Grisaille

grisaille

[grə′zī]

(graphic arts)

A technique of painting to imitate a bas-relief and done in shades of gray.

All methods of painting in which full modeling is done in black and white or other contrasting tones, and then finished by the application of transparent glazes.

(textiles)

A poplin-type fabric in salt-and-pepper gray with printed warp and coarse filling that imparts a texture.

McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific & Technical Terms, 6E, Copyright © 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

grisaille

1. A system of painting in grey tints of various shades; used either for decoration or to represent objects, as in relief.

2. A stained glass window executed according to this method.

McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Architecture and Construction. Copyright © 2003 by McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Grisaille

 

a kind of decorative painting executed in various shades of some one color (most often gray). Grisaille dates from the 17th century and is widely used in interior murals of the classic style that are mainly imitations of sculptured reliefs (for example, in palaces in the cities of Pushkin and Pavlovsk, in the auditorium of the old building of Moscow University, and in the 18th-century palaces in Ostankino and Kuskovo). Grisaille is also the name applied to paintings in monochrome enamel (gray, brown, pink) with some elements of gold, in which a sculptured effect is achieved.

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.