En Francais :
Les Couleurs utilisées par Monet claude monet

Claude Monet, The Path among the Irises 1914-1917, detail

Claude Monet, Studio Corner, 1861

Impressionist art is based upon the use of color, which has to “draw” the motif without much use of line.
At the beginning of his career, Monet used dark colors, as he did in the ‘Studio Corner’ marked by black shades. His painting evokes Courbet and the Realist School.

From 1860 on, Monet abandonned dark colors and worked from a palette limited to pure, light colors. In 1905, answering a question about his colors, he wrote:

“As for the colors I use, what’s so interesting about that? I don’t think one could paint better or more brightly with another palette. The most important thing is to know how to use the colors. Their choice is a matter of habit. In short, I use white lead, cadmium yellow, vermilion, madder, cobalt blue, chrome green. That’s all.”

Color analysis on his work has enabled scholars to identify the colors he used and the binder which held them: poppyseed oil and linseed oil. The former dries off slower and yellows less.

The issue of black

Pure black is rarely used by the impressionist painters. Monet obtained an appearence of black by combining several colors: blues, greens and reds. He almost completely eliminated black from his painting, even in the shadows. In the Red Boats, Argenteuil, shadows are purple.

Avoiding black was so deeply anchored in Monet’s manner that when he died, his friend Georges Clemenceau would not stand the black sheet covering the coffin. He exclaimed: “No ! No black for Monet !” and replaced it by a flowered material.

Claude Monet, Red Boats in Argenteuil, 1875

Colors seen by an ill eye

In 1908, at age 68, Monet was affected by cataracts in both eyes. He began to loose his sight. The first signs of this cataracts can be found in the paintings he made in Venice in 1908.

Cataracts produce a progressive opacity of the crystalline lens that filters the colors. As the cataracts develop, vision changes, with whites becoming yellow, greens become yellow-green and reds, oranges. Blues and purples are replaced by reds and yellows. Details fade out, shapes blurr and become hazy.

When his vision altered, Monet went on with working. He could know what color he used by the labels and the unvarying order he set them on the palette. “My bad sight means that I see everything through a mist,” he wrote. “Even so it is beautiful, and that’s what I would like to show.”

Canale Grande and Santa Maria della Salute,
1908

Claude Monet, The Waterlily Pond, 1897

Monet’s habit was to paint exactly what he saw. Gradually his paintings are invaded by reds and yellows. Blues vanish. Details fade, such as in the Weeping Willows of 1919 and the Waterlilies of 1920.
The effects of the cataracts on Monet can be observed from some paintings depicting the same motif, for instance The Japanese Bridge made in 1897 and The Waterlily Pond produced in 1923.

Claude Monet, The Japanese Bridge,1923

In 1911, Monet wrote to a friend : “Three days ago, I realized with terror that I didn’t see anymore with my right eye.” During the next years, his left eye lost gradually its acuity, and he had to stop painting in Summer of 1922. He was then almost blind.

Nevertheless, his friend Georges Clemenceau convinced him to undergo surgery. In 1923, he could see again with his right eye, wearing special green glasses. But his vision was still altered, and he refused to undergo surgery for the left eye.

Monet with his glasses

Claude Monet, The House seen from the Roses Garden, 1922-1924

Monet resume painting as soon as 1923. The House seen from the roses garden shows the effects of the operation. In this series, Monet painted either with his left eye suffering from cataracts – everything is red, the sky is yellow – or with the operated eye – everything is blue.

“I see blue, I don’t see red anymore, nor yellow; this bothers me terribly because I know that these colors exist, because I know that ther e is red, yellow, a special green, a particular purple on my palette; I don’t see them anymore as I used to see them in the past, and however I remember very well how it was like.”

In spite of this handicap, Claude Monet continued to paint until 1926, a few months before he died.

Monet’s colors seen by an illustrator

Bijou Le Tord is the author of the book 'A Blue Butterfly' which tells the story of Claude Monet to young children.

“During the short trip I made to Paris and Giverny in preparing for this book, nothing I had seen or felt until then prepared me for what I was about to encounter at the Musée de L’Orangerie in Paris. This museum was built to house Monet’s now world-famous Water Lilies paintings. As I stood there gaping at the pair of astonishing paintings, I had to humbly ask myself: How did he do it, using so few colors?

When I was ready to paint my book, I hoped I would have the courage to use the same colors Monet used. And I did, following a list he had worked with in the latter part of his life. We now know that the list was incomplete. It shows only eight colors: silver, white, cobalt violet light, emerald green, ultramarine extra-fine, vermilion (rarely), cadmium yellow light, cadmium yellow dark, and lemon yellow. “And that’s all!” as Monet himself exclaimed.

It was not easy for me to use someone else’s palette. But by some strange coincidence, my own colors were very close to those of Monet. “

My source:

http://www.intermonet.com/colors/

Today I am speaking of the tombs of Gianni di Bicci, Cosimo, Lorenzo the Magnificent and the family’s good friend, Renaissance sculptor Donatello. If you are interested in the ducal tombs in the 16th century chapel, this ain’t that.

Società Canottieri

The basilica was completed by the Old Sacristy, commissioned by the Medici as their family mausoleum. Giovanni di Bicci de’ Medici entrusted the project to Filippo Brunelleschi, who between 1421 and 1426 built one of the most complex masterpieces of renaissance architecture. Dedicated to St. John the Evangelist, the so-called “Old Sacristy” is a cube covered by a hemispherical umbrella dome divided by ribs. The chromatic interplay of grey stone and white plaster is heightened by the presence of painted stuccoes: the frieze with cherubim and seraphim, the roundels with the Evangelists on the walls and the ones in the spandrels of the dome with Scenes from the life of St. John the Evangelist, by Donatello, who was also responsible for the bronze doors with Saints, Martyrs, Apostles and Doctors of the Church.

The frescoes in the small dome in the apse show the Sun and constellations as they appeared over Florence on the night of 4 July 1442. It is thought that this celestial map was executed by the eclectic painter and decorator Giuliano d’Arrigo, known as Pesello. The funerary monument to Piero and Giovanni de’ Medici, sons of Cosimo il Vecchio, was commissioned from Verrocchio in 1472 by Lorenzo the Magnificent and his brother Giuliano: one of the most sophisticated products of Laurentian artistic culture.

When you enter the crypt of San Lorenzo, you are able to visit the “Treasures of San Lorenzo” museum as well as the underground tomb of Cosimo and the tomb slab of Donatello.

First, I’m focusing on the underground tomb of Cosimo:

In addition to the underground tomb, the sculptor, Verrocchio, was also commissioned to create a cenotaph in the floor of the main basilica to commemorate Cosimo. This consists of an abstract patterned floor slab in front of the high altar connecting to a burial chamber in the crypt beneath. The artist used valuable materials—bronze, marble, red porphyry and green serpentine stones—to suggest Cosimo’s prestige. Interlocking ellipses within a circle and square evoke medieval diagrams of the universe, associating the name of Cosimo with the cosmos.

was equally skilled in a variety of media and often approached one medium as he would another. His training as a goldsmith reveals itself in his love of polychromy, and the tomb of Cosimo de’ Medici in white marble and red and green porphyry is distinguished by the richness and colour of the materials. This was developed in the tomb of Piero I and Giovanni de’ Medici (San Lorenzo, Florence), where the combination of a variety of coloured stones with bronze decoration is strikingly original.

The picture shows the floor tomb of Cosimo il Vecchio in the nave of Basilica di San Lorenzo, Florence

The tomb of Donatello in the crypt of San Lorenzo

The two bronze pulpits are great works of Donatello’s late manner (c. 1460; finished by his assistants Bertoldo and Bellano), achieving intense dramatic expressivity in the New Testament scenes executed by Donatello himself in ‘stiacciato’ low relief, particularly the Deposition. 

The first half of this video provides a fascinating look inside an historic palazzo in Venice:

Desiderio da Settignano, Tabernacle of the Sacramento, south aisle

The Annunciation by Fra Filippo Lippi:

The large mannerist fresco of the Martyrdom of St Lawrence is by Bronzino. According to legend, St Lawrence, who was one of the deacons of Rome, was roasted alive on a gridiron in 258 AD.

Many historians believe a simple spelling mistake led to the belief that St Lawrence (San Lorenzo) was roasted rather than decapitated, as was the normal punishment used against others during the same persecution. However, the legend is well established and the gridiron is generally used as the symbol of St Lawrence.

This is one of the last works of Bronzino. On the left of the fresco, beneath the statue of Mercury, Bronzino painted a self-portrait together with two portraits of his master, Pontormo, and his pupil, Alessandro Allori.

The video below is of the chapel just to the left of the Old Sacristy.

Bonjour tout le monde et merveilleux week-end à toutes et à tous 🌹💝🌺