Around 1629 two Haarlem painters, Pieter Claesz and Willem Claesz. Heda, threw out colour. What was left was one dark asphaltum ground, a narrow band of grey-brown earth, and a single candle. Objects — a skull, a tipped roemer, a lemon peeled in one unbroken ribbon — surface out of unlit depth and fall back into it.

This system works the same way. Hierarchy comes from value, not hue. The page is near-black olive; type and surfaces are read off it in graded browns; the hot candle yellow appears on a few square millimetres and nowhere else. Restraint is not a mood here, it is the rule of the genre.