The motif
Florence sleeps. Above the dark rooftops a single form glows: Brunelleschi’s dome, bathed in luminous quinacridone magenta.
White ribs run like lines of light up to the lantern. The paint lies thick and glossy on the shell and runs in long streaks down over the drum into the black; individual splashes break away and float into the sky. All around, the city stays monochrome – roofs, façades, scattered lights in the lanes – and above it a night sky in deep blue with bright veils of cloud, the hills on the horizon. The quinacridone magenta bears the name of the pigment with which David paints his originals.
