Historical Painting Techniques, Materials, and Studio Practice

Figure 4. Il1frared reftectogram from Lady jane Grey's skirt in The Execution of Lady Jane Grey.
block, but the scale of these various grids suggests that there is no single
system of squaring across the entire picture surface. The infrared images show
many changes in the underdrawing; lines drawn across Lady Jane's wrists
suggest that her dress was to be long-sleeved, as in the watercolor sketch (Fig.
4). At the drawing stage, Delaroche also indicated such fe atures as shadows
in drapery folds, as seen in the standing woman's dress.
In many unfinished French paintings of this period it can be seen that the
underdrawing has been strengthened with a translucent brownish wash, sometimes
known as "sauce" (32, 33). In this case, no such material could be
detected with certainty in any of the cross sections examined, and only the
charcoal drawing was fo und; possibly a grayish wash, for example, was applied
in the shadows of folds.
Subsequently the figures and background were laid in using brownish or
grayish shades of paint, composed of lead white combined with a variety of
tinting pigments (Cassel earth, ochres, and other natural earth pigments, as
well as small quantities of cobalt blue, a red lake pigment and black) . The
tonality of this underpaint bears some relation to the color of the paint that
was to be applied on top, thus the background and black garments are underpainted
in shades of gray, while the underpaint of the flesh varies from a
warm beige fo r the executioner to a grayish white for Lady Jane. The underpaint
also indicates light and shade, by varying the proportion of ochres,
black, and cobalt blue in the mixture, the color of the underpaint of Lady
Jane's dress is changed from a pale beige in areas of highlight to a dark brown
in the deepest shadow. Occasionally, the underpaint is similar in color to the
intended local color; for the cushion it is a translucent green consisting of
black, verdigris, Pruss ian blue, yellow ochre, and perhaps a yellow lake.
At this point the painting would have had an appearance not unlike a grisaille
version of the final composition, an element of Delaroche's practice mentioned
by Delaborde (34). Infrared reflectography has revealed many pentimenti,
however, bearing out comm.ents by students that Delaroche frequently
reworked passages during painting (35). The executioner appears originally
to have had a sash around his waist, for example, and the position of the pike
behind the balustrade and the angle of the banisters have been altered. The
underpaint for the executioner's tights is mauve-gray (composed of lead
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Historical Painting Techniques, Materials, and Studio Practice