Palette Studio
Four ways to find your colours: study the palettes of the great painters, build your own step by step, borrow the working palettes of our ambassadors, or get a tailored watercolour set from our finder.
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
The most prized medieval pigment; synthetic ultramarine carries the same chemistry.
Genuine vermilion is PR106; cadmium red gives the same warm, opaque punch without mercury.
Historical lead white is PW1; titanium white replaces it as the permanent modern equivalent.
Natural yellow ochre - unchanged for two millennia.
Viridian approximates the soft green earth used under flesh; green earth has no single modern CI, so the historical CI is intentionally left blank.
Ivory/bone black for deep, warm shadows. Source review (P7, Aug 2026) found no citable Giotto-specific evidence confirming charcoal/vine black (PBk8) over bone (PBk9) or lamp (PBk6) black; the historical CI is intentionally left null rather than guessed.
| Role | Historical pigment | Hist. CI | Michael Harding colour | Modern CI |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Skies & drapery | Lapis lazuli (natural ultramarine) | PB29 | Lapis Lazuli (Afghan) | PB29 |
| Vermilion accents | Cinnabar / vermilion | PR106 | Cadmium Red Light | PR108 |
| Highlight | Bianco (lead white) | PW1 | Titanium White No. 1 | PW6 |
| Earth yellow | Yellow ochre | PY43 | French Yellow Ochre | PY43 |
| Green underpainting | Green earth (terra verte) | pending | Viridian | PG18 |
| Shadows | Charcoal black | pending | Ivory Black | 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.
Colour Disclaimer: Colours shown on screen or in print may vary from the actual product. For the most accurate representation of colour, texture and finish, we recommend viewing a physical sample or swatch in person before making your final selection.