Verdaccio Painting: Why Portraits Start with a Green Underlayer

Updated on 01/09/2026 by Rita Moreira

Watch a classically trained painter begin a portrait and you may see something odd: the first layers of the face go down in green. Why would anyone spend hours on colours that look nothing like skin, when tubes of pink and ochre are sitting right there on the palette?

That green stage has a name, verdaccio, and a logic that has survived more than six centuries because it works. Understanding it will sharpen how you think about colour, values and layering in any medium, graphite included.

What is the verdaccio painting technique?

Verdaccio is the Renaissance underpainting technique that lays a greenish, earthy base beneath portraits and figures before any flesh colour is applied. It uses the principle of complementary colours: when warm pinks, reds and oranges are painted over the green base, the two partially neutralise each other, producing skin with a depth and naturalness that painting directly in pink rarely achieves.

It grew up in the Italian Renaissance workshop system, in fresco (painting onto fresh plaster) and in egg tempera (pigment bound with egg yolk). The underlying idea transfers to any medium that supports semi-transparent layers, which is why it still appears in oil painting today.

Where can you actually see verdaccio?

The most revealing example hangs in London. Michelangelo’s Manchester Madonna (NG809, at the National Gallery) was left unfinished: the two angels on the left were barely begun, and their faces still show the greenish underpainting exactly as it left the brush. The gallery’s own notes describe it as the layer traditionally used to balance the pinkish flesh tones that would be painted over it.

That is what makes the panel such a gift for students. In finished works the verdaccio is buried under flesh colour, quietly cooling the shadows from below; here the process is caught mid-step, like a magician freezing halfway through the trick. If you can get to Trafalgar Square, entry to the collection is free, and no reproduction teaches the point as well as standing in front of those green-faced angels.

What did Cennini’s verdaccio actually contain?

The classic written source is Cennino Cennini’s Il Libro dell’Arte, from the end of the 14th century. In chapter 67 of Christiana Herringham’s 1899 translation, Cennini gives the recipe for painting a face in fresco: ochre, a quantity of black “the size of a lentil”, a little lime white and a touch of the red pigment cinabrese, a mixture “called in Florence verdaccio, and in Siena bazzeo”.

Notice what that means: true verdaccio is more earthy olive than leaf green, and its exact shade drifted with whatever local pigments a workshop had. The purer green in early flesh painting usually came from a different pigment, verde terra or green earth, which Cennini directs the painter to use for shading under the chin, lips and eyebrows. The two are often confused, even in otherwise respectable references, but they are separate ingredients in the same system.

Why start skin with green at all?

The answer sits in basic colour theory. Colour has three properties: hue (the colour itself), value (how light or dark it is) and saturation (how vivid or muted). On the colour wheel, complementary colours face each other across the circle, and the complement of red is green.

Skin is dominated by reds, pinks and oranges. Painted straight onto white, those hues easily turn sweet and flat. Over a green base, each warm layer is partly cancelled by its complement, so the mixture settles into the muted, believable tones real skin has, with the green surviving faintly in the cooler shadows. The painter can then use surprisingly intense pinks and oranges without the result looking like plastic. The same complementary logic drives layering in realistic coloured pencil drawing, where a first pass in a cool colour keeps later warm layers under control.

Which underpainting colour should you choose?

Verdaccio is one member of a small family of underpainting traditions, and each base colour serves a different goal. All of them exist to settle the values, the light and dark structure, before colour complicates the decisions.

Some artists keep the underpainting to a rough value map; others resolve it almost to a finished monochrome picture before glazing colour on top, a stage traditionally called overpainting. Neither approach is more correct. What matters is that the value decisions are made early, while they are still cheap to change.

Does any of this apply to pencil drawing?

Directly, no: graphite is monochrome, so there is no complement to neutralise. In spirit, completely. An underpainting is really a first, light layer whose job is to establish values before detail, and that habit transfers straight to graphite: map your lights and shadows softly across the whole drawing first, then build darks and detail on top of a structure you trust. It is the same discipline taught in light and shadow drawing and applied throughout realistic pencil drawing.

When I introduce this to my students, I frame the first pass of a portrait as “your verdaccio”: nothing precious, only proportions and values, cheap to correct. Faces reward this most, because skin lives or dies by its midtones; the fine layering that follows is exactly what our guide to skin texture covers, and if drawing faces that feel alive is your goal, my step by step guide to realistic features walks the whole sequence in order.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is underpainting in art?

An underpainting is the first, usually monochrome or limited-colour layer of a painting, applied semi-transparently to establish composition and tonal values before the final colours go on. It acts as the drawing’s skeleton: get the lights and darks right here and every later layer has a reliable guide.

The best known variants are named after their base colour: greenish verdaccio, grey grisaille and brown bistre. The layers painted over it, where the true colours appear, are traditionally called the overpainting.

What is the best colour for an underpainting?

It depends on what sits on top. Greenish verdaccio suits portraits, because green tempers the reds and pinks of skin. Neutral grey grisaille gives the most honest value control, with no hue nudging your colour mixing. Reddish-brown bistre warms everything above it, useful for scenes lit by warm light or for deeper skin tones.

If you are unsure, start with grisaille: values are the hardest skill to build and grey isolates them completely. Move on to verdaccio once portraits become your main focus.

What is the difference between verdaccio and grisaille?

Both are underpainting techniques for settling values before colour, and the difference is the base hue. Verdaccio uses greenish, earthy tones whose complementary effect softens the warm colours of skin painted over them, which makes it a portrait specialist.

Grisaille uses neutral greys, so it adds no colour influence at all: what you gain in control you give up in that built-in warm-cool interplay. Painters often choose grisaille for studies and complex compositions, and verdaccio when flesh dominates the picture.