grisaille: one construct, many systems

In stained glass, grisaille is glazing built from clear or greenish-white glass carrying only monochrome grey-brown painted ornament (foliage, lattice, strapwork) rather than a full palette of coloured pieces. The vitreous-paint technique that makes it possible is set out as early as Theophilus's On Divers Arts, and Krieger's Grisaille traces how such windows, notably in Cistercian houses, flooded interiors with light while staying austere. The referent is a monochrome mode of the window itself. It is the same core idea, an image carried in the values of a single hue, that painters call grisaille.[1][2]

Unit

A window rendered in the tones of one neutral hue

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Characterised by its restriction to monochrome paint on near-colourless glass and by its light transmission

In painting, grisaille is a work executed wholly in shades of grey, or another single neutral, used to imitate carved stone relief, to model form in an underpainting, or to stand as a finished monochrome image. Krieger's Grisaille and Presciutti's Miracles in monochrome follow the mode from manuscript illumination through panel and mural painting, prized for its sculptural illusion and its gravity. The referent is the same monochrome-rendering construct as grisaille glazing, realised in paint rather than fired glass. Depicting the world in one hue's values is the shared move across both media.[2][3]

Unit

An image built in the tonal values of a single hue

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Judged by the range of tonal values and the sculptural or illusionistic effect achieved in one hue