A painting technique by which an image is executed entirely in shades of gray and usually severely modeled to create the illusion of sculpture, especially in a relief: The artist was renowned for her execution of grisaille, using a monochrome of grey.

This aspect of grisaille was used particularly by the 15th-century Flemish painters (as in the outer wings of the van Eycks’ Ghent Altarpiece) and in the late 18th century to imitate classical sculpture in wall and ceiling decorations.

Among glass painters, grisaille is the name of a gray, vitreous pigment used in the art of coloring glass for stained glass.