The poet James Thomson lauded their different styles – "What e'er Lorrain light-touched with softening hue, / Or savage Rosa dashed, or learned Poussin drew" – and their effect on British painters was profound.
The softening hues of blue and yellow have been filtered or drained out of the palette; the dominant color is the molten brown-gold of bronze shields.
In Pamplona, Rafael Moneo, a Navarre-born former winner of the Pritzker Prize, the world's most prestigious architectural award, has created a zigzaggy conglomeration of interconnected geometric forms, with its lines softened by the pinkish hues of the concrete exterior.
Her steely, powerful voice softened and took on warmer hues when the newly vulnerable Turandot came to realize that she had been outsmarted by Calàf.
Again, the video pays close attention to the surface of the coral, rough and scratchy like sandpaper, but softened by a range of hues.
Electric red hues in the newsroom are softened by writers wearing denim and circular stickers in canary yellow pasted everywhere and bearing catchwords such as "win," "noms" or "LOL". A smiling staff writer ushers us into one of the conference rooms named after members of Destiny's Child.
He has softened since then, becoming a dazzling arranger of hue and motion, and is now the favored son of his homeland, but we no longer watch his work for the depth of the characters, any more than we do Riefenstahl's.
Apricots that are no longer firm but have softened and taken on a lovely deep orange hue should be eaten immediately, or used in cooking before they become mouldy or mushy.
For pleasing a crowd, there are plenty of other options: tender, rosy-fleshed lamb shanks with an almost chicken-fried exterior; a whole guinea fowl, split and deep-fried to an optimal golden hue; bony chunks of agreeably oily grilled lamb, blanketed in barely softened onions.
Pastel hues, crisp white wainscoting and a pair of brick fireplaces give the house a classic, softened ambiance.
