably due to the white I was using. Veronese would've used lead white as mentioned, but for safety reasons I chose 'mixed white'. I didn't want to dark other areas to show a comparatively bright sky because it would've made the rest of the painting dark and dull which would certainly be missing the bright luminous essence of Veronese paintings.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Veronese - conoscere e capire l'arte, Veronese's pigments of the Imagination at the National Gallery | The Independent