Crimson & Olive & Gray

Crimson (vivid, passionate warm) with Olive (dark, muted, earthy warm) and Gray (perfect neutral achromatic) creates the most classically restrained and most artistically sophisticated palette — the warm vivid Crimson is elevated by the dark muted Olive and set against the classically neutral Gray in a combination that recalls the most studied and most carefully considered historical painting palettes.

The palette is the visual world of Venetian Renaissance painting — specifically the characteristic palette of the school of Titian (Tiziano Vecellio — c. 1488/1490 – August 27, 1576 — the most celebrated Venetian Renaissance painter and arguably the most influential colorist in the history of Western painting). The Titian palette: the deep vivid crimson of Venetian vermilion (vermiglio — cinnabar red — mercury sulfide — HgS — the most vivid and most expensive red pigment of the Renaissance, produced either from natural cinnabar (mined in Almadén, Spain — the most important cinnabar mine in the world — or in Idrija, Slovenia) or from synthetic vermilion (heated mercury and sulfur together — a process known to Italian craftsmen from at least the 12th century CE)); the dark muted olive-to-shadow-green of the Venetian shadow color (the characteristic dark muted olive used by Titian in the most deeply shadowed flesh tones and drapery — produced from verdigris — copper acetate — verde rame — modified with lead white or yellow ochre, or from the green earth — terra verde — a natural mineral pigment of extraordinary historical significance); and the cool gray of the characteristic Venetian sky (the cinereous gray — grigio cenere — ash gray — of the overcast Venetian lagoon sky and of the underpaint in Titian's characteristic warm-colored flesh).