grisaille
Americannoun
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monochromatic painting in shades of gray.
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a work of art, as a painting or stained-glass window, executed in grisaille.
noun
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a technique of monochrome painting in shades of grey, as in an oil painting or a wall decoration, imitating the effect of relief
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a painting, stained glass window, etc, in this manner
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of grisaille
1840–50; < French: painted in gray monotone, equivalent to gris gray + -aille noun suffix
Vocabulary lists containing grisaille
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
MFA’s example from that summer, “Three Boys on a Beached Dory,” is a charming grisaille work depicting the children, wearing broad-brimmed hats, looking at sailboats on the horizon.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 11, 2025
Sterne’s work is a tall, abstracted cityscape in grisaille that looks, from a distance, drawn or somehow printed but, up close, reveals itself to be tenderly brushed.
From The New Yorker ● Dec. 31, 2018
For example, I did a show in Berlin two years ago that was all grisaille — almost no color or very little color except red, black and white.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 3, 2018
In “California Art Collector,” a matron, rendered in modern grisaille, occupies an armchair beneath a lean-to that echoes the manger in Piero Della Francesca’s “Nativity” in the National Gallery in London.
From New York Times ● Nov. 23, 2017
Modern grisaille has replaced its ancient prototype, which, in accordance with the conventions, surrounded these early canopies to increase the light-admitting power of the embrasures.
From Stained Glass Tours in England by Sherrill, Charles Hitchcock
Observed closely, the typeface reveals itself to be not black, but instead a more Freudian grisailles.
From New York Times ● Nov. 30, 2018
The miniatures include a few rather coarse grisailles.
From Illuminated Manuscripts by Bradley, John William
A number of these are grisailles, and the true amateur of glass considers the grisailles to be as well worth study as the legendary windows.
From Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres by Adams, Henry
All we can do is to note that the grisailles were intended to have values.
From Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres by Adams, Henry
Paintings, mosaics, marble and gilding were requisite; the dome was to be relieved of Thornhill's lifeless grisailles; and above all, stained-glass windows were pronounced indispensable.
From Old and New London Volume I by Thornbury, Walter
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
