"Dead Coloring" or Underpainting

After the initial outline drawing was completed, Vermeer began the "dead coloring," (or underpainting as it is called today) one of the most important stages in his working procedure. Without a thorough knowledge and mastery of the underpainting technique, the extraordinary pictorial coherence which characterizes Vermeer's most mature pictures may not have been easily achieved. The underpainting technique greatly facilitates the realization of finely balanced compositions, accurate depictions of light and chromatic subtleties.

Underpainting is rarely practiced today. For the last century, artists have simply begun painting directly on commercially pre-prepared white canvases with full color surpassing anything but a abbreviated drawing. Therefore, neither the function or the practice of underpainting are well understood.

In its simplest terms, an underpainting is a monochrome version of the final painting intended to initially fix the composition, give volume and substance to the forms, and distribute darks and lights in order to create the effect of illumination. The lack of color probably explains the word "dead" in the term "dead painting." Color was then applied over the underpainting only when it was thoroughly dry. Underpaintings were usually executed in warm earth tones on neutral grey grounds. Raw umber, at times mixed with black, were frequently used for this purpose. Cool grey underpaintings were also employed.

In Leonardo da Vinci's unfinished Adoration of the Magi (right), both the initial drawing and various stages of the underpainting can be clearly seen . Rubens used white to heighten the illuminated areas of the underpainting (right).

Thus, with a minimum of effort, an artist was able to envision quite accurately the totality of his pictorial idea. He could observe the defective parts of the painting and correct them with relative ease, for it is far easier to model with a few neutral tones than with more complex color mixtures. Even broad areas of the canvas which seemed too dark could be easily worked up and lighter ones darkened. The degree of finish and the exact tones used in the underpainting stage varied from school to school and even painter to painter. It cannot be ascertained if Vermeer defined his underpainting as accurately as those of Leonardo but laboratory evidence indicates that they were more sketchy. Vermeer generally used black and brown in his underpainting.

Rembrandt and Rubens, in particular, are know to have used underpainting very effectively. It is believed that artists once kept a number of underpaintings in their studio waiting for clients' interest before completing the painting with full color and detail.

Underpainting was not only a rapid and economical way to envision and correct elaborate compositions, it aided the painter in creating a number of optical effects that cannot be achieved by direct painting with color as well.

Vermeer's Underpainting

a detail of The Geographer
Johannes Vermeer

It now seems certain that underpainting  was a fundamental step in Vermeer's relatively methodical creative process. Laboratory analysis demonstrates that in the underpainting stage, the artist made many major and minor alterations in the type,  placement , and  dimensions of objects found in his compositions.¹ Chairs, maps, framed paintings, musical instruments, baskets, a standing cavalier and even a dog can no longer be seen where they were originally represented. Vermeer probably painted them out in the underpainting stage having seen that they did not create the desired effect or that they were distracting to the painting's central theme. He changed the positions of arms and fingers to create precisely the gesture he desired, edges of maps were moved to the left or right to add stability to the composition and the contours of the the young women's garments were altered to make them more elegant and fluid,  and shadows too were lightened or darkened, all depending of the immediate visible effect that the underpainting produced.

It has been noticed that in the Geographer there is more than one passage which seems to have been left uncompleted or which over have become exposed. Perhaps, much of the deep shaded area of the carpet reveals Vermeer's method of underpainting. If this is so, his method would appear similar to those of his contemporaries.

Did Vermeer Use the Camera Obscura to Define His Underpaintings?

Lawrence Gowing, a painter and one of the most penetrating of Vermeer scholars, believes that an x-ray photograph of the face of the Girl with a Pearl Earring constitutes evidence of the artist's painting method.  X-rays images reveal the presence of lead, which is the primary component of lead-white, the principal white pigment used by painters until the mid-nineteenth century. Gowing assumes that the white areas of the image correspond  the underpainting stage and was a direct transcription of the incidence of light on the screen of the camera obscura.  Particularly suggestive of the camera obscura's effect is the perfectly spherical highlight of the pearl earring which has been altered in the final version, the same goes for the dim highlight of the eye to the right hand side of the painting. Gowing believes that "the artist, evidently proceeded, in finishing the picture, to mediate between objectivity and convention."¹ Since the x-ray image only reveals the presence of the heavier lead white and the remaining areas are registered as black, it tends to produces an exaggerated effect of contrast.

Gowing's idea has been corroborated by Phillip Steadman's more recent hypothesis that Vermeer may have used the camera obscura not only to trace the projected camera obscura image on the canvas, but also to paint in strict correlation with camera obscura image always close at hand.

A Hypothesis of Vermeer's Underpainting Methods

The image below shows a reasonable hypothesis of Vermeer's underpainting methods as displayed in the upcoming DVD which accompanies the book How to Paint Your Own Vermeer by the author of this site, Jonathan Janson.

Click here to acess a large image of the uderpainting. For information about this DVD, please click here and contact the author.