Recreating Veronese’s Dream of Saint Helena Using Renaissance Oil Painting Methods

James Otto Allen
Nov 6
4 min read

Updated: Nov 10

While travelling through Northern Italy just before COVID broke out, I researched Veronese painting techniques, studying his colour choices, materials and working process up close in museums. These Renaissance oil painting methods helped me understand how Venetian painters built luminous colour and depth in their work.

My goal was to recreate The Dream of Saint Helena using materials and methods as close as possible to Veronese’s own. I decided to paint my copy on A3 which is a lot smaller than the original, but since this was part of a period of research into historical painters and I wanted to do a lot of them relatively quickly, A3 was a good size to be able to store easily while still getting a descent amount of space to do details. The entire painting took me about ten days including waiting for drying time, because I had to pause after the first session to let the underpainting dry, just as Veronese would have.

If you’re interested in understanding how Renaissance masters achieved that luminous, layered glow, this tutorial breaks down each stage - from surface preparation to glazing.

To paint along with me, here are the tools, materials and procedure I followed.

What You'll Need For This Oil Painting Method:

Tools

Easel
Palette and two palette knives
Palette dipper
Hog’s hair brushes

Materials

Graphite and paper for sketches
Linen canvas
Turpentine (or Sansodor)
Oil paints:
- Lead white (I used Mixed White for safety)
- Yellow ochre
- Burnt sienna (modern substitute for iron oxide)
- Vermilion (modern substitute for cinnabar)
- Terre verte (substitute for malachite)
- Ultramarine blue
- Raw umber

See my blog post on oil painting tools and materials for more info on where to buy these materials and tools.

Studio Setup

Choose a north-facing window if possible - this keeps the light constant throughout the day and avoids direct sunlight shifting your values.

Graphite sketch of Saint Helena with grid overlay showing how Veronese would have transferred his composition onto canvas.

Step 1

Like Titian and Tintoretto, Veronese began with thumbnail sketches - small graphite studies to explore the composition and movement of figures. According to my research, he combined observation (from live models) and imagination to refine his designs.

Once satisfied, he would enlarge a chosen thumbnail into a cartoon - a full-scale drawing for transfer. You can grid this up or use the prick and pounce method to transfer it onto your canvas.

Early stage of Veronese painting recreation showing raw umber and white ground with first white underpainting layer applied on linen canvas.

Step 2

From close study of the original and zoomed views on Google Arts & Culture, it seems Veronese worked over a mid-toned linen ground, not a coloured imprimatura.

To imitate this, I mixed raw umber and white to create a warm neutral base - a perfect middle value for building both light and shadow. Once this layer was dry, I began painting in only the whites, establishing the brightest values early on.

This stage feels like overexposing a photograph - essential before glazing, since those glazes will later soften and deepen the tones.

Applying first glaze of yellow ochre and terre verte over the white underpainting in the Veronese Dream of Saint Helena recreation.

Step 3

I left the 'mixed white' to dry for about 5 days until it was dry to the touch. This is very important because if you try to glaze over even tacky white paint you'll collect the wet white into your glaze and the glaze will become misty and lose the stain glass window effect.

Over the dry white I glazed some yellow ochre mixed with terre verte thinned with 1 part linseed oil to 3 parts sansodor. If you want to paint along with me, you can use liquin if you don't want to get into worrying about the 'fat over lean' rule. After that I glazed some raw umber and ultramarine blue into the stone wall surrounding the window.

Applying red and green glazes to the Dream of Saint Helena painting, building depth and colour using Veronese’s Venetian glazing technique.

Step 4

I then started to glaze vermilion onto the dress thinned with a mixture of 1 part linseed oil to 3 parts sansodor. I glazed burnt sienna over the flesh of the female figure, her hair and the two cherubs, and some yellow ochre and raw umber over the wooden cross. Over the white of the sky I glazed yellow ochre and terre verte. Straight into the wet glaze I then started to model some of the folds in the yellow cloth she's sitting on with burnt sienna.

Working wet-into-wet on the yellow areas of the painting, adding burnt sienna shadows and thin glazes over the white underpainting to define light and form.

Step 5

While still wet, I continued to work into the yellow components of the picture by adding shadows of burnt sienna mixed with 1 part linseed oil and 3 parts sansodor. At this point I could determine the highest value on the yellow dress by applying a very thin glaze over the white underpainting. After this stage I left it overnight to dry.

Refining light and shadow across each colour group in the painting, including red dress, flesh, wood, sky, and stone, using layered glazes to enhance depth and brilliance.

Step 5

At this point I started to add lighter and darker values to each component (a component or 'colour group' being a red dress, flesh, wood, sky, stone etc.).

I did this by adding some raw umber and terre verte to the shadows of the wooden cross, some raw umber and burnt sienna to shadowed flesh and hair of the cherubs, more terre verte and yellow ochre glazing into certain parts of the sky and I then applied a white scumble over the lower left part of the sky to try to achieve more brilliance.

Results

Below is my finished copy. Even with material limitations, this process gave me a profound appreciation for how Venetian painters built light through transparent layers, allowing the underpainting to shine through like stained glass.