Master Palettes
Each master worked with the pigments of their own century. Here we reconstruct canonical palettes - from Giotto’s tempera and Titian’s Venetian glazes to Zorn’s four-colour discipline and Hodgkin’s modern intensity - and map every colour to the real Michael Harding oil tube that recreates it, matched by Colour Index pigment so the connection is exact, not decorative.
Giotto
Giotto worked a century before oil paint reached Italy, in fresco and egg tempera. His palette is restrained but decisive: precious lapis blue for skies and the Virgin’s mantle, vermilion for emphasis, earth colours for flesh and landscape, and a green earth underpainting beneath faces. We map his tempera colours to the closest permanent modern oil equivalents.
Reconstructed and curated by Michael Harding Art Formulas Ltd. Colours are mapped by Colour Index pigment code to the live oil catalogue; where a historical pigment is toxic or obsolete, its permanent modern equivalent is shown.
The palette spans Blues, Reds, Whites, Yellows, Greens, Blacks.
Browse all oil coloursThe reconstructed palette
| Role | Historical pigment | Hist. CI | Michael Harding colour | Modern CI |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Skies & drapery | Lapis lazuli (natural ultramarine) | PB29 | — | PB29 |
| Vermilion accents | Cinnabar / vermilion | PR106 | — | PR108 |
| Highlight | Bianco (lead white) | PW1 | — | PW6 |
| Earth yellow | Yellow ochre | PY43 | — | PY43 |
| Green underpainting | Green earth (terra verte) | pending | — | PG18 |
| Shadows | Charcoal black | pending | — | PBk9 |
Mappings are by Colour Index pigment code and resolve against our live oil colour catalogue. Where a historical pigment is toxic or obsolete (lead white, vermilion), we show its permanent modern equivalent rather than the original.