With only 2 days left in the copyist program, today is the day to make any major changes. There are still a lot more to do, but I decided to prioritize my attention to the Woman and Peter.
Matching Colors when master copying at the Met was one of main challenge. For those of you taking on mastercopying at museums in the future, here is my advise: Try matching colors near the original—the lights hitting your canvas might be completely different than the one on the original. I only came to realize this when lights abruptly changed in week 5. Fact: The new lighting in much of the European Wing at the Met has been completely redone during the pandemic.
- Related NY times article: The Met Casts New Light on its Greatest Hits and History
In today’s session, I mixed up a few major color tones in front of the original, and painted with those colors instead of the colors that I actually see on my canvas. Result was warming up of skin tones. I pushed this as far as I can take it. After that, I had to rework Peter’s hands and other areas that needed at least one final layer of paint.
Then it was time to go after carefully measuring and making the best use of 3 hours.
And, in preparation for the final session, I painted a small head study from another painting by Caravaggio…
- Met Copyist Program – Week 1
- Copying Caravaggio – Week 2
- Painting at the Metropolitan Museum – Week 3
- Mastercopy: Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio – Week 4
- The Met: Gallery 601 – Week 5
- Painting the soldier’s helmet – Week 6
- Mastercopying Caravaggio at the Met – Week 7
- The Denial of Saint Peter: Woman, Life, Freedom – Week 8
- A Master Copy – Diego Velázquez- Done for now
- The Denial of Saint Peter (La Negazione di Pietro) is a painting finished around 1610 – Read More From Wikipedia