Color issues cannot be divorced from light issues in painting; color can only be understood in light and it changes depending on the conditions.  A pale palette tends to be characteristic of the true fresco technique throughout history, although it is not always evident in reproductions.  Since the technique mixes water-based paint with opaque white plaster, frescoes rarely have intense colors.  In addition, Renaissance artists worked with a limited range of  pigments:  natural inorganic pigments (ground earths and minerals), natural organic pigments (from plants and animals), and a few artificially prepared colors (often based on lead).  Thus, there was not the variety of colors that is available today to artists, who work mainly with chemical paints.  When fresco painters wanted saturated colors, they would normally wait until the plaster dried before they painted (a technique known as a secco), a method not normally as durable as true fresco.(14)

Renaissance palette

This fresco is mostly painted in the true fresco technique, and the colors are mainly pastel. Giotto wanted to achieve an intense blue in the sky and the robe of the Virgin Mary, however, so he applied ultramarine paint to the wall after the plaster had dried.  The result today is that much of the blue has flaked off the wall, while the true fresco areas are still in excellent condition.  He also used real gold leaf for haloes; this had to be glued onto the surface, and it has survived well.  The gold is particularly noticeable, since it is luminous, while the frescoed areas are matte; it is the only variation of surface on the walls.  This fresco is part of a large chapel decoration, and one of Giotto's considerations must have been to achieve a kind of overall uniformity.  By keeping colors within a limited range, he achieved a homogeneous decoration on all four walls. 

Giotto, Nativity, Scrovegni Chapel,
Padua, c. 1305 

Like Giotto's fresco, this painting is part of an overall room decoration.  Mantegna also wants to create rich effects, so he combines the true fresco technique with an a secco use of oil-based paint. Using paint mixed with pure linseed oil (which is basically colorless) allows colors to appear more saturated (because they are undiluted) and more complex (because they are slightly translucent and can be layered). This part of the room's decoration is almost entirely a secco, perhaps to allow Mantegna to carefully evoke the elaborate costumes.

Andrea Mantegna, Ducal Court, Camera Picta, Palazzo Ducale, Mantua, 1465-74

composition     space     figures     colors      light      Renaissance Style