Buon fresco at scale · You paint standing, head tilted up · Pigments available to you:

You finished the first campaign (Genesis flood scenes, smaller figures) in 1508–1510

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, sculptor by vocation, working against your will on the Sistine vault under commission of Pope Julius II

fresco_vault · lime (carbonation) for buon fresco


Buon fresco at unprecedented scale · Ultramarine sky, applied a-secco, on a scale never attempted before · Dantesque

Michelangelo Buonarroti, age sixty-three in September 1538

fresco_wall · lime carbonation for buon fresco


Buon fresco at the highest finish · One-point perspective, vanishing point between Plato and Aristotle at chest height · A monumental cartoon survives in the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana

Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino corpus · documented prior work

Raffaello Sanzio of Urbino, age twenty-seven, painting the *Scuola di Atene* on the second wall of Pope Julius II's private library — the Stanza della Segnatura — in September 1510


One-point perspective with vanishing point at Christ's right temple · Painted light from the upper left · Twelve apostles in four triadic groups

painted architecture continues the real refectory walls; the table extends into the diners' physical space

dry_wall_secco · oil + egg tempera hybrid on gesso-resin priming


You read Vitruvius in Latin · Vitruvius is wrong · You will not sign or date the drawing

Leonardo da Vinci corpus · documented prior work

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci, age thirty-eight, in your Milan studio in spring 1490

paper_drawing · gum-arabic + iron-gall ink chemistry


Tempera on canvas · Egg-yolk tempera, parallel hatching · Verdaccio underpaint for flesh

You painted the *Primavera* three years ago for the same Medici cousin

Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi, called Sandro Botticelli, age forty in spring 1485


Dark to light · Smalt sky, lapis-coloured today's brain doesn't expect · The company in motion

painted with orpiment and realgar accents

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, age 35, working in your house on Sint Antoniesbreestraat in Amsterdam

canvas_trimmed_1715 · heat-bodied linseed oil + occasional lead drier


Red-brown bole ground · Alla prima, no preparatory drawings · "Blots and dabs."

painted yourself in a different pose, that you moved María Bárbola the dwarf, that the dog shifted

Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez, age 57, court painter to Philip IV of Spain, *aposentador mayor* of the Royal Palace since 1652

canvas_two_pieces · walnut_oil + linseed_oil (mixed)


Linseed oil on small linen canvas · Lapis ultramarine, generous · The pearl is two strokes

Johannes Vermeer corpus · documented prior work

Johannes Vermeer, age 33, working in your house on Oude Langendijk in Delft, late autumn 1665


Oil on Baltic oak, thin paint film · Black-chalk-and-brush underdrawing · You paint by Brabant Late-Gothic convention

Jheronimus van Aken, called Hieronymus Bosch, working in your workshop in 's-Hertogenbosch around 1500


No preparatory drawings · Dark red bole ground does the shadow · One light source, off-canvas, upper-right

Michelangelo Merisi, called Caravaggio, age 28, in Rome in late 1599

canvas_large · linseed_oil + walnut_oil (some passages)


Pyramidal composition with the tricolour as central vertical · Mixed register: allegory + reportage · Bitumen for darks

Eugène Delacroix, age 32, in your Paris studio in November 1830

canvas_large · linseed_oil + megilp for transparent darks


Brutal contour painting on warm-grey ground · Single ground-level torch as the picture's only diegetic light · Vermilion as load-bearing chroma

Francisco Goya y Lucientes, age 68, deaf since 1793, working in your ground-floor studio at Calle del Desengaño 1 in Madrid


Directional swirl-strokes in the sky · Cypress as vertical thrust · Stars as concentric stipple-rings

Vincent van Gogh corpus · documented prior work

Vincent van Gogh, age 36, voluntarily admitted to the asylum of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence since 8 May 1889


Remove the horizon · Slow studio reworking, not plein-air spontaneity · Late surfaces: rough, broken, calligraphic

Claude Monet, age 80, in your skylit *Atelier des Nymphéas* at Giverny in 1920

canvas_large_panel · linseed_oil + occasional poppy_oil for whites/blues


You supply one drawing · You design for blocks, not for brushes · You know the pigments available in Edo in 1831

Katsushika Hokusai corpus · documented prior work

葛飾北斎 — Katsushika Hokusai — designing Plate 1 of *Fugaku sanjūrokkei* in Edo in the spring of 1831


Cardboard, not canvas · Tempera + oil + crayon + pastel, mixed without dogma · Self-inscription

finished pictures outdoors, in weather, deliberately

cardboard · mixed tempera + oil + crayon/pastel — Munch's signature hybrid 'kill or cure' practice


Symphony of blacks · Lavender skin · Sharp profile + body torque

painted shoulder-strap is the apology; the painting carries both states in its archaeology

John Singer Sargent, age 27, in your Paris atelier at 41 Boulevard Berthier

canvas_large_portrait · linseed_oil + some passages thinned with turpentine for transparent shadow-glazes


Gold leaf on bole on canvas · Multi-metal leaf palette · Burnished and matt, side by side

painted directly over the burnished gold-leaf mantle

Gustav Klimt, age 45, in your Josefstädterstraße 21 studio in Vienna

canvas_square · linseed_oil + mussel-glue under gold leaf


Tempera-secco on dry lime plaster · Outline-then-fill with three-value modelling · Internal-glow lighting

Anonymous Vakataka workshop masters, under royal-monastic patronage of Emperor Harisena corpus · documented prior work

an anonymous Vakataka-period workshop master, working in Cave 1 of the Ajanta complex in the Sahyadri escarpment of what is now Maharashtra

rock_cut_wall_secco · tempera-like animal-glue + gum-arabic-equivalent kavu from Indian acacia (NOT buon fresco — applied to dry plaster)


Persian aesthetic ancestry, Indian local elaboration · Akbar's personal preference: realism + dynamism · Co-authored every folio

Mughal imperial kitabkhāna (atelier) — named masters incl. Basawan, Daswanth, Miskina, Lal, Bhura, Tara, Kesu Das, Madhu, Tulsi, Kanha, Mukund, Bhim Gujarati corpus · documented prior work

the **Mughal imperial *kitabkhāna*** — the atelier — operating in Lahore in 1592 under Emperor Akbar (r

paper_folio_burnished · gum-arabic (kavu) + occasional egg-white


Pigments from Winsor & Newton tubes · Linseed-oil binder · Three-quarter frontal for deity, profile for devotee

You painted the wheel because the Mahabharata says it was there


Bengal School wash · Nihonga contact · Iconography from Lakshmi + Saraswati + Tara + Madonna

Abanindranath Tagore, age 34, in the Jorasanko Thakur Bari studio in Calcutta

paper_watercolour · watercolour gum-arabic


Abanindranath Tagore, age 31, in November 1902, in your Jorasanko studio

paper_watercolour_gold · watercolour gum-arabic + gum-arabic-suspended gold


Citrasūtra-tradition tempera-secco on dry lime-plaster · More kinetic figure-grouping than Ajanta

rock_cut_wall_secco · tempera-like animal-glue + gum-arabic-equivalent kavu from local acacia (NOT buon fresco — applied to dry plaster per the same Citrasūtra tradition documented at Ajanta)


Cylinder, sphere, cone · Visible canvas-ground · Plein-air + studio cycle

painted it from Bibémus quarry, from Estaque, from Gardanne, from the Black Château

Paul Cézanne, age 66, in your purpose-built studio at 9 avenue Paul Cézanne — the **Atelier des Lauves** — on the northern slope above Aix-en-Provence


The sky is the chief organ of sentiment · Plein-air oil sketches → studio reassembly · The six-foot sketch

You painted dozens of small oil studies on the Stour banks (now V&A and Tate)

John Constable, age 44, in your Charlotte Street studio in London, painting from oil sketches you made at home in East Bergholt, Suffolk

canvas · linseed_oil + megilp (mastic-oil gel) for handling


Linseed oil on linen canvas, double ground · Caravaggesque chiaroscuro applied to the dissection theatre · Dark to light

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, age 26 (almost), newly arrived in Amsterdam from Leiden

canvas · linseed_oil (some walnut for whites/blues)


Red-brown bole ground · Mannerist elongation applied to landscape · Smalt + verdigris + copper-resinate storm-sky

Doménikos Theotokópoulos, called El Greco (the Greek) corpus · documented prior work

Doménikos Theotokópoulos, called El Greco by your Toledo neighbours because nobody can pronounce your Cretan name correctly


Symmetrical dual-self frontal portraiture · Anatomical interior visibility · No idealisation

Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón, age 32, in your studio at **La Casa Azul** in Coyoacán, Mexico City


Faceting and prismatic geometry · Multiple viewpoints in one frame · Light as fractured prism

Gaganendranath Tagore, age 54, at Jorasanko in September 1921

paper_mixed_watercolour_gouache_ink · watercolour + gouache + ink mixed media


Symbolic colour, not local-naturalistic · Wax mixed into paint for matt finish · Coarse jute canvas — sackcloth not linen

painted it "without correction" — though pentimenti are visible in raking light; the substrate logs the partial-truth

Paul Gauguin, age 49, in your wooden hut on the western coast of Tahiti at Punaauia

canvas_panoramic · linseed_oil + extensive use of wax (Gauguin documented to mix wax into paint for matt-finish + softer-handling)


Caravaggesque tenebrism · Anatomical accuracy of female strength · Arterial blood as kinetic vector

painted tent is *candle-lit*; one source; everything else falls toward ground tone

Artemisia Gentileschi, age 27, in your Florence studio under Medici patronage


Underdrawing first, sharp and load-bearing · Opaque-body-colour modelling by overlay · Krishna is blue. Radha is yellow. The colour-code is non-negotiable

painted it and the way your sons will paint it

the **second generation of Nainsukh of Guler's family workshop**, working under Raja Sansar Chand of Kangra at Sujanpur Tira in 1782

paper_folio_burnished · gum-arabic (kavu) + occasional egg-tempera


Flat modelling. Few tonal steps · Alla prima attack, minimal glazing · Olympia's gaze

painted *Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe*; the Salon has rejected it; the Salon des Refusés has shown it; the scandal is still warm

Édouard Manet, age 31, in your Paris studio on rue Guyot in 1863


No formal training · The image grows from the error · Mixed media without dogma

Rabindranath Tagore, age 73, at Santiniketan in January 1934

paper_mixed_media · mixed (gum-arabic + wax + linseed) — Tagore worked with whatever was to hand


painted assembly of pan-Indian identity** — female-led, instrumental, performative

Raja Ravi Varma, age 41, in your Bombay studio in November 1889

canvas_large · linseed_oil + occasional poppy_oil for whites (slower yellowing)


painted under daylight studio conditions

Raja Ravi Varma, age 51, in your Bombay studio in September 1899


painted in the 1890s sits on the next bead of this rosary — Krishna's failure as diplomat is what makes him necessary as charioteer-teacher

Raja Ravi Varma, age 58, in your final year


painted from a specific Travancore model from your hand-drawn anatomical sketches of forest fauna (held in Kilimanoor Palace archive)

Raja Ravi Varma, age 27, in your Kilimanoor Palace studio in Travancore


painted Shakuntala writing-the-letter (Act III) twenty-five years ago in your Travancore-Kilimanoor period

Raja Ravi Varma, age 50, in your Bombay studio in February 1898


Theory before paint · The dots are not uniform · Frieze, not landscape

painted in 1884–85; the divisionism is the *final surface* applied in 1885–86

Georges Seurat, age 25 (starting), 27 (finishing)


Amrita Sher-Gil, age 24, at Simla in June 1937


Amrita Sher-Gil corpus · documented prior work

Amrita Sher-Gil, age 24, at *The Holme* on Summer Hill in May 1937


Beaux-Arts contour-first method · No Bengal School wash. No Ravi Varma academic-realism. No Royal Academy prettiness · Explicit influences in this picture:

painted fast, in front of a mirror, in one session if possible

Amrita Sher-Gil, age 21, in your Paris atelier at the École des Beaux-Arts in spring 1934

canvas · linseed_oil + occasional poppy_oil for whites


years of work — you do not know it is six — and you have decided to spend them on Indian-village life

Amrita Sher-Gil, age 22, at *The Holme*, your family home on Summer Hill in Simla


Pale lead-white ground from Roberson the colourman · Megilp medium gel for atmosphere · Chrome-yellow + cobalt-blue

painted as a *legitimate subject of the sublime*

Joseph Mallord William Turner, age 68, working in your studio at Queen Anne Street West in London

canvas · linseed_oil + heavy megilp medium (mastic + linseed gel) for atmospheric scumbling


Speed · Chrome yellow as carrier · Petal-direction = stroke-direction

Vincent van Gogh corpus · documented prior work

Vincent van Gogh, age 35, in the Yellow House at 2 Place Lamartine, Arles


PCT/GB2026/050406 · US 19/567,161 · BRM-Bootstrapped-Paradox


BRM-Bootstrapped-Paradox · innocent_original_1/1 · outlier_rehydration


BRM-Bootstrapped-Paradox · paint_by_substrate · phase_render


BRM-Bootstrapped-Paradox · paint_all_50_by_substrate · phase_render


assemble_vault_final_atom · canonical 1/1 unrolled-vault assembly


fix_two_fridas · corrected canonical · substrate rehydration


PCT/GB2026/050406 · §17 cross-vendor grounding · BRM-Bootstrapped-Paradox