Standflügel des Helleraltars von Matthias Grünewald, ausgeführt in Grisaille

In the summer of 2006 I saw my first grisaille, by Flemish Primitive Jan Provoost at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels. I had been thinking about what I had seen, I could not figure out why artists would paint in monochrome in an age where black and white – so I believed – had not yet been invented. Furthermore, it was one of these enigmas where a simple Google search would not suffice. I thought of contacting someone at the museums of Brussels or Antwerp. The day before yesterday I decided to post it on the talk page of Jan Provoost’s entry at Wikipedia. Wetman answered my query in two hours. One more testimonial to the efficiency of Wikipedia and the phenomenal knowledge of Wikipedia editor Wetman.

Here are the answers I was looking for:

Grisaille (Fr. gris, grey) is a term for painting executed entirely in monochrome, in various shades of grey, particularly used in decoration to represent objects in relief.–http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grisaille [Sept 2006]

Grisaille first appeared in the late thirteenth century, but was especially popular from the second half of the fourteenth through the fifteenth c. —http://www.geocities.com/cjfearon/ [Sept 2006]

In the Middle Ages grisailles were often painted on the outer panels of altarpieces. This was to suggest stone sculpture. Around 1700 grisailles became the height of fashion. Later in the eighteenth century, the vogue for grisailles declined. —http://www.rijksmuseum.nl/aria/aria_encyclopedia/00046966?lang=en [Sept 2006]

See also: painting – Matthias Grünewald