Piero del Pollaiuolo (Piero di Jacopo Benci) (1441–1496), Portrait of a Woman, ca. 1480. Tempera on wood, 19 1/4 x 13 7/8 in. (48.9 x 35.2 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bequest of Edward S. Harkness, 1940. Public domain (CC0).

Portrait of a Woman

Piero del Pollaiuolo (Piero di Jacopo Benci), ca. 1480. Tempera on wood.

Profile
Soft light
Painting

Half-length profile facing left, evenly lit from the left against a blue sky, with crisp contours and gentle modeling.

Open in the value study maker

The image is free to use for any purpose: the museum has released it into the public domain.

Value studies

Portrait of a Woman as a study in 2 values — **Notan, 2 values.** Split at value 2.6: 21% of the picture is dark and 79% light.

Portrait of a Woman as a study in 3 values — **3 values.** 17% dark (values 0 to 2.2), 62% middle (2.2 to 4.6) and 21% light (4.6 to 10).

Portrait of a Woman as a study in 5 values — **5 values.** From darkest to lightest: 12%, 11%, 21%, 38% and 19% of the picture.

Split at the picture's natural breaks between light and dark, with Simplify at 5, as in the value study maker. Values run from 0 (black) to 10 (white).

Palette

#596567Value 4.2, neutral
21%
#A4866AValue 5.8, warm
16%
#765B40Value 4.1, warm
13%
#010101Value 0.0, neutral
12%
#633028Value 2.6, warm
11%
#4B5E69Value 3.9, cool
9%
#49382DValue 2.5, warm
9%
#925F54Value 4.5, warm
8%

The 8 main colors run from value 0.0 to 5.8: 5 warm, 1 cool and 2 neutral. See warm and cool colors for how the labels are worked out.

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