Raphel, Marriage of the VIrgin, 1504
Classicism also exists in the color system. The classical painters applied colors for the purpose of establishing the composition of the figures and enhancing the spatial illusion. The oil glazing technique encourages using cartoon and underpainting, line drawing or disegno. Colors were never a seperate entity but an additional support for completion of the work. Yet, Raphel carefully chose less saturated, cooler colors in the background and more saturated, warmer color in the front. There are two lines that make a perspective drawing towards a vanishing point. Along with them, the two gradients of colors illustrated on either side indicate the color range from background to front, top to bottom. Even though classical artists more emphasized disegno than color, one cannot deny the fact that Raphel took advantage of the power of the color effect.
Raphel, Marriage of the VIrgin, 1504
Since color contributes to organizing the composition of the painting, Raphel efficiently used the most saturated red in certain parts, which reflects his understanding of isochromatism. Isochromatism was originally developed from Cennini's system in order to compensate for his problem of exhaustive hue selection and narrow value range of up modeling. Isochromatism solved the confusion of using the same colors in several figures in a complex composition. The illustration on the right indicates all the red parts extracted from the original painting. Divided from the axis, it is evident that Raphel attempted to achieve compositional balance and accentuated the important figures by applying red, which is the most common pure pigment in a high saturation level.