COLOR AND CULTURE

Practice aud Meaiiiiiii from Antiquity to Abstraction

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 JOHN (;A(,E

COLOR AND
CULTURE
Practice and Meanin^q
from Antiquity to Abstraction

A Biilfincli Press Book

Little, Broiini and Coiiipany
Boston • Toronto • London
For Nick and Ena, rccalliuri those Florentine day

Frontispiece
lu;naz Schiffcrnniller, The Colors, from I 'ersiich cines Farhensystcnis.
Vienna 1772. A decorative twelve-part color-circle by an entomologist
who specialized in butterflies, this suggests a “natural'' order of colors which
may be experienced both indoors and out. It is one of the first of such circles
to place complementary colors opposite each other: blue (I) opposite
orange (Vll/Vl), yellow (V) opposite violet (XI), and
red (Vlll) opposite sea-green (11).

Copyright © igg^ by John Cage

All rights reserved. No part of this hook may be reproduced in any form or
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First North American Edition

ISBN 0-S212-204J-S

Library of Cotigress Catalog Card Number 95-776;./

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Published simultaneously in Canada by

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PRINTED IN SINGAPORE
 CONTENTS
Introduction
PACE 7

1. The Classical Inheritance

Archaeoloi^y andphiloloyiY ■ Greek theories of colour ■ Splendour and inotton
PACT, I I

2. The Fortunes of Apelles

The four-colour theory ■ The problem of mixture ■ Apelles in the Renaissance
Durer and Titian ■ The idea of the primaries ■ Apelles in the studio
PAGE 2y

3. Light from the East

Monumental mosaics ■ Meaning in mosaic ■ Light and liturgy ■ Realism and
tnovement ■ The colours of Divine Light ■ The colours oj Islam
PAGE 39

4. A Dionysian Aesthetic
The neiv light ■ Suger's aesthetics ■ 'The blues of St-Denis ■ From glass-staining to glass-painting
W’orkniatiship ppr5H5 materials ■ The secularization of light ■ Dante on the psychology oJ light
PAGE 6y

5. Colour-Language, Colour-Symbols
Basic colour terms ■ The colours of heraldry ■ Secular and sacred in colour-meaning
Post-medieval perceptions of heraldic blazon
PAGE 79

6. Unweaving the Rainbow

From Titian to Testa ■ The Romantics ■ Prismatics and harmony
'Fwentieth-century epilogue
PAGE 93

7. Discfffio versus Colore

Alberti and Grey ■ Ghiberti and perception ■ Colour-symbolism in the Quattrocento
'Fhe importance of materials ■ Leonardo da I ’inci ■ I 'enetian colour in the sixteenth century
PAGE I 17
 8. The Peacock’s Tail
(Ailoiii iiuliuiloy.-' ■ Lcoihudo on alchemy ■ Alchemical {H'lidenii}; in Jan van hych
Alchemy in the Sisline (Aiapel ■ Spiritual metaphors in metallnrp’y
PACE 139

9. Colour under Control: The Reign of Newton

I he colours of lic^hl ■ Darkness visible ■ I he problem of colour-scales ■ i\eivon’s Opticks ami
the uses of classification ■ Colour-space from \’etvton to Seurat
pa(;e 133

10. The Palette: 'Mother of All Colours’

The palette as system ■ The ivell-tempered palette ■ Delacroix's palettes ■ 7 he palette as paintin'^
PAGE 177

11. Colours of the Mind: Goethe’s Legacy

Colour as perception ■ The impact of Goethe ■ The morality of colour ■ 'Painting is recording
coloured sensations’ ■ Prom Matisse to abstraction
PAGE 191

12. The Substance of Colour

I 'enetian secrets ■ Technology and ideology ■ The impact of synthetic colours ■ Time the painter
Colour as constructive material
PAGE 213

13. The Sound of Colour

The Greek chromatic scale ■ Medieval and Renaissance colour harmonies ■ Arciuiholdo’s colour-
music ■ Music and colour in the seventeenth century ■ Castel’s ocular harpsichord
The Romantics ■ Sonority and rhythm ■ Moving colour
PAGE 227

14. Colour without Theory: The Role of Abstraction

The grammar of colour ■ De Stifl ■ Colour at the Bauliaiis ■ Empiricism in Italy and
Prance ■ Empiricism as theory ■ The materials oj abstraction
PAGE 247

Acknowledgments
PAGE 270

Notes to the Text

PAGE 271

Bibliography and Concordance

PAGE 303

List of Illustrations
PAGE 324

Index
PAGE 328
 INTRODUCTION
For all its baocact of scholarly apparatus, this is not an
academic book. Nor could it be, tor its theme — the way in
which the societies of Europe and the United .States have shaped
and developed their e.xperience of colour - falls between too
many academic stools. Colour is almost everybody’s business
but it has rarely been treated in a unified way: thus my book
opens and closes with instances ot how a tailure to look at colour
comprehensively has led to absurdities of theory, if not of
practice. 1 begin with the attempt of some nineteenth-century
Classical philologists (led by the Liberal statesman Mr Glad¬
stone) to define the nature of the Ancient Greek experience of
colour - without consulting Classical archaeologists, so they
were led to believe that Greek colour-vision in the fitth century
BC was anomalous, even defective, and that our modern visual
system had evolved in only a few thousand years. 1 conclude
with an even more astonishing episode in lybos American art,
where a number of fine colourists were able to persuade
themselves, their critics and perhaps even some of their public
that they had finally released colour from form. This opinion is
the more surprising that it was promoted by an artist, Josef
Albers, who had had direct experience of the study of the
interrelationships between form and colour in the psychologi¬
cally oriented German art-world of his youth. In other areas of
colour-study, there are still some psychologists who believe, for
example, that brown is simply a darkened yellow and black no
more than an absence of light, beliefs which would have to be
modified after a few conversations with practising artists or
even after a careful e.xamination of paintings. So, although there
are a number of academic areas in which colour is an important
topic of investigation and debate, notably the psycho-physics of
colour-vision and colorimetry, and linguistics, it is not a subject
that has hitherto played much part in the study of Western
cultures as a whole — not least perhaps because it has not lent
Itself easily to academic treatment.
Nor is this book an interdisciplinary study, using one or other
of the ways which modern scholars in the humanities have
developed to revive their owm subjects, in my case the history of
art. This is an historical study in the sense that it deals with one
thing after another, looks for the origins of the methods and
concepts of visual art and treats art as the most vivid surviving
manifestation of general attitudes towards colour expressed in
visual form. As an historian I am wary of assuming that today’s
theoretical positions (I am thinking particularly of the notions
of experimental psychologists which have filtered into general
culture) are likely to survive any longer than those of the past. I
see my task as to provide more material for readers to chew on as
they think about colour in the context of history and perhaps
their own experience of it too. More than other formal
characteristics, colour has seemed to most of us to speak directK
and unambiguously (a good deal of capital has been made from
this assumption, not least in the marketing of goods). 1 hope m\
book will make this assumption seem more problematic, but
even if it does not, 1 want my reader tti be left not simply w ith
some beautiful images, but also with some stimulating ideas
about the visual character of a wide range of societies in the
West.
Yet I have not written this study to suggest that if we pool
ideas from the various areas of enquiry into colour we shall be
able to present a more adequate picture of the role it has played,
aiicf can play, in Western societies. I am even less concerned to
propose a new academic subject which might draw together the
strands of what has hitherto been so dispersed. What interests
me is precisely how this fragmentation has come about; what
has prevented intelligent and sensitive investigators from
coming to a clear understanding of their subject; why so much
of what has been WTitten and is still beiim
sT*
written about colour
cannot be believed. The subject may best be approached from
the perspective of history, although the very notion of a history
of colour may at first sight seem paradoxical. Why 1 have
ventured into this confusing area, perhaps some autobiography
will explain.
As a schoolboy painter I was very much attracted to colour —
John Piper was my idol — and when 1 came tti look at the history
of art I was puzzled by the neglect of colour in describing and
accounting for the styles of historical periods. When 1 began to
read aesthetics, first Berenson and then Ruskin, 1 was even more
astonished by the apparent renunciation of colour in writers to
whom it clearly meant so much. Berenson’s wonderful account,
in Sketch for a Self-Portroit (lyqy), of the first encounter with the
‘atmosphere of disembodied colour’ in the Upper Cdmrch of
-San Francesco at Assisi showed me that his feeling tor colour
was not confnieci to the natural landscape, where he enjoyed it
so abundantly, but that he also felt it in art. Yet he did not allow
these instincts to override his aesthetic belief that the proper
material of visual art was ‘tactile values’ and ‘ideated sensations’;
hence his preference for Florentine art, especially Florentine
drawing.' 1 did not discover until much later how deeply
rooted these perceptual prejudices were in the classicizing
tradition where representation has been seen as the artist’s
primary function. Iferenson’s idealism, his crucial dis¬
tinction between ‘ideated sensations’ and ‘sensations like those
experienced in the workaday world’ could only make him
hostile to colour. For he saw colour as belonging essentially to
this humdrum world, as identifying the artefact as an object
among other objects, focusing the attention on its materiality;
and he had a very condescending attitude to materials and
IN I H( )I)U( I ION
techniques.- It seems to me th.it it is precisely the continuity
betw een the experience of colour in nature and that experience
in art which makes it so important to us, and not only to those
who concern themsel\-es with painting.
A more sophisticated thinker than Berenson, lUiskin turned
out to have a far more ctunplex relationship with colour. His
earh' reading of Locke had made him regard hue as accidental;
he felt that tonal values in colour, w'hich dchned torm ami
spatial relationships, were the primary concern ot the artist,
including e\’en Turner, whose works he had come to know
c hiefly through black-and-white engravings. Ruskin’s growing
devotion to Early Italian art in the late 1840s brought about a
rapid revision ot this position: with the example ot Fra Angelico
before him he came to believe that ‘the purest and most
thoughtful minds are those wdaich love colour the most'; and he
had fewer inhibitions than Berenson about positing a con¬
tinuum between art and nature.'^ But even in the [850s, atter a
close engagement w'ith ancient and modern Pre-Raphaelites,
Ruskin continued to adjudicate 111 favour ot the primacy ot
torm. and he annoyed his co-teacher at the Working Men’s
College. Dante Cabriel Rossetti, by insisting that a study ot
colour must come only after a thorough grounding in chiaro¬
scuro. His great practical handbook of 1857 was entitled The
Hlcinciits of Draii’itn’T At the time I did not fully understand the
importance ot giving as much attention to value (light and dark
content) as to hue (spectral location), but I have come to see it
more and more, and now' au:ree with Ruskin’s assessment ot its
central interest to Turner.
Berenson and Ruskin set me thinking about hierarchies in
colour, but chance encounters in my college library with two
other books made me realize that there was far more to colour
than meets the eye. One was Paget Toynbee’s Dante Studies
(1902), which included an essay on the obsolete medieval
colour-term perse wdiose meaning it seemed almost impossible
to reconstruct on the basis of wu'itten evidence alone. The other
was R. D. Gray’s Goethe the Alchemist (1952), which persuaded
me that colour-theory w'as not simply a few rules of thumb but
a rich amalgam of physical and metaphysical ideas. When at the
CioLincil ot Europe ‘Romantic Movement’ exhibition ot 1959 I
was able to examine Turner’s tw'o late paintings Shade and
Darkness — the Ui’ening of the Deluge and Light and Colour
(Goethe's Theory) - the Morning after the Deluge - Moses writing
the Book of Genesis, I knew' that 1 had found a great painter who
thought so too.
Neither Berenson nor Ifuskin were historians, although they
both knew a good deal ofhistory and both, especially Berenson,
devoted more attention to the art of the past than to that of their
contemporaries. But they attended to tins historical art prima¬
rily as critics. My spell as an undergraduate showed me that I
was neither a good artist nor a good historian yet that history
was to be my absorbing interest; I wanted to identify, isolate and
Linderstand sets of circumstances which are inseparable from the
past, not to take the critical position of making of the past a sort
ot honorary present. Yet how art, which is so vividly present to
us, can be set 111 its own (past) ‘present’ is an issue of the greatest
difficulty, one which the most recent approaches to art-
historical writing have only been able to accommodate by
ignoring. Colour compounds the problem, tor in what sense is
the colour which I perceive in an artefact not ‘present’? 1 may
recognize from the style of the w'ork that it belongs to a
particular time which is not ours but how can I say the same tor
its colours? Is not red the same whenever and w herever it is seen?
To find the historical dimension ot colour I had to look at
artefacts and at the colour-language of the periods in question;
as Baget Toynbee had warned me, this was an exceedingly
problematic issue. The study ot colour-vocabularies has been
one of the most expansive areas ot research since the 1960s: we
know a good deal about the structure of colour-thinking, as
expressed in language, in many hundreds ot cultures and yet we
know very little about how these structures came to be tornied,
how they relate to experience. Wittgenstein, tor example,
assumed that six colour-terms were adequate tor most purposes,
a figure almost certainly reached because he was thinking ot the
colour-circle of three ‘primaries’ and three ‘secondaries’, as
published for instance by (ioetlie — a recent and rather
specialized way of arranging colour-space.''’ Those who cook on
gas know that it is the high-energy (short-wave) blue fames
which do most of the heating and even those who do not are
likely to be aware that it is the even shorter, higher-energy
waves, the ultra-violet, which burn our skin. Yet in common
usage it is the long-wave red end of the spectrum which is telt as
warm and the blue as cool. We may think of a ‘universal’
experience of hot red (?) sun and cool blue (?) sea but in the
written record this tolklore seems to go back no turther than the
eighteenth century; the first colour-system to incorporate co¬
ordinates of cold and hot was probably the one published by
George Field as late as 1835. So what is our ‘experience’ ot
colour in this case? Why are our linguistic habits so at odds with
our knowledi2;e?^
I said earlier that colour is within the experience ot almost
everyone and that the colours of nature are continuous with the
colours of art. Itut, of course, artists have a special way ot seeing
colour and a special way of presenting what they see in the torm
of artefacts. As a schoolboy I went on a sunimer sketching
holiday to Chxtordshire; one dull atternoon at Dorchester I
encountered an extraordinary colour-composition ot an old red
telephone-box isolated on the edge of a wood in which the
normally strident contrast of red paint against green tohage was
softened and mediated by the ‘warm’ depths ot the dark, tree-
filed space behind the box itself It was a stunning image ot
unity in contrast and I risked the trafic to make a hasty and
unsatisfictory painting of it from the best viewpoint in the
middle of the road. Some years later I read Adrian Stokes’s
Colour and Form and was surprised to see a vivid recollection ot
just such an experience, this time with a red post-box on a
telegraph pole. Stokes concluded his long account of it in these
terms:
My experience was unique at that time. How long I had waited to
see our glaring pillar boxes given by the light and season a structural
relationship in the English countryside! For years they had stood
out in my eyes, glaring irrelevantly. On this overcast May day,
however, the young leaf-greens of intense Inminosity and of the
right area and disposition, had come to the rescue, had entered into
companionship with the red, and with each other, like soldiers who
make a solid pile of their (red) hats to prove their amity, the

/sV'
One of the most r.idie.il e.irlv attempts to
. •/
reduce colour perceptions tt> a simple diagram
was the physician Rtsbert hhuldb colour circle,
published in 1626 (see p. 171). Fludd arranges
seven colours in a tonal sequence between
Co
white and black, but it will be seen he
describes both red and green (I'iridis) as
the median colour, with equal proportunis of
light and dark, white and black, (i)
ss'^V*'
A A'
distinctiveness ot each as breather. And in iny opinion every picture
that really ‘works’, pcassesses in infinite reduplication this kind of
relationship, this kind oi moveiiiciitJ
This experience of colour was available to many, it was perhaps
even commonplace, but it was an aesthetic intent which gave it
value. It is in pictures, or when we see m terms of pictures, that
these colour-relationships take on a coherence. Hence the
central importance of art for the study of colour in the larger
social context.
As a student 1 had the good fortune to spend long periods in
Florence and came to love those large painteci embellishments
to Italian fourteenth- and fifteenth-century choir-books, dis¬
played so spaciously and luminously in the Convent of S. Marco
and other Florentine libraries and sacristies. I was astonished that
such beautiful objects had been so little regarded in the histories
ot Italian painting. 1 imagined that because of their perfect state
ot preservation they could show us what the pristine colouring
of the much damaged and repainted altarpieces and frescoes of
the period might have been. As it happened, 1 never did have the
opportunity ot pursuing my interest in Renaissance manuscript
illumination very tar; paradoxically, my only discussions here
are ot two miniaturists mentioned by Dante (none of whose
works are known; see Chapter 4) and the disparaging remarks of
sixteenth-century critics about this branch of painting {see
Chapter 7). I was, in any case, quite mistaken about the import
ot the colour of these works, since the materials and technical
conventions ot manuscript paintings were quite different from
1\ I k( )1 >1 . I !( 'S
O S;
o '<V-
:o R
N \d^\
' W '
Col o ruin <
-Aimitlir.f
/ Ov
'<p /<j/
yy/
v/
&
A^ j G eA-'''
those in work on panel or wall, which also differ markedly from
each other. Berenson's belief that materials liax'c almost no role
to play in style should hardly have survived his first \'isit to S.
Croce in Florence, where many chapels still furnished with
stained glass, wall-painting and altarpieces from the Frecento
show quite clearly that the colour-ranges in each of these media
have very little in common. Perhaps, after all, his eye was too
conditioned by his use of black-and-white photographs. Flie
study ot materials (developed for the most part out of the
exigences ot conservation) has brought a new concreteness to
the historical understanding of art. It is important for us to
know how an object was made and what it was made of because
of the hierachy of values inherent in materials and techniques
themselves, even now when synthetic pigments and media have
taken over. A precious ultramarine in the fourteenth centtirv
had no more of an aesthetic wilue for its user than a synthetic or
industrial paint for an American Colour-Field painter of the
1960s. This sort of analysis seems to be even more important for
the historian than for the activity of conservation which
provoked it. since the rhetoric of conservation-theory often
seems to contuse conserwition (preventing further preventable
deterioration to the work) with restoration (bringing it back to
a notional pristine condition). C')nly very limited sorts of small
portable objects enamels, illuminated manuscripts, cabinet
pictures are ever likely to be seen in their original condition
and 111 something like their original circumstances, which brings
us back to the earlier question of how much of the past can ever
be seen at all.
9
IN I R( IDUCIK )N
A hiiok winch has been more than thirty years in the making
can hardl\- expect to engage closely with the most recent phase
in a rapulK' evoKang subject such as the history ot art and 1 have
to admit that some recent developments are hostile to the sort ot
project 1 ha\'e undertaken here. When 1 began looking at the
history ot art, its most contro\ ersial branch was iconography, as
associ,ited especially with the Warburg Institute in London,
riiis seemed to reduce the ‘sub)ect’ ot painting essentially to
written texts. I was tortunate to be taught by Edgar Wind who,
although he h,id been a pupil ot Warburg's, continued to
approach the question trom a tar broader base than 1 had come
to expect from that school and who believed that subject must
also implv style.
Since that time the influence ot E. H. Gombrich and
especialK' Mich.iel Baxandall at the Warburg has brought the
tormal characteristics ot artetacts back into the centre ot the
discussion ot their meaning; it is to their work that 1 owe much
ot my own approach. Iconography in its less expansive sense has
been revix’ed by the most vital ot the newer tendencies in art-
historical writing, wdiich has given it a political edge. The New
Art History has done a great service in bringing a new
seriousness to a subject which might have lost itself in the
routine pursuit of influential postures in the figure. However,
because it has adopted theoretical tools from wu'iters wdth no
important visual interests, and because the ambiguity ot visual
images has made them seem poorly adapted to re-cycling as
propaganda, there has been a turning away trom the visual
characteristics ot artetacts tow'ards a concern with the sort ot
representation wdiich may readily be conveyed in verbal terms.
It IS another version of‘find the text’ but this time the text is less
likely to be tound in historical literature than in social theory or
psychoanalysis. But if the visibility of the visual arts is not seen as
the proper concern ot historians ot these arts, the task ot treating
it will be left in the equally reductive hands of the commodity-
fetishists of the media and the market.
Although I have had to deal with a number of controversial
points, I do not intend this to be a polemical study, for there is no
active debate about colour in Western culture to which my
arguments might be usefully related. The neo-formahst Ger¬
man school of‘colouring-history’ {Koloritgcscliichre) is too non-
contextual in its emphasis and too exclusively concerned with
painting to bear more than tangentially on my own subject.*^ I
10
want simply to demonstrate that there is a set of issues wdiich
needs to be grasped. My list of reterences, though long, is very
lean and intended simply to send the reader to my sources. 1 do
not think a large-scale bibliography ot colour is practicable at
the moment but 1 have given an outline ot wdiat I would expect
it to look like in a bibliographical article.'^
So this book cannot be an historical survey ot colour even
trom A to A. Such a history does not seem to be possible,
although a number of bolder historians have attempted it since
the 1960s.'*’ What we still need is an overview ot the chief
landmarks in changing attitudes to colour and we do not yet
know even which historical texts bear on the question, since the
several useful historical studies of theories of colour, for
example, have been concerned rather with the development of
new knowledge than w'ith its ditfusion and acceptance by the
community at large." What I have tried to do is to find
surviving types of monument wdaich were the subject of
contemporary commentary; for the earlier periods especially,
these are very tew and tar between. I have tried to isolate
techniques, such as mosaic and stained glass, cirawing or oil-
painting, which were clearly responses to particular aesthetic
needs and to discuss their transformation as these needs
themselves changed. Some chapters focus on these techniques;
others look at more theoretical questions, such as the continual
re-interpretation of an ancient text on four-colour painting, or
the problem of how to see the rainbow, or the function of the
palette, or the paradigm of music, all of which recur in many
historical periods. Several themes return repeatedly, such as the
feeling that verbal language is incapable of defining the
experience ot colour, or the notion trom Antiquity to Matisse ot
an ‘Orient’ which was an exciting and dangerous repository of
coloured materials and attitudes. These two themes were
constantly interrelated in the beliet that the rational traditions of
Western culture were under threat from insidious non-Western
sensuality. Thus as late as the iqqos Berenson was characterizing
his experience of medieval stained glass outside its architectural
tramework as ‘not so dilferent from the Rajah’s gloating over
handfuls of emeralds, rubies and other precious stones’." How
artists and thinkers in the West negotiated these dangers is a
theme of great interest and one which I hope will make mv
readers look at the traditions of Western art and psychology in a
rather different way.
 1 • The Classical Inheritance
Archacoloiiy ami philology ■ Ch ech theories of colour ■ Splendour ami niotion
Towards tuf f.nd the iS6os the Anglo-Dutch painter
Lawrence Alnia-Tadema exhibited a small picture, Pheidias ami
4 the Frieze of the Parthenon. Athens, in which the artist is shown,
not as the greatest setdptor of Antiquity, but as a painter, putting
the finishing touches to the rich polychromy of the relief, the
fiery flesh-tones of the horsemen set off against a background of
the deepest blued Alma-Tadema became famous for his careful
reconstructions of the Classical past; this early intrusion of a
strident colouring precisely where the dazzling purity of white
marble had been thought, at least since the Renaissance, to be
one of the noblest characteristics of ancient art was not an
arbitrary one.’ For during the first half of the nineteenth
century archaeologists throughout Europe and Scandinavia had
come to realize more and more that Greek architecture and
sculpture had indeed been painted and in the most vigorous
way. As early as oSiy the English scholar Sir William Gell had
been able to assert of the Greeks that ‘no nation ever exhibited a
greater passion tor gaudy colours’.^ Even though the discussion
of the colouring of the Parthenon Frieze itself had arrived at no
very firm conclusions,"* Alma-Tadema may well have been
impressed by the 1862 report of the excavations of the
Mausoleum at Halicarnassus in Asia Minor, where the sculpted
frieze, attributed to Scopas (fourth century bc), was shown to
have been brightly painted just as in his picture, the background
ultramarine and the flesh ‘dun red’.^ To demonstrate the
practice of colouring sculpture in the greatest period of Cfreek
Glassical art was a bold stroke, which would have been
unthinkable in the period of high Neo-Classicism fifty years
earlier.
Alma-Tadema was perhaps the most daring but he was not
the first painter to e.xploit the archaeological discovery of Greek
to polychromy. Ingres’s 1840 version of Antiochus and Stratonice
introduced an interior of e.xtraordinary richness, far beyond
j anything in his original conception ot the subject in 1807. It is
very likely that he drew' on the impressive researches of j. I.
It Flittorrt', whose magnificent study, De I’Architecture polychrome
chez les yrecs, had first appeared in 1830.^ Many Neo-Classical
architects were themselves turning to polychromy in these
years; Karl Friedrich Schinkel’s design for a new Royal Palace
on the Acropolis at Athens, its interiors laden with inlaid and
painted decoration, dates from the same year (1834) as Gottfried
.Semper’s proposals for the use of polychromy in modern
classical buildings.^ By the 1840s the last of the English Neo-
Classicists, John Gibson, perhaps following Hittorfl's sugges¬
tions, made a timid attempt to re-introduce polychromy into
sculpture itself, first with his portrait of Queen Victoria in 1846
2 and then, most importantly, with his Tinted I'entis of 1851—6,
shown in London at the ‘International Exhibition’ of 1862 in a
brightly coloured niche de\ ised b\- the designer Gwen jones. It Q
bore the inscription Ihninas Rcrum ()lK<curas Ilhi.<trat (ionfusus
Distinyiiit Onines Ornat (lolorum Diversitas Sauvi.< and .Wr 1 'ita
nec Sanitas \’cc Pulchritudo \cc Sine (iolore Itiecntus (‘The gentle
variety ot colours clarifies the doubtful form of tilings,
distinguishes the contused and decor.ites es ers thing' and "W ith-
out colour there is neither life nor health, neither beautv nor
youth’).Nothing could demonstrate more decisively the death
ot the Renaissance and Neo-Classical aesthetic. 'Fhe disco\-erv of
the pre-Classical remains of Mycenae and Knossos in the latter
halt ot the nineteenth century reinforced the view that the
Greek world had always been a highly coloured one.
Yet it is an irony of scholarship that in these very years the
Classical philologists who approached the Greek experience of
colour trom the direction of language were reaching entirelv
opposite conclusions about its nature. Fhe British statesman
W. E. Gladstone, in his essay ‘Homer's perceptions and use of
colour’, concluded that the poet’s colour-system was 'founded
upon light and upon darkness’, that the organ of colour ‘was but
partially developed among the Greeks of his age' and that it had
not developed much further by the time of Aristotle.** More
detailed research into Greek colour-terminology tended to
contirm Gladstone's view's; the then only recently investigated
phenomenon ot colour-blindness w-as invoked to explain why
the Greeks seemed to be so insensitive to the difference between
blue and yellow.*** But blue and yellow were precisely among
those colours most frequently used in early Greek painting, and
Gladstone’s conclusions were soon contested by at least one
scholar who had takem the trouble to compare language and
artefacts.* * We know now that language cannot he interpreted
as a direct inde.x of perception and that the phenomenon of
colour is multivalent: besides the characteristics of hue and
saturation, which modern spectators tend to regard as most
important, is the characteristic of value, the degree of lightness
in a given hue. It was this last characteristic which was of special
interest to the ancient Greeks, an interest rooted in the Greek
theory of colour. *-
Grech theories of colour
As we should expect, the earliest written Greek reccirds ot
colour, in the poetry of Alcmaeon of C'roton (early fifth century
Bc), dwell on the antithesis between black and white, or
darkness and light.' ■* In the fifth century this antithesis provided
the armature of the more developed thetiries ot Empedocles and
Democritus. Empedocles used the analogy ot the painter's
mi.xing colours {harnionin mixante) to illustrate the harmony ot
I 1
I m ( i ASSICAl INUl RI I ANCl
Nco-C'l.issical sculptors \\ crc reluctant to
lollow the discos cries ot archaeologists \ cry
far. Although it was shown at the London
International Exhibition ot 1N62 under a
canopy which stressed the importance ot
colour (pi. 9). John (libson's '/Viitcd 1 ciiiis
(iSsi/i')) had the colour restricted to hair, lips,
eyes and gold ornaments, with only the palest
tingeing of the flesh. (2)
the tour elements, earth, air, hire and water, among them¬
selves;'"^ in an early formulation ot the notion that ‘like
perceives like’, he stated that the fiery element in the eye is what
perceives white and the watery, black.The late antique
commentators on Empedocles, Aetius and Stobaeus, had it that
he followed a Pythagorean scheme of‘primary’ colours, adding
to black and white red and ochron, a vague term which has been
thought to designate a whole range of hues from red through
yellow to green and must probably be understood to imply a
faded quality in any of them.Stobaeus noted that Empedocles
linked his four colours with the tour elements, although he did
not specify which elements were appropriate to red and ocliron.
Democritus also spoke ot tour ‘simple’ (Impla) colours: white
which was a function of smoothness, black which was a
function of roughness, red which related to heat and chloron
which ‘is composed of both the solid and the void’. ‘The other
colours are derived from these by mi.xture.’'’'' When Democ¬
ritus came to describe the nature ot these mixtures, his
tormulations are cTfticult to follow. Gold and copper were
mi.xed from white and red (ot some interest when we come to
consider the aftimties ot red and gold); purple (porplutroii) was
mixed from white, black and red - its large proportion of white
made it pleasant to look at and could be deduced precisely from
Its brilliance {lamproit). But indigo {isatin), according to Democ¬
ritus, was mi.xed from deep black and a little chlorou (pale green);
leek-green {prasinon) from crimson and indigo, or pale green
and a purplish pigment. He added that sulphur is a more
brilliant variety of this mixed prasinon, which refers aptly to the
greenish cast of sulphur-yellow."^ This must be the earliest
recorded proposal that yellow and green are two species of the
same genus of hue. Clearly we are dealing with a writer who
either had little experience of practical colour-mixing or, as is
more likely, used his terms to designate a tar wider range ot hues
than we are accustomed to grouping together. Democritus also
stated that chloron might be produced from a mixture of red and
white, which has led one commentator to suppose that he was
thinking of the complementary after-image of a red patch on a
white ground.'*^ What is more important is the observation ot
Aristotle’s follower Theophrastus (to whom we owe this
account of Democritus’s theory), that he need not have
e.xpanded his ‘simple’ colours beyond black and white, and that
red and green are not true antitheses, since they do not have
opposite ‘shapes’’" (colour being related to different geometric
arrangements ot atoms).
These theories of Empedocles and Democritus were taken up
and developed by Plato and Aristotle in the fourth century and,
through them, became the starting-point of all subsequent
colour-systems until Newton. Plato’s most extensive account
occurs in his poem on the creation, in Tiinaeus hyd—68d, where
he offered what he called ‘a rational theory of colours’. White,
said Plato, is the effect of the dilation of the ray which the eye
sends out 111 the process of vision and black the effect ot its
contraction. A more violent ‘fire’ and dilation of the ray
produces what we call ‘dazzle’ and an intermediate tire, blood-
red. But Plato and his contemporaries had no means ot assessing
the quantities of light reflected from any coloured surface, nor
was any means devised until the nineteenth century, and he
concluded this passage with a cry of despair: ‘The law of
proportion . . . according to which the several colours are
formed, even if a man knew he would be foolish in telling, for
he could not give any necessary reason, nor indeed any tolerable
or probable explanation of them.’ He none the less listed a
number of mixtures, including an ochron composed of white
and flame-yellow (xantlion), itself a mixture of red, white and
lanipron. Plato’s leek-green was a mixture of flame-colour
{piirron) and a darkener {nielan).^^ He concluded:
There will be no difficulty in seeing how and by what mixtures the
colours derived from these are made according to the rules ot
probability. He, however, who should attempt to verify all this by
experiment would forget the difference of the human and divine
nature. For God only has the knowledge and also the power which
are able to combine many things into one, and again to resolve the
one into many. But no man either is or ever will be able to
accomplish either the one or the other operation, [trans. Jowett]
Plato thus passed on the most meagre of colour-systems.
Aristotle, with his more cieveloped interest in experiment,
produced a tar more extensive and ramified body of doctrine,
all ot it, however, scattered among writings on many other
subjects. It was his school of philosophy which left the only
comprehensive treatment of colour to have come down to us
trom Antiquity.
In his treatise On Sense and Sensible Objects (442a), Aristotle
stated that ‘the intermediate colours arise from the mixture of
light and dark.’-^^ He also identified five unmixed intermediate
colours: crimson, violet, leek-green, deep blue and either grey
(which he conjectured might be a variety of black) or yellow
(which might be classed with white, ‘as rich with sweet’).

Aristotle secins to be inclined towards a seven-colour scale troin
black to white here because ot its closeness to the musical octave,
which had just proedded him (439b—440a) with an analogy tor
the method of generating intermediate colours by numerical
ratios. In his account of the rainbow, howeser (A/ctcem/oy’)'
372a), he seemed to regard red, green and purple as the only
umnixed intermediate colours, (ireen appears elsewhere to be the
central intermediate colour between (black) earth and (white)
water (On Idatits S27b; compare Probicws XXXI, 959^)- Hcd was
closest to light and violet to dark (.f/crcrce/eyy 374b-37sa).
The Peripatetic On (xilours presents tew variations on the
same theme, although the ‘primary’ colours here seem to be
white (the colour of air, water and earth) and golden (the colour
of fire), black becoming simply the colour of the elements in
transtormation (791a). Here too, in effect, the modification ot
light by darkness was the cause ot the intermediate colours: red
was the primary product ot such a modification (791b). In
|. A. 1). Ingres, Amtochus iind Stmloiiicc. a sculptural and nionochroniic pencil and brown wash study ot 1S07. (3)
nil (1 \ssi( \i i\iii Kii \\; 1
general the picture of the nature ot the colours besond light and
dark was as uncertain as Plato's:
We do not see .iiiv of the colours pure ,is tlie\ re.ilU .ire, but .ill .ire
mixed with others: or if not mixed w ith ,in\ other cedour tlie\ .ire
mixed with r.ivs of light or with sh.idows. ,md so thev .ippe.ir
dirterent .ind not .is the\ .ire. C .onsei.]uently things .ipjse.ir ditlerent
according to whether the\' .ire seen in sh.uiow or in sunlight, in .1
hard or soft light, and according to the .ingle ,it w Inch they are seen
and 111 accordance with other differences as well. I hose w hich are
seen 111 the light of the tire or the moon, and b\ the rays ot the lamp
differ by reason of the light in each case; and .iKo by the mixture ot
the colours with each other; ffir 111 passing tlirough each other the\
are coloured; for when light falls on aiuuher colour, being again
mixed by it, it takes on still another mixture ot colour, ffujb. trails.
Hcttl
The admission that these problems in identityiug colours was
13
Ilir (,I ASSICAI. INUF-R! lANCtl
further evidence nf the eye’s incapacity to judge the true
nature of things became enshrined in a tradition ot sceptical
thoLurht from abotit the first century Ai), when Philo ot
Alexandria cited an example which was to have a particular
resonance in the Middle Ages: ‘Have you ever seen a dove's
neck changing in the rays of the sun into a thousand different
shades of colour? Is it not magenta and deep blue, then fiery and
glowing like embers, and again yellow and reddish, and all
other kinds of colours, whose very names it is not easy to keep in
mind?'--^
Of cotirse, what to one observer was a stibject tor despair to
another was a cause of great sensual delight. In a brilliant set-
piece description ot a magnificent hall, the second-century
(ireek writer Lucian paused to consider the plumage ot the
peacock, which was also to be much in the mind ot medieval
commentators;
Now and again he is a sight still more wondcrtul, when his colours
change under the light, altering a little and turning to a different
kind of loveliness. This happens to him chiefly in the circles that he
has at the tips of his feathers, each of which is ringed with a
rainbow. What was previously bronze has the look ot gold when
he shifts a little, and what was bright blue [kuatiatii^es] in the sun is
bright green | ihloriui^^cs] in shadow, so much does the beauty ot the
plumage alter with the light. | The Hall 11, trans. Harmon]
The Peripatetic On Colours had insisted that the study of
colour should be investigated ‘not by blending pigments as
painters do’ but rather by ‘comparing the rays reflected from . . .
known colours’ (792b). In discussing the rainbow Aristotle had
stressed that the basic unmixed colours there were those ‘which
painters cannot manufacture’ {Metcoroh\i’y 372a). Yet from
Empedocles onwards theorists of colour repeatedly drew on the
experience of handling colour in art. Democritus is reported
to have left treatises both on colour and on painting, neither
of which have survived,and Plato, who made frequent
reterences to painting methocis, especially in theatrical scene¬
painting, was thought in Antiquity to have been a painter in his
youth.An anonymous, probably Alexandrian Platonist of the
sixth-century AD even claimed that the notions of colour¬
mixing e.xpressed in the Tiniaetis arose from discussions in
Plato’s studio.-^ One of the most vivid of Aristotle’s accounts of
colour-contrast derives from his observation of textile-
manufacture; it posed a question which was not addressed
systematically until Chevreul took it up in the nineteenth
century:
Bright dyes too show the eflFcct of contrast. In woven and
embroidered stuff's the appearance of colours is profoundly affected
by their juxtaposition with one another (purple, for instance,
appears diff'erent on white and on black w'ool), and also by
differences ot illumination. Thus embroiderers say they often make
mistakes in their colours when they work by lamplight, and use the
wrong ones. \MctcoroU\^Y 375a, trans. Webster]
This is a remarkably clear formulation of the problem now
known as nietamensm, by which colours that appear to match
under one sort ot light, seem diff'erent under another.
Records ot a number of technical treatises by Classical artists
have also come down to us but nothing of their contents.The
14
most intriguing are perhaps On Synujictry and On Colours
{voluniiua . . . do synunetria ct colorihus) attributed by the Elder
Pliny to the mid-fourth-century hc painter and sculptor
Euphranor {\atural Hisrory XXXV. xl, I2(S). Pliny’s reterence
to volumes in the plural suggests that they w'ere distinct
treatises, but he may well have been dividing what had been a
single concept in the earlier Greek discussion of colour. In the
Mono (ybd) Plato had defined colour itself in terms which he
had borrowed from Empedocles, as effluences Irom the surfaces
of objects ‘fitted’ into the channels of sight in the eye by the
process of perception: colour was itself a form of ‘measuring
together' {sunnnetros) or symmetry.-” Pliny may have been
inclined to separate these concepts because, as a sculptor,
Euphranor had a high reputation for his expertise in symmetry
{usurpassc syninictriam). It was as a sculptural concept, the canon
of proportions in the human figure, that the term came to have
most resonance in the later Classical period. By Pliny’s own day
the Stoics had treated symmetry and colour as the two essential,
but quite distinct, ingredients of beauty. This formulation,
transmitted especially by Cicero, hati the greatest impact on
medieval aesthetics.-'^
Symmetry was a concept based on number: proportion
could only function as a numerical relationship between a
number of parts. With the exception of Aristotle’s rather vague
and random attempt to relate colours to the musical octave,
there was in Antiquity no attempt to interpret colours in terms
of number. Plotinus, a Greek philosopher living in Rome in the
third century ad, excluded colour from the category of Beauty
precisely on these grounds: ‘All the loveliness of colour, and
even the light of the sun, being devoid of parts and so not
beautiful by symmetry, must be ruled out of the realm of
beauty. And how conies gold to be a beautiful thing? And
lightning by night, and the stars, why are these so fair?’^° He
was echoing the attitudes of his master, Plato, and, I suggest, of
Euphranor. No painting attributable to Euphranor has survived
but a Roman reference of the first century ad to his Poseidoti at
Athens talks of its ‘most extraordinary splendour’.^ ^ It was this
splendour, or brilliance in colour, understood as the effect of
reflected light, which constituted its chief charm for the ancient
observer.
Other Classical writers refer to the beauty of colour:
Democritus talks rather obscurely of a ‘most beautiful colour’
{kalliston idirdnia) composed of green, white and red, ‘but the
green component must be small, for any admixture woulti not
comport with the union of white with reci’.-^- In a well-known
passage of the Philehus (53b) Plato referred to the intrinsic
beauty of simple colours on the analogy of simple geometrical
shapes; but he did not say which he understood these simple
colours to be. Elsewhere, for example in the Republic (qaic-d),
he supported the conventional Classical preference for purple as
the most beautiful colour, also endorsed by Aristotle in his
discussion of colours and music.
The relationship of these theoretical ideas to the practice of
Classical painters is very difficult to assess since almost no
specimens of painting of the Classical period, with the exception
of vase-painting, have come down to us. There are, however,
some indications that the techniques of monumental painters
were well understood by the theorists. One of Aristotle’s

hypotheses about the origin of the intermediate colours was
that:
the black and white appear the one through the medium of the
other, giving an effect like that sometimes produced by painters
overlaying a less vivid upon a more vivid colour, as when they
desire to represent an object appearing under water or enveloped in
a haze, and like that produced by the sun, which in itself appears
white, but takes a crimson hue when seen through a fog or a cloud
of smoke \ ()n Sense and Sensible Objects 440a, trans. Beare]
The use ot a semi-transparent white scumble in mural
painting is known at least as early as 1400 bc at Knossos and a
black under-layer has been noticed in the fifth-century
Etruscan wall-paintings at Tarquima, which may be by a (Ireek
artistT-^ Much later, at Pompeii, the use of a black, pink, brown
or grey underpainting for red had become standard in the most
important schemes. Pliny, who died at Pompeii in the volcanic
eruption ot ad 79, ciescribed a number of red and blue
undercoats used to achieve the most brilliant effects with the
cheapest purple pigment (Xatural History XXXV, x.wi. 45).
He also left the most important record of what may be a
reflection of theory in painterly practice: the four-colour palette
contined to black, white, red and yellow, which w'as attributed
to the fflth-century painter Apelles and his contemporaries {see
Chapter 2). Pliny’s account, which was essentially a complaint
about the florid painting of his own day, falls into a familiar
Roman rhetorical pattern: painting is now thought worthless,
he says, if it is not executed in a multitude of costly and exotic
pigments. In another passage {Natural History XXXV, xil, 30),
he indicated that these floridi colc:)urs were supplied by the
patron and not by the artist, which suggests not simply their cost
but also that they represented the taste of the consumer rather
than that of the producer. The Roman architect Vitruvius also
remarked on this practice in the late first-century bc {Ten Books
Of] Architecture VII, 7—8). The theme of the decadence of modern
extravagance was a common one in these years: Seneca, for
example, contrasted the simplicity of the baths at Scipio’s villa
with the modern taste:
But who in these days could bear to bathe in such a fashion? We
think ourselves poor and mean if our walls are not resplendent with
large and costly mirrors, if our marbles from Alexandria are not set
off by mosaics of Numidian stone ICno'th Nuniidicis], if their
borders are not faced over on all sides with complicated patterns,
arranged in many colours like paintings, if our vaulted ceilings are
not buried in glass [niosaic| \tiisi vitro absconditnr camera] [Epistles
LXXXVI, 6f, trans. (iummcre|
The reference to Egypt and Numidia is a crucial one, as is the
reference to Indian colours in Pliny’s complaint {see p. 39), for it
was essential that the decadence should have an e.xotic, an
oriental origin. Pliny’s contemporary the Latin poet Petronius
was already stigmatizing China and Arabia as the source of that
luxury which was undermining Roman taste {Satyricon 11, 88
and 119). It was an extension into art of the old controversy
between the Attic and the Asian in rhetoric, where Attic stood
for simplicity and directness and Asian for a soft and over¬
ornamented style. ’"’ In rhetoric itself the term colores came as
early as .Seneca in the first century to mean the embellishment
I 111 ( I AssK M l\lll Kl I \\< I
and amplification ot the essemi.il structure or maten.il ot' an
argument. ’'’ In the history ot \ isu.il colour it is mqsort.mt th.it
the materials which pian ided the basis ot'svnsti.il delight should
have been seen to come into Europe t'rom the bast, tor this is a
topos which recurs throughotit this book.
Eor critics throughout Antie]Liit\ colour in painting had a
profoundly ambiguous status: on the one h.ind it stood for the
adventitious, the merely decoratn e. the filse, but on the other
it was what gave painting life and truth. 1 he antithesis w.is
already clear in Aristotle w ho wrote in the Poetics {14s0.i-b) that
'the chalk outline ot a portrait will gi\ e more ple.isure than the
most beautiful colours laid on confusedb '. Plato, on the other
bc hand, spoke of ‘a portrait which is as \ et an outline sketch .md
does not represent the original clearly because it has still to be
painted in colours properly balanced with one another’ {States¬
man 277b-c). Eor both philosophers the aim of art was the
imitation of nature; colour might either further or hinder this
aim. E\'en Philostratus, the novelist ot' the second to third
century ad, who moved beyond imitation to a notion of the
intuitive imagination in art, ’'’ contrasted the colours of cosme¬
tics with the colours of painting, whose function was to imitate:
'if that was not its business, it would not be considered absurd, a
pointless mixing of colours’. But, he continued, colours were
not even essential to imitation, since verisimilitude could be
achieved in monochrome if the drawing was good: ‘If we draw
one of these Indians even with a white chalk, he will obviously
seem black; the snub nose, fuzzy hair, large jaws and (so to
speak) bulging eyes have a black effect on the thing seen.’’'^
Plutarch, in the first century ad, summed up the Cilassical
attitude in a brilliant paradox;
|ust as in pictures, colour is more stiiiuilating than line-drawing,
because it is life-like, and creates an illusion, so in poetry falsehood
combined with plausibility is more striking, and gives more
satisfaction, than the work which is elaborate in metre and diction.
but deviod of myth and fiction . [Moralia 16c, trans. Babitt]
The emphasis on the imitative function, which at the same time
confers a decorative attractiveness, can be seen at work in late
Hellenistic polychromy. such as a painted sarcophagus from
Sidon, which has both naturalistic colouring and a decorative
use of gilding.'’'’
For the ancient critics colour, ifnot positively damaging, was
at least not essential to representational painting: it has been
argued that the ethos of Hellenistic art was seen to reside less in
the use of colour than in a command of line.'’' In a period when
execution was already considered to be inferior to conception, it
was even suggested that 'a precise mixture of colours and
appropriateness in the application of them’ were matters best
left by the master to his apprentices.'’- Such a view will not have
been welcomed in the workshop itself but we are still very ill-
informed about the details of ancient practice, tfne of the rare
representations of an ancient painter at work, on a painted
sarcophagus of the first century ad from Kertsch in South
Russia, shows a paintbox with sixteen divisions. Even the
painters of the small funeral-stelai at Volos are kntiwn to have
used a palette of thirteen pigments, including two whites and
three blacks as well as blue and green.'” At Bompeii stmie
twenty-nine different pigments have been identified, including
I s
 I Hl Cl ASSICAI INHI RI'I ANCT
ten reds, althcuigh the contemporary Roman murals from
nearby Boscotrecase used a very limited palette of five pigments
(including an earth green), whisse range was somewhat in¬
creased by mixing.An account of painting procedures given
in the second century Ai) by lulius Bollux lists tweh'e colours,
including riesh-tints {cvnh-t'ihcloii) in an arrangement which
seems qtiite arbitrary(O/Kin/iisfion; Vll, i-9)- As he was writing
essentially for connoisseurs of rhetoric, we can learn rather little
abotit practical attitudes to colour trom this sort ot lexical
compilation.
Splendour and motion
For all their conventionahty, the complaints of Bhny and
Vitrtu’ius about the extravagant polychromy of later Roman
painting do reflect a development in taste which is attested by
both momiments and Roman literature at large. We have seen
that polychromy was by no means foreign to Classical Greece:
one of the rare surviving documents of the economics ot Greek
taste concerns the interior decoration of the Asclepeion at
Epidauros (qth century Bc), where the expenditure for labour
on wood inlay and the gilded ivory statue ot the god was -
excluding the precious materials themselves — two and a half
times that on the colonnade of the temple and more than ten
times the annual salary of the architect.^® The fashion tor
encrusting walls with thin panels of coloured marble can
certainly be traced to sixth-century Greece — the earliest
example may be the Siphnian Treasury at Delphi, where now
all traces of the marble itself have vanished — but it was used
more widely in Rome after the first century Clearly, the
Romans made far more use of the coloured marbles of Greece
than the Greeks themselves had ever done.'^’^ A development of
this sort may be seen most readily perhaps in the sequence of
Roman mosaic pavements, from the simpler four-colour
mosaics made from black, white, red and yellow pebbles or
stone from the third century bc (Morgantina, Serra Orlando in
Sicily), through the gradual introduction of coloured glasses —
especially for bright reds, blues and greens in the second century
BC (Pergamon) — to the chromatic splendour of the glass mosaics
at Pompeii and Herculaneum or the first-century ad mosaic
is now in the museum at Corinth, where the most vivid blues,
greens, yellows and red are woven into the geometric border.'^®
In the Latin language, too, a decisive expansion of colour-
terminology has been noted in the late first century ad, when
the meagre list of five words for hues in Homer’s poems had
now expanded to over seventy terms, including some sixteen
terms for reds, eight for blues and ten for greens.Artistic
practice and public perceptions of colour may indeed have gone
hand in hand.
Yet we should not leap to the conclusion that a tonal outlook
had been replaced by a chromatic one. If we look at Roman
descriptions of their sumptouous btiilciings, we find that they
are still seen primarily in terms of light, of brilliance, of
splendour. The Roman poet Lucretius, for example, writing in
the first century bc, praised the simple life: ‘But what matter if
there are no golden images of youths abotit the house, holding
flaming torches in their right hancis to illumine banquets
prolonged into the night? What matter if the hall does not
16
sparkle with silver and gleam with gold, and no carved and
gilded rafters ring to the music of the lute?’ [On the Nature of the
IJniverse 11, 59—63, trans. Latham|, He may have been drawing
his images from that locus classicus of architectural description.
Homer’s account of the Palace of Alcinotis {Odyssey VI,
82-130), but he was using it in a didactic poem and in a section
where, following IDemocntus and Epicurus, he was anxious to
demonstrate the physical unreality ot colour.
If we look at the techniques of painting and mosaic
developed by the Romans, the emphasis can bc seen to have
been no less on lustre than these descriptions suggest. The
painted walls of Pompeii and Boscotrecase were burnished until iq
they shone like mirrors;-'’' the pavements of Pergamon and
Morgantina were ground smooth, wa.xed and polished not only
to bring out the colour (as is now done by dousing them with
water) but also to produce a highly reflective surface.The
effect to be achieved was surely akin to that which Pliny
attributed to the thin coat of dark varnish used by Apelles to
finish his paintings that ‘caused a radiance in the brightness
[repercussuni claritatis] of all the colours and protected the
painting from dust and dirt’, and, ‘by using a calculated system
of lighting’, acted so that ‘the brightness of the colours would
not be oftensive to those who looked on them (it would be as if
they were looking through transparent mica) and this same
device, from a distance, might give an austere quality to colours
which were too bright’.An effect of at once enhancing and
subduing the colours on a surface according to the changing
angle of vision of a moving spectator is exactly what polishing
will achieve. Apelles was indeed accustomed to working in the
context of architecture: his celebrated paintings of the Venus
Anadyomene were originally destined for the sumptuously ij
polychromed temple at Kos.^^'
As Pliny’s account of Apelles suggests, the Romans were
highly sensitive to the effects of lighting on pictures: Vitruvius,
for example, prescribed a north light for museums so that the
lighting should be more constant.A concern for sheen or
lustre in coloured objects and in painting was also exemplified in
late-antique colour-preferences, at least in those preferences
which can be attributed with some confidence to that period.®'’
The most obviously prized hue was purple, the most valuable
dystuft in Antiquity. Purple dye made from a number of species
ol shellfish had been developed among the civilizations of Asia
Minor and in Mycenaean Greece since the fifteenth century bc;
already in the seventh century it was noticed by the lyric poet
Aleman as being especially admired.®^
That Greek sculpture was coloured came as a shock to the early
Victorians, but by the 1860s the archaeological evidence was too
strong to be resisted. Alma-Tadema, in a painting showing the fifth-
century Athenians viewing the Parthenon frieze before the
scaffolding was taken down, imagined the reliefs painted in strong,
schematic colours that would make the bodies stand out in the
distance.
4 Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Pheidias and the Frieze of the Parthenon,
Athens. 1H68/9 (detail)
 ^ »f . •<
. t --1 J
■liiij

■ ^
-l-jniETfSiIm liFi JiV*
 Mixing and matching

The range of colours used by Greek and

Roman artists was certainly not limited to four
(white, black, red and yellow), as was once
believed. A panel from Saqqara (7) is virtually
the only known painting from the classical
period which is so restricted. Works from all
centuries, early (5) and late (6), show many
colours, including bright blue. On a papyrus
fragment from Antinoc, however (6), the
blue-grey of the central charioteers may have
been made from black. Pigments were rarely
mixed on the palette, but where necessary the
same effect was achieved by hatching (8).

5 Tomb of the Diver, Pacstum, fifth century bc

(detail)
6 Six charioteers, papyrus fragment from Antinoe,
c. AD 500
7 Fragment of painted panel from Saqqara, fourth
century bc
8 Mummy-portrait from el-Fayum, Egypt, fourth
century ad

18
Greek colouring restored

20
lO

Early in the nineteenth century the idea

that Greek architecture and sculpture was pure
white had to be given up. Ingres, greatest ot
French Neo-Glassical painters, represented
Greek interiors as vividly polychroined (lo).
1 hs friend the French archaeologist and
architect 1 littorif published coloured
reconstructions of Greek buildings (i i) and
imitated them in his own. Owen Jones in 1862
designed a temple (9) to house Gibson's
famous Tinted I 'ciiiis (pi. 2) carrying a series ot
inscriptions proclaiming the importance of
colour for life and health, beauty and youth.

9 OwHN joNi:s. for a temple to house Gihsoii’s

' Tinted I 'eitiis', 1862
10 Jr.-VN Auuustk Dominiquf. In(;ri;s, Antiochns omi
Strotoiiice. 1834/40
11 l.'VKOK It;N.\7. HrrroRi I-, The Temple ot
Kmpedocles at Seliiiunte, from Restitution dtt Temple
d’limpedocle it Selinunte, on Arehiteeturc polychrome
chez les Grees, 1851

2 I

11
j - •

1 • ""-i

The legendary Apelles

Apelles was the most famous painter in
Antiquity. None of his works survis'ed, but it
became popular to paint reconstructions of
them based on written descriptions, d'itian's
I 'eiius Anadyoiiictic (13) recreates one of his
paintings that was damaged at the bottom.
Tiepolo (12) shows a scene from his life, when
he was commissioned to paint Alexander the
Great's mistress Campaspe and fell in love
with her himself, upon which Alexander
generously surrendered her to him. The report
that Apelles used a four-colour palette seems
not to have interested either artist, for fitian's
sea is blue-green, and Tiepolo, natur.illy,
shows Apelles painting from a well-stocked
eighteenth-century palette such as he used
himself

12 (hov.ANNi H.Ariisi.-\ 1 II I'oi o, . l/c.vaiii/cr a/iJ

C.'iJiii/ici.s/ic in the Sliiiiio oj Apelles, e. ly.Pv ?
13 IMi.w. I enns . Inni/yonniie (The lirnlyeii’dier
I enns). c. i 320/5

2^

12

AlthcHigh the finds in the Royal Tomb of Philip 11 at Vergina
(Thessaly, fourth century lu;) include remnants of purple cloth
spangled with gold-star medallions, purple was not apparently a
royal prerogative until Roman times, when it came to be the
object of a special cult. Pliny wrote of
that precious colour which gleams IsuhlHcens] with the hue of a dark
rose . . . This is the purple for which the Roman /asres and a.xes clear
a way. It is the badge of noble youth; it distinguishes the senator
from the knight; it is called in to appease the gods. It brightens
\illui)tiuat] every garment, and shares with gold the glory of the
triumph. For these reasons we must pardon the mad desire for
purple, but \vh\- the high prices for the conchylian colour, a dye
with an offensive smell and a hue which is dull and greenish, like an
angry sea [color atisterus in ^lauco ei irascenii siinilis iihiri\'c [Xatnral
History IX, .x.xxvi, 126, BaileyJ
As Pliny suggests, purple was a colour reserved for the highest
officers in the state: m the form of a purple anci gold robe, it
could only be worn by a general m his triumph. Senators might
wear broad stripes of purple round the openings of their tunics,
and knights and other high-ranking officials narrow'er stripes.
Cicero and other first-century writers had spoken of ‘royal
purple’®*^ and by the time of Diocletian (early fourth century
ad) It haci come to be associated exclusively with the emperor.
For anyone else to wear purple was tantamount to their plotting
against the state. The ownership of any purple-dyed cloak or
any cloth dyed with the finest purple or even an imitation of it
incurred severe penalties, although by the fifth century there
was widespread evasion and a lively black-market m purple
cloth.^‘^
The reasons for this cult of purple are very difficult to define.
According to Theophrastus, Democritus had referred to a
purple {porpliiirios) which was a mixture of white, black and red:
red in the largest proportion, black in the smallest and white as
intermediate between the two. ‘That black and red are present is
clear to the eye; its clarity [phaneron] and lustre [ lampron] testify
to the presence of white, for white produces such effects.The
very names tor purple in the earliest Mycenean and Homeric
Greek texts seem to have had the secondary connotation of
movement and change, which may perhaps be accounted for by
the many colour-changes in the dyeing process but which is also
of course the condition required for the perception of lustre
itsehff* The fourth-century bc poet Menander described a
textile made of interwoven purple and white threads, which
shimmered according to the fall of light, an effect akin perhaps
to that of the shot stuffs of late Antiquity {see Chapter 3).^^ Two
and a half centuries alter Menander Lucretius wrote of ‘the
Red, as the colour of light, was an important element of the
interiors of Roman religious buildings. This wall at Pompeii would
certainly have been polished, as well as painted, to enhance its
brilliance. Coloured illustrations of these magnificent interiors
became available to the public in the early 1S30S, almost a century
after the excavations.
14 Ch.mu i:s Fi(.\n<,;ois M.^zois, Reconstruction of a wall, ‘Edifice’ of
Funiachia. Pompeii, from Les Rttiiiesde Poinpei, iHay
rm ci .\sM( Ai iNni ki I \\< i
bright sheen of purple robes' {On the Wiiure of tin I inrtr.-t II.
sN). The beauty ot purple was also attributed to its Mirtace lustre
by Pliny and Philostrattis. who in his I^iiiures d. asi noted,
‘though It seems to be dark, it gams .1 peculiar beauts t'roni the
sun, and is intused with the brilliancy of the sun's warmth'.
Pliny's characterization ot the mans' nuances of purple in his
Xatural History is, as tisual. the fullest. Of the 1 yrian purple
made from niiire.x he svrote, as sve sasv, that ‘it brightens es ers'
garment' and although he claimed that a frankls' red |n(/)CH.'|
colour svas interior to one tinged svith black (XI. xxxs iii. 134),
he svent on to describe precisels' boss- this blackness ssas
achieved. Distinguishing betss een tsvo tvpes of shellfish vield-
ing dyestuft, the small huccinunt (? purpura haouiastrouia) and the
purpura (uiiirex hrandaris), he explained (IX. xxviii, 134-3):
The buccine dye is considered unsuitable for use by itself for it does
not give a fast colour, but it is perfectly fixed by the pelagian
[purpura], and it lends to the black hue of the latter that severitv
[austeritatein] and crimson-like sheen which is in fashion | lutorcinquc
qui quaeritur Ccird]. The Tyrian colour is obtained by first steeping
the wool in a raw and unheated vat of pelagian extract and then
transferring it to one of buccine. It is most appreciated when it is the
colour of clotted blood, dark by reflected and brilliant by
transmitted light [colorc sanguinis coiicrcti, nigricans adspectu, idcmquc
suspcctu rcjulgens]. [trans. Bailey]
In a later chapter (IX, xxxix, 138), he noted that a paler shade of
purple was fashionable in his owm time.
Certainly true double-dyed Tyrian purple, like gold, had
great rarity value for it was very uneconomical to produce, and
the Phoenicians kept the secret of its manufacture for many
centuries.It was also a particularly durable colour: when
Ale.xander the Great brought back his booty from the Persian
campaign he found that a large quantity of Greek purple cloth
had kept its sheen and freshness for nearly two centuries.This
durability made emperors like Diocletian and Constantine use it
for burial shrouds.In the process of dyeing with niure.x.
several colours were produced at various stages, including
yellow, blue and red, as well as the blue-green which is
presumably the colour Pliny viewed with such distaste; we
might have expected that these hues would have been equally
prized.*^ ‘Green purple’ was indeed used in Byzantium to
distinguish the curators of the Imperial court.That these
colours were far less important than purple must surely be
attributed to the symbolic value of purple as a heavenly colour,
a value wdiich has been traced at least as far back as the early fifth
century bc in a ceiling at Chitisi.^*^ It was heavenly precisely
because it w^as a bearer of light.
The most valued purple cloth was probably the deepest
double-dyed variety, such as m Theodora’s imperial robe at
Ravenna,yet we have seen from Pliny and many, other
w'riters that it was the brilliance and lustre of the colour that was 44
most noticed; it may wxdl have been that, like Apelles's dark
varnish, it was the miracle of purple to incorporate within itself
darkness and light and hence the whole world of colour. Pliny’s
rather rudimentary test for the best purple must have been
much m demand m late Antiquity and in Byzantium, for the
identification of true purple (used exclusively by the Imperial
family) in the face of the many imitations necessarily had the
 nil- C.l ASSICAI I\II1 RIIANCi
t'orcc of law. whose breach might incur the pcn.ilty ot death.
I'he many edicts of the Emperors Clratian, Valentiman,
I heodosins and Instiman suggest that this was a persistant
problem, fheir wording, which referred to the dyestnfl (sacri
iiiiin'd. sacred whelks, or niri coiichylii, crushed shellfish) rather
th.in the hue, which is called pitrpuYd thronghont, is an early
instance of the recotirse to clearly identifiable materials rather
than uncertain appearances, as a criteriim tor judgment.^" The
legal code.x of Ulpian (third century) w'ent so tar as to define
purpura as all red materials except those which contained the
other red animal d\'estnfl iocatat, made from the insect coccus
illictis. ' ^
Blit if'purple' could include so many colours, how could it
bear the important meanings which it undoubtedly attracted in
late Antiquity? It could do so first of all because it was a colour
^4 generallv classed with red,^- the chromatic representative ot tire
14 and of light. Red had, since the earliest times and in many
-e cultures, heralded the divine.^-’ It was used in Ancient Cireece as
a colour to sanctity weddings and tnnerals and as a military
colour in both Greece and Rome to strike awe into the enemy.
Before the fifth century, Greek tnnerary stelai had red-painted
grounds (see the pnrplish-red grounds of some Hellenistic stelai
at Volos), although these grounds later became bine. The
interiors of some temples w’ere painted red, such as the Temple
of Aphaia on Aegina. Bhilostratns in his Life of Apollonius of
I'yaua reported a shrine of the snn at Taxila in India where, ‘The
w'alls ot the shrine were ot a red stone that had a golden sheen,
giving ofl'a light like the sun’s rays’ (II, 24). The Temple of Isis at
Pompeii had red walls, and the background ot the initiation
scenes 111 the Villa of the Mysteries 111 the same town was
probably red for the same sacred reason. Some red-painted
statues of Roman gods are also known. Red was widely
regarded as the colour of the snn; some Greek rites used red and
white interchangeably in a solar context: a late third-century ad
mosaic of Helios in the imisenm at Sparta shows the god with a
reddish nimbus emitting reddish-yellow, red and white rays.^"^
Tims red also had a particular afhnity with gold, that other
snpreniely imperial ‘colour’ 111 Antiquity and early medieval
times.It was an affinity that affected the methods of both
mosaic and panel-painting [see Chapter 3). Aristotle placed red
next to light in his colour- scale, which nmst be emphasized here
precisely because it returns ns, through purple, to onr primary
concern with light.
For if the nature and identity of particular hues was a matter
of nncertainty in the Greaco-Ronian world, there was no doubt
about the place of light. Light and life were cognate concepts;^^
to be alive was to see the light of the snn.^^ A touching epitaph
on a late fifth-centnry bc: tombstone in the Keranieikos in
Athens, which shows a woman with her grandchild, reads: ‘I am
holding here the child of my daughter, the beloved, whom I
held in my lap when, alive, we beheld the light of the snn, and
now I am holding it dead, as I am myself dead.’ Zens, the chief of
the gods, was the personification of the sky, as the source of
brightness and of day. From Mycenaean times light was a sign
of the epiphany of the god; even statues of gods, like the
Palladinm, could blind mortals. Hence perhaps the frequency of
the subject ot the rape of the Palladium on Antique gems, since
gems themselves were repositories of light.Dio Chrysostom
26
[Orations XII, 25.52) described Pheidias’s gold and ivory statue
of Zens at Olympia as emanating light and grace: it was a
radiant omen [phasnia laniprou). The nimbus or halo of light
became an attribute of divinity and appears on many statues
from the time of Alexander the Great.
Yet it was not until late Antiquity that light began to take on
a transcendental colouring in the West. Greece was exceptional
among ancient cultures in having no developed cult of snn and
moon gods, nor a prominent place for snn and moon legends in
its mythology: such cults, notably those of ancient Egypt, w'cre
regarded by the Greeks as barbaric. Then, in the second century
AD, two Hellenized orientals, Julian the Chaldaean and his son
Inliaii the Thenrgist, published a nnniber of oracles which
brought light to the centre of late antique religion. In these
oracles the snn was the hub of the cosmos and the element in
which the supreme God revealed himself The snn had
purificatory and cathartic powers and its rays descended to earth
to lift the soul of the initiate towards itself*^'^’ The magic
practices of Theurgy which derived from these Ghaldaean
Oracles were in vogue until the fifth century. Among them was
the conjuring of the God by a spirit-medium; this manifestation
was, too, frequently accompanied by a shaped or more often a
formless luminosity.^'
The most distinguished contemporary discussion of these
ideas occurs 111 the Enneads of Plotinus. His connection with the
Thenrgists has been hotly disputed but he certainly shared many
concepts and images with them.®- Plotinus is of particular
interest because he was the most important thinker about light
and colour in late Antiquity and, like his masters Plato and
Aristotle, he showed a lively interest in the theory if not the
practice of the arts. He was a religions philosopher chiefly
concerned to explore the nature of the soul and the modes of its
unification with the Supreme One. The One he repeatedly
described as light and specifically as the snn (V, 3.12, 17)
precisely because for Plotinus light in itself was a perfect image
of oneness, of wholeness. He used this image in a beautiful
passage describing the union of the soul with the One:
Here, we put aside all the learning; disciplined to this pitch,
established in beauty, the quester holds knowledge still of the
ground he rests on, but, suddenly, swept beyond it all by the very
crest ot the wave ot Intellect surging beneath, he is lifted and secs,
never knowing how; the vision floods the eyes w'ith light, but it is
not a light showing some other object, the light is itself the vision.
No longer is there thing seen and light to show it, no longer
Intellect and object of Intellection; this is the very radiance that
brought both Intellect and Intellectual object into being for the
latter use, and allowed them to occupy the quester's mind. With
this he himself becomes identical, with that radiance whose Act is to
engender Intellectual-Principle . . . |VI, 7.36, trans. MacKcnna]
Beauty, too, is identified by Plotinus with the One and with
Light; for a moment, as we saw, he seems to accept the beautiful
‘simple’ colours of Plato’s I^hilchus, ‘devoid of parts’ (although
all Plotinus’s examples are lights rather than colours: gold,
lightning, fire, the stars) (I, 6.3): ‘The beauty of colour is also the
outcome of a Unification: it derives from shape, from the
conquest of the darkness inherent in matter by the pouring-in of
light, the unembodied, which is a Rational-Principle and an

Idoal-Fnrin'. Mnrc often Plotinus regarded eolours as inodes ot
light alone (11. 4.5). engendered by the reheetion of light (IVh
4.29) or the effect ot light acting on matter (IV. s-7)- hi talking of
painting, he allowed that colour must be apportioned according
to the tunction of each ot the various parts (II. 2.1 1): 'people . . .
ignorant ot painting . . . complain that the colours are not
beautiful everywhere in the picture: but the Artist has laid on
the appropriate tint to every spot.'
Plotinus was especially sensitive to the subjective manifes¬
tations of colour (V, 5.7):
file eye is not wholly dependent upon an outside and alien light;
there is an earlier light within itselt. a more brilliant, which it sees
sonietnnes in a nionientary dash. At night in the tiarkness a gleam
leaps from within the eye: or again we make no effort to see
anything; the eyelids close; yet a light ffashes before us; or we rub
the eye and it sees the light it contains. This is sight without the act,
but it is the truest seeing, for it sees light whereas its other objects
were the lit, not the light . . .
1 lo had perhaps been impressed by Aristotle's observation that
after gazing at the sun colours are produced in the eye even after
it is closed, the secjuence beginning with white and ending with
black {On Drcai/i.s 4 syb). These subjective phenomena of colour
were of special interest from the second century onwards and
they prepare us for the more e.xtreme subjectivity of art and
theory in the early Middle Ages.^-^ Plotinus's aesthetic thought
was transmitted to the Middle Ages in the Hcxacniaron ot St
Basil the Cireat (II, vii, yf) but whether it had much effect on
medieval aesthetics may be doubted.Certainly his close
identification of colour with light met with little favour 111 later
centuries, which found the Peripatetic concern to distinguish
them (Oil Colours 793b) more sympathetic.
Yet the ancient tradition of interpreting the values of colours
according as they more or less embodied light was a very
persistent one. Pliny’s characterization of Tyrian purple was
well known to the Middle Ages. Descriptions ot the amethyst
by Isidore of Seville, Bede and Marbode ot Rennes related this
stone, whose colour Pliny had compared to the finest purple
stuff's {Sariiral History IX, .xxviii, i 3 5), to the hue of a dark rose.
Mos.iic pavement herder. C!orinth, first century
prebablv tlie earliest te be made entirely et glass cubes
mere sigmtie.mtly. inaugurating a mueli wider range et bright eeleurs than
had been .ivailable m stene. (i s)
nil I I A,Mi \i i\in Kii A\' I
as he had done niiyrontis roSiU rolorc siihlunii.'. 1\. \x\\ i. ;
rhis comparison may itself derive t'roiii .1 (ueek sour.-., su;.:- .1
\ ersion ot it appears in Creek in some eighth- (U' miuh-ceniur\
treatises, the Lucca .MS and the Moppot CLivuiiLi." I he su-ss
on lustre which is such a fe.iture o|' the Roni.in .u c;)unts ot
purple also emerges troiii some kite .Xiituiue Creek techiiK.il
liter.iture, as well .is from th.it of the niedies ,tl West. Lhe
Stockholm P.ipx rus of the late third or e.irl\- fourth centurs ad
includes three recipes for d\ ing purple w itli substitute ds esttitfs,
which refer to lustre; one of them is preficed b\- an admonition
to 'keep this a secret matter because the purple h.is .m extremeK
beautiful lustre'.^'’ In the eleventh centur\- the cr,iftsni.in know n
as the Anonymous Bernensis claimed in ,1 discussion ot egg-
tempera that his preparation would gi\ e .1 shine to red th.it was
'almost the effect of the most prized purple'. Isidore of Ses ille's
derivation ot the word pnrpnra from pnritato lucis. 'puritN ot
light', had a long lite 111 VC'estern thought until the
Renaissance.'^"
No less than the Ancients, medicwal spectators found it
difficult to isolate purple among a whole range of reds; tiuw,
too, sought to anchor their perceptions in ni.iteri.ils rather th.in
hues. Like the late-medieval terms 'sc.irlet' .iiui 'perse' {sec
Chapter 5), 'purple' in the early medieval West came to
designate not a hue but a thick quality of probably silk cloth,
which might be of almost any colour, including white and
green.This contusion is rather engagingly exemplitied in one
ot the mosaics in the tourteenth-century Church ot Christ in
Chora (now the Karije Djami) in Istanbul: in the scene ot Mary's
choice of coloured threads to w'eave into the curtain ot the
Temple (stc Chapter 7), the skein of purple, clearly labelled ps
porphiirion, is rendered by the mosaicist in a bright vermilion
red.'^^'
Thus (meek and Roman Antiquity passed down to its
posterity a set of assumptions about colour which were
modified only slowly and which gave far more prominence to
the value of light and shade than they gave to hue. Yet modified
they w'ere, and we can trace the nature of this moditication it we
focus on the posthumous fortune ot the most tamous ot ancient
artists, the painter Apelles.
Ai). dins p.ueineiit was
a great luxury, but
^7
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 2 • The Fortunes of Apelles
I'he four-colour theory ■ The prohlciii of uiixture ■ Apelles in the Renaissance
Diirer and 'Titian ■ 'The idea of the primaries ■ Apelles in the studio
In contrast to the generally ambiguous notions about hues
handed down to posterity by the ancient world is the story,
lormulated most clearly in Pliny’s Natural History, that some of
the best painters ot Classical times had made use of a very
deliberately limited palette:
Four colours only - white trom Milos, Attic yellow, red from
Sinope on the Black Sea, and the black called atramentum- were
used by Apelles, Aehion, Melanthius and Nikoinachus in their
immortal works; illustrious artists, a single one of whose pictures
the wealth ot a city would hardly suffice to buy, while now that
even purple clothes our walls, and India contributes the ooze of her
rivers and the blood of dragons and of elephants, no famous picture
is painted. We must believe that when the painters’ equipment was
less complete, the results were in every respect better, for . . . we arc
alive only to the worth of the materials and not to the genius of the
artist.'
Pliny’s account not only records the precise nature of the four
colours but also attributes their use to four named painters, first
of all to Apelles, who was born c. 370 bc and flourished in the
320s. He was the most famous of all ancient artists, in spite of the
fact that none ot his works had survived even until Pliny’s day.^
Nevertheless, Pliny and the other ancient writers on art were
able to pass on anecdotes about Apelles’s extraordinarily
successtul career and ^ most unusually — about his style. We
have already encountered the story of his remarkable dark
varnish, also called atramentum, like the black of the four-colour
palette; another told of his virtuoso performance as a draughst-
man, when he was able to outshine Protogenes with his
supremely hue line.^ Apelles was clearly one of those rare Greek
artists whose works could be vividly imagined.
All subsequent discussions of the four-colour palette stem
from Pliny or Cicero {Brutus 50) and perhaps the most recent is
in V. J. Bruno’s Form and Colour in Greek Painting (1977), where
the palette is exemplified in painted tombs at Lefkadia in Greece
and Kazanlak in Bulgaria, which date from the late fourth or
early third centuries bc, thus slightly later than Apelles. Bruno
has sought to establish the plausibility of Pliny’s story by
relating it to the pre-Socratic ideas of the four ‘basic’ colours of
the tour elements and by explaining the rather surprising
absence of blue in the four-colour palette on the grounds that
6 black pigments may be made to appear blue and that there was.
Nicolctto Rosex. Apelles, c. 1507/15. The most famous painter of ancient
(ireece contemplates a board bearing four geometrical shapes, perhaps the
graphic equivalents of the four elements, the four seasons, and the tour colours
ot his palette. (16)
indeed, an overlap in the Greek terms for black and blue.'*
Whether or not Pliny in the first centur\- was aware cif the
philosophical arguments relating colours to elements, and chose
his tour pigments according to those arguments, there is little
reason to think that they were ever in the minds of the fourth-
century BC painters. Empedocles, the earliest philostipher to
whom a four-colour theory of the elements was attributed,
makes no reterence to it in the surviving fragments of his
writings; his use of the term ‘polychrome’ {j)olychroa [.sir|) to
refer to the painter’s palette in Fragment 23 suggests that he was
not aware of any restriction of colours in workshop practice."’
Neither Aetius nor Stobaeus give details of the four colours thev
attribute to Empedocles’s theory of the elements.^ The earliest
text to name four colours as basic was. as we have seen, the Oti
Sense of Theophrastus, who was, as it happens, a near¬
contemporary of the painters named by Pliny: he reported that
Democritus in the late fifth century had argued that these
‘simple’ colours were white, black, red and green.^ Theophras¬
tus did not suggest that Democritus had related these colours to
the elements; in the On Colours (which may also be his work'*)
earth, air and water were all, as we saw, related to white and
yellow to fire. It was not until the first or second centuries ad. in
Aetius {Epitome of Physical Opinions 1, IS.S), in Galen {On the
Elements from the Hippocratic Opinions 1, 2) and in the pseudo-
Aristotelian On the World (396b), that there seems to have been
any agreement that there were tour basic colours related to the
four elements, and that these were black, white, red and yellow.
Perhaps the most promising rationale for the four-colour
theory ot Pliny is oflered by the Hippocratic doctrine ot the tour
humours, which were thought to express themselves in the
colours of the human complexion. For Apelles had a high
reputation as a painter of flesh (Plutarch, Alexander 4 and
Lucian, Pictures 7) and he had inherited an older Greek tradition
in painting which had represented differences in gender by
lighter or darker skin."* A gifted portraitist such as Apelles might
well have been expected to amplify this repertory. Some later
commentators on the four-colour palette did relate it specifi¬
cally to the painting ot skin.
The medical school of Hippocrates, who was a slightly older
contemporary of Apelles, had argued that man is made up ot
four ‘humours’; blood (red), phlegm (white) and yellow and
black bile, which in a perfectly balanced mixture {kresios) made
up a perfectly balanced organism.Yet in the corpus ot
Hippocratic writings we do not find this doctrine applied to the
colour of flesh. It was certainly applied to the four diagnostic
colours of the tongue {Epidemics VI, 5.8) but it was not until
Galen in the second century ad that it was extended to the
complexion and hence became available to painters ot the
29
 I III I OK I IM S ( )l AI'I'LI I S
figure.' ' Nor do the aneient writers on physiognomies take up
this doetriiie, although they were much concerned with the
colour of the comple.xion as an inde.x of personality- More
important, there is very little indication ot the use ot such
colouring in the most impressive body ot ancient portrait-
painting, the tempera or encaustic mummy-effigies ot Iffiiman
A' Egypt, which employ a similarly restricted palette tor flesh.' ’
Most of them were painted about the time that Clalen's
interpretations ot Hippocratic doctrine were spreading
throughout the Roman world.
In other examples of Cireek painting the absence ot blue in the
palette attributed to the four-colour artists continues to be a
serious problem. The argument, revived by Bruno, that
atriDJicnruiii may have been a blue-black pigment which, mixed
with white or used as a semi-transparent glaze, can be made to
appear blue, is convincing in itself but it hardly applies to the
history of the Cireek palette as we know it. As we saw in Chapter
I. there were many blue pigments in use from Mycenaean to
Hellenistic times; they were not blue-black but bright, saturated
blues made tor the most part trom the Egyptian blue trit called
kuaiios in Creek and caenileuiii in Eatin.'"^ It is blues of this sort
that we see in the Bronze Age wall-paintings of Thera and
Knossos, at Mycenae and Vergina as well as in the sixth-century
_s tombs at Kizilbel in Eycia, the tifth-century Tomb of the Diver
near Paestum and in the fourth-to-third-century paintings ot
EetTadia and Kazanlak. This is also the type ot blue used in the
tourth-century Kertsch-style ceramics which have been as¬
sociated with the style ot Apelles himselt.'^ Hellenistic works
which have been regarded as copies ot paintings by Apelles or
other four-colour painters, such as the Alexander Keraiinophon
and the ‘Alexander mosaic’ from Pompeii, also make use of a
range of blues and greens.’^ A fragment of panel-painting from
7 Saqqara in Egypt appears to use a four-colour palette; it is
particularly interesting in relation to Apelles since Pliny stated
that he painted almost exclusively on panel. This fragment,
from a portable shrine, is painted in white, black, red and yellow
ochre and their mixtures grey anci pink. There is no blue.’* It is
certainly not impossible that this small provincial work might
reflect the most advanced aesthetic of its period, but it hardly
seems to be enough to outweigh the improbable notion that a
group ot artists (and their patrons) should have abaiidoneci the
use ot a beautiful and tannhar pigment on purely aesthetic
grounds, and that this voluntary restraint should have found no
echo 111 the practice of their followers in late Antiquity.
The key both to Pliny’s account of the four-colour painters
and to the later interpretations of Apelles’s practice is surely
aesthetic choice; as suggested in Chapter i, Pliny was above all
concerned to show that the simplicity of the Ancients was
preferable to the modern proliferation of gaudy and expensive
materials, hike Cicero, he was giving an historical justification
to a tamiliar Roman critical theme, the complaint against
modern, exotic taste also voiced by Vitruvius, Seneca, Varro
and Petronius.So anxious was Pliny to establish the virtuous
sobriety ot his Classical artists that he fell into a serious
inconsistency in his various accounts of Apelles’s practice. The
tour colours he listed so precisely are all in the category of co lores
anstcri. as opposed to the colores floridi he attacked {Natural
History XXXV, xii, 30). In a passage on early monochrome
30
painting (XXXlll, xxix, 117), Pliny also accounted tor the
abandonment of the florid colours cinnabar and minium in
favour of the austere ochres nihrica and siiiopis, on the grounds
that the former were considered by later artists to be too vivid.
But in his account of Apelles’s dark varnish {see p. 16), he
claimed that one effect of this substance was to tone down florid
colours {iiiniis floridis colorihiis austeritateui occulte daret): ]ust that
class of pigments which he had earlier suggested Apelles had
been careful to avoid.-" It may well be that Pliny’s Cireek
sources distinguished variotis phases in this painter’s career, in
which he first used florid colours under a dark toning varnish
and later a restricted palette of austere colours - the sort ot
development which we know in the careers ot Diirer or Titian
or Rembrandt. However this may have been, it seems clear that
Pliny was prepared to sacrifice historical consistency in order to
promote a Roman ideal of aiisteritas. He may have been
thinking, for example, of the tour-colour palette used by the
white-ground Greek lekuthoi painters ot the fitth century bc:;
but his theory seems to owe more to the general notion ot the
irreducible number of‘simple’ colours current 111 his own time.
The problem of mixture
One of the most persistent arguments for the authenticity of the
four-colour theory is that the small number of basic pigment-
colours could have been substantially expanded by intermix¬
ture; one eighteenth-century scholar calculated that these four
colours alone could yield S19 variations.-’ It is an argument
which would have much to recommend it it it could be shown
that mixing was a usual procedure among Classical painters and
it It were not tor a body ot ancient opinion which condemned it.
In Fragment 23, Empedocles compared the mi.xture of the
elements in the material world with the painter’s blending
{luixante) of pigmeiics in their preparation of temple-offerings;--
in a discussion of the mixing-bowl mentioned by Herodotus
{History 1.25), Plutarch spoke of‘pigments ground together,
losing their own colour in the process’, mentioning especially
mixtures of red and yellow ochre and ot black and white
{Moralia 436bc). But elsewhere Plutarch voiced the painter’s
strongest objection to mixtures; ‘Mixing produces conflict,
conflict produces change, and putrefaction is a kind ot change.
This IS why painters call a blending of colours a deflowering
[phthora: Aristotle’s term for a ‘passing away’] and Homer [Iliad
IV, 141] calls dyeing “tainting”; and common usage regards
“the unmixed and pure as virgin and undefiled”.’-*
Portraiture is perhaps the context in which we should expect
to find mi.xtures for the painting of flesh, for here the problems
of matching tints in nature with colouring materials must soon
have been apparent. Plato refers the mixture of several colours
specifically to flesh-painting {Cratylus 4240).^'’ Both here and in
the encyclopaedia of Julius Pollux a flesh-tint is given a special
term; audreikelon {Oiioiuasticoti VII, 129). Yet there is some
reason to think that even flesh-tints were sought in an unmixed
state: in his discussion of red-ochre {miltos), Theophrastus stated
that it was found naturally in many diflerent nuances, ‘hence
painters use it for flesh tints’.^*
As Plutarch’s remark suggests, there was a lively discussion
about the nature of mixture in Antiquity: was it, as the

Phitoiiists and l^'ripatctics held, that onl\’ the qualities nf
substaiiees were truly mixed, while the substances themselves
remained in sume looser form of association; or was it. as the
Stoics maintained, that the substances were themselves fused
together and hence destroyed? The crucial question was
whether the process was reversible, whether the compound
could be reduced again to its elements. Chmiposition by
juxtaposition {suiitlicsii, parallicsis or )iiixis) was reversible;
tusion {suiiiliiisis) was not, for it led to the destruction (jilHhora)
ot the elements.-'’ Aristotle {On (h-ncration and ({Corruption 32Sa)
distinguished two types of mixture as homogeneous physical
mixture and purely perceptual ’optical’ mixture. The latter
notion was attributed to nemocritus the atoniist by Aristotle’s
commentator Alexander ot Aphrodisias in the third century
Plutarch’s record ot studio-language suggests that painters
deplored fusion and the less drastic optical method was indeed a
part ot ancient technique; the building-up of tones by su¬
perimposed hatchings, rather than by tones established and
mi.xed betorehand, can be seen both in the wall-paintings of
Pompeii and in the rarer examples of tempera-painting on
panel, such as a imiimny-portrait dating from the fourth
century Another form of ‘optical’ mi.xttire practised in
Egypt and Classical Greece was the glazing of a transparent
colour over an opaque one, a method noticed by both Aristotle
{On Sense qqoa) and Pliny {Natural History XXX’V, xxvi, 45).-^
Here, too, the mixture was easily resolvable into its component
parts, as we can see from the frequent flaking of the upper layers.
Apelles was known in Antiquity as a painter in wax encaustic
(.Statius, Siluae I. i, 100; Lucian, Pictures 23), which was the
ancient method that appro.ximates most closely to modern
painterly techniques of mixing, especially in the painting of
flesh. In the mummy-portraits of Hawara and el-Fayum and in
the Early Christian encaustic icons ot Sinai, we often have a sense
of a more spontaneous blending and working-together ot tones
on the panel itself, which reminds us of the oil-paintcrs of
sixteenth-century 'Venice and sometimes even ot Rembrandt.
Pollux’s account of painting methods, although it lists thirteen
colours, places particular emphasis on mixing and seems to refer
chiefly to encaustic; the term niixai is applied to wax and tour
terms are listed in connection with the mixture ot colours;
kerasai, niixai, synnnixai and syncheaiP^ Yet even the most
painterly of the mummy-portraits, such as a second-century
Priest of the Sun from Hawara, show an extensive use ot
hatchings to model the flesh.Also, the palette of the encaustic
painter as given by Pliny and Pollux was far from restricted,
suggesting that in any case mixtures w'ere not much in
demand.-^'’ Encaustic was one of the few ancient techniques to
have survived unmodified into the Middle Ages; it is documen¬
ted m the ninth century in Byzantium and the group ot sixth-
and seventh-century encaustic icons in the monastery ot St
Catherine on Mount Sinai is among the most impressive
monuments of Early Christian painting.Yet in the fourth
century, Ctregory of Nyssa, one of the most widely read Greek
Fathers, who must have been especially flmiiliar with this
technique, compared the soul to the painter precisely because
both could separate the already mixed into its constituent parts;
his analogy referred to the ‘elemental’ colours of the four-
colour painters — black, white, red and yellow.
nil I ()K11 \i s (ii \i'i 111 s
Perhaps the most telling indication that mixtures were not
common 111 ancient times is the absence of ,1 tool fiir making
them. iiameK' the palette. '*’ .•\nother is the extraordin.it \
ignorance tit the principles and eflects ot'mixtures which soeiiis
to have prex ailed .iiiiong the ediic.ited. It has been well argued
by Bruno that the difficult passage on mixture 111 Pl.iio's Ptniaeu.-
{see p. 12) can be made to yield a pertectK' cogent meaning it the
colour-terms are ctirrectly uiiderstmid but Platti dehber.itelv
discouraged investigation.None ot'the mixtures he listed w as.
strictly, inter-chromatic; all were made with 'hghtetiers' or
‘darkeners’, elements with which (ireek scientists t'elt them¬
selves to be rather more at lumie. In the second centurx .\i)
Atilus Gellitis reported an interesting discussion between the
philosopher Eavorintis and the ex-consul Ftoiuo on the subiect
ot Greek and Latin colour-terms, which rex eals the prewiihng
uncertainties about basic colours and mixtures. Following
Democritus, the simple colours were taken to be red {rufus) and
green. Piilvus (classified as a type of red) was a mixture of red
and green and fauns (also taken by Fronto to be a red), ot'red,
green and white.'*' Both /u/i'h.v and fauus seem to us to be
varieties ot yellow, only to be mi.xed from red and green bv an
additive, optical process such as was hinted at bv Aristotle in his
account ot the rainbow {Meteoroloi^y 347a, y-S).-'** Gellius has no
reference at all to blue and the discussion does not suggest that a
knowdedge derived from the practical experience of colotir-
mi.xmg w'as current in his day. A century later, an account of the
rainbow by Alexander ot Aphrodisias also suggests that mixture
was not the usual procedure among painters. Aristotle had
claimed that it was impossible for painters to represent the
phenomenon since, although they did some mixing, no
mi.xtures could produce the rainbow-colours red, green or
violet. In his commentary on this passage Alexander consider¬
ably extended the argument;
That the . . . colours of the rainbow can neither be procured nor
imitated by painters, and that red {phoiiiikoiin, puniceusj is closer to
W'hite than green [prasinou, prasinus] and violet [halouryon, halurpus]
is clear from the following. The natural red pigments are cinnabar
[kinnahari] and dragon’s blood \drakotnion\ which are made from
the blood of animals;'**’ red is also made from a mixture [ni/.vb'l of
talc [koiipholithos] and purple \porphuron. purpiireuui], but this is
much inferior to the natural colours. Natural green and
violet are chrysocolla and ostruiu. the one made troin blood and the
other sea-purple.■*' But the artificial colours cannot match them:
green is indeed made from blue |kiniMeii] and yellow [J('/ire/(|, but
violet from blue and red, for the contrasting energies of blue and
yellow make green, but those of blue and red. violet. And in these
cases the artificial colours are far interior to the natural . . . I'liat red
is closer to white than green and violet is evident from their origin.
For red is made from talc, which is white, but green from ochre,
which is a weaker white, for a [gradually| darkened light appears
first to be changed into this colour, thus red is closer than green to
white . . . But again [it is clear] that green is closer than violet to
white, since the former is made from yellow, but violet from red
. . . and yellow is closer than red to white . .
From this account, which seems to be the earliest attempt to
establish a value-scale between white and black, it appears that
although painters sometimes mi.xed cheaper substitutes tor
3I
 THl- l-ORI I'NhS ()1 APKI.LF.S
natural pigments, they did not, so far as Alexander knew,
attempt to mateh the colours of nature with mixtures on the
palette.
The Attic Sii^htc of (iellius and Alexander’s commentary on
Aristotle’s Meteorology were both tamiliar texts in the Middle
Ages and the Renaissance, when they were often reprinted.
Their rather loose classification of hues and their uncertainty
about mixtures may well have contributed to the delay in the
development of notions of primary colours until well into the
sixteenth century.
Apelles ill the Renaissance
The reputation of Apelles was kept alive during the Middle
Ages in biographies of artists and popular stories, but it was not
until the fifteenth century that the nature of his art became a
widespread topic of discussion. The competition with Proto¬
genes to draw the finest line attracted the attention of the artists
and theorists Alberti and Ghiberti in Florence; Apelles’s
painting Caluiimy. the subject of a famous description by
Lucian, became a favourite topic both in literature and in art.'^-^
The first portrait of him in his professional role seems to be a
print by the north Italian engraver Nicoletto Rosex, produced
16 111 the early sixteenth century.Rosex presented the artist in a
romantic lanciscape setting as a silent poet, alluding to the
celebrated dictum attributed to Simonides that painting is silent
poetry. Apelles contemplates a board bearing geometrical
figures, which is resting against the base of twin broken
columns, the emblem of strength, and perhaps an allusion to
Apelles’s famous power over princes.
Perhaps the most surprising feature of this portrait is the
object of Apelles’s meditation. It recalls that remarkable joint
‘picture’ by Apelles and Protogenes, the three lines, which Pliny
recorded as having survived at Rome until the time of the
Caesars; ‘and among the numerous works by excellent painters
it was like a blank [itiani siinilem], and it was precisely this that
lent it surpassing attraction and renown’ {Natural History
XXXV, xxxvi, 83). The architect’s square resting at the foot of
the panel and the callipers depicted on the base of the ruined
monument suggest that the artist is primarily a geometer, as he
had been presented in Ghiberti’s first Commentary where the
competition with Protogenes had been interpreted as a compe¬
tition in perspective."^'’ But if Apelles was simply a geometer,
the inclusion on his panel of the lowest of the four figures, the
octagon, is puzzling, for the three ‘primary’ figures of the circle,
the triangle and the square were usually considered in the
Renaissance to be a sufficient symbol of the whole of plane
geometry.On the other hand, if we regard the figures of
Apelles’s diagram to be symbolic of solids - the sphere, the
pyramid, the cube and the octahedron — we fall into another
numerical difficulty, for the doctrine of the primary bodies
attributed in late Antiquity of Pythagoras and much discussed in
north Italy around 1500 involved a series of five regular solids:
the pyramid, the cube, the octahedron, the icosahedron and the
dodecahedron."^® The absence of the sphere is especially striking
but Aetius had characterized the dodecahedron as ‘the sphere of
air, an idea repeated by Luca Pacioli in his De Divina Proportiotie
{On Divine Proportion) published in Venice in 1509."^'^
3^
A different series, of four geometrical solids, had been
established by Plato in his discussion of the structure of the
elements {Tiniaeus s^d tf) and elaborated by Theon of Smyrna
early in the second century AD.®" According to this view, all the
elements were based on a combination of triangles, descending
in complexity from the most rarified, fire (pyramid), through
air (octahedron) and water (icosahedron) to the densest, earth, a
cube composed of forty-eight triangles surrounded by six
equilateral pentagons. If Rosex intended to refer to this scheme
of solids and elements, why, by including a circle, did he allude
to the sphere, which had no direct part m it? According to the
Platonic doctrine, the circle in Apelles’s diagram should
correspond to the icosahedron, for the pyramid, the cube and
the octahedron are clearly symbolized in his other plane figures.
The icosahedron, constructed from twenty equilateral triangles,
IS not a solid that can be reduced to an easily legible plane figure.
Pacioli treated it as the most comprehensive solid, with the
exception of the dodecahedron {De Divina Proportiotie XLVI),
and showed that it could circumscribe even the dodecahedron
itself (XXXIX). ITe amplified Plato’s discussion of water in the
Timaeus by suggesting that the very large number of surfaces 111
this figure had led the philosopher to think ‘that it suited the
sphere more readily because of its downward rather than
upward motion when scattered’, i.e. that this figure was indeed
closely related to the sphere.®" If Rosex was following the
Platonic schema, and if he expected his public to identify the
circle with the icosahedron and with water and the other three
figures with the other elements, it seems entirely likely that he
felt this to be appropriate to the subject of his print precisely
because of Apelles’s reputation as a four-colour painter, and
because of the association between the four colours and the four 59
elements that had been such a commonplace since late
Antiquity.
Rosex’s engraving is not coloured, however, and the reading
of his four shapes as colours is not as straightforward as it might
first seem. None of the ancient commentators related specific
colours to specific elements, except for the author of On Colours,
who named only two colours, yellow and white. On the other
hanci, the Demoentan view that the elements were not
themselves coloured - that colour was only a secondary quality
of matter - persisted well into the Middle Ages.®^ The earliest
writer to allocate different colours to the elements seems to have
been the second-century AD Athenian astrologer Antiochos
who, like Theon of Smyrna, drew up an elaborate table of
correspondences in which black was the colour of earth, red of
air, white of water and yellow of fire.®® There is no reason to
think that this four-colour scheme (the same as that of the four-
colour painters) was known in the fifteenth century. When
Alberti came to relate colours to the elements in his treatise on
painting, his correspondences were quite different because he
did not regarci black and white as basic colours at all. For him,
red corresponded to fire, blue to air, green to water and ash-
colour {cinereum) to earth.®"'' Rosex’s contemporary Leonardo
da Vinci rehabilitated black and white as ‘simple’ colours, ‘for
painters cannot do without them’, but he identified the elements
with four colours between them: his equivalents were Alberti’s,
except that where Alberti had excluded yellow and introduced
green, Leonardo allocated yellow to earth.®®

Thus, seen in the light ot cnntenipnrary north Italian theory,
the diagram in Rosex's engraving would read, from the top:
Cdrcle - icosahedron-water green
Triangle-pyramid -tire -red
Square-cube -eartli-yellow
Octagon-octahedron-air-hlue
But this would be to assume the universal acceptance of the
Rlatonic equivalents, which was clearly not the case. Leonardo,
for example, disputed the identification of the cube with earth;
tor him the pyramid was the more stable body, tor it had tewer
surfaces than the cube and was thus a more appropriate symbol
of earthly stability.
The question is further complicated by the survival into the
Renaissance of another four-colour scheme, derived from the
6 late-antique symbolism ot the imperial horse-races. Here the
association was chiefly with the four seasons, which Alberti
introduced into his treatise on architecture as green for spring,
red tor summer, white for autumn and dark (J'nsciis) for
winter.'"’^ The late-antique and Byzantine authors who had
dicussed the question in relation to the Imperial Circus, notably
Tertullian, Cassiodorus and Corippus, had not followed this
scheme. They all agreed with Alberti about spring and summer
but Tertullian and Corippus assigned blue to autumn and white
to winter, and Cassiodorus the reverse.^® Theon of Smyrna had
proposed;
Spring-pyramid [i.c. fire-rcd|
Summer-octahedron |i.c. air-bluc|
Autumn-icosahedron [i.e. water-green]
Winter-cube [i.c. earth—yellow]
and Antiochus of Athens;
Spring-red
Sum mer-yellow
Autumn-black
Winter—white
Thus around 1500 we are presented with a number of arbitrary
and conflicting options for linking ‘basic’ colours to ‘basic’
forms. No clear reasons for preferring one colour to another had
yet emerged, probably because there w'as still remarkably little
interest in that aspect of colour now regarded as the most
important one, namely htie.®^ It seems clear that, it Rosex’s
16 portrait of Apelles was understood to refer to the four-colour
palette, his public would have been hard put to it to identify
which shapes these colours were, even with the help of Pliny’s
story.
Diircr at id Titian
Apelles’s fame made his the most appropriate name to invoke in
a learned compliment to a modern artist and it was frequently
used in the Middle Ages, sometimes in the most unlikely
places.(Pacioli’s references to Leonardo’s art as surpassing
those of Apelles and the sculptors Myron and Polyclitus fall into
this purely adulatory category.**) The growing interest in the
imagined formal qualities and subject-matter of Apelles’s work
during the fifteenth century may lead us to expect more critical
I 111 I ( )K 1 I \l s ( il \1M Ills
and more concrete allusions to him in the lligh Renaissance,
especially in contexts \\ here painters .iiul schol.irs \\ ere becom¬
ing more interdependent in their treatment of the (. flassical past.
Two painters ot the sixteenth centurv closeK associated with
humanist scholarship were Diirer. whose Cflassical interests
were tor a tune remarkablv close to those of iLr.ismiis. .md
Titian, whose circle in the middle years of the centurs included
a number of scholars and polymaths working tor the X’enetian
publishing houses of'Ciiohto .md Marcohm. Both .irtists were
compared to Apelles more persistently than any before them,
and in both cases it w as their mastery of colour which seems
chiefly to have invited the comparison.
Diirer and Erasmus at first cultivated their interest in Apelles
independently of each other. I'lie painter had been described as
alfcro Apcllc by the humanist Cionrad Deltis as earl\- as i 500.*-
few years later Diirer was using the loss of all the ancient
writings on art, including those of Apelles (Pliny. .Vunuci/
Fiistory XXXV, .x.x.xvi, 79) as a stimulus to compiling his own
treatise on painting, most of which was itself luwer to be
published.*-^ Thus it was Apelles the theorist who seems chiefl\-
to have concerned the painter; ftir the humanist Erasmus, on the
other hand, it was Apelles the satirist: in 1506 he had edited
Lucian’s Slander, the only early source of information about the
Calumny of Apelles, and in response to the bitter attacks on his
first edition of the New Testament ten years later, he empkwed
Ambrosius Holbein to cut a version of this subject for the title-
page of the second edition.Erasmus and Dtirer met in ’Hie
Netherlands in 1520, when the painter took the scholar’s
likeness twdee. For Erasmus he soon became nostrum ApelleniA^
But It W’as at the end of the painter’s life that Erasmus made his
most telling comparison betw'een Dtirer and Apelles: he
introduced into his Dialoy’uc on the Proper Protmneiafion of Latin
and Greek (1528) a passage on Diirer’s prints in which he claimed
that the painter was able to achieve with a single colour what
Apelles had only been able to achieve with several, ‘albeit
few’.** It was astonishing that, whereas the (ireek painter had
been supreme through his use of these tew colours, the Clerman
was supreme in his day wdthout the benefit of any save black.
Erasmus could here have been reflecting his friend’s view ot the
virtues of a restricted palette: Philipp Melancthon recalled how
the painter had told him he had abandoned in old age the
complexity and vivid colouring of his early work {fioridas et
maxinie varias picturas) in favour of greater simplicity; Diirer’s
only surviving discussion of colour, a note on drapery-painting
of about 1512/3, presumably part of his projected treatise on
painting, already emphasized the chromatic simplicity ot relief
as opposed to the complexities demanded by the rendering of
shot materials.**' But that Erasmus did not think of the colours
in this sense, and that he did not refer to them either in his notes
to Pliny’s Natural History (which he published 111 i 516) or in the
introduction to the new edition of 1525, where he re-told the
story of Apelles’s damaged I 'enusA*^ suggests that the four-
colour palette was ofno interest to him and that it had no special
significance for Dtirer either.
Clould Pliny’s story have been of any direct concern to
painters when the significance and even the identity ot the tour
colours remained so obscure? Clertainly in the seventeenth
century it was suggested that the story found a sympathetic echo
33
 mi lORri NTS ()l Al’I 1 I FS
,mu)ng earlier paiiuers in Venice, especially with I iti.in. In his
hte ot (rioryione the seventeenth-century writer Clarlo Ridcilh
w.is anxious to show that this painter was the first to employ an
extensive r.inge ot mixtures tor the more perfect imitation ot
nature, particularly tor hesh,
which was imitated b\' (hur^io with a tew colours adequate
to the sub|ect he undertook to express, wliicli procedure was also
followed (ifwe arc to belicwe their writers) anionp; the ancients, by
the illustrious painters Apelles, Aetion, Melanthius
Nikoin.ichos, who used no more than tour colours |u)/i)ri| to
constitute tiesh tints.
Modern analvsis of (uorgione’s flesh-painting has certainly
shown an avoidance of 'florid' pigments and it is particularly
interesting that Ridolfi confined the restricted palette to this
area.^‘’ It was as a flesh-painter, too, that he regarded Titian as
the closest follower ot (.liorgione, although he was equally
certain of Titian's special interest in blue, which in combination
with red in drapery 'never interferes with the figures’.'*
Another seventeenth-century Venetian commentator, Marco
Boschini, cited Titian’s preference for a palette limited to black,
white and red in underpain ting, which may also refer to the
preparation of flesh areas.Titian’s personal interest in Apelles
can hardly be doubted: his three-quarter-length Bridgewater
1 j I 'ei/iis was clearly inspired by the story of Appelles’s I ’e/a/s
Aiiadyoweiie, whose lower portion was damaged (Rliny XXXV,
xx.xvi, 91),^^ but even in this picture Titian did not avoid the use
of blue outside the areas of flesh.
It became a commonplace to link the names of Titian and
Apelles in that large body of Venetian art-criticism which grew
up about the middle of the sixteenth century in the writings of
Rietro Aretino, Anton Francesco Doni and Lociovico Dolce. All
were in direct contact with the painter and all show a
knowledge of the life of Apelles as told by Rliny.In several
letters between isqo and 1548, including one to Titian himself,
Aretino compared the painter to Apelles but, although it was
Titian's colour which chiefly aroused his admiration, he
nowhere mentioned the four-colour story as an example of his
mastery.Doni, in his dialogue on painting of 1549, made a
comparison betw'een Apelles and Titian as physiognomists and,
although he showed a particular interest in pigments (especially
their capacity to render flesh), he, too, made no reference to
Rliny’s story.Rerhaps the most striking evidence of the lack of
interest in the four-colour story in Titian’s ainbieiite is offered by
Dolce, who was one ot the most prolific poligrafi working tor
(holito and one of the most vigorous supporters of Titian,
whose work he praised particuarly in the dialogue L’Aretitio,
published by Giolito m 1557. Here Dolce professed a special
liking tor the brownish softness in flesh-tints he attributed to
Apelles who, he said, had particularly cultivated brown;
surprisingly, he did not go on to associate this sombre tonality
with a restricted palette.Dolce was familiar with Rliny’s story
in its most modern form: in 1565 he published Dialogo . . . iiel
quale si ragioiia della qiialita, diversita e proprietd de i colori, much of
which is taken direct from Rliny but also from the Lihellus de
Colorihus of Anthonius Thylesius, first published in Venice in
1528. Thylesius had linked Rliny’s account of the ‘florid’ and
‘austere’ colours to the four-colour palette, a passage Dolce
34
reproduced in his own version.He amplified 1 hylesius s
protest that he wrote as a philologist, not as a philosopher or a
painter, by claiming that the painter’s view belonged to the
‘divine Titian’,but again he made no attempt to suggest that
Titian was working according to four-colour principles. If the
four-colour theory had enjoyed any currency at all among
Venetian painters from the 1540s to the 1560s, we may be sure
that scholar-journalists such as Aretino, Doni and Dolce, avid
for copy, would have made the most of it.***’
and
Even in the latter half of the sixteenth century, when Rliny’s
story had come to be e.xaniined more closely in the light of
painterly practice, its significance for the interpretation of
Titian’s methods did not seem to be very great. The volume on
painting in a remarkable illustrated catalogue (On the Pictures
placed ill Audrea ] ’eudraiiiiu’s Museum) compiled for the Venetian
collector Andrea Vendramin in the 1620s, which includes
reproductions of many works attributed to Giorgione and
Titian, has a Latin preface extracted from the Gallus Roiiiae
Hospes (1585, 1609) of Louis de Montjosieti (Demontiosms).
Montjosieti’s work, reprinted several times in the seventeenth
century under the title Commeutarius de Pictura, includes one of
the most important early discussions of the four-colour palette
(.s'ccp.35); here 1 want to notice that although the surrounding
matter on the history of ancient painting is reproduced by
Vendramin’s cataloguer the analysis of the four-colour theory is
not.*** Clearly it was of no interest to him and it is very likely
that as late as the 1620s it had not been associated with Venetian
technique. Ridolfi’s linking of the limited palette to Giorgione
in 1648 was, like Rimy’s own account, part of a polemic against
the garishness of modern painting, particularly against the flesh-
tints of ‘grey, orange and blue’ which he had noticed among
‘some moderns’, by whom he probably intended Federico
Barocci and Rubens.**^ There is little reason to suppose that the
sombre palette was ever an issue with the earlier Venetian
painters themselves, who would have found the exclusion of
blue dift'icult to accept. It is an irony of history that, through the
work of philologists such as Montjosieti in the late sixteenth
century, blue had become firmly established as a component of
the four-colour palette and that this palette could be at the
centre of the development of the mociern system of‘primary’
colours.
The idea of the pyhiiaries
Closely related to the question of colour mixture is that of the
irreducible number ot colours needed to re-constitute the whole
range ot visible hues, a question we generally take for granted
but which even nineteenth-century colour theory did not settle,
proposing as it did diflerent numbers and sets of primary colours
according to whether colour was seen from the point of view of
the physicist, the psychologist or the painter.®^ The early
history of the idea ot the primaries is comple.x: it seems clear that
the very late cievelopment of the modern subtractive triad of
red, yellow and blue, in the context of painting, was itself
witness to the reluctance to experiment with mixtures which we
have seen. A further obstacle was the linguistic problem of
classifying colours in a range of specific substances. Rliny, in his
account of the four-colour painters, was able to distinguish

between piiginents and abstract cnlour terms; the white of Mikis
was ‘ex albis’, the red of Sinope ‘ex rubris’, atraDicntiiiii was ‘ex
nigris’; but here two of the terms were simply the names of the
places ot origin ot the materials. Pliny’s tourth colour - also
identitied by its place ot origin — si/ from Attica, was such a
doubtful term that it became the subject of an important
controversy in the sixteenth century. Favorinus, according to
Aulus ('rellius, recognized the poverty of (Ireek and Latin
colour-terms, as compared with the capacity of the eye to
discriminate between nuances ot colour, and he made his
abstract colour-categories tar more wide-ranging than we
would do. His rulnir included purple {ostriiDi) on the one hand
and yellow (crocuiii) on the other.The technical literature of
the Middle Ages tor the most part avoided an engagement with
abstract colour-terms and simply listed specific colorants.A
number of late medieval texts do show an awareness of the
problems ot abstract colour classes but they too pass quickly to
the discussion ot pigments. The tourteenth-century Neapolitan
De Arte Illtiininaiidi {On the Art of Ulumitiation), for example,
attributed to Pliny the view that there are three ‘principal’
colours, black white and red, and that all the others are
‘intermediate’. The author then proceeded to show that the
illuminator required eight natiiralcs colores and listed the classes
niger, alhus, rtiheits, glaums, azurinus, violaceus, rosaceus and
viridis', but finally he classified the pigments yielding these hues
according to whether they were natural or artifical and arrived
at a figure of some twenty colouring agents. Similarly the late
fourteenth-century Tuscan writer and painter Cennino Cenmni
began the chapter on colours in his Lihro dell’arte {Book of Art) by
stating that there are seven ‘natural’ colours, then opted for four
‘minerar colours — black, red, yellow and green - the last three
ot which are ‘natural’, but needed to be helped artificially by
white, ultramarine or azurite and giallorinoA'^ Clearly Cennini
was concerned neither with the status of ‘natural’ colours nor
with the precise distinction between these and the ‘artificial’
ones; he had little interest in theory but felt, significantly, that he
must make some gesture towards it at the start of his account.
Several early sixteenth-century Venetian writers deplored
the prevailing confusion about the nature and number ot basic
colours;®^ indeed, with the increasing use of mixtures brought
about by the development of the oil technique, we might well
expect that some more empirical approach to the problem
would emerge in the course ot the century from a painterly
milieu. It has rightly been suggested that the most important
feature of the first modern colour-systems, which make their
appearance about 1600, is the new prominence given to blue.*^'^
Although blue had been an important colour throughout the
Middle Ages, it does not seem to have formed part ot a set ot
‘basic’ colours: we have seen that green was far more usual in
such sets. In the si.xteenth century, when Titian showed a
particular liking for blue, the view that it was essential to the
basic set began to gam ground and, by a curious linguistic error,
to be incorporated into the context of Pliny’s four-colour
system. The problem was the precise identification of Attic sil.
In the Xatural History (XXXIll, Ivi, 158) Pliny had stated that
both sil (yellow ochre) and caeruleiun (probably azurite) occur 111
gold and silver mines: this may have led to a contusion ot the
two pigments, a confusion all the easier in the later Middle Ages
I in I OW I l M S I II \l'l I I I s
when a term tor yellow, ceriilus (perhaps trom (i r.i, \\ ,i\ . w ,is in
use.'^” A late titteemh-ceinurv V enetian commenator on Phn\.
Ermolao Barbaro, was possibK the first to m.ike the
contusion,''' soon ftdlowed b\ ,1 number ot other writers.
Clesare Vesariano, in his comment.ir\ to the m.igmticem i szi
Ckmu) edition ot Vitrusius. stated categoriealK th.it >il w,is
ultramarine (although he here contused lapis l.izuli and a/uritei;
Thylesius m 1 accepted th.it silaceus \\ .is ■among the blues’.
Vtiily in the middle ot the eentuiw did the topic become
important in the context ot pamterK' mixture. In .1 tre.itise on
monetary values, written probably atter i snj w hen he became
deputy director {luogotenente) of the Florentine .‘\ec.ideim.i del
Disegno, Vasari’s triend Vincenzo Horghim adduced Phns's
attack on the abuse ot expenswe pigments, cuing the tour-
colour story; but he was unable to prox ule a colour-equu alent
tor attico, as he had dtme tor all the other terms, as it he w.is
uncertain whether the CJreek painters could e\ er h,i\ e m.inaged
without bhie.''-^ A decade later a French encs clopedia ot the arts.
Pierre Clregoire’s Syntaxeon .drtis Mirahilis. proposed, following
an earlier French commentator on Vitruvius. Cieorges Philan¬
der, that sil was ianthinus, a shade ot violet, but he also added the
important suggestion that trom the tour colours all others could
be mixed.The most substantial discussion ot the whole
question was made in 1585 in the (foninientarius de Ihctura
{Coifunentary on Ihtiiiting) by the French mathematician, philo¬
sopher and bear-leader Louis de Montjosieu, who had arm ed in
Rome tw'o years earlier. Fie was one ot the first scholars to test
the descriptions of ancient styles by reference to contemporary
practice, rejecting the view that the competition between
Apelles and Protogenes had been a demonstration ot drawing
supremely thin lines, since he had not found such an emphasis in
the work of modern draughtsmen such as Raphael. Michelan¬
gelo, Salviati, Polidoro da Caravaggio, Correggio or Titian.
When he came to Pliny’s account of the four colours he found
Philander’s alternative ot purple or yellow tor sil contusing: he
stated clearly (61) that one of the tour colours must have been
blue: ‘For it is certain that these four colours, white, black, red
and blue, are the fewest that are needed in painting, and trom a
mixture ot which all the others are composed.’ However.
Montjosieu went on to list a number ot mixtures which may
cast doubt on his practical experience: we may accept his grey
{cineraceus) composed of black and white and his brown {fulrus)
made from red and black; but his green was a mixture ot red and
blue and his yellow {luteus) a mixture ot green and red, which
suggests that he was still thinking very much in Classical terms,
for there is no indication that he was concerned with the optical
mixture which might give this result.'"’ What is important is
that Montjosieu stressed the dependence ot all colours upon
these basic four, that Attic sil (as opposed to other types ot sil.
which might be violet or yellow) was always blue, and that his
views were several times republished and widely read during
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
The several accounts of the primary colours which appeared
about 1600, which established the modern subtractive triad ot
red, yellow and blue, appealed to the experience ot mixing in
painting although, for the most part, they were written by
physicians.The Irish chemist Robert Boyle, writing in mid¬
century, summed up the way in which painters had guaranteed
35
I HI 1OIM I NKS ()l API l.LhS
k)r natural philosophers the identity of the newly discovered
prnnars' set, in Iixpcrimciits & (^TiistdcriUtons 1 onchiiii^ Ce/cn/rs
(1664) 219-Ai:
I herc .ire hut few Simple .ind hrinuiry Ckilours (it I may so call
them) from whose \-arious compositions all the rest do as it were
Ik'sult. For though Painters can imitate the Hues (though not
always the Splendor) of those almost Numberless diflering coknirs
that are t'O be met \s ith in the Works of Nature, and ot Art, I have
not yet found, that to e.xhibit this strange Variety they need imploy
any more than White and Black, and Red, and Blew, and Vt’/Zeip;
these fi’c. variously Compoittnlcd, and (it I may
DcLOinpoiiiidcd. being suflicient to exhibit a Variety and Number ot
dolours, such, as those that are altogether Strangers to the Painters’
Pallets, can hardly imagine.
The growing conviction that the primary colours were three,
and that black and white stood in some sense outside this triad,
even if they could still be regarded as colours, threw the
interpretation of Pliny’s account still further into confusion.
I'he archaeologist }. C. Boulenger hedged his bets in the 1620s
by claiming that modern painters mixed their hues trom either
three or tour colours, without naming them.'^’^ The three (or
five) colour scheme, which Boyle clearly presented as a novelty,
cannot be seen to have been generally accepted until the end ot
the century. Furthermore, it Attic si/ was now identified as blue
it could not also be a yellow, so Apelles’s four colours w'ere no
closer to being assimilated to the new triad ot primaries.The
French mathematician Mann Cureau de la Chambre, in a
treatise on the rainbow ot 1650, was still worrying over the
discrepancies ot Pliny’s story. Apelles was known to have been a
wondertul painter ot lightning but it si/ were blue, his tour-
colour palette could not include yellow ‘which is proper for the
representation of brightness’. The ancient authors must have
been referring not to classes of abstract colours but to pigments,
and It was w^ell known, said Cureau, that si/s were both yellow
and blue; so he could conclude that yellow, like blue and red, ‘is
a simple and primary colour’.The German painter Joachim
von Sandrart, too, found it hard to reconcile Pliny’s account —
which he attributed to the painter Euphranor (see Chapter i) —
with the modern doctrine of the primary colours; he proposeci
that black and white be removed from the series, which must
surely have been ‘the four bright [htinte] colours red, yellow,
blue and green, necessary to paint the whole creation’.
Apelles ill the studio
Thus the problem of the number and identity of these basic
colours continued to be a perplexing one: Roger de Piles,
writing at the end of the seventeenth century in the context of
the French Academy of Painting, called the four colours of the
ancients ‘capitales’ but did not specify them, although 111 his
adaptation ot Ridolfi’s account of Venetian flesh-paintmg he
excluded black and white from their number. Similarly, the
anonymous French translation of Pliny’s Book XXXV, which
appeared in London in 1725, glossed the four colours as ‘Simples
& primitives’, without further comment.But during the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as the red-yellow-blue
reading ot the primaries became the orthodoxy among theor¬
3h
ists of art, so Pliny’s story came to be interpreted entirely
in Its terms. The second (1762) edition ot A. J. Dezallier
d’Argenville's H/ircyc de /a vie desp/iis faineux peiiitres noted that a
system of five primaries — Boyle’s - had been ‘a peu pres’ that ot
the four-colour painters of Antiquity, a verdict quoted with
approval by the critic C. L. von Hagedorn in Germany.
F^agedorn observed that Pliny had been concerned to recall
painters to a primitive simplicity ot colouring, an endeavour he
thoroughly supported, and this was again to be the nub ot the
story during the Neo-Classical period. Fde also claimed that
painters rarely noticed that they had more than tour colours on
so speak)
their palettes, forgetting the black and the white, and he
concluded, somewhat opaquely: ‘And if they make a mystery ot
this, that does not disprove my thesis; for often the artist, palette
m hand, paints with such impetuousity that he would be hard
put to it to give a detailed account of his mixtures’.Yet
Fdagedorn was writing at a time when the setting of the palette
(see Chapter 10) was still a thoroughly organized affair, and its
range of pigments was far from restricted to tour. Flow did the
artist of the eighteenth century imagine that Apelles had set his?
The Renaissance interpreters of the theme ot the Ca/timny had
given no sign that they were anxious to follow Apelles m respect
of colour; they made, for example, an abundant use ot blue.^°^
Several artists of the eighteenth century who showed Apelles at
work were also happy to represent him as one of themselves. In
an Allegory of Pahitiiig Sebastiano Conca (1680—1764) showed
Apelles painting Campaspe, the mistress of Alexander the
Great, as Venus: his palette seems to be set for flesh with only
reds, yellow and white but there is blue in the picture on the
canvas, as well as in other parts of Conca’s scene. A similar
subject by Francesco Trevisani(i656—1746) also presents Apelles
with a far from restricted palette, including vermilion, as does
Tiepolo in two versions of Alexander and Campaspe in the Studio
of Apelles. Apelles’s palette in the later version (r. 1735/40) is set 12
in the standard eighteenth-century sequence from white, near
the thumbhole, through yellows and reds to black, a total of six
colours.
Possibly the first visual indication of the effect of both the
excavations at Fderculaneum, where a number of represent¬
ations of artists at work had been uncovered, and the philolog¬
ical study of the four-colour story, is presented by the otherwise
thoroughly Tiepolesque frontispiece by Friedrich Oeser to
'Winckelmann’s Gedanken of 1756, which shows the painter ij
Timanthes — described by Cicero {Brutus, 70) as a four-colour
artist — at work on his most famous subject, The Sacrifice of
Iphigenia.^^'^ Timanthes does not use a palette but seems about
to take his colours from four pots at his feet; a closer
examination reveals a shadowy fifth put behind the others and it
is likely that Oeser, like Dezallier d’Argenville, intended to
allude to the story of the limited palette only in the most general
way. Later painters were more precise; David, in an unfinished
picture, showed Apelles painting Campaspe from only four
saucers of paint and without a palette. ^ In 1819 j. M. Langlois
won the larger Gold Medal at the Paris Salon with a Generosity
of Alexander that also shows the painter using only three pots of 18
colour (although he does have another in front of him and uses a
palette).Another late French Classicist, Antoine Ansiatix,
also presented Apelles in his Alexander offering Campaspe to
Apelles with a conventional modern palette hearing only the
three primaries, red, yellow and blue, in tonal order from light
Icl'ailfcii
«i6fr t>ie
to dark.''^ A French theorist of the iSaos, David's pupil f N.
Faillot de Montahert, insisted that the three ctilours of the
primary triad, plus black or white, were just the four the ancients
had used, a view re-stated by Ingres's pupil ). Ch Ziegler in the
iS50s.'’-’ Ziegler was familiar with the De la loi dn coiitraste
simulraiie des couleurs (1839; Principles of Harmony and (Contrast of «et(e
(Colours) of the chemist and colour-theorist M. E. Clhevreul, in bfr
which had claimed summarily that the ancients had used a
palette of five primaries, including the red-yellow-blue triad, !)f?alcrrp unP SSilPpaiicrfiinff.
and that mixtures may have been produced 'spontaneously' (i.e.
optically) by the etfects ot the simultaneous contrasts Cdievreul
had expounded.' By the time ot Clhe\'reul, the understanding
of the four colours in terms of some 'primary' combination had
become quite uncontroversial and it does not seem to have been
ot much concern to later students of Clreek art until Clladstone,
as we saw, raised the question of the Clreeks' colour vision.
Bainters in the Romantic period were conscious that Pliny’s
account of the four colours could still be understood as practical
advice. There were, indeed, painters who found the effort to
reconcile the conflicting evidence hardly worth the trouble. The
Norwich portrait-painter Thomas Bardwell, who was also the
author of a widely read and much reprinted Practice of Paintiny^
(1756), had been inclined to be sceptical of the supposedly
practical details handed down by Pliny (if):

For my part, I cannot believe, that the four capital colours of the
Ancients would mix to that surprising perfection we sec in the
works of 7'ilian and Rubens. And if we have no certain knowledge
(DtesDen unP ^eipjig. 1756.
of their methods of Colouring who lived in the last Century, how 2m ^String ter ^SaltperifdKn .^anHiiiig.
should we understand theirs who lived Two Thousand years ago?
Friedrich C'leser, 'I'iiiuviihcs piiiiuim; 'The SiicritiiC cj lphis;ciiiy. trontisjiicee to
Sir Joshua Reynolds w'as far more typical in seeking to
J.]. Winckelniann's Cjediiukcu. 1756. Oeser's riinanthes paints Iron) tour or
accommodate Pliny’s account to contempiorary practice; he
possibly five pots, arrayed on the ground. (17)
disputed a view, still current in the eighteenth century, that
Apelles had labciured under a disadvantage in restricting his
palette. He interpreted the story of the dark varnish as a mistake
of Pliny’s in interpreting the sobriety of Apelles’s paintings,
which was due, according to Reynolds, not to an overall
tomng-down but to ‘his judicious breaking of those [tour]
colours to the standard of nature’."^ Later, in his notes to Du
Fresnoy’s De Arte Grapliica, Reynolds came to interpret the
account of the varnish as a description of glazing and scumbling
but he continued to commenti the restricted palette; ‘1 am
convinced the fewer the colours, the cleaner will be the effect of
those colours, and that four arc sufficient to make every
combination required. Two colours mixed together will not
preserve the brightness of either of them single, nor will three he
as bright as two ...’"^ Too many mixtures would be an
infringement of the simplicity implicit in Apelles’s practice.
Towards the end of his life Reynolds based his own pictures on
simple underpaintings of white, black, Indian red and raw
umber, 'representatives’, as a commentator put it, '(however
negative) of the three primary colours’.''^ In Reynolds, too,
there is a hint of the lingering ancient prejudice against mixture
in a more comprehensive sense. In a note to Du Fresnoy he J.M. Langiois. 7//e ( 'wiicrosiiY ol . Utwiinder. iSiy. 1 he late Neo-C.lassu .il

referred to 'that harmony which is produced by what the version of Apelles's studio shows a hinited ninnber ot pots but als<> a

ancients called the corruption [corrnptio, i.e. phthora] of the nineteenth-century palette. (iS)

.D
 I III I ()R 11 M S ()l Al’l.l I r s
t\)lours, hv the mixing and breaking them till there is a general
union ol'tlie whole, without any thing that shall bring to yonr
reniembranee the painter's palette, or the original colours',
which lie tonnd characteristic ot the Bolognese and Dutch
schools.''^ 'Fliis method of achieving harmony he tonnd
inferior to the Venetian practice, best exemplified in Rubens,
w here ‘the brightest possible colours are admitted, with the two
extremes of warm and cold, and those reconciled by being
dispersed over the picture, till the whole appears like a bunch ot
dowers'.''
It is especially ironic that Reynolds should have thus asserted
the essentially Antiejne virtues of the limited palette, tor this
ninst also have been the emphasis of his enemy William Blake,
who attacked him precisely because he telt he w'as guilty ot
Renibrandtesqne mixing and who condemned the works ot
l itian and Rubens as ‘sickly daubs’,'-^’ But about oSoo Blake
himself looked at Rembrandt and the Venetians with great
interest.'-'. It was probably during his two snbseqncnt years ot
colonr-stndy, described in a letter of November 1802, that he
began to cast about more widely for appropriate models and
came across the story of Apelles. Writing shortly after Blake’s
death, J. T. Smith, wdio had known the visionary well tor many
years, recorded:
As to Blake’s system of colouring ... it was in many instances most
beautifully prismatic. In this branch ot the
acknowledged Apelles to have been his tutor, who was, he said, so
much pleased with his style, that once when he appeared before
him, among many of his observations he delivered the following:
‘You certainly possess my system of colouring; and I now wish you
to draw' my person, wdaich has hitherto been untruly delineated’.
Blake’s portrait ot Apielles may be identifiable wdth the well-
ig known drawing The Man who taught Blake Paiiitiug in his
Dreams. This portrait dates from about 1819 but it is not easy to
place the artist’s encounter with his ancient teacher. He allucied
Willi.1111 Blake. The .Man lelio tainjhl Blake Painting;’ in his Dreams, c. 1819. (19)
to the competition with Frotogenes in the Descriptine Catalogue
of 1809, and also in his Notebook, which was in use tor many
periods from the 1780s.'- ' But the ‘prismatic’ palette, recog¬
nized by Apelles during this encounter, was certainly developed
in the watercolours prepared for Ins patron Thomas Butts in
1803. In his letter to Butts of the previous November, Blake
showed that he had made an extensive study of Reynolds’s
writings, where he will have found the discussion of the palette
of the ancients quoted above. The lesson which he claimed to
draw from Reynolds’s (which he reinforced in his later
marginalia to Reynolds’s Literary Works) was that the ‘broken’
hence ‘corrupt’ colour of the Venetians was injurious to
grandeur, which could only be the product of simplicity.It is
not at all clear how tar Blake took Apelles’s message to be a
serious recommendation of the restricted palette: the florid
tonality ot many ot the later illuminations with their trequent
use of gold suggests that austerity was never a constant aesthetic
with him. The technique of even the simplest ot the late
watercolours, the Dante series, makes a good deal of play with
mixed and ‘broken’ tints. Blake’s early biographer, Alexander
Gilchrist, described Ins pigments as ‘few and simple’ but went
on tea list five, including cobalt blue, one of the newest synthetic
pigments, which the painter would supplement occasionally
with ultramarine, gamboge and vermilion. The palette of
Painting in the Enoch lithograph of 1821 shows a range ot six
art he often
colours.'-'"’ It must remain debatable how tar Blake’s reading ot
Apelles’s colour practice was, like that of his French contempor¬
ary Franyois Gerard, a reductive one.'-'’
Thus from Antiquity until the nineteenth century Apelles
stood, as a colourist, for an ideal aesthetic simplicity, understood
by each period which looked to him in terms of the prevailing
notion of basic or primary colours. His story gives us the clearest
indication of how theory often provided an uncomfortable ft
with practice and how each generation could only look at the
colour of the past with the colour in its own eyes.
 3 • Light from the East
MoiniDiciHal mosaics ■ Mcaiiini>:i in mosaic ■ Li^ihf ami lilnr^iy ■ RcalisDi ami
movement ■ llie colours of Divine Liylit ■ I’lie colours of Islam
Wki'Iinc; in (;aza in the first lialf nf the sixth century ad the
orator C^iorikos concluded his account ot the Cdnirch ot St
Stephen there with a rather surprising picture ot a group ot
Early Cihristian connoisseurs:
Let us invite men who have exaininod the shrines of many cities,
each one an expert in a different kind of work, and in the presence of
such judges let our church be tried as in a court against the tanious
temples of the world. Let one, for instance, he a connoisseur ot
painting, not only the kind that uses pigments, but also of mosaic,
which imitates it; let another be a judge ot marbles, be they named
after the place where they are quarried or after their colour; another
an expert on capitals; let another clearly evaluate the amount of
gold, in case there is a deficiency or an excess - both errors of taste.
Let someone else carefully observe the roof (unless he declines to do
so because of its height), for here there are costly timbers,
covered with coffering for the sake of both strength and beauty.
When all the judges have come together, and each one allotted the
aspect he happens to know better than the others, then our church
will unanimously be declared the victor. ‘
This is an attitude towards Clhristian art which is thoroughly
secular: a church interior is to he admired for the beauty of its
proportions, its precious materials and its craftsmanship; there is
no suggestion that any of these serve a religious or even a
generally e.xpressive function.’ The only hint that there is
something about this building beyond the immediate aesthetic
impression is in the reference to the types of marble in columns
and revetments, since Chorikos had wTitten earlier that they
offered a double benefit;
(they provide] the church [with material) for decorous
workmanship and are a source of honour to the cities that sent
them, since a man who has seen them and admired them at once
praises the donor. Among the columns, the most remarkable are
the four, dyed by nature with the colour of imperial raiment,
which define the area forbidden to those who are not members ot
the holy ministry ... T he Lower part [ot the apse] gleams with
different kinds of marble. In the centre is a window, wide and tall in
proportion, entirely encompassed by a single kind ot stone, though
diversified by art, which completes the revetment along both edges
of the window and adorns the walls on either side. It does not cease
here, but mounts up on both sides and reaches the band, itselt ot the
same [kind ot] stone, that lies above the window. In this way, bands
of well-fitting marble cover the wall. 1 hey are so joined together as
to appear to be a work of nature, and so variegated with their
natural colours as to resemble altogether a hand-painted picture.
Indeed, painters whose business it is to select and copy the most
beautiful objects there are, should they need to represent columns
or gorgeous plaques - and 1 have seen that sort of thing in paintings
- will find plenty of excellent models here.’
Cdiorikos's .ipprcciation ot the origin and colour ot the marbles
at St Stephen's was eehoed e\ en more vi\ uilv bv his contem¬
porary Paul the Silentiary, in Ins description ot St.i Sophi.i m
Clonstantinople:
Upon the carsed stone w.ill curious designs glitter ever\where.
I'hese ha\'e been produced by the quarries ot'sea-girt Proeonnesus.
the joining of the cut marbles resembles the .irt of p.nnting. tor you
may see the seins ot the sejuare and octagon.il stones meeting so ,is
to torin devices: connected m this wav. the stones imitate the
glories ot painting ... Yet who. e\en in the thundering strains ot
1 lomer, shall sing the marble meadows g.ithered upon the mighty
walls and spreading pas'ement of the lotf\ church? .Mining [tools
of] ttiothed steel have cut these trom the green Hanks ot U.irystus
and have cleft the speckled Phrygian stone, sometimes rosy mixed
w'ith white, sometimes gleaming with purple and siK er flowers.
There is a vs'ealth ot porphyry stcuie, too. besprinkled w ith little
bright stars that had laden the rwer-boat on the broad Nile. You
may see the bright green stone ot Laconia and the glittering marble
with wa\’y veins found in the deep gullies of the lasi.m peaks,
exhibiting slanting streaks of blood-red and livid white; the pale
yellow with swirling red from the Lydian headland; the glittering
crocus-like golden stone which the Libyan sun. warming it with its
golden light, has produced on the steep Hanks ot the Moorish hills;
that of glittering black upon which the Cieltic crags, deep in ice.
have poured here and there an abundatice of milk; the pale onyx
with glint of precious metal; and that which the land ot .^trax
[Thessaly] yields, not from some upland glen, but trom the kwel
plain: in parts vivid green not unlike emerald, in others ot a darker
green, almost blue. It has spots resembling snow next to Hashes ot
black so that in one stone various beauties mingle.'’
The appreciation of marbles for their provenance and their
coloured veining goes back to the Roman poet .Statius in the
first century ad.'’ It is not surprising that Chorikos and Paul
drew on this tradition for they were writing within the literary
convention ot'ehphrasis —the description of works of art which
at Caza was practised especially by Procopius and John ot
Caza.^’ Their accounts should not be dismissed as mere literary
exercises, for the architectural features to which they drew
attention were precisely those on which Early Christian and
Bvzantme patrons and craftsworkers lavished the greatest
expense and skill. Columns of green-veined cipolin marble
from Carystus in Euboeia were indeed sent to the Christians in
Caza."^ The finely drilled and carved capitals are perhaps the
most distinguished form of Byzantine sculpture on a monu¬
mental scale. Although very few roofs ot this period have
survived (see the reconstructed fifth-century root ot Sta Sabina
in Rome or the twelfth-century root ot the Palatine Chapel in
 1 i(,n I I KoM iiir 1 Asr
I Palcrnu)), tlicrc is gciod evidence that they were particularly
suinptiunis. The inosaic cifthe Nile, with its meadows and birds,
as C'diorikos described it on the aisle walls at St Stephen's, is
known at least in the form of mosaic pavements trom late
(’ Antiquity - at Palestrina, and Piazza Armerina in Sicily - to the
Cdiristian churches ot Aquilea in north Italy ot the late fifth
centurv and, not far trom Claza, the church ot St John the
Baptist at Cferasa.'^ The imagery ot these Nile landscapes, soon
assimilated to that ot the tour rivers ot Paradise in Early
(dinstian apses (tor example, m SS Closmas and Damian in
Rome), has not so tar been found on walls, but there is no reason
to doubt the substantial accuracy ot Chorikos’s account.*^
The orator had stated that the first and greatest merit of the
church was its proportions and the second its marble cladding;
he concluded, ‘(told and other colours give brilliance to the
whole work". .Symmetry and colour were still the primary
categories ot beauty, as they had been in Classical times. For the
Byzantine spectator, as tor the Classical, the foremost aspect ot
colour to be appreciated was its value as light. The most
characteristic items ot Early Christian liturgical ecjuipment, the
sheen ot silk vestments and hangings, the goki and silver ot
lamps and vessels, the jewels and enamels ot processional icons,
reliquaries and books —all were developed in the early Christian
i'alcstriiKi. Temple ot Fortune, Nile scene, first to third century ad. Images of
the Nile were frequent subjects in Rom.in mosaic pavements such as this,
leading on to the Harly Christian theme of the four rivers of Paradise, and to
the Hy/’antine notion of the mosaic itself as 'flowing', like a river. (20)
40
centuries primarily as receptacles and images of light. Yet it was
their background of silver and gold mosaic ‘as it were, gushing
from an abundant golden fountain', as Chorikos put it in his
ckphrasis of the C'hurch of St Sergius at Caza,''* which shows
most clearly how a specialized technique was put to the service
ot an aesthetic ideal.
Alonuniciifal mosaics
The monumental mosaic is perhaps the most original medium
ot Early Christian art. and in its transtercnce from pavement to
wall and vault, the technique itself was modified with the
specific object of e.xploiting the effects of light. At first, wall and
pavement mosaics ran parallel 111 their style and imagery. The
pebbles ot the early Greek mosaics gave way to regularly cut
tesserae (cubes) about the third century bc,^' and soon the
naturally coloured stone tesserae were supplemented by a
sprinkling of artificially coloured terracotta or glass, which
brought a vast increase in chromatic range. The earliest
surviving pavement entirely of glass is at Corinth, which is
matches in richness the wall and niche mosaics of contemporary
Pompeii and Herculaneum. Its borders include naturalistic
vegetation which breaks with the geometric patterns of earlier
Roman mosaics. This tendency increased in some of the highly
polychromatic pavements of the fifth century AD at Argos and
the late fifth-century pavement excavated in an Early Christian
basilica at Heraclea Lyncestis (Bitola) in Macedonia: its florid
rendering ot the Garden of Eden relates directly to the imagery
ot several Early Christian apses in Rome and Ravenna (SS
Cosmas and Damian, Arian Baptistry).
Conversely, the earliest intact vault-mosaics which survive -
the criptoporticiis ot Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli (early second
century ad), the ambulatory of Sta Costanza in Rome and the 26
vaults ot the Rotuncia of St George in Thessaloniki (late fourth
and late fifth centuries respectively) — echo the geometrical
designs of earlier pavements. The Tivoli vault, although it is
in an exceptionally dark passage and can only be seen by
artificial light, makes only a little use of glass (for blues) but the
rough pebble-hke tesserae are loosely set to catch the light at
several angles. All the early literary references to vault mosaics
in the first century AD allude to glass; indeed, until the word
miisivum (the origin of our ‘mosaic’) gained currency in the
second to fourth centuries, vitris (glass) seems to have been the
only term for wall and vault mosaics. The decisive break with
the methocis of pavement mosaics probably came with the
introduction of metallic tesserae - first gold, then silver — which 27—jo
can be traced fairly certainly to the early third century,
specifically to the gold halo of the risen Christ in the vault
mosaic of the Mausoleum of the Jtilii under St Peter’s in
Rome.'^ The place and date arc interesting in that they coincide
with the appearance of a related specialized technique, that of
gilded glass vessels, large quantities of which have been found in
the Catacombs of Rome: in them, as in the gold tesserae, a layer
of gold foil is sandwiched between two layers of glass.
This, then only sparing, use of metallic tesserae is the first
clear indication that the Early Christian mosaic was to be
primarily a vehicle of light. In the Mausoleum of the jtilii, the
analogy gold-light is overt, since Christ here appears as the
 IK.n I I 1<( :\1 I Ml I \'

ninihcd sol iin’ictus. In the seennd prominent nionnment tci use

26 ^old eidses, Sta (lostanza, they are both more deeorative and
more subtle. The imisaies with subjeets from the Old Testa¬
ment, which also had deeorative surrounds including gold
mosaic, have now vanished’^ but the ambulatorv nuisaics
which surs'ive have gold only at the liturgical locus of the
design, in the two vaults flanking the high altar, which is lit b\-
windows in a turret above. We may assume that the lost mosaic
ot (dirist and the Apostles in this turret also incorporated gold; it
was compared in the si.xteenth century to Sta Ptidenziana (c.
401 /y) in Rome, where there is also a notable use of highlighting
in gold on the robe and halo of Christ.From these modest
beginnings, gold mosaic spread over the whole background in
the Rotunda ot St Ceorge at Thessaloniki, where there is also
perhaps the earliest use of silver cubes.It spread also to the
scarcely modulated cladding of dome or apse in S. Vittore in
cacio atirco in the Ambrosian Basilica ot Milan (?late fifth
century) and to Sta Eirene in Istanbul, with its iconoclastic
decoration ot the eighth century.-^ From the precious focus of
the most heaven-like precinct of the temple, it became in later
centuries, notably in the twelfth-century Royal Chapel at
Palermo and in the Cathedral at Monreale where gold is
lavished over the surfaces like a bath of Anihrc Sohiire. simply
another field tor conspicuous display.-^
With the introduction of metallic cubes went the develop¬
ment of techniques of setting that also took the practice of wall
mosaics further and further away from the practice of the
pavement. At Pompeii and Herculaneum the flush setting of
glass tesserae in and around the niches ot tountains seems to have Flickering light t'roni st,il.iciite p.itteriis ut' c.ir\’ing bring the ceiling ot' the
aimed tor the same sort ot polished surfaces as the floors.As IhiLitine Ch,ipel ,ic Ihilernio close to the Hw.intine .lesthetic ot’ colour in
the technique for walls and vaults developed, a deliberately motion. (2 i)
irregular surface was created, giving especially in the case ot
gold a soft, fluid effect which is particularly striking in the dome
ot the chapel ot S. Vittore in Milan and in the ‘Mausoleum’ ot throughout and a more random ‘impressionistic’ setting; this is
Calla Placida at Ravenna.A more controlled irregularity was the style of the early mosaics of Rome. 1 shall look more closely
created by raking some metallic cubes downward at an angle of at the ‘Greek’ style in a discussion ot naturalism but I want to
up to 30°, so as to reflect light down to the spectator below — a emphasize here that the two stvles, however distinct m their
technique used especially for haloes and mandorlas as in the effects, were able to co-exist from Antiquity onwards. I'he well-
monastery ot St Catherine on Sinai of the mid-sixth century, in known mosaic pavement ot Dionysus on a panther in the I louse
the fifth- and seventh-century mosaics ot S. Demetrios in ot the Masks at Delos is in the minutest tit techniques but is
Thessaloniki, and in the ninth-century panel over the Imperial framed by panels of centaurs in a lotise impressitinistic style,
29 door in Sta Sophia at Constantinople;-^ and for inscriptions, as which IS also that of a contemporary group tit musicians in a
at Porec in Croatia and again at Sta Eirene and S. Demetrios.-^ neighbouring room.-'’ And at S. Lorenzo fuori le Mura in
These irregularities of surface seem more characteristic of Early Rome (sixth century), the head of .St Lawrence is in the same
Christian than of later medieval mosaics: in Sta Sophia they style and entirely in glass, while the head of the ctiiueniptirary St
seem to have been abandoned in most work ot the ninth and Paul uses smaller stone tesserae tor the flesh, in a linear setting.-’”
tenth centuries.-^ There are no examples in the Nea Moni on It may be that the early ‘Greek’ technique related more closely
Chios of the late eleventh century and by the close of the Middle to those Hellenistic subjects like the Battle ot Alexander or the
Ages, when the first substantial technical literature on methods two small theatrical scenes in Naples which were clearly
of setting made its appearance in Venice, the Classical ideal of a reproductions ot paintings. Tti conclude that the ‘Roman’ style
smooth surface, with no visible gap between the cubes, had re¬ is more specifically appropriate to the medium and thus more
asserted itself, as can be seen in the early fitteenth-century work autonomous’’ seems hasty, tor mosaic has show n precisely that
in the Mascoli Chapel in S. Marco.-” it is infinitely adaptable. If the ‘Roman’ technique exhibits a
File technique ot Early Christian mosaic may be divided more completely homogeneous surface, and is thus treer from
broadly into two types. One was the more peculiarly Creek illusitinisni (the adaptation tif the material and style to the
method using smaller stone cubes for modelling flesh and a characteristics of the subject), it shares this homogeneits w ith,
more linear method of setting; this was found widely in for example, late antique wool-tapestry, where the demands nf
Constantinople. I'he other was the use of larger glass tesserae the medium itself the regular repetition tit the same units tit

41
 I K.II I I Ui )M I III I AM
colour - impose a uniform texture, with an effect very close to
this type of mosaic.
Any understanding of illtisiomsm must surely depend on the
context of the work under discussion; this is conspicuously so
with one aspect of mosaic technique that can be closely related
to the contemporary theory ot colour, namely ‘optical mix¬
ture’. The local setting ot tesserae not in regular lines but in a
27 ‘staggered’ or checkerboard arrangement has been noticed in all
periods ot medieval mosaic and it is particularly striking in the
‘Clreek’ style, where it contrasts with the more usual linear
setting. It seems in general to have been used for flesh, where a
softness of modelling was appropriate (the general use of smaller
tesserae for the modulation of flesh itself shows a nice under¬
standing of the principles of optical mixture), or for lustrous
surfaces like fish skins or animal coats or more positively
luminous ones like haloes or the rainbow or water.
These patterns are so striking that they must have been the
result ot a thoroughly self-conscious method. The theoretical
basis tor optical mixture had been laid down clearly in the
second century AD by Ptolemy, who had identified two causes
ot optical tusion in colours: the first, by distance, meant that the
angle of vision tormed by rays of light from very small patches
ot colour was too small tor them to be identified separately by
the eye, hence many points of different colours seemed,
together, to he the same colour. The second cause was
persistence ot vision, whereby if a coloured object was moving,
an atter-image would be superimposed on the successive image
and a mixture ot the two would result. Ptolemy illustrated this
second phenomenon by the spinning of a parti-coloured wheel,
such as a potter’s wheel — precisely the tool for optical mixtures
used by many colour-theorists in the nineteenth century,
including several, such as Clerk Maxwell and Ogden Rood,
4-^
Fapcstry and niosaic coninionly work with
equal-sized, regularly spaced units ot'colour, to
create a homogeneous visual ert'ect, although
mosaic has far greater flexibility (see pis.
27- 30). Both the loop-tapestry fragment from
.^khmln (fourth century .vu) and the mosaic
pavement made in Antioch use optical mixing
techniques. The circular pattern at the left of
the mosaic recalls the bands of colour spun on
a potter's wheel in an experiment with
mixtures described by Ptolemy. (22,23)
(Opposite) A mosaic panel from Hacirian’s
Villa, a copy of a painting, uses exceptionally
fine tesserae to render the sheen of doves'
feathers and lustre of the drinking vessel by
means of hatching. (24)
who were cited by the Neo-Impressionists.^-^ The disc with a
radial pattern of black, white, yellow, red and green squares in a
staggered pattern, on a fragment of third- or tourth-century
mosaic from near Antioch may reflect the sort ot disc for mixing
that Ptolemy had in mind.
Yet we should not conclude from this that these early
mosaicists were Neo-Impressionists auant la if they
were, the looser and more homogeneous ‘Roman’ style would
be far closer to the aims ot pointillism than the more local
‘Greek’ use of ‘staggered’ textures. But when we look at the
crucial question of viewing-distance the range is very great. The
small panels from Hadrian’s Villa were originally set in 24
pavements and were thus to be seen from a distance ot trom
three to a little over five feet (a metre to a metre and a half): their
technique is very fine. That of the pavement at Heraclea
Lyncestis is far coarser, although the viewing distance is the
same. The dome mosaics of the Rotunda of St George are some
sixty feet (eighteen metres) above ground level, yet the detail ot
the heads is in a fine linear style; it has been suggested that they
were set on the ground, m the Classical manner, and transferred
wholesale to the walls.On the other hand, the mosaics on the
vault of the small Chapel of S. Zeno in S. Prassede in Rome are 2<.s’
about fifteen feet (four-and-a-half metres) above the spectator,
yet they are set in the coarsest style and in electric light or in
photographs the contrasts of colour are very strident. Only in a
subdued light do the colours begin to fuse, although the texture
of the surface is still very clear. Similarly, the chequerboard
pattern of cubes on the neck of the Virgin is clear to the spectator
in the large Deesis mosaic in the Church of Christ in Chora in 27
Istanbul: here it is impossible to go far enough away to make the
colours tusc. The typical movement ot the spectator under the
mosaic decoration ot vaults and the upper areas ot walls — where
 they arc so often sited ~ is opposite to that of the spectator of
easel-paintings: they must be parallel and not perpendicular to
the surface, which makes it very difficult to adjust the viewing
distance and achieve optical fusion. What we miss in these
antique and medieval examples is not so much the understand¬
ing of a theory, as that relentless empiricism which was to
characterize Seurat's career.
Ptolemy also analysed other instances of optical mixture,
already the subject of scattered observations by Aristotle and his
commentators: the heightening of contiguous colours by
contrast or the softening of their edges by colour-spread.It is
the understanding of this latter phenomenon which surely
accounts for those touches of brilliant vermilion that were so
often used in and around areas of Hesli in the early mosaics of the
‘Roman’ type.-’^ They are not highlights or any part of a system
iS’ of tonal modelling but simply colounstic touches to give
warmth to the skin. A quite opposite intention seems to lie
behind the use of a range of greens, sometimes very bright
greens, in the modelling of Hesli, which is particularly notice¬
able in some late medieval examples in Clreece.-^’^ It may be that
this pronounced green is taken over from the green underpaint¬
ing for fiesh, which sometimes appears through transparent
shadows and was used as early as the frescoes of Pompeii
although it was not standardized perhaps until Middle
Byzantine painting. ''' In mosaic it has the purely surface effect of
cooling down the whole complexion.
As the use of gold ground spread, mosaic artists found means
to modulate the excessive uniformity of vast areas of gold, at
first by reversing some cubes to show the colour of their glass
body (as at Sta Maria Maggiore in Rome, .S. Appolinare Nuovo
in ITivenna and at St Ciatherine’s on Sinai) and later by
scattering a few sils er cubes (Sta Eirene) or sometimes both, as
in the ninth-century apse mosaic in Sta Sophia.''" 1 lere. too, we
are dealing with a purely colotiristic de\ice b.ised on the
phenomenon of colour-spread, d hat the gold cubes in ItaK
should sometimes have had a basis of red glass is interesting: in
the often loose setting of such gold grounds the cubes project up
to a quarter of their thickness from the plaster bed. .illow ing tlie
colour of the glass body to be diffused o\er the gold b\
reflection and giving it that reddish cast \\ Inch w as sn prized m
Antiquity. The setting-bed itself was often coloured red. so that
the plaster between the cubes would add to their rtis\- flush.'*' .A
beautiful instance of the aflimts' the Bvzantines felt between
gold and red is in a mosaic votive panel of the seventh centurs in
S. Demetrios in Thessaloniki, which shows the saint and a donor
in a blue tahlion with an identical pattern to that on the white
hiifhnion under it. The golden triangles on the white beccmie a
brilliant red on the blue: as in Aristotle's sc.ile of colours :,()ii
Sense qqaa). red is, as it were, onl\' the sh.ulow siile of light.
'I'he outlines of hakies against gold in Middle B\z.intine
mosaics are usually red, which mav have to do with their
symbolic function as light but m.i\' .ilso reflect the old aesthetic
preference for these two colours in conjunction, (iregors' of
Nyssa wrote of a river ‘which glows like a ris er of gold draw n
through the deep purple of its banks and retldenmg its ; urrent
w ith the soil he washes.''*- 1 le w .is talking of an expeneiuc of'
pure colour w Inch was especi.illy gr.iteful to the Byzantine -'ye.
It may be felt that these rather slight and sc.ittered inst.mces isf
the application of a theory of colour in mosaic painting •do; lU't
reflect any notable curiosity or scientific culture on the p.irt v>f
Early C Christian or Byzantine artists, who were, it might bv
thought, simpK carrving out the wishes of their patrons .md
working .iccordmg to barely lonsi ioiis rules i.j thumb. I or 'h.
moment it w ould be rash to suggest th.it thc--e eraU w rk.TN di-.l
I I(,H I I l<( ),V1 I Ilf FAST

iiK'irc than share scsnic low-level (and ancient) assumptions

about lipht and ctdour with the intellecttials ot their day. Yet
there is some reason to think that the educated spectator ot the
tune was capable ot bringing a general knowlecige ot science to
bear on the experience ot art. Some striking instances ot this are
in the Homilies ot Fhotitis. Patriarch of Cionstantinople in the
ninth century. In these sermons given to Imperial gatherings in
the capital, Photius alluded repeatedly to optical theory: in
March S63 he spoke ot

tills hob' and august temple |Sta Sophia] which one might well call
. . . the eye ot the universe, and especially so today when, mixing
the white and the black [an allusion to the dress ot the
congregation], out ot which colours the natural constitution ot the
eye is wrought, you have tilled with your bodies the voids ot this
wondrous place, forms, as it were, the socket ot the eye ..

The image may be thought overwrought until we remember

that the sermon was delivered in a space whose gilded dome was
not at all unlike the socket of a vast eyeball, the sun-like organ ot
vision according to Platonic theory, and that the reference to the
black and white, as well as evoking the dark eyes of his audience,
alluded to the Empedoclean view of the function of black and
white in perception.A few years later in the same place
Photius justified a defence of images (he was celebrating the
victory ot the Iconodtiles over the Iconoclasts) by an apjseal to
the ancient Cireek doctrine ot sight as the superior sense: ‘For
surely, having somehow through outpourings and effluence ot
the optical rays touched and encompassed the object, it too [like
hearing] sends the essence ot the thing seen to the mind, letting it
be conveyed trom there to the memory tor the concentration ot
unfailing knowdedge.’ Here, too, Photius adopted one of the
several contending theories of vision current in his day, that ot
the Pythagoreans and Hipparchus of Alexandra, who argued
that the eye sends out rays which seek and grasp the objects of
sight and return them to the mind.^^-'’ In a sermon at the
inauguration of the Palatine Chapel Photius even made a
passing reference to the mosaic pavement: ‘Democritus would
have said, I think, on seeing the minute work of the pavement
and taking it as a piece of evidence, that his atoms were close to
being discovered here actually impinging on the sight’.These
apparently far-fetched allusions are in no way surprising, for
Photius was a formidable scholar — he compiled a lengthy list
and abstracts of the hooks he had reaci, the Myriohihlioii, which
includes many titles no longer available to us. In particular, his
manuscript ofjohannes Stobaeus’s Eclogues, which summarized
in Its hrst book Classical ideas on physics including those ot
Empedocles and Democritus on vision and colour, was more
complete than any now extant.
Speaking ot the decoration ot the mosaic-filled interior ot the
Palace Chapel (the church of the Virgin of Pharos), Photius
declared: ‘It was as it one had entered heaven itselt with no one
barring the way from any side, and was illuminated by the
beauty in all forms shining all around like so many stars, so is one
utterly amazed.The luminosity of the ecclesiastical interior
was an image of the heavenly light: it was not simply for
aesthetic enjoyment or conspicuous display that mosaic was
developed as the supremely luminous form of painting, but as
the vehicle of a Christian iconography of light.
The Chi-Rlio symbol of Christ is set in the centre of a starry vault - an
emanation of light that grows weaker as it gets further from its source.
Compare the ‘Divine Darkness’ (pi. 33) ot the Transfi^^uranon mosaic at Sinai.
Meaning in mosaic
Mural mosaic was a luxury medium; the examples which we
now know' were for the most part the result of imperial or royal
or papal patronage; the precious materials were, like others,
subject to both plunder and legitimate re-use. As funds
dwindled programmes of decoration begun m mosaic had
sometimes to be finished in painting; in the less visible areas, the
application of a scattering of tesserae sometimes did duty for a
large mosaic surface, the rest being filled with fresco. Within the
mosaic materials themselves there was a hierarchy of values
from marble to glass and finally to stone or terracotta cubes:
when the more valuable ran out, mosaicists sometimes had to
make do with the cheaper.Thus, at least in its early phases, we
should expect to find the medium used only in the most
significant areas of ecclesiastical buildings. (There are many
documents of the use of mural mosaic in secular buildings in
Byzantium but the Stanza del Re Ruggero at Palermo seems to
be the only surviving example.) If we look at the iconographic
programmes of these areas, we become aware of the intimate
connection between the subject-matter and the means of its
expression.
Both the literary and the archaeological evidence for the
Classical use of glass mosaic in walls and vaults refer predomi¬
nantly to fountains and baths.Even the etymology of the
term mosaic {opus imisivum) refects the belief that it was
especially appropriate to the haunts of the Muses, or nymphs,
namely w'atery grottoes.^' Thus the use of mosaic decoration in

44

sDiiic dt the earliest Clhristian baptistries (Naples, c. 400; Albeiiga
and Ravenna, late titth century) was in a continuing tradition.
But the imagery ot the decoration of these early baptistries was
also especially appropriate to the medium, for the rite of
baptism was, as its original (Ireek name pliotisnia (illumination)
implies, a conferring ot light. A Neo-Blatonic te.xt of the late
third century, the Syniposiuni of Methodius of Olympus,
comments on the presence of the moon under the feet of the
woman clothed with the sun {Rcrclatioiis 12: 1) and links it to
baptism:
for moonlight seems to bathe us like lukewarm water, and all
humidity derives from the moon. 'I'he Cduirch must preside o\’cr
the baptised as a mother: it is thus that her function is called moon
1 .sc/c/K’l, since those who are renewed shine with a new gh)w |.v('/ii.<|,
that is, with a new brightness, which is why they are also called
'newly illuminated’: the Clhurch shines in their eyes, through the
phases of the hassion, the full moon of the Spirit. . . until the radiant
and perfect light of the full l)ay.^-
1 lence baptism was often celebrated at night and, especially at
the time of the Easter vigil which stressed the theme of the
Resurrection, baptistries were lit by lamps; the mosaics, which
as at Naples and Albenga on the Italian Riviera sometimes have
representations ot starry skies in their vaults, became especially
significant.The orientation of the baptistry, like that of the
church, was often towards the east;^'^ according to a fourth-
century instruction to the candidate, he or she was to turn first to
face the w'cst, ‘the realm of the visible darkness’, and to ‘deny the
dark and shady ruler’ (Satan):
when you have denied Satan and all association with him, and
completely loosed the ancient bond with ttell, God’s l^aradisc will
be opened to you, which he planted towards the rising sun, from
which our ancestor Adam was driven for transgressing the
Commandment. To show this symbolically you must turn from
the setting to the rising sun, towards the realm of light. Then you
w'ill be told to say, ‘i believe in the Father, and in the Son, and in the
1 loly Ghost, and in the Baptism of Penitence’.
25 At Albenga, the mosaic vault with the monogram of Christ
in a starry frnianient is 111 the eastern apse of the building,
opposite the entrance; in Naples the phoenix, emblem of
Resurrection, is also to the east of the vault, to figure the
dawning light of illumination.^^ This imagery of Paradise, set
‘eastward in Eden’, and ot Christ as the rising sun was also
common in that other major area of the earliest mosaic
decoration, the apse. Very little is known of possible mosaic
wall or vault decoration 111 pre-Christian temples,but if an
early seventeenth-century Roman drawing of a now vanished
Lupercal Chapel to Romulus and Remus is to be credited, by the
third century ad mosaic was used for apse-decoration in a pagan
context.-^” Certainly in the majority of Roman churches mosaic
was at first confined to apses,many of them (SS Clo.smas and
?2 Damian in Rome and .S. Vitale in Ravenna are the best-known
examples) showing images of the future Epiphany of Christ that
was, according to Early Christian traditions, to take place in the
east.^'* That these are scenes ot dawning light is otten made clear
by the clusters of rosy clouds above and around the figures. So
crucial did this visible indication of the time of day appear that
I K.HI I Hl)\l IHl 1 \M
m the twehth-century apses ot'S. Clemente .ind St.i I r.uu es. a
Romana in Rome, whose crowxled compnsitioiis did n>u .ilU>w
them to be deployed 111 the main picture-sp.ice, these clouds .ire
packed into small comp.irtments on either side ot'the liaiul ot
Ciod. at the top of the design.'’’
A later image ot Christ, common both in Western .ipse
mosaics and 111 the centr.il i.ionie ot B\ /.mtiiie chuixlies, is the
figure of the I\ifilok:ra!or or Ruler ot'the World. 1 his image, too.
is a manitestation ot light, for Christ otten carries .1 scroll or
book bearing the text from St |ohn's Gospel. ’1 .1111 the fight ot'
the W/'orld’. Even where, .is at 1 )aphm. 1 losios fouk.is or .'\rt.i in
western Greece, and in the Pammacaristos ifethive Di.iini) in
Istanbul, the book is closed, its glittering be)ewelled cover is a
surrogate for this legend.'’- The mnth-centuiw .^nglo-S.lxon
poet Aethelwult seems to have been thinking in terms ot this
Pantokrator figure when he spoke of’Books which present the
e.xalted utterances of God the Thunderer' .ind refers specific.ills
to their conspicuous gtild covers.'’ ’ Gospel book-covers in the ,'h
early Middle Ages were indeed essentialK' items of displ.iw foi
use on the altar or in processions,'’'* and were thus precious
liturgical objects in their own right, could be stored separateK'
from books and transferred from manuscript to manuscript.
Inscriptions like that on the Lindisfarne Gospels might mention
not only the scribes and authors but also the goldsmith who
made the cover ‘with gold and with gems and also with gilded
silver - pure metal’, as well as the maker of the leather-covered
boards.'’'’ The cover by Billfrith for this manuscript is lost but
many others survive, their extravagant encrustation with gems,
their lavish use of gold and ivory and enamel making it clear
that they could be seen very readily as an embodiment of Divine
Light.
The figure of the Virgin, who also appears frequently in early
apse mosaics, can equally be understood as entering this realm of
light. The eighth-century theologian John of Damascus in a
Homily on the Birth of the Virgin, invoked her in these terms:
‘fdail thou gate, looking towards the East, from which there
appeared the Rising of Life, diminishing for men the setting ot
death’, and in a tenth-century epigram on an icon of the Virgin,
Constantine of Rhodes wrote: ‘If one would paint thee, G)
Virgin, stars rather than colours would be needed, that riiou,
the Gate of Light, should be depicted 111 luminositiesIn the
twelfth-century apse at Torcello, the tituUis beneath the Virgin
refers to her as ‘Star of the Sea’ and as ‘the (iate of Sah'ation',
since she as the second Eve has now replaced the first. In this role
she stands near the gate of Paradise at the bottom of the vast
mosaic of the Last ]udgment on the west wall.'’” Here and in Sta
Sophia, Hosios Loukas and Kiev, Mary bears a star on her
forehead, but a particularly moving example of her lumiiuius
role is in the sixth-century apse mosaics in the cathedral at Porec
on the Istrian coast of Croatia. The Virgin (with a star on her
forehead) and Child are seated beneath the figure of Christ
Pantokrator on the triumphal arch and crowned with blue and
pinkish clouds. At the sides of the apse are two scenes from her
life, the Annunciation and the Visitation. Ikith scenes, which
presented the promise of Christ’s coming, take place on the edge
(.if the sea from which rise, in rosy striations. the first indications
of the dawning day.'’'’ The development of a simple gold
ground, at Sta Sophia in Thessaloniki in the seventh century, for
45
I K.ll I I U( ).\1 mi FAST
cx.implc, MMiictiincs p.ixc added intensiry to this image ot tlie
Virgin: all tigiiratn e imagery has gone; there is neither sunlit
eloiul nor the mandorla of light which trom this date was to
serx’e so often as the most characteristic hieroglyph ot snper-
hnnian majestx’; she became simpU' the luminous tocus tit a
bowl of light V
d hat the domirs and crattworkers ot these mosaic pro-
giMiumes were well aware ot their tuiiction is clear trom the
main- inscriptions which they appended to them in the West,
tor these inscnptuins often refer to the light-creating qualities ot
the cubes. A typical tormulation runs round the base ot the apse-
conch in SS Ciosmas and Damian in Rome; ‘This hall ot God
shines with its adornment ot mosaics,^' a hall where the
precious light of taith gleams even more brightly.'^- Some¬
times, as in the now ruined church of the late fitth-century
monastery of St Andrew the Apostle at Rax’enna, the titiiliis,
which reters cliiedv to the marble revetment, is long enough
and literarv enough to constitute an chpliriisis ot the decoration
Itself It begins;
Hither light is born here, or, confined here, rules treely. Perhaps it is
the earlier light, whence conies now the beauty ot the sky. Perhaps
the modest walls generate the splendour of daylight, now that
external rays are excluded. See the marble blossom, a quiet glow,
and the reriections trom every compartment [/’I’tn/.vi] ot the purple
wiiilt. The gifts of Peter dazzle because of the mastery ot the
workman [auctoris pyccio \ . .
The conceit that the church interior rivalled the light of day wxis
one which became a commonplace in early medieval aesthetics,
dependant on the dominant role of artificial lighting. Betore we
can understand the leading themes of Early Christian and
Bvzantine colour-aesthetics, we must look more closely at the
physical conciitions in which this decoration was seen.
and liturgy
It has been shown that in the early Byzantine church, tor
example in the ‘Mausoleum’ ot Galla Placida at Ravenna, the
wnndows themselves and the controlled light which entered
through them were part of a complex iconography of light. As a
Syrian hymn put it; ‘There shines in the sanctuary a single light,
entering through three windows in the wall; another eloquent
symbol of the Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
C')ne of the greatest obstacles to the modern appreciation of
medieval buildings is the fact that for the most part the lighting
conditions tor which they were created no longer apply. If the
present-day visitor to the dingy interior ot Sta Sopihia in
Istanbul is surprised at the dazzling evocations of Procopius or
Paul the Silentiary, this is not simply due to the grimy condition
ot the marble revetment and the sacily unlucid vaulting, which
give It rather the appearance of a run-down Victorian railway
station (not, indeed, unlike the present condition of the Pera
Palace Hotel on the other side of the Golden Horn). It is also due
to the reduction in the number of windows in the course of
many restorations since the sixth century to about half the
original tigure. Betore the collapse of the dome in 5 5S, each of
the halt-domes had windows around its base; those around the
eastern half-dome were reduced from fifteen to five in order to
4h
strengthen the structure and in the interests of symmetry similar
reductions were made on the west. The semi-circular tympana
to north and south originally had tar larger semi-circular
windows than at present.^-’’ Similar modifications were made at
S. Marco in Venice, where the extension ot the mosaic
programme paradoxically meant the blocking-up ot many
windows, although here the darkening led to the construction
of two large rose-windows in the south wall and the large
lunette on the north in the late fifteenth century and the
enlarging ot many windows in the seventeenth.^^ Although the
disposition of the light is now very different trom that in the
original twelfth- and thirteenth-century church, S. Marco still
offers perhaps the most authentic experience ot a Byzantine
church interior available to us.
At Monreale in Sicily some thirty-four windows were made
or enlarged during the restorations ot 1816, so that there is much
more light in the nave now than in the twelfth century.Here,
too, the lightening effect is increased by the seventeenth-century
substitution of panes of clear glass for the original pierced lead
rransi'iinac, or window-screens, which has also been the case with
many Early Christian monuments. At S. Apollinaire in Classe,
outside Ravenna, the present trausennae have been shown to be
far less substantial than the original ones, and the excavation ot
coloured glass fragments both at S. Vitale in Ravenna and in
Istanbul suggests that, at least from the twelfth century, such
glass was used in coniunction with fresco and mosaic in the
interior; here, too, the result must have been considerably less
light.
Whatever the effect of a modification of light trom outside,
through the use of small openings or coloured glass, it seems
clear that the Early Christian or Byzantine church was to be
e.xperienced as not so much a receptacle as a generator ot light.
As the early eulogist of Sta Sophia, Procopius, put it: ‘You
might say that the interior space is not illuminated by the sun
from the outside, but that the radiance is generated within, so
great an abundance of light bathes this shrine all round.
Interior space was above all to be seen by artificial light. It is
clear to the modern observer that, for example, the ninth-
century apse-mosaic of the Virgin and Child, which was
inserted rather awkwardly into the eastern half-dome of Sta
Sophia over existing windows, was never intended to be seen by
daylight, for against the light from these window's it is almost
invisible from the body of the church. The spectator has the
same difficulties at Torcello and, in a reverse sense, in Sta Sophia
with the tenth-century Alexander mosaic in the North Gallery,
which is placed high under a vault that receives no direct light
from the w'lndow's. Only if we could see them at night by
artificial light w'ould they be properly visible.
This is precisely the way in which Byzantine mosaics were
usually seen, for much of the ritual of the Eastern Church w'as
nocturnal. Any visitor to Greek or Russian Orthodox services
even today will notice the vast role played in them by the many
candles and lamps. From the enci of the second century the
Eucharist in the Eastern Church was celebrated just before
dawm; St Jerome, w'ho visited Constantinople trom the West in
the tourth century, noted; ‘in all the Churches ot the East, when
the Gospel is going to be read, candles arc lighted, even though
the sun may already be up — not to dispel the darkness, but

dcimnistrating a sign of Vespers, too, was held in the
evening twilight and lamps and candles were lit during the first
half of the service (called luclniihon because ot this): at Easter,
according tti the Exultet hymn for the Easter Vigil, they were to
last until the morning star — Cihrist — had risen. From the second
century the vespertine sers ice also included a hymn to 'joytul
light’ (jilios ilaroii), anticipating the dawn.’^' The Spanish nun
Egeria, visiting the C'hurch of the Resurrection in Jerusalem at
the end ot the fourth century, described the evening service
thus:
livery weekday at the tenth hour [4 p.m. |, called licit)icon we call it
Incernare the people gather in the Anastasis [Resurrection|. All the
lamps and candles are lit, and an infinite light is created. The light is
not brought in from outside but from within the grotto, where a
lamp burns night and day, that is from the room behind the grille.
I'he psalms of light are also sung .. . great glass lanterns are burning
everywhere, and there are many candles in front of the Anastasis,
and also before and behind the Ciross. By the end of all this it is
dusk . . .«^
Many monastic services were vigils and it is recorded that after
the completion of the Church of Christ in Cihora in
Constantinople, its founder, Theodore Metochites, attended the
nocturnal services with the monks to observe the effect of the
interior decoration of mosaic and marble.
Hence the emphasis on lamps and candles, which also played
such an important role in the ceremonial of the Byzantine
court.The rhapsody on Sta Sophia by Paul the Silentiary
closes with a long and astonishing account of the lighting
arrangements in the church: ‘But no words are sufficient to
describe the illumination in the evening: you might say that
some nocturnal sun fills the majestic temple with light.’ Efe
went on to describe the great double ring of lamps with silver
rehectors under the dome, the rows of lamps down the aisles,
around the edges of the galleries and the base of the dome, along
the chancel screen and even on the hoor, concluding;
CTiuntless other lights, hanging on twisted chains, docs the church
of ever-changing aspect contain witliin itself; some illumine the
aisles, others the centre or the east and west, others shed their bright
flame at the summit. Thus the bright night smiles like the day and
appears herself to be rosy-ankled . .
In 1200 Archbishop Anthony of Novgorod saw eighty silver
candlesticks in the dome and others throughout the church, and
another visitor from Novgorod in the fourteenth century
noticed the
enormous and innumerable quantity of lamps .. . some in the
chapels and the rtioms, others on walls and between the walls, in the
aisles of the church where the great icons arc, and where there also
burn lamps of olive oil, and we sinners went joyfully, with tears in
our eyes, offering candles according to our means, just as before
holy relics.. .
Even in the far smaller church of S. Demetrios in Thessaloniki a
late fifteenth-century traveller counted some six hundred lamps
burning on the name-day of the saint.
I'he effect of this lighting on mosaics is difficult for us to sense,
accustomed as we are to daylight or (as usually in Italian
I li.ll I I K' ’M 1 HI I \M
churches) the even glare ot electru Hoodliglus. Paul the
Silentiary was surely right when he suggested that it w.is .111
effect ot continual movement, for the breeze and the an
distributed by the processuuis must ot'ten h.is e > .lught the
flanies. Ehe flickering light pl.ised oxer the soft .ind irn gular
surface ot the x ault mosaics, making them ex en less subst.mtial
than they seem to us and cert.iinlx iimre porous, more gentle
and more alwe. At the same tune, it is xerx unlikelx th.it thex
gax e an impression ot more x ix id loc.il colour.
Rcalisiii and niorcniciii
Although Byzantine aesthetics has been gixen .1 good de.il ot
attention in recent years, there is still x erx little agreement about
xvhat its leading characteristics xxere. I xvo main schools ot
thought have developed: one, th.it Bvzantine .ittitudes to the
arts xvere governed by essentially 1 lellemstic ideas ot'truth .iiul
verisimilitude,”^ and the other, that thex aimed to cre.ite .1
hieratic distance and an essentiallv unreal spiritual effect.”” Ehe
casual spectator might find the latter the more compelling but
an examination of the documents and of the methods of'image-
making gives far stronger support for the former, tjuite apart
from the many ckphrnscii, xvhich understandably reriect more tir
less the attitudes ot their I lellemstic literary models, the
extensive literature arising tixmi opposition triumphant
opposition — to the iconoclastic movements of the eighth and
ninth centuries is, ot its very nature, strtingly in favour ot a close
resemblance betxveen image and prototype.
Writing in the early eighth century, before Ins conversion to
Iconoclasni, the Emperor Eeo 111 told the C'aliph C')niar II 'xve
have alxvays felt a desire to conserve [the images of Cdirist and
his Disciples] xvhich have come doxx n to us from their times as
their living representations . . .’. Earlier still the Canincil In
Tnillo of 691 had repudiated the Hellenistic type of Cdirist.
insisting that he he shoxvn in his historically accurate, bearded
(i.e. Syrian) appearance.Even the Iconoclasts, at the Ecumen¬
ical Council of Hiereia in 754. characterized the art of painting
images as ‘deceptive.Many popular stories of miraculous
icons depend upon the fact of their complete verisimilitude; that
this xvas the expectation tif the Byzantine artist hniiselt is
attested by an engaging anecdote told to Anthony ot Novgorod
on his visit to Sta Sophia:
There xvas also a great mosaic of the Saviour, xvhich lacked a finger
of the right hand, and as the .irtist completed it, he said, looking at it
‘Lord, I have made you just as you xxere xxhen alive.' A x’oice came
out of the picture and said. ‘And xx hen did you see me?’ And the
artist xvas silent and died, and the finger remained unfinished. Then
it xvas made out of gilded silver.*’'
■Artists had both xvritten and graphic models axailable to
them to learn the e.xact appearance ot their subjects. I'he list ot
the features of a vast range of religitnis personalities, tamiliar in
the eighteenth-century compilation of Ditniysiiis ot Eourna,
go back to the physiognomies of the type ot Ulpian the Roman,
of the ninth or tenth century.*'- Anthony ot Nox gorod also
pointed to the thoroughly Classical procedure ot using a
‘master’ model - in this case txvo icons in Sta Sophia tor the
likenesses ot saints.*'’ Ehe urgent need tor an exact likeness in
47
I l(;n I I ROM IMF 1 AST
icmi-inakin^ was alsci iindcrst(H)d in secular portraiture, as we
read from a ninth-eentiiry Islaniie account which
LU'zautiue artists for their unusual gifts:
If one of their painters paints a portrait without omitting anything,
lie IS still mu satisfied, and is willing to present him as a young man,
a mature m.in, or .in old man, as required, lis en th.it does not satisfy
him, .ind he paints him weeping or laughing. That also is not
enough I'or him. and he represents him as handsome, eharniing and
distinguished-looking. 1 lowever, he is still discontented,
distinguishes in his painting between a quiet and ,ui embarrassed
laugh, between a smile and a laugh strong enough to make tears
flow from one's eyes, between joytuis laughter and mocking or
threatening laugh ter.
These signs of mobility iii facial features, even allownig tor their
literary origins in physiognomies, were tar more appreciable to
contemporaries than they are to us, as we may see it we try to
interpret the expression on the face ot the Pantokrator.
The role ot colour in the establishment ot this realism also
followed the traditional Hellenistic pattern. The Greek Fathers
of the fourth century, in their occasional and well-mtormed
remarks on the nature of painting, were content to observe that
colour was used to give greater truth to the tirst sketch. Even
Gregory ot Nyssa, tor all his delight in pure colour-sensations,
restated Aristotle’s severe judgment when he wrote, ‘anyone
who looks at the picture that has been completed through the
skilful use of colour does not stop wnth the mere contemplation
of the colours that have been painted on the panel; rather he
looks at the form w'hich the artist has created in colour.’^-'’ For
Gregory, as perhaps for most of us, these ways of looking were
entirely distinct. The emphasis was repeated by the Council of
754, Photius and ]ohn of Damascus in the ninth century, and in
the twelfth by Constantine Manasses who, in an ckphrasis of a
mosaic in the Great Palace at Constantinople, preferred painting
to sculpture precisely because it was able to use chiaroscuro to
portray ‘the roughness of skin and every kind of complexion, a
blush, blond hair, a face that is dark, faint, and gloomy, anci
again one that is sweet, comely and radiant with beauty.’ The
attitude is one that comes directly from one of the Elder
Philostrattis’s Pictures (E 2).'^^
Against this emphasis on verisimilitude must be set the
frequent inability of artists to discriminate between individuals
and a reliance on verbal inscriptions, which had a strong
theological justification throughout the Byzantine world. As
John of Damascus wrote in the eighth century, ‘Fdivine grace is
given to the materials by the naming of the person represented
in the picture’.But among the writers who discuss the realism
of painting we find hardly any support for the aesthetic value of
colour in itself.*^® In the fourth century St Gregory Nazianztis
confessed that he had a weakness for deep, florid colours, but
these, he said, confuse the imagery; the simple palette of Zeuxis,
Polyclitus and Etiphranor - whose works he can hardly have
known - were much to be preferred. It is a fitting irony that his
own works should have received some of the most florid and
sumptuous illumination of the Middle Ages.’’^ And we saw
with what pleasure Paul the Silentiary compared the poly¬
chrome marbles of Sta Sophia to painting; for him, the glories
ot painting must surely have been the glories of colour.
48
This concern for realism shown by commentators on
praised Byzantine art was reflected in its methods. Althotigh there are
some striking examples of artists ignoring the needs of the
spectator for \'isibihty and intelligibility (for example the small
narrative panels in Sta Maria Maggiore in Rome and S.
Apollinare Niiovo in Ravenna and the frescoes in the side-
chapels in Staro Nagoncane in Macedonia), Byzantine artists
showed considerable interest in illtisionism. Cdptical corrections
to allow for the viewing position of the spectator were widely
and
practised: thev have been noticed in Sta Eirene in Constantin¬
ople, in Sta Sophia in Thessaloniki, at Ravenna and in Sta
Sophia in Kiev.'*’" In mosaics at Rome (Chapel ofjohn 'VII) and
at Ravenna (S. Vitale) there was also an attempt to render
jewelry ‘illtisiomstically’ by the use of single large tesserae or jq
shaped mother-of-pearl, although the more usual practice was
to shapejewels from several tesserae in a ‘representational' way.
The handling of flesh and drapery in mosaic also indicates a
striving for realism. The standard Byzantine practice of using
far smaller tesserae for flesh was clearly to produce subtler qo
modelling than in the more broadly handled draperies and
backgrounds. In the draperies themselves, a painterly discrimin¬
ation between opaque highlights, using marble or matt glass,
and transparent glass shadows has been noticed both in Rome
(Sta Maria Maggiore) and in Ravenna (Basilica Ursiana frag¬
ments). In the Church of Christ in Chora at Istanbul 27
(presumably in the panel of the 'Virgin in the nave and the Deesis
in the narthex) it has been noticed that the reverse is true and that
the highlights on the drapery are glass, whose glossy surface
suggests light Itself, and the reduced intensity of hue which that
brilliance produces.
All these examples refer to the realistic treatment of the
figure; in none of them is there a hint of a spirituality beyond
appearances, still less that the artist might convey such a
spirituality through e.xpressive deformations. The one sugges¬
tion of such an attitude that 1 have encountered is in a ninth-
century sermon by Leo VI, in which he referred to a
Pantokrator figure in a dome as truncated in order ‘ter erfler a
mystical suggestiern erf the eternal greatness inherent in the One
represented, that is, that His mcarnatiern ern earth die! not eietract
from His sublimity Yet there is a whole class of
Byzantine and Early Christian literature on art that does not
deal with the figure but is concerned with sublimity and the
means of achieving it in art: this is the description of the interiors
of buildings, of which we have seen several examples. They are
the most original and the most important evidence of a
specifically early medieval aesthetic.
Gold highlights could be used in ceiling mosaics in a way that was
nert possible in the level medium of pavements. In a bay of the
ambulatory of Sta Constanza in Rome (built as a mausoleum for the
daughter of Constantine) they pick out the bowl with drinking
doves, and indicate proximity to the focus of the building, at first a
tomb but now the high altar.
26 Rome, Sta Costanza, vault mosaic in a bay of tlie ambulatory, fourth
centurv -CD
 27 Istanbul, Cdirist in Chora (Karije njaini), Dccsis.
1. 1320
28 Rome, S.l'rasscdc, Chapel ot S.Zeno, wuilt
mosaic detail, ninth century
29 Ist.mhul, Sta Sophia, panel ot Leo I 7 k/irc/iin;
hcforc ('Jirisi, ninth century
30 Ravenna, 'Mausoleum' ofCalla RIacid.i, I'lie
C'jood SliophcriL fifth century

2?

Luminous colour
It was through mosaic that the artists of the Early Christian and
Byzantine churches were able to convey their message ot salvation.
They achieved an astonishing degree ot expressiveness in this difficult
medium, in which bright colours, including gold, were tused into
little glass cubes, the tesserae (30), giving an enhanced brilliance, and
by varying the angles of their surfaces, creating sparkle and shimmer
as the spectator moved. Tesserae might be set at an angle at strategic
places, such as haloes (29), to reflect light downward, or optical
techniques could be used to create a variety ot eftccts. Flesh (28) was
warmed by a random scattering ot red tesserae, tor example, or a
chequerboard type of shading gave an optical shimmer to sott or
lustrous subjects (27). I'hc examples range from the tilth to the
fourteenth century.
29
SO
 •'^\i

r >.
1 ' J

i j
fT^ J
r 1 1
v^J

30
The colour of Divine Light

Throughout the Middle Ages the Classical tradition that red was 31 Venice, S. Marco, atrium mosaic. The separnlioii of from darkness,
the colour of light continued to find expression in art. In one ot the thirteenth century
mosaics of St Mark’s in Venice (31), the light of Creation itself is red 32 Rome, SS.Cosmas and Damian, apse mosaic, sixth century

as It is separated from darkness (blue). In many Early Christian apse

mosaics, the theophany of Christ takes place among the rosy clouds
of dawn (32). 32
f| 3 ffv^. •

in
■/:") «?•<>■■ • i;

HH
r:'4.JP^i

^«ii

W ** - \
I ‘‘■’■■iJ
1 ' -4 * i’Var’ ^

^H|p<|TjM|biMIB^^BWiWwP^.^

>4
Tlic colour ot Divine Darkness

33 Sin.ii, Miin.isiiTN ot St In the Transfigurtilioii the'■hpl'f ■ii-..r.::r t- I

C'.iihcrmc. .ipse mos.iu, I'lic m.iiuiorl.i hecotiies winter .is It r. .- .ii .‘-..'i-,;
'!'r,ii:<tii;nr,ilioii of ('lirL-t. sixtli Sin.ii It e\ en turns the Apostle s' •■.n r:o"ts b n. I Ins liine .
1 L'lUurN
e h.ir.ieteristie tteir the-luirin.il beh.iv'our e.t h :ht. pi ■
rerieetuin elf the \ lew prop.ig.ite'el In the si\th-v e etiirs ti:. .■see.-i e- ;
bseiulei-l )ion\ sns, th.it .it this inonie'nt in (. hrist's in. , '.i - !■ s;..l r.j

(.birkness were .ihout him' il's.ihn pn e:

34

The colour purple

Redness and lustre seem to h.ive been the

twn most prized e]ualities of ancient and
medieval purple. In the Empress Theodor,fs
robe at Ras’enn.i it was prohahh' the shine, not
the hue. which proclaimed it the true Imperial
purple; and in the scene of M.iry receis'ing the
skein ot wool (35), although ,111 inscription
c.ills it 'porphurion ' it is cle.irh' a \'ermilion
red.

34 R.nenn.i, S. Vit.ile. I'hc l:iiipn's.< ’Iln-Oiiorj jinl her

Lhiu >. 1'. S40
35 Ist.inbul. tllirist in tlliora (K,iri|e I ti.iiini, Ihr 3.S
I ir^iii rru iviii'^ ihr skfiii of wool. r. i iao piet.iili
 The illuminating book
51 1

aX

The Gospel itself was a vehicle ot light. In a

copy ofBcatus’s Commentary on the
Apocalypse (36), Christ, in a cloud supported
by seraphim, holds the Book with a jewelled
cover. Another such Gospel-book appears on
the altar in the Uta Codex (37).

36 Christ appearing in the Clouds, from a

Commentary on the Apocalypse by Beatus ot Liebana.
c. 1109
37 St Erhard Offering Mass, troni the Uta Codex,
eleventh century (detail)

36

The ultimate model ot these chphrascis was 1 lomer's descrip-
ti(Mi ot the Palace ot Alcmotis, which Odysseus approached
with some misgivings {Odyssey Vll, Sa—130):
For a kind ot radiance, like that of the sun or moon, lit up the high
rooted halls ot the great king. Walls of bronze, topped with blue
enamel tiles, ran round to left and right from the threshold to the
back ot the court. The interior of the well-built mansion was
guarded by golden doors hung on posts of silver which sprang
troni the bronze threshold. The lintel they supported was of silver
too, and the door handle of gold . . . [trans. Rieu|
Here Homer first sets the tone of the description, then takes the
eye briskly round the interior space. He hints at the splendour of
the ceiling hut not at the character of the pavement, although an
early commentary on this passage had it that it was of gold.
Later Lfomer’s brief account was elaborated into a type of set-
piece description by Lucian in the second century ad and by
Nonnos in the fifth. Lucian in The Hall dwelt at length on he
gilded ceiling, like a starry sky at night, mentioning too the
painted walls with their suggestion of spring flowers. Nonnos
{Dioiiysiaca XVll, 67—90), on the other hand, turned the whole
building into a lavish display of precious stones and metals and
drew attention to the intricate patterns in the mosaic pavement;
he concluded that his visitor ‘turned his wandering gaze to each
thing in order’. The early medieval ekphrasis developed these
models by amplifying all their characteristics and by giving
particularly extended attention to ceiling and floor. Thus,
already in the early fourth century the author of a life of
Constantine the Great described the ceiling of the Church of the
Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem as composed of carved coffering
‘which, like a great sea, extended over the entire basilica in a
continuous intertwining, and, being entirely overlaid with
radiant gold, made the whole church gleam with flashes of
light.’It was an image which fascinated the early Middle
Ages in the West; Paulinus in the fifth century used it of his new
ceiling in the basilica at Nola in South Italy, with its ‘shimmer¬
ing’ coffers; in the seventh century Venantius Fortunatus
introduced it into his account of the church of Bishop Felix at
Ravenna and in the ninth Giselmanus into his of the Church of
St Vincent in Fans. This vivid image of the coffered ceiling as
a shimmering sea stands out from the more obvious metaphor
of a sunny or starry heaven.
The pavement, in mosaic or the marble slabs whose striations
recalled the striations of salt-foam on the breaker or the ship’s
wake, was also frequently compared to the sea or rivers in these
descriptions: the use of green Thessalian marble lent itself
especially to such an analogy. In his account of the mosaics of the
Great Palace in Constantinople, from the period of Andronikos
Paleologus the elder (i2(S2-i328), Nicephorus Xanthopoulos
extended this image to the whole room: ‘What is spread on the
floor, and what clothes the whole space like a dress worked in
colours might at first sight be called a sea, which, moving on all
sides in the gentlest waves, is suddenly petrified.’The
analogy is second only to the image of the pavement (and
sometimes the whole church interior) as a flowery meadow,
another with a good Classical pedigree.Sometimes the idea
of the sea and the meadow co-existed, for all this cosmic
imagery was part of the early medieval attempt to see the
I K.H I 1 Hi iM I lU t A'' i
church as expressne of the whole um\erNe.‘ Flu rel.ui-'iislnp
of pavement to sea \\ as sometimes ,1 response to the imaui re of
the pavement itself as m the east late tifth-centur\ fishinu
pavement of the Cathedral at .\quilea whose motifs uo b.u k t-.'
the Temple of Fortune at Palestrina and whose stele reflects
secular paeements at Piazza .^rmerina in Sicilw and a grcnip ot'
pavements in churches around the .Ailriatic notable Sta
Eufemia at Grado and in north kale , from the sixth to the
tevelfth centuries, evhich include a particular evave-like pat¬
tern.'" We are reminded, too. that the great rieers and the
ocean had been singled out by Longinus in the first centurv ad as
among the sublimest images of nature {On the Snhliine 35).
The most imptirtant feature of the sea-imagere for both
ceilings and pa\'enients is that they conveyed a vivid sense of the
gentle hut ceaseless movement of natural things; the interpret¬
ation of the Byzantine and Earl\- Christian interior as nuue-
ment was perhaps the most original characteristic of post-
Classical ekphrasis. The twelfth-centur\- description of the
pavement in Sta Sophia in Constantinople, by .Michael of
Thessaloniki, stated categorically: ‘The floor is like the sea. both
in its width and in its form; for certain blue waves are raised up
against the stone, just as though ytiti had cast a pebble into the
water, and had disturbed its calm . . It extended to everv
feature of the interior space: Chorikos’s hint that the gilded
vault mosaics w'ere flowing fountains, echoed bv Michael
Psellus in the eleventh century,"-’ was expanded in the twelfth
by Michael of Thessaloniki into an image of liquid movement
that brought tears to the eyes of the spectator and involved
church and observer in a single action: ‘The brightness of the
gold almost makes the gold appear to drip down; for by its
refulgence making waves to arise, as it were, in eyes that are
moist, it causes their moisture to appear in the gold which is
seen, and it seems to be flowing in a molten stream.'''■* This
intense subjective involvement in the experience of the church
interior had already been expressed by Procopius in his sixth-
century account of Sta Sophia:
All [the] elements, marvellously fitted together in mid-air,
suspended from one another and reposing only on the parts
adjacent to them, produce a unified and most remarkable harmony
in the work, and yet do not allow the spectators to rest their gaze
upon any one of them for a length of time, but each detail readily
draws and attracts the eye to itself. Thus the vision constanth' shifts
around, and the beholders are quite unable to select any particular
element which they might admire more than all the others.. .' "
In his account of the new church of St George of Mangana,
Psellus went out of his way to stress that it was the size and
grandeur of the building which impressed and, above all, its
manifold detail:
It was not merely the exceptional beauty of the whole, composed as
it was of most beautiful parts, but just as much the individual details
that attracted the spectator's attention, and although he could enjoy
to his heart's content all its charms, it was impossible to find one
that palled. Every part of it took the eye, and what is more
wonderful, even when you gazed on the loveliest part ot all, the
small detail would delight you as a fresh discovery
This sense of ecstatic bewilderment was induced partly by the
I i(;}n I ROM I HI. I'AS I
imncatc planning, both horizontal and vertical, of the
I3\'zantine church, so unlike the simple sweep of the Western
basilica towards the apse, and by the often confusing lay-out of
the inan\’ narrative paintings or mosaics, at its most extreme in
the Macedonian painted churches of the fotirteenth centtiry,
such as Staro Nagoricane. This meant that the narrative
sequence had to be sought with some difficulty in order to be
nnderstood. *It was an attitude towards viewing a church
w hich also had important consequences for style — not least, for
example, in delaying the exploitation of the late-Classical
single-point perspective system m monumental painting — and
for the handling of colour, for it is only to the moving eye that
the metallic elements in mosaic and fresco are fully visible. But
when the gold and silver surfaces are at their most reflective, the
adpicent coloured areas are least chromatic: light destroys colour
and the spectator must move on to enjoy the coloured images
again.' * ® This functional separation between light and colour in
Byzantine mosaics, which reflects the Aristotelian distinction
between them that dominated the early Middle Ages and was
still strongly present in the Arab theorists of the tenth and
eleventh centuries,^could only be reconciled in an aesthetics
of movement; it was this aspect of Byzantine aesthetics which
was perhaps most important. The early Renaissance polemic
against the use of real gold in painting and the great reduction of
Its use in mosaic, for example in the Mascoli Chapel in
Venice.was closely associated with the re-assertion of a
single-point perspective system and hence the reduction of
lateral movement in the spectator.
Mosaic pavement ot Sta Euteniia, Grado, sixth century. The wave-like
pattern embodies the poetic notion of tlic mosaic pavement as a shining sea.
58
The colours of Divine Lic^lit
If light and colour were distinct, albeit related phenomena, what
was the colour of light, and more specifically of Divine Light?
Some years ago Fatrik Reutersward addressed this question in a
playful essay and concluded that it was either red or blue. But
if w'e look at a related group of Byzantine churches w'hose
similar iconographic programmes gave many opportunities for
the deployment of Divine Light - Hosios Lotikas (r. 1020), Nea
Moni on Chios (mid-eleventh century) and Daphni (before
1080) — we find a situation which is rather more complicated
than that. Hosios Loukas, which has the most complete cycle of
mosaics, includes a scene of Pentecost in the dome w'here the red
flames of the Holy Spirit are enclosed in white rays with a dark
bluish-grey edge; this pattern is also seen in the heavenly rays
descending on Christ at the Baptism. The same formula is used
in these scenes at Nea Mom but at Daphni, w'here the use of
silver cubes is generally very marked, the rays in the Baptism
include silver too. In the Nativity at Hosios Loukas the rays
descending on the infant Christ are gold, where silver is again
used at Daphni; in the scene of the Transfiguration in Nea Moni,
Christ’s dazzling efiFuIgence is gold, while in the painted
rendering in the crypt at Hosios Loukas and in the mosaic at
Daphni it is blue, white and silver, where the mosaic artist has
made the rays flashing from Christ’s body golci and grey within
the area of his mandorla, to contrast with the blue-silver of the
mandorla itself, and silver and grey outsicie it, to contrast with
the gold background of the whole picture. At Daphni too is one jg
of the most eloquent evocations of the Divine Light: in the
astonishing space between Gabriel and Mary in the scene of the
Annunciation light is caught and held in the cupped surface,
whose bareness of imagery is especially striking by comparison
with the croweied figures of the other three pendentifs of the
dome. There the light catches the figures of Christ or the Holy
Spirit (as a dove); here their presence must surely be implicit in
the reflected light itself For it occupies just that place 111 the
composition reserved for the Christ-child or the dove of the
Holy Spirit 111 some Aiiiiunciations in the Mam (southern
Peloponnese) and in a well-known icon at Sinai. Here Divine
Light is indubitably a beautiful pale gold.
Perhaps the question ‘what colour is Divine Light?’ is badly
framed, for we have seen that it was not hue but luminosity with
which the early medieval artist wxis chiefly occupied. Certainly
it could be red, especially in the later Middle Ages.'--^ It is
notable that the miraculous light which appeared in the Holy
Sepulchre in Jerusalem at Vespers on Good Friday was described
in the twelfth century as ‘not like an ordinary flame, but [it|
bu rns in a marvellous fashion, and with an indescribable
brilliance, red like cinnabar’.Yet the red w'as surely
important not for its hue but because it stood for the finest sort
of light.
Divine Light may also be blue: blue grounds seem to have
preceded gold grounds in the earliest wall niosaics^^-'’ and blue
was the dominant colour in many of the mandorlas which
surround Christ in representations of the Transfiguration and
the Atiastasis from the sixth century onwards, as it is of the
emanation from God’s hand in the Byzantine churches just
discussed. There is something very curious about the form of
D.iphni, I'lic AiiininiidlioH. c. lONo. The cin.m.itioii ot the Heil\
etinveyed by lui more than the reHeetion ot lipht on goki mosaic, (.pj)
these m.mdorlas and these emanations: tor the most part they
reverse the sequenee of brightness-zones that we should expert
frtim a hght-giving body (deseribed clearly by Plotinus in his
discussion ot di\ine emanation in limictuh IV, T'?)- they
proceed frtnn dark at the centre, round the body ofClhrist or the
hand tit (lod. tti light at their turthest extremity. Iliere are
exceptions to tins scheme Cihrist’s mandorla in the Last
[udgment at Loreello. in the central dome tit S. Mareti in Venice
and in the treseti d ranstiguratitni at Nea Mom. ttir example
but 111 general this ‘ntirniar sequenee is re\ ersed.' Niehtil.is
Mesaretes in the twelfth century put Ins finger tin the reason tor
Spirit is this curitius iinersion when he described the scene ot the
Transfiguratuin in the (iitiw destrtiyed) Cdiureh ot the 1 loK
Apostles in C Ainst.intintiple, w Inch must h,i\ e etiiitormed tn the
usual type:
flic space in the air supports a cloud ot light .uul in the niulNt ot the.
hears lesus. uiadc iiitire bnlliant th.in the sun, .is though geiier.ind
like .iiuither light frtuii 1 lis l-.ither's light, w hich though with ,i
clouti IS )oined tti the nature of in.in. bor .1 cloud, it is w ritten, .uul
d.irkness were .ihout lliiii. .iiid tin light prodiu es tin- jeloud
through the tr.instorin.itioii ot the higlier iiatur. m tiu 'o'.si-r.
hec.iuse ot'this union w Inch surp.osex .ill underst.ii'diu;;. .ird w - -■
unspe.ikable n.uuri- . .' "
1 hus the d.irkness .irose w hen the l)i\ ine 1 ight took op tn -h.
but there was another dimension m Mes.iretes'-. . .upmem us.
 I K.ll I I ROM I HF- i;as i
tor he was able to appeal to a Biblical tradition ot Divine
darkness, a tradition which had been given particular promin¬
ence b\- one early Byzantine theologian.
The ancient fewish notion that (lod dwelt in inefiable
darkness'-” became firmly Cdinstianized in the sixth century in
the writings, probably by a Syrian monk, attributed to
Dionysius the Areopagite. the pagan philosopher converted by
St Paul at Athens (Acts 17: 34) and who, according to a legend
often represented in Byzantine art, had attended the Virgin at
her death. Pseudo-Dionysius was one of the most frequently
cited theologians ot the early Midcile Ages,^-'"^ according to
whom, ‘we posit intangible and invisible darkness ot that Light
which IS unapproachable because it so tar e.xceeds the visible
light' {Oil the Divine Saiiics VII, 2), and in a letter, ‘The divine
darkness is that “unapproachable light” where God is said to
hve’d-’o That Christ is emanating darkness in the Transtigur-
ation is suggested by the darkened bodies ot the three Idisciples
on the sides towards him, especially clear in the earliest known
monumental rendering of the subject, in the apse in St
H Catherine’s on Sinai, where the tunics of SS Peter and Janies
(respectively, a light brown and a light purple) turn deep blue
where Christ’s rays strike them.' The Divine effulgence seems
to have similarly surprising effects in the Church of Christ in
Chora mosaic of the Dormition of the Virgin where Christ’s
mandorla (grey and blue) turns the golden seraphim grey-blue
where it overlaps them; in the Nativity the grey-white light
from heaven does the same for the oxen. Conformably to the
sense ot bafflement which is conveyed in the Gospel accounts of
the Transfiguration, blue is the colour of the Divine Darkness
which transcends light. The mosaic at Sinai seems to be the
earliest representation of this type and it was especially
appropriate to the Dionysian interpretation of God’s nature
there since Sinai was the site where Moses ‘went into that
darkness where God was’ (Exodus 20: 21), the episode shown in
another mosaic at St Catherine’s and an example of the ‘truly
mystical darkness of unknowing’ to which Pseudo-Dionysius
drew attention m his Mystical Theology
At the Transfiguration, too, however, Christ’s garment
became a dazzling white; in his commentary on the story, the
second-century Greek writer Origen amplified the idea that
‘since there are even degrees among white things, his garments
became as white as the brightest and purest of all white things,
that is light.The Greek and his early Latin translators did
indeed have several terms for white at their disposal: Origen
used lainpron as well as leiikon and his translator caiididns.'^^‘^ He
might still have been able to use phaion, now translated as ‘grey’
but originally meaning ‘shining’ as welM^^ Laniproii (bright)
was such a tundamental concept in Greek thought about colour
that It appeared together with pliaion as one of the ‘twelve’
colours (actually ten) capable of being distinguished by the eye
in a fragment of Ptolemy’s Optics (probably from the lost first
book) widely known in Byzantium.The list also includes
three terms for dark colours and it is not surprising that Greek
and Latin also had several ways of characterizing ‘black’; it is the
other side ot the coin of what has seemed to philologists to be a
simplitication ot colour groupings into ‘light’ and ‘dark’.'
Red and blue were not simply Divine but also the colours of
mundane light and darkness, as they appear in the thirteenth-
60
century mosaics of the Creation in the atrium ot S. Marco in
Venice; in the eleventh-century colour-scale devised by the
Byzantine lexicographer Siida, red also appears next to white
and blue to black.If early medieval painters grouped the
colours according to those which had an affinity with light and
those which were close to darkness, they hardly had the means
to develop a very complex language of colour symbolism.In
liturgical vestments, where we might have e.xpected to find such
a language developing, there was no general agreement about
the significance of colours: here, too, red was usually assimilated
to white for joyous feasts and violet and indigo to black tor
feasts of penance and mourning. For Pope Innocent III, who
attempted to codify liturgical colours for the 'Western Church
at the end of the twelfth century, green, following Aristotle,
was the median colour, ‘intermediate between white, black and
red’, and could thus be used for less dearly characterized feasts. i
The Eastern Church had no colour-canon but showed a
preference for bright colours and white, even for funereal
occasions. 'White and black remained for both Eastern and
Western churches the most important points of the colour-
scale.
Modern studies have tended to narrow the gap between
designers and executant craftworkers in medieval mosaic
production, to stress the freedom of action of the setters,
especially m the matter of colour choice.''*^ Certainly the
transmission of ideas through model-books concentrated on
forms, so far as we know, and in the few known e.xamples of the
use of manuscript illuminations by mosaicists - the most
familiar example is that of the Cotton Genesis in the British
Library anci the atrium mosaics of S. Marco - the influence does
not extend to the colour. Dionysius of Fourna, following the
Gospels of Mark and Luke, prescribed white for the garments of
the transfigured Christ, and so they were usually rendered; hut
at Nea Moni Christ is m gold, at Daphni he wears a pale green
cloak over a pink tunic, and at Nerezi in Macedonia in the
twelfth century and on an iconostasis beam at Sinai in the
thirteenth he is in red over green. Yet if we look at the clothing
of some familiar Biblical figures such as St Peter, we find that
from Venice to Sinai and over a period of eight or nine centuries
he wears the same class of colours, if not precisely the same hues;
a yellow or brownish cloak over a bluish or greenish tunic. The
medieval spectator would not have been able to recognize Peter
by his colours alone: in the scene of Christ washing the
Disciples’ feet at Nea Mom, three other Apostles wear exactly
the same combination of colours as he does; and yet his
garments invariably belong to the family of the blues and
browns. The medieval painter was concerned less with precise
individual hues than with a general class.
Given the concentration on effects of light manifested in the
development of early medieval mosaic, it is perhaps surprising
that mosaicists made little use of a formal device which became
very common in the drapery painting of the later Middle Ages:
colour-change, by which draperies could be modelled not with
a darker value of their own hue but with another hue which
might be of the same value and thus maintain an overall high
tonality. A model of colour-change effects had perhaps been
available to artists since late Antiquity in the form of ‘peacock
stuffs’, or shot materials. These have been identified in a first-

century .M) mosaic with a scene from a comedy in Naples (blue-
green) and were described in the third century by Ale.xander ot
Aphrodisias, although no early examples ot the fabrics them¬
selves have survived.The history of these textiles remains
confused because we must rely for the most part on ambiguous
verbal descriptions. It is not clear, for example, whether the silk
dyed with orseille {scriciiiu auriccllatiiDi), dipped in indigo and
then showing shimmering colours similar to those of the
peacock (described by the south Italian doctor Urso of Salerno
at the end ot the twelfth century), was a shot material (in which
the woot is ot one colour and the weft of another) or simply had
a sheen. Ciertainly by the eleventh century Tinnis, near
Alexandria, was famous for a cloth called bukalamun, ‘the
colour ot which changes according to the different hours of the
day’, one type ot which was red and green, and was compared
to jasper and peacock’s feathers. In the early fourteenth
century, discussions ot colour-illusions began to add silk stuffs to
the more traditional examples of the dove’s neck and the
rainbow. Peter Aureol, for example, about iji6, related these
‘silk cloths which in different positions show different colours’ to
the dove’s neck, but went on to say that they were indeed
illusions, w'hich suggests very strongly that if they were shot
materials, he had not examined them very closely. At about
the same time caiij^iacolore (colour-change) stuffs begin to be
mentioned in Italian inventories, notably at Assisi.
In handbooks of painting, how^ever, there is little hint of these
‘shot’ effects: Theophilus in his twelfth-century treatise makes
no reterence to any other than tonal shading, nor does
Dionysius of Fourna, some of whose material goes back to the
eighth or ninth century; the first hints that colour-changes
might be used does not appear until the late additions in
‘Heraclius’ in the late thirteenth century. Most of these examples
could also be regarded as ‘tonal’.Yellow-green colour-
changes are common enough from the fourth to the twelfth
centuries, but we have seen the status of yellow as a type of green
in Antiquity (p. 12) and they continued to be regarded as
members of the same genus of hue as late as the fifteenth
century. I have noticed red-green colour-change in the
mosaics ot Nea Mom and in the w'all-paintings of Mom
Mavriotissa at Kastoria in northern Greece. From the twelfth
century a very wide range of combinations — blue or green on
purple, yellow on blue or red, red on white are some of the
more striking - may be seen in monuments all over the
Byzantine world. The device is perhaps more common in
painting than in mosaic and may be a function ot the method,
known from the eleventh century onwards, of working on a
blue or black ground, from dark to light (whereas the mosaic
setters worked from light to dark), and needing to create the
light entirely out of colour.
I )o these developments (which accompanied the decline of
mosaic as an important medium of expression) testify to a new
sensitivity to hue during the course of the Middle Ages? There
are certainly some reasons for thinking that they might.
Knowlecige ot the subjective effects ot colours grew and spread
during the period. Galen wrote ot the miniature painters who
‘especially when they are working on white parchment’ and
their eyes tire easily, ‘place nearby grey or dark-coloured
objects, to which they keep looking away, thus resting their
1 It.11 I I K( M 1111 1 \sl
eyes’.' Thn clearly reflectN the (ffeek idea that s ninn n
essentially dependent on light and dark. But two centune^ l.iti r
Basil ot Gaesarea referred to blue and green .is the ■. olours which
were specifically restlul and it was tor this re.ison th.it the poet
Baudri ot Bourgueil in the eleventh centuiw preferred to w rite
on green rather than black w .ix t.iblets,'.-Xi istotle had seen
green as the happv medium between light and dark; 111
Antiquity it had also been associated with the magical \ irtues of
the emerald and other green stones, which w ere pow dereil and
used as an eye-s.iKe, but luiw the idea was gi\en .1 more
subjective, a more psychological intlection. ’
'The colours of Isluiu
It we examine the colour of a wide ramre of Bs zantine artefacts
in every medium, it becomes clear that a good deal of the \ i\ id
local colour, which has given them their reputation for a
peculiarly highly developed colour-sense, dernes from the
ornament, much of which was developed from late-antique
motifs, from the landscape and architectural backgrounds,
w'hich have a similar origin, above all from the costumes of the
figures, who stand or kneel, stiffened by the weight of the
jcwvelled and embroidered stuffs they are so avid to displav.
These costumes are the least Hellenic ingredient in Bvzantine art
and in many cases they are specifically oriental. In S. Apollinare
Nuovo in Ravenna it is the brightly clothed Persian Magi who 40
present the Fioly Virgins to Mary - the Virgins who are
themselves dressed in richly flowered dalmatics, with Asian
belts and the oriental loros underneath them, whereas the white-
robed martyrs opposite are led by St Martin in a plain ptirple
tunic. These same Magi are figured on the hem of the Empress
Theodora’s cloak in the mosaic at S. Vitale, their presence 44
underlining the pervasive influence ot oriental fashion trcmi the
sixth to the ninth centuries and also that it was fashionable
w'omen who w'ere its most important transmitters to the
West.^^^ Charlemagne indulged his wife and her entourage, as
well as the many churches he endowed, with the rich imported
stuffs and gold brocade that he denied himselt and disctiuraged
in the male members of his court.At Palermo on Christmas
Day 1185 the Arab traveller Ibn loba'ir noted that the Christian
w-'ornen w'ore silk stuffs and gold brooches, variegated veils and
gold-embroidered shoes, perfume and paint, ‘like musulman
w'omen’.
This was not a taste for women only; a love ot luxurious
jew'els and stuffs, especially oriental stutis, had come to
Byzantium with the Roman army ot the Emperor Constantine,
the first Roman emperor ‘to wear a diadem decorated with
pearls and precious stones’, according to an early chronicler.'
Constantine’s biographer described his entrance to the Council
of Nicea (325) 'like some heavenly messenger ot God, clothed in
raiment which glittered as it were with rays ot light, reflecting
the purple radiance of a glowing robe, and adorned with the
brilliant splendour of gold and precious stones . . .’. The same
writer described, somewhat disapprovingly, how the bar¬
barians would attend the Emperor at his palace in Constantin¬
ople: ‘like some painted pageant, (presenting! to the Emperor
those gifts which their own nation valued, some ottering crowns
of gold, others diadems set with precious stones, some bringing
61
I K.ll I 1 ROM THI F AST

MELCHIOR
gaspah

The IT-rsian costumes of the Thi ce Magi at

Ifavcniia (sixth century) caught the attention
of western artists and were widely imitated. It

%
may be an indication of the fluidity of colour-
description at the period that the ninth-
century restorer of these mosaics listed the
cloaks as blue (signifying matrimony) for the
purple, yellow {flai’o, signifying virginity) for
the white, and variegated (signifying
penitence) where we find green. (40)

fair-haired boys, others barbaric vestments embroidered with services at the festival (Epiphany) is made of gold and jewels. You
gold and flowers.The bright tunics and trousers which now simply cannot imagine the number, and the sheer weight ot the
became a feature ot Roman army uniform reflect Hunnish candles and tapiers and lamps and everything else they use for the
influence, and further Hunnish and Persian garments were services.^®'*
introduced by Justinian in the sixth century. The costumes
Although textiles with Christian subject-matter had been
represented in the mosaics ot Piazza Armerma (probably early
produced at least since the late fourth century, many ot these
toLirth century) show those segDictita — inlaid decorative panels
church hangings and even vestments used the traditional pagan
ot woven design of animals, birds, human figures - which were
designs of flowers, animals, hunting scenes and, after the rise of
so much in demand in North Africa from the first century ad
Islam m the eighth century, Kufic inscriptions in praise ot Allah,
and had spread throughout the Roman Empire by the end of the
which were later imitated on stuffs produced in the West. Thus
third. A taste for Persian fabrics became so strong that in the
in the late eighth century Pope Leo III presented St Peter’s with
seventh century the Emperor Heraclius brought Iranian
a hanging for the ciboritim of the high altar bearing tigers
weavers to Constantinople, and oriental stuffs were widely
embroidered m gold, and ten years later Pope Gregory IV gave a
imitated within the Empire.
curtain from Alexandria for the mam door, with 'men and
The fashion for rich stuftf was not confined to costume.
horses’, probably a hunting silk.^^-'’
Those swags of seemingly pointless materials which drape so
This presentation of entirely secular and often pagan imagery
many buildings in early medieval pictures are symbols of the
in a Christian setting might have been expected to stimulate the
innumerable hangings with which churches in Byzantium and
kind of allegorical interpretations which had arisen when the
the West were decorated on feast-days - hangings which
hunting aned fishing pavements of late Antiquity had been taken
included the most precious oriental textiles. The Spanish nun
into churches. Yet this cioes not seem to have happened; an early
Egeria was greatly impressed by the church interiors at
ninth-century text, the Aiitirrlietiais of the Patriarch of Constan¬
Jerusalem and Bethlehem late in the fourth century;
tinople, Nicephortis Gregoras, provicies a remarkably early
The decorations really are too marvellous for words: All you can discussion of the distinction between subject-content and
sec is gold, and jewels and silk; the hangings are entirely silk with decorative content which has had a good deal of resonance m
gold stripes, the curtains the same, and everything they use for modern aesthetics. Arguing against the Iconoclasts, Nicephortis

62

Stated that what was venerated by the lcoiu)dules was the saered
nbjeets themselves, not the decorations on them, not even the
image ot Cihrist. The many lising things — he listed wild
animals, horses and birds - represented in the sanctuary were
there not to be honoured and venerated ‘but because of the
decorativeness of the stuffs into which they are woven'. Holv
icons were not like this, since they were holy in their own right
and designed to recall the Archetype's.'^^ That the concept of
pure decoration should have been associated with te.xtiles is
interesting, tor it was in the enjoyment of textiles that medieval
spectators expressed the purest interest in colour for its own
sake. (Iregory of Nyssa in his Life of Moses retold the story of the
vestments made tor the officiants at the Tabernacle (Exodus
39: 1—3): ‘blue is interwoven with violet, and scarlet mingled
with white, and among them are woven threads of gold; the
variety of colours shine with remarkable beauty'.'^’'' (Iregory’s
version is striking not only because he emphasizes the whiteness
ot the linen tar more than his model, but also because, like other
Byzantine writers, he is concerned with the visual effect — the
beauty — ot the result, where the Hebrew writer simply admires
the clever workmanship, and the Cffaeco-Jewish commentators
Josephus and Ehilo of Alexandria stress the elemental symbol¬
ism of the colours.'*^® Chne of the most vivid and precise
descriptions of a w'ork of art 111 the Middle Ages is Reginald of
Durham’s account of the textiles shrouding the remains of St
Cuthbert in Durham Cathedral, which w'ere exposed and
examined in August 1104:
He was clad in tunic anci dalmatic, in the manner of C'hristian
bishops. The style of both of these, with their precious purple
colour and varied weave, is most beautiful and admirable. The
dalmatic which, as the outer robej,] is the more visible, offers a
reddish purple tone, quite unknown in our time, even to
connoisseurs. It still retains the bloom of its original freshness and
beauty, and when handled it makes a kind of crackling sound
because of the solidity and compactness of the fine, skilful weaving.
The most subtle figures of flowers and little beasts, very minute in
both workmanship and design, are interwoven in this fabric. And
for more grace and beauty its appearance was frequently changed
and variegated by strands of another colour mingled with it ... a
yellow colour seems to have been laid down drop by drop; by
virtue of this yellow the reddish tonality in the purple is made to
shine with more vigour and brilliance ..
As Aristotle had hinted, and as his late-antique commentators
had emphasized,'"'’'^ it was the workers with textiles who had
developed the most intimate knowledge of the harmony and
contrast of colours.
Since the cause of this appreciation of pure hue was probably
oriental in origin and since with the rise of Islam in the seventh
century a culture was to develop in Asia and the Arab world
which was as self-conscious and articulate as any in the West and
was, in particular, to make the most important advances in
medieval optics, it might well be expected that the art and ideas
of the Middle East would ofl'er a quite distinct aesthetic or, at
least, a distinctly different emphasis from those developing in
Europe. Clertainly the most original and uncompromising of all
medieval cokiur-styles is found in manuscript-painting in
northern Spain, on the borders of the Arab world, in the highly
1 K.H I I R( i\l HIM \s|
schematized illustrations iif the tenth to twelfth centuries to
Beatus s ('.oiimieiitiiry on the Apoailyi'se. winch were so exciting ;('
to colourists like Ihcasso and Leger w hen the\ w ere brought to
light again in the 1920s. .Modern critics ha\e emph.isi/cd the
autonomy ot colour in this remarkable group ot siuiie twent\
sur\i\ing manuscripts and ha\e underlined the lucid, almost
diagramm.itic quality ot the colour-.ireas ot high s.itur.uion
what one ot them described as ‘the brilliant, une.irthk’ zones of
an abstract cosmos It is still not clear what preciseK the
relatitins between this style and .Mozar.ibic art re.ilK' were but
certainly its visual origins were \ ery \ arious.' 1 he di.igr.mi-
matic quality ot these illuminations is in the spirit of the
manuscript tradition of Isidore of Seville's On ilie Winire of
lliitiys. with its early deselopment of a range ot scientitic
schemata, especially those based on the circle.'"'' .‘\lthough the
Beatus manuscripts differ considerablv among thenisehes in
their choice and handling of colour, all depkw an umisuallv
wide range ot hues tti articulate sets ot" clearly dem.ircated
colour contrasts.What is perhaps most striking about these
large and sumptuous books is their complete lack of metallic
colours: where Batidri ot Botirgueil specificallv mentioned the
Arab origin ot the gold which embellished the manuscript of his
poems,in the Beatus series we find an unusualK w itlespread
use ot yellow paint, unparalleled perhaps until El CIreco at the
close ot the sixteenth century. "Ehese Beatus yellows have not, so
tar as 1 know, been analysed but some of them look like saff ron,
a vegetable dyestuff grown in the Middle East which the
Crusades had introduced very widely into Europe bv the
twelfth century.'’'^ Yellow has had a bad press in modern times
and is now thought to be the least popular colour;'but there
were good reasons for regarding it as an especially harmonious
hue in the later Middle Ages. The yellow angels who are so
conspicuous in the Silos Apocalypse may be understood in terms
ot a gloss by Bernardino de Busti in the fifteenth century, where
the colour {flavns) expressed the balance between the red of
justice and the w'hite of compassion.'’'®
'Visually this yellow seems to bear little relationship to gold
and unlike the early medieval Irish manuscripts whose repertory
ot interlace seems to derive largely from metalwork,"'' the
Spanish organization and handling of colour reffects a highly
developed taste in textiles. Of the subtle modulation of the
coloured areas by repeated lines and dots, characterized by the
tiny horseshoe pattern in the Silos Apocalypse, Meyer Schapiro
has written: ‘It is a method of dosage of cxilor that suggests an
Impressionist flecking and breaking, but is related also to the
play of colored points and threads in a wtiven fabric.''®'* It is
perhaps more than a coincidence that one of the most extended
and original metaphors in Beatus's CAvinneniary on the
Apocalypse should be drawn precisely from textiles and their
dyes. The mystery of the Trinity, wrote Beatus, could be
understood in terms of the way pure undyed woollen cloth was
made up of three elements: the warp, the thrum and the woof
But this pure white cloth was often darkened [fiiscantnr) by a
range of coloured dyes. Some cloths smile (stihriJeant) with
vermilion, some with green, some with yellow, some with
scarlet, others with different red or black coknirs - the range
indeed which we see in the illuminated manuscripts of his work
(but all of them postdating the eighth-century text). Yet tor
<^>3
1 K.H I I ROM I HR. I'AST
Bcatus these colours were the manifold heresies which dehlcd
the purity of the Cittdhead, heresies which his own career as a
theologian was dedicated to uprooting and which in tact were
the pretext for his vast commentary on the Apocalypse of
joliii.^’^^ We are reminded of the apocryphal Gospel of Philip,
where Clod himself was described as a dyer, capable ot
conferring through baptism a permanent dye on all his creatures
but with only a single colour, wdiite; in particular ot the episode
where Jesus, on a visit to a dyeworks, throws seventy-two
colours into the vat and brings them all out white.
Beatus's reservations about polychromy were thus firmly in
line with the late-antique aesthetic of light outlined here. The
Islamic attitudes to which his illustrators were more or less close
were no less Hellenic in character. The magnificent mosaic
decorations of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem (691) and in
the Clreat Mosque at Damascus (r. 715) do not differ in style or
colour trom their Western counterparts; indeed, they otten
employed Byzantine craftworkers. ‘Nor were Islamic atti¬
tudes to such work very different from those in the West: a
ninth-century te.xt attributed to Htinain Ibn Ishaq suggests that
Cn'eeks, Jews and Christians decorated their temples with the
common aim of the ‘refreshing of souls and the engagement of
hearts' and a little later the philisopher al-Razi wrote that the
therapeutic effect of pictures derived, apart from the subject,
from ‘beautiful, pleasant colours — yellow, red, green and white
— and the forms are reproduced in exactly the right proportions’
— an entirely Hellenic formulation.^*"^ Islamic descriptions of
buildings emphasized their hght-giving materials and their
capacity to stun the spectator 111 ways which are close to
Western examples.^** The role ot light in Islamic mysticism
was analagous to that in early Christianity and it was probably
derived from a theory of perception which included the ideas of
Plato and Plotinus.^*'’ The theory of colours in the ninth-
century Syrian Job ot Edessa’s Book of Treasures was largely
Greek: black and white were the primary colours, from which
the intermediate red, saffron-yellow, green and golden-yellow
derived. The colours were linked to the elements, white to
dryness and black to humidity; the eye itself contained black and
white, and hence all the colours, within it.^*^ Avicenna
(980-1037) was particularly preoccupied by the question of the
relationship of values to hues, which he was able to describe
64
only as a series of discrete scales between w'hite and black for
each hue, and for grey.' ** As we shall see (Ch. 9), it took many
centuries tor colour-theorists to sec that a co-ordinated colour
space must be three-dimensional. Avicenna’s concern with
value was even greater than that of Ins Greek forbears.
Even Alhazen, who wrote the most comprehensive treatise
on optics in the Middle Ages and specifically developed the
study of subjective colour-phenomena, did not reject the tonal
emphases of Aristotle or Ptolemy, who provided him with Ins
starting-point. He experimented with colour mixtures on a
spinning disc, noticing that the ‘stronger’ colour tends to
overcome the ‘w'eaker’ (Optics I, 31; 11. ipf), but strength and
weakness seem to have been understood entirely m terms ot
value, the lighter colours being the stronger. In a section on the
effects of colour-contrast (I, 32), such contrasts were e.xplored
only in a tonal context: red spots on a white ground seemed
black, but on a black one white; the ground should be grey to
show their true colour; green on a yellow ground seemed
simply darker (not greener or yellower) than on a darker
ground. A discussion of beauty (II, 59) was similarly unspecific
about light and colours: the moon and the stars, Rowers and
coloured cloth were all described simply as beautiful; there was
beauty in both similarity and contrast, and harmony and
proportion were primary sources of it. But Alhazen (who died
c. 1038) brought no developments in understanding the interac¬
tion of hues.
The structure of colour-terminology in Arabic was very
similar to that in the European languages of the Middle Ages,
with an emphasis on light and dark and a relative imprecision in
the discrimination ofhues.^^° It is very striking that perhaps the
two most distinct contributions of early Islamic craft-skill to the
arts — the lustre-ware ceramics produced in Egypt from about
the seventh century, m imitation of metalwork, and the
monochrome silks manufactured in Persia in the ninth century
and at Antioch or Damascus in the eleventh — should have
depended for their effect entirely on creating sensations of
hght.i'^i
To find light used in the service of colour, rather than colour
in.the service of light, we must turn to the stained glass which
became the most important new medium of European monu¬
mental painting from the middle of the twelfth century.
The immaterial glow of stained glass gave colour a new mystical
dimension in the Early Middle Ages. Among the most densely
symbolic of such windows are those made for Abbot Sugcr of St-
Denis in the mid-twelfth century. The top roundel, a modern
reconstruction, is based on Revelations V, 1—6, and shows the Lion
and the Lamb unsealing the Book. Below, the Ark ot the Covenant
with a crucifix surmounts the Quadriga ofAniinadab, and is flanked by
the symbols ot the four Evangelists, who proclaim that the new life
of the New Testament creates a new Covenant with God. Sugcr,
following the Pseudo-Dionysus, argued that sensory impressions
derived from bright colours drew the onlooker ‘from the material to
the immatcriar, bringing the divine into human life. Glass becomes a
medium for mysteries.
41 St-Dcni.s, Chapel ot St Peregrinus, ‘AnagogicaP window, c. 1140 (detail)
 .QVK t-yvFSTiH/.o’NVS

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 Transparency and gems

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i-'k.. Wi'lo'Kis Uern^nf cfh.in^-.fiuir'S.'TcfAii

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tfmlj-nmr Nic'tifn^' culi ■no'tcp-'Ksifiiir
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154
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inmifi _

43
In the twentieth century the preciousness of
gems relates to their transparency, but in the
Early Middle Ages all matter was thought to
incorporate light, so that the ‘sapphire’, the
‘gem of gems’, could be shown as the opaque
lapis lazuli (43) in an inventory of the jewels of
St Albans compiled in the thirteenth century
(note the gem at the foot of the page). With
the spread of stained glass transparency
became more and more prized; even a silver
chalice (44) might incorporate the quality
with a decoration of windows. Precious gems
also had healing and magical qualities by
virtue of their divine associations. The walls of
the Heavenly Jerusalem (42) were traditionally
built of sapphires (oval), emeralds
(rectangular) and pearls, and the same
combination appears in the Shrine of
Charlemagne (45), formerly in the treasury of
St-Denis but destroyed in the Revolution.

66
44
 I

42 Rome, Sta Maria

Maggiore, detail of mosaics
ot the Triumphal Arch, The
Heavenly Jerusalem, fifth
century
43 Maithew F’aris, 'The
Jewels of Si Albans, MS
inventory, 1257
44 The Merode Cup, French
or Burgundian, early fifteenth
century
45 The Escrin de Charlema^^ne,
ninth century (now lost).
Watercolour by E. Labarre,
1794

45
 • < \ A%

~vj( 0l il m
'Vr^' '

/Ww^

:x“4:x2scm?c
 4 • A Dionysian Aesthetic
The new ■ Sutler's iiesrlierics ■ The hhies of Sr-Dems
Ih'ODi <^lass-staiiiiiij^ to iilass-piUiifiin^ ■ U'orkfiiaiiship reisii< iihitenols
I he secularization of liphi ■ Dante on the psychology ot liyht
In his account ot the rebuilding of the Carohngian Abbey
Church of St-l)enis, on the northern outskirts of Paris. Abbot
huger remarked in the 1140s that he had ordered a mosaic to be
inserted over the door in the new north portal, even though this
was ‘contrary to modern use’.* Wall mosaics had indeed gone
out ot tashion in northern Europe by the twelfth century;
Suger’s use of a modest one here was probably a self-conscious
tribute to an older Christum tradition, which he would have
encountered at Rome and perhaps also at Nola near Naples,
where seven hundred years earlier Bishop Pauhnus had clad his
basilica ot St Felix in extensive mosaic decorations. Pauhnus had
supplied these with just the sort ottituli that Suger was to display
so conspicuously at St-I)enis.^ In order to gain space and light
tor his much visited shrine ot St Felix, Pauhnus had removed the
wall separating two earlier churches and had put up versiculi (a
term also used by Suger) proclaiming how these twin halls had
given access to a new light [tioim lux).^ Suger’s enlargement of
his upper choir was the occasion of a very similar inscription:
Once the new rear part isjoined to the part in front.
The church shines with its middle part brightened.
For bright is that which is brightly coupled with the bright.
And bright is the noble edifice which is pervaded by the new light
[/((.V iioua]. . .■*
Whereas the Early Christian tradition had developed the glass
mosaic to embody these notions of luminosity, the incipient
Gothic of St-Dems developed the stained-glass window; Suger
made it very clear that he regarded this as one of his own special
achievements. In a probably slightly earlier account of the
consecration ot St-Dems 111 1144 Suger wrote ot the glazing ot
41 the chapels around his new Upper Choir, ‘by virtue of which
the whole [church] would shine with the wondertul and
uninterrupted light of most luminous windows, pervading the
interior beauty’.^
Yet it to the medieval spectator light could be mamtested as
well in mosaic as in glass windows, to the modern observer these
windows seem to have very ditTerent characters. Between the
In many medieval churches no surtacc was left uncolourcd.
P.untcd ornament, narrative scenes in tresco. imitation mosaic and
even iroiiipc l\vil cloth-of-gold hangings all contributed to the
sumptuous ert'ect. At Assisi the generally lighter colours of the glass
allowed the tresco cycles to be clearly seen.
46 .Assisi, .S. F-raneesco. Upper Cdiureh, North wall of the Isaac bay, c. 1100
mid-twelttli-cemury glass of. say. Chartres’s west facade and
the thirtecnth-century glass of. say. the Chapter 1 louse at \'ork
Minster there seems to be little eiunigh 111 common. 1 he
richness and low tonahtv ot the first which was to be
accentuated in the thirteenth century confers on the interior an
almost tangible gloonC but the predominance of w hite or
grisaille glass at York alkiws that space to be bathed in light.
Tins manitest change in the aesthetics of stained glass, w Inch //, 40
took place during the course of the thirteenth centurw’’ is
reflected in a number ot texts ot the later Middle Ages and the
Renaissance. In the Temple ot the Supreme Cod of the earlv
tourteenth-ceiuury French Roman de I’erceforest. ‘there were no
windows, except such as were necessaiw to gi\ e a modicum ot
light, to be able to see the way round the Temple, and tti see and
recognize the image ot Ctod; for the wise men said that a place of
worship should have neither brightness nor painted decoration
to which the people could direct their imaginatitins.’ Fhe
anonymous author went on to say that the new. open fashion in
the design of temples ‘hinders worship and simplicity . . . cntI
vanity [has] made glass and windows to give ample light, so that
wTirship and repentance, which tornierly inhabited these
temples, have become suspicious, and are Hed because of the
great brightness.’**
This theme became a commonplace in the Renaissance. The
churches in Thomas More’s Ihopia (i 5 16), for example, were ‘al
sumwTat darke’; ‘Fiowbeit that was not doniie through
ignoratince in buildmge, but as they say, by the ctninsel tit the
priestes. Bicause they thought that over much light doth
disperse mens cogitations, whereas in dinnne and douhttul
lighte they he gathered together, and more earnestly fixed uptui
religion and devotion.Later in the same century a German
commentaterjoked that in former times hearts were lighter and
churches darker, by virtue of the many-coloured glass
wdndows.*** These developments towards the lighteiiing ot
stained glass w'ere not, as has sometimes been claimed, a
question of economy but one very largely ot aesthetic choice.
The earliest surviving specialized treatise on glass-painting,
compiled by Antonio da Pisa about 1400, stressed that coloured
windows should include at least a third of white (colourless)
glass, which will make the work more joyous {alleyro) and also
more easily read (coniparascente). At .Siena in the 1440s work on a
coloured ocuhis by Guasparre di Giovanni da Volterra was
suspended because some citizens felt that it would darken the
cathedral, making it less hello.' *
For most modern spectators light has seemed to be the key to
the understanding of stained glass throughout the whole span ot
the Gothic centuries, and some have characterized the idea ot
f)(;
 \ DM )\^ SI \\ \l S I 111 IK
'gothic gloom’ .is a figment of the Enlightenment or ot the
Romantic imagination.'- Others have relied on largely
thirteenth-century te.xts to reconstruct a ‘metaphysic of light’ in
rel.ition to stained glass, a 'metaphysic’ in which light is seen as
the prmi.ir\- creatis'c force and an analogue of the Divine. The
.inalogx' is attractive hut it can hardly be understood without
some consideration ot the various degrees within the concept ot
light, current in the early Middle Ages and codified in the
optical writings of the thirteenth century. In the literature on
the si.\ days of Cireation, which goes back to St Basil the Clreat,
the primary light {lux) was distinguished from the light ot the
heavenly bodies {liiiiiinariu) created later as derivations from lux.
Isidore of Ses’ille wrote that 'Lux is substance itselt, and Liiiiivn
what Hows troiii Lux. that is the whiteness ot Lux. but writers
confuse these two' {EtYniolo<.^ics XIII, -\, laff). Indeed they do;
the terms seem to have been used more or less indiscriminately
until the thirteenth century when it was generally accepted, by
scientife writers at least, that lux referred to light-sources and
luiiieu tea light seen, as it were, trom the terrestrial, receiving
end.'-' But some writers, and most importantly here Johannes
Scotus Eriugena in the ninth century, seriously attempted to
discriminate between these terms. Eriugena asked in his com¬
mentary on the Pseudo-1 )ionysion Celestial Hierarchy ‘whether
the Father of lights (luiiiiutuu] is in himself light (///.v)’. '■* In some
conventional formulae, like the Lux noua, the light of the
Christian dispensation, used by Pauhnus and by Suger, or the
text Ego sum Lux muiuli held by the Pantokrator, the identific¬
ation of lux with the Divinity is clear. It was a term used on
candlesticks, these light-spreading analogues of the Divine
presence, such as the Gloucester Candlestick of the early twelfth
century.'-^
The relationship of light to colour was a matter of some
debate in these centuries but there was general agreement that
colour was at best a secondary attribute of light, its most
material aspect, accident rather that substance. Colour was
related to lumen rather than to lux and was thus at two removes
from the highest form of light. The late-antique Roman
philosopher Boethius was emphatic that colour was an accident;
of the later Arab writers most concerned to figure out the
relationship of light and colour, and most influential in the
"West, Avicenna, Alhazen and Averroes — although Alhazen was
able to distinguish light from colour and allow colour some
independent power — all made light a far more important
structural concept.'^ 'We have already seen how early attempts
to construct colour-scales put blue next to black or darkness and
blue is the colour most characteristic of twelfth-century French
glass.That this reflected not simply a specialized academic
doctrine but a general response to colour values is suggested by
the use ot blue glass in the Crtixifixion 'Window at Poitiers (r.
118o) as a surrogate for the black of Christ’s hair and beard.'®
It may appear paradoxical to suggest that the type of stained
41 glass which is the glory of the Romanesque anci early Gothic
periods in France should have represented light at its least
divine, but the paradox remains only it we regard luminosity as
the central preoccupation ot the early glass-designers. I want to
show here that this was hardly the case; to do so I must start by
examining the texts by Suger w'hich more than any others have
allowed modern commentators to project back into the twelfth
70
century the attitudes of the thirteenth — the texts which the
leading modern expert on Suger has, in an unguarded moment,
called ‘an orgy of neo-Platonic light metaphysics’.'''
Sniper's aesthetics
Siiger’s accounts ot his re-modelling ot St-Denis must be the
central documents for the study of the aesthetics of early
medieval glass because of their detail and length and because
they describe the most influential cycle ot early windows. In his
On Administration Suger recounted how he ‘caused to be
painted, by the exquisite hands of many masters from dift'erent
regions a splendid variety of new windows, both below and
above; from that first one winch begins [the series] with the Tree
of Jesse in the chevet of the church, to that which is installed
above the principal door in the church’s entrance.’-" He gave
the subjects of a few of his favourite windows in the chevet but
not the total number of windows glazed, nor the subject-matter
ot more than these few. According to which modern recon¬
struction of the church we accept,-' we must assume that there
were between fitty-eight and sixty-eight wintiow-openings,
‘above and below’ (i.e. four registers, including the crypt, wdnch
also appears to have been glazed with painted glass); a further
eleven have been estimated for the narthex, none of which have
survived.-- If we take Suger at his word and include the
windows of the Carolingian nave,-^ something like ninety to a
hundred windows must have been glazed by him. The figure of
seven hundred livres, plus the gift of all the blue glass — the most
expensive item — which Suger mentioned with satisfaction,
would probably have been ample to glaze all these openings in
the style of the surviving windows, which would certainly have
made the building as dark as Chartres.-"'
So it is rather surprising that in the On Consecration Suger
should characterize the effect of his circuit of ambulatory
chapels, whose rich and florid style of glazing we know so well,
as essentially one of light. Some of these chapel windows were
almost certainly filled with grisaille glass, but Stiger’s grisaille,
some ot which survives at St-Denis, was itself densely patterned
with lozenges ot grifl'ins in complex reci and green borders, and
its capacity to transmit light is very much less than that of the
contemporary grisaille developed by the Cistercians.-^ The
prestige ot white colourless glass, which was the most diflicult to
manufacture and which Isidore {Etymologies X'VI, X'Vi, 4) had
described as the noblest, had survived into Stiger’s day. In
eastern France and Germany there was a tradition of white
grounds for figures: the ‘backgrotincis of the clearest white’
mentioned by the German Theophilus in his treatise Of Divers
Arts of the 1120s and exemplified by the earliest extant
windows, the prophets at Augsburg winch date from perhaps a
decade or so later.-" It is particularly surprising that Suger
should have igneared this tradition in favour of blue grounds
since his glassworkers, ‘from different regions’, must surely have
made him aware of it, even if he had not seen glass of this type
on his travels. It is possible that he was given the lavish supply of
blue glass in the period between the On Consecration, which
speaks ot the beautitul and ‘wonderful’ light from the windows,
and the On Adttiinistration, which makes no reference to it. But
since at this time white glass would have been almost as
 \ 1 )|( i\N si \\ \i s mi I ii

expensive as blue, and hence unlikely tn be renuned. this I h.it inet.iphorN without resi.-inbl.nu e [di^aiinh ' ainihriiduu ^. .m
scarcely seems plausible. more .ipt to eles.ite our sotiK, I think no in.11: o( sense wouKi
Suger’s two accounts thus present us with a number oi sjuestion; tor it is likeK' tli.it s,u'rei.l tigiires ot .1 more preeiotis n.ituiv
dirt'ictilties in interpretation. 1 low seriously are they to be taken? u-tnild proh.ibK iiuiuee men to err. since the\ \\ ould be iiuhued to
1 )o these texts represent accurate as well as vivid descriptions ot beliei e tli.it there .ire in the lie.oeiis bnlh.mt essences like gold, or
what the Abbot achieved, or were they largely propaganda men t.ishioned ot light, hnlh.mt .iiul he.iutit'ulU dressed, emitting
designed to impress the Abbey Cdiapter and to justify the r.iys ot harmless tire; 111 short, th.it we tiiul there ,ill those sorts ot
enormous expense? huger borrowed his accotint of the Ciarolin- celestial toriiis ot’whieh w e re.id 111 the Serij-'tures.
gian church almost vcrhatihi fixsm an earlier chronicle; we have
The three annual symbols of the Ls angehsts .md the w heels of
seen that the language of the verses he displayed on wirious parts
the ()uadrig.i were brought together in Suger's window with
t)t his building was stnnetimes very close, in its stress on light, to
the figures tit the crucitied C'hrist ,uid his .iwestnne l ather
the Early Clhristian tituli. They thus laid emphasis on just those
lotiming twer the w Imle in proportionate disprtiportion. tti
aspects ot the traditional cult of luminosity which his modern
create just that sort ot p.ir.idoxic.il enigm.i recommeiuled b\
style of glazing might have been expected to make obsolete.
Pseudo-Dionysius ui puzzle the luiiuis ot'simjile men,
It .Suger’s tascination with light was rather a conventional,
.Suger’s chief .iccess to the theolog\' ot Pseiulo-l )ion\ siiis w.is
even old-tashioned, attitude, can his creation of a mysterious
through the translations and com mentanes of Eruigena, w ho is
gloom at St-l )enis be attributed to anything more serious than a
especially interesting tti us because, unlike Pseudti-l )ion\ sius. he
liking for lax’ish display? 1 believe it can, for the thought behind
was concerned to relate his mystical experience to the pheno¬
some ot the verses and behind the account [see below) ot how the
mena ot the physical world. **’ In his tre.itise I’eriphyseon: ())i the
splendour of the decorations led his spirit ‘in an anagogical
Division of Xanire. from which Suger seems to h.u e borrowed a
manner’ to the ‘purity of Heaven’ have suggested that he was
number ot ideas used in his On (Consecration. Eruigen.i took up
familiar with the theological wTitings of Pseudo-Dionysius,
and reintorced the Dionysi.in concept ot negatixe sx inbohsin
whose identity had in the ninth century been assimilated to that
outlined above, suggesting that metaphors like t'renzw intoxic¬
of St Denis, the Apostle of France and the patron of Suger’s
ation, torgettullness, anger, hatred or concupiscence are, for the
Abbey. St Paul had rallied Dionysius and the Athenians for
simple-minded, more appropriate to God than life, virtue,
setting up an altar to ‘The Unknown Uod’; mystical ignorance
breath, cloud, brightness, sunrise, thunder, dew, shower, water,
was a keystone of the Dionysian doctrine, which presented a
river, earth or even the remoter ini.iges suggested bv Pseudo-
two-told, positive and negative, experience ot the Divine.
Dionysius such as lion, o.x, eagle or worm. " In a discussion of
Although some modern commentators have chosen to ignore
the operations ot the light of the sun later in the same book,
It, there can be no doubt that tor Pseudo-Dionysius the negative
Eriugena made the surprising claim that it becotnes brighter not
was the superior way and that Suger shared a concern for it with
as it IS closer to its source but the nearer it approaches earth, for it
a number of associates and contemporaries such as Hugh of St
is only by mi.xing with the substantial vapours of the material
Victor and St Bernard’s triend William of St Thierry.One
world that it can be apprehended at all by the material senses. '-
indication that Suger was indeed involved in the negative aspect
Thus on a purely physical level the light of the distant heavens
of the Dionysian theology is the elaborate and detailed
w'as also darkness, that ‘incomprehensible and inaccessible
programme he devised for the ‘anagogical windows’ in the
light’, in the Dionysian tormulation, ot the dwelling-place ot
chapels of his Abbey, of which, from his account of it in the On
God; the luminous darkness ot Suger's windows at St-1 )enis was
Adniinislratioii, we may inter that he was inordinately proud. It
a perfect analogue ot the Divine presence in his church. Was it
was an appropriately Pauline scheme, seeking to expound the
not in the very nature of glass, according to Isidore of Seville
Christian traditions of esoteric and exoteric religion. In the Old
[Etymologies XVI, xvi, 1) that it at the same time shut out and
Testament the truth is shrouded in the Law, but in the New it is
made manifest, thus providing Suger with the appropriate
revealed by the Gospel.-® This conception of hiding and
medium tor his iconographical programme?
revealing is articulated in the windows through a series ot
symbolic roundels of extraordinary abstrusencss; in particular.
41 the panel of the Qnodrij^a of Aminadab in the ‘Anagogical’
window, which has been aptly characterized as ‘a sort ot sacred
The blues of St-Deiiis
hieroglyph’, seems to correspond very closely to a passage in the Perhaps we have been misreading the glass at St-Dems by
Dionysian (Celestial Hierarchy which embodies that theologian’s suggesting that it was anything more than an expenswe vehicle
view tif the nature and function of religious symbohsni itselt. for an ambitious decorative scheme. Stained glass was. after .ill,
Divine matters, said Dionysius, may best be conveyed by no novelty in the i 140s; it has only seemed so because ot the
incongruous images [dissimilia sienna): God may be presented as ahnost complete lack of extant examples from the previous tour
having many faces or feet, like a great bull or a ferocious lion; he centuries. Whatever the origins ot figurative stained-glass
may be said to have an eagle’s feet or a bird’s plumage; we may decoration in the West - the earliest documents suggest that it
see in the heavens fiery wheels or material thrones, many- was first introduced into apse-decoration in Rome as a develop¬
coloured luirses and great captains bearing arms, and other ment from the mosaic schemes in use there and took over their
expressive symbols troni the Scriptures. I'liese images have been function as a luminous manifestation ot the I'heophaiiy'' - by 4
provided to raise the spirit towards the Divine; they are the twelfth century it had come to be used in Prance on a very
anac’Oi’icas sandas scriptiiras. 1 )ionysius continued: substantial scale.'’' Suger's exclusive concentration on the

71
\ I )l( )\^■SI AN AF S I HI IK
siih)cct-niattL'r of the cast windows at St-I)cnis suggests that tor
him they were, too. appropriate to the most sacred part ot the
btiildmg. Idis boast abotit the extraordinary extent ot the
glazing, and the des'otion ot some windows (not mentioned by
Stiger and possibly later’-'’) to the lives of saints and the exploits
of Cdiarlemagne foreshadow those vast glazing schemes ot the
late twelfth century and the bligh (lothic period when the
medium became, like the mosaics of Norman Sicily, just
another vehicle for painted decoration, another opportunity tor
vdiictit> and a further pretext for conspicuous display.
The emphasis on material values which emerges again and
again from Stiger's account ot his chtirch was shared by many
commentators in his time. His biographer, William ot St Denis,
writing in the ii josjust after Suger’s death, dwelt on the
preciousness of the materials, the onyx and sardonyx, the prase
and other precious stones, the silks and purple and gold cloths
used in the Abbot’s decorations, but he did not give the stained
glass more than an afterthought.-’^’ This emphasis was that ot the
Abbot himself: Suger devoted far more space to enumerating
the abundant gemstones than to describing the glass, which was
Itself always identified as saphiroriini materia. This was perhaps no
more than the common generic term tor stained glass in the
period;-’^ Theophilus noted (II, 12) that it was indeed the French
who were especially adept at making ‘precious sheets ot
sapphire, very useful in windows'. But the indication of
preciousness here is important for it was also a major teature ot
Stiger’s account of his windows. In the mid-twelfth-century
dispute between the Cistercians and the Cluniacs about legiti¬
mate decoration, I'itreae saphiratae were to be considered almost
as synonymous with ‘beautitul and precious windows’.^” In the
later Middle Ages blue glass was by far the most expensive
variety but it is not easy to see why this should have been so in
Suger’s time, for the most costly ingredient ot Gothic blue glass,
cobalt, which would have been imported from Saxony or
Bohemia or from as far afield as Persia, was only one of the
possible colouring-agents for this glass: it could have been
produced with the far more commonplace ingredients of
manganese and copper. These have, indeed, been found to be in
the commonest use in French window-glass betorc the thir¬
teenth century.-’'^ Perhaps the most important clue to the
prestige ot this glass was not its chemistry at all but Theophilus’s
observation that the French were skilled at making panes of blue
window-glass from ancient vessels, probably a reference to the
Roman scent-bottles of opaque blue glass that were common in
the Rhineland between the second and tourth centuries ad but
which had probably become very scarce by the tweltth.'^*’
Another source ot blue glass tor re-use was Byzantium
(Theophilus also mentions the re-cychng of ancient mosaic
cubes), where it was possibly employed 111 windows as early as
the beginning ot the twelfth century; this glass would also have
been an expensive imported material."'-'’
It has been noticed that the stylistic affinities of some of the
motifs in the glass at St-Denis are with metalwork and
jewellery."'- It seems, indeed, to belong to that phase in the
development ot French stained-glass design where the practice
ot all these arts was closely related, a relationship reflected in the
prominence given jointly to glass-painting and metalwork in
Theophiltis’s treatise and m the arrangement of the workshops
7^
at the Abbey of Cltiny in the first half of the eleventh century,
where goldsmiths, enaniellers and ‘glass masters’ shared the
same cell.-'-’ This is not at all surprising, when glass as a substance
was seen to belong to the family ot stones and metals and when
an important branch of the glassmakers’ art had tor long been
the manuficturc ofartificial gems.''-' Theophilus gives a method
for applying such gems to stained glass itselt, a practice which so
far has only been identified 111 some glass trom thirteenth-
century Germany.
The chief reason, however, for Suger’s pride at the display ot
‘sapphire material’ at St-Denis surely lies in the signiticance ot
the sapphire itself In On Adniinistration he spoke of the
satisfiction, even excitement, with which he contemplated the
Cross of St Eloy (the golcisimth-saiiit) and the ‘crista’, the so-
called Escrin de Charlemagne, on the high altar ot his church, .jy
displaying as they did all the nine stones of Paradise enumerated
in Ezekiel 28: 13:
To those who know the properties of precious stones, it becomes
evident, to their utter astonishnicnt, that none is absent trom the
number of these (with the only exception of the carbuncle), but
that they abound most copiously. Thus when - out of my delight in
the beauty of the house of God — the loveliness ot the many-
coloured gems has called me away from external cares, and worthy
meditation has induced me to reflect, transferring that which is
material tc-) that which is immaterial, on the diversity of the sacred
virtues: then it seems to me that I see myself dwelling, as it were, in
some strange region of the universe which neither exists entirely in
the slime of earth nor entirely in the purity of Heaven; and that, by
the grace of God, I can be transported from this inferior to that
higher world in an anagogical manner."'®
A knowledge of the ‘properties’ and of‘the diversity of the
sacred virtues’ seems crucial to Suger’s conception ot the
anagogical process’; his engagingly frank admission that neither
cross nor shrine included a carbuncle must depend on his
knowlecige that the true carbuncle shone brightly in the dark
and on his inability to guarantee that the red stones of the Escrin,
the sarcis listed by him or the rtthis noted in the late twelfth- or
early thirteenth-century chronicle,"'^ possessed this rare and
fascinating characteristic. Although some ancient and Islamic
lapidaries had referred to the magic properties of some
gemstones, the systematic interpretation ot the nature ot stones
in magic and moral terms was a very recent development, due
chiefly to the popular verse and prose lapidaries written by
Marbode of Rennes about 1090. An older Western tradition of
interpreting stones, tor example in Bede’s commentary on the
Apcacalypse,-"’ had been based on the twelve stones which made
up the fabric of the Heavenly Jerusalem (Revelation 21: 18—21;
Suger, On Consecration W); this allegorization of the twelve
stones was particularly cultivated in Suger’s day. The elaborate
cast censer 111 the form of the Heavenly Jerusalem described by
Theophilus included ‘representations of the twelve stones’, each
ot which was assigned to one of the Apostles, ‘according to the
significance of his name’. Although the idea that the twelve
stones might be related to the twelve Apostles was an old one, it
does not seem to have been detailed until the beginning of the
twelfth century in the Sermoties of the German poet Sextus
Amarcus whose attribution to each depended upon the ‘virtues’

inherent in the stones themselves.I'he special status of these
twelve stones was reHected in the design ot manv precious
objects, such as the Lscriti dc C'Jiarlc>}\a<;iiic itself Along the top of
the relR|uary casket in this shrine was a sequence ot large blue
and green stones, separated by round pearls. According to the
detailed inventory of the treasure of St-l )enis, drawn up in
1634. the oval blue stones were 'saphirs' and the oblong green
stones ‘grosses presines d'esnierauldes'. '’" This trio of oval blue
Ciihochons, square-cut green stones and pearls is one which we
also encounter in the representations of the Heavenly Jerusalem
in the mosaics of the Triumphal Arch in S. Maria .Maggiore in
ITmie and at S. Vitale in Ravenna, and it was common in the
42 mosaic border-decorations of many Early Cdiristian churches.-'’'
The combination epitomized the tweK'e stones ot the walls and
the pearls of the gates of the Heavenly Jerusalem. In Revelation
21 the first stone is given as jaspis. a green stone often confused
with sniaraiidiis (the fourth of the series), and here gi\ en the
characteristic oblong shape which dependeci on the crystalline
structure of the emerald. The second, and in the present conte.xt,
more important stone, was the sapliirus.^-
.Suger’s appeal to the ‘sacred virtues' of his gemstones
suggests very strongly his tamiliarity with the verse lapidary ot
Marbode of Rennes, where all stones were seen to be impreg¬
nated with virtues by Divine power {On Stones 34). Marbode
gave pride of place to saphirns for its manifold capacities to
protect its bearers from harm, release them trom prison or other
shackles, reconcile them with C'lod and dispose them to prayer,
to cure disease of the body by cooling the inner organs, prevent
excess of perspiration, cure sores when powdered and mixed to
a paste with milk, to clear eyes and cure headaches and ailments
of the tongue. It was, in short, a sacred stone, the ‘gem of gems’
(41—3). In Marbode’s primary source, the possibly late-antique
(ireek writer ‘Damigeron’, a Latin version of whose lapidary is
known in a number of twelfth-century French manuscripts, the
role ot saphirns was stated even more uncompromisingly. He
who possessed this stone ‘is armed against all deceit and all ill-
doing, and against the strategems ot all other stones. This natural
power is said to be divine: the stone is vigorously honoured
by Hod’ (96).-'’-^ It is thus no surprise that Suger was so proud to
have whole registers of windows fashioned trom this material.
Yet It is perhaps surprising that his immediate analogy for the
blue glass of St Denis should have been not with a transparent,
light blue stone but with a dark and mottled opaque one; for the
saphirns of the ancients and of the early Middle Ages was not our
sapphire (blue corundum) but lapis lazuli, which continued to
4? be one interpretation of the word until well into the middle of
the thirteenth century.'’'* In its adjectival form saphirinus, the
blue stone, seems to have embodied no connotations of clarity:
it could be used of the distinctly opaque textiles, Frisian felts,
which were presumably dyed with a dark indigo.^-'’ Bede, in his
commentary on the Apocalypse, had indeed made a comparison
between the colour ot the stone and the clear blue ot the sky
{cpiasi coelutn ctiin serenus est) and, by a beautitul inversion, Hugh
of St Victor in Suger’s day transferred the luminous attribute ot
the stone back again into the transparency and clarity ot the
sky.-^^ That he was inclined to do so suggests that the
connotations ot'saphirns had now changed, that lapis lazuli had
been succeeded by the transparent blue stone iacinthos which.
\ Dll IN'! -.1 \\ \l >1 III
although It was numbered .minug the tWLbe su.nes. h.id
enjoyed no particular reput.itum during the e.irK Middle .Xees
Iacinthos was thought to be found in three . -.iKuirs. red. sell.iw
and blue, ot which the most wilu.ible w.is red.tor this u.is not
snnpK resistant to but also enh.mced b\ fire A" fhe ihief \ isible
characteristic ot the blue winetv w .is its w .iteiw tr.insp.ireiu \ .
'Fheophilus’s account ot the m.muf.icture ot blue w indow-gl.iss
makes it clear that it w as op.ique blue glass trom ancient mosaic
cubes or nascnla which was turned into semi-tr.insp.irent
material by the addition of clear colourless (chiri et alhi ) glass, in
order to make the ‘precious panes ot s.ipphire'.''' In tin-
discussion ot the embellishment of windows with artitici.il
gems, the iacinthos to be pl.iced in the bv now tr.idition.il
arrangement between the emer.ilds {sifiara'^dos) were to be
made trom particnlis saphiri clari. tragments of clear sapphire
glass.'’*' In this treatise of the 1120s, as in the contempor.irs
writings ot Hugh ot St Victor, we are witnessing a shift in the
understanding of the characteristics ot'blue stones: the phvsic.il
attributes of iacinthos are now seen to belting to saphin and
conversely the moral connotations ot saphiri are transferred to
iacinthos. It is not at all surprising that the blue sttines of the liscnn
dc Oharleniapnc, including thtise beautitul waters sapphires
which decorate the only surviving fragment, the crest, should in 4
the earliest (ninth-century) actnint of the shrine be referred to as
iacinths, whereas in 1634 they were described as sapphires.'’” It is
tempting to suggest that this transference in the designation of
‘sapphire’ from an opaque tti a transparent stone was ac¬
celerated, it not positively stimulated, by the outstanding
beauty of blue stained glass.
From <^lLiss-stiiiiiiii<^ to t^loss-pointiiit^
The remarkable stylistic change from the type of glass seen at
Chartres and St-Denis to that characterized by the Chapter
House windows at York has been interpreted largely as a
function ot the growing control ot the medieval architect twer
every aspect of construction and decoration, and of his wish to
allow his own notable achievements to be properly seen.'’' This
view is supported by the increasingly architectural patterns of
the glass-designers themselves in the late thirteenth and especi¬
ally the fourteenth centuries.and by the shift in the training
and attitudes of glass-painters from the earlier atfimties with
crafts like jewelling and metalwork to closer association with
painting. In the fifteenth century, too, we witness a separation
of the functions of the glass-designer (now usually a painter) and
those of the executant painter.'’-’ The growing luminosity ot late
medieval glass was aided by advances in glass-technology
(particularly in that most ditlicult ot glasses tti maiuitacture,
clear white glass) and by the disctivery of new materials, such as
silver-stain, developed about 1300, which enabled many ele¬
ments such as hair and draperies to be painted freely in the pale
yellow which is so characteristic ot tourteenth-century glass.'’'*
But institutional and technical developments should not obs¬
cure the essentially aesthetic and conceptual character ot this
change, whose background in the thirteenth centtiry was the
revaluation of the role of light itself.
That the I'seudo-Dionysian tascination with Itiminous ob¬
scurity was no longer of any general interest bv the mid-
A l)l( )^^ SIAN Al sun Tl(.
thirteenth eentiiry is stiggested by an anonyinniis description ot
the two rose windows in Linceiln Ciathedral, written probably
around i 230. The poetic account begins in a rather conventional
wa\' b\' in\-oking the power ol the luniinotis nave and choir
windows to ON’ercome the ‘Stvtrian tvrant’, continuing;: ‘And
two are greater, like two lights, their circular blaze, looking
upon the directions ok north and sotith, surpass through their
double light all the other windows. The others can be compared
to the coniinon stars, but these two are one like the sun, the
other like the moon.’ Then the author turns to the more
immediate and e.xciting image of the rainbow: ‘In this manner
these two candles lighten the head of the church, and they
imitate the rainbow with vi\'id and various colours; not indeed
imitate, but e.xcel, for the sun makes a rainbow when it is
reflected in the clouds: these two sparkle without sun, glitter
without cloud.'*’-'’ The image is particularly interesting in the
context of Lincoln since the poem was written w'hile Robert
Cirosseteste was Bishop there, who in the 1230s wxis much
occupied with the rainbow', concluding in a short treatise on it
that it was not, as earlier theorists had supposed (and as the poet
implied), the product of light reflected from a dark cloud but of
a intich more complex set of si.x modifications of light —
including darkening, but also refraction - which produced the
si.x rainbow colours.*’^ Thus, according to the poet at least, the
artists ot the rose windows were close to a new' understanding ot
the rainbow as the product of light alone. ,
The Dionysian teaching w'as, as we have seen, a two-fold
one: it is the positive, exoteric aspect of this doctrine which w'e
find uppermost in the several thirteenth-century discussions of
the nature ot the beautitul. A more expansive interest in this
topic was Itself an important feature of Scholastic philosophy.
Pseudo-Dionysius had raised the question in his treatise Oti the
Dii’iiic Names (IV. 5). The chapter was the subject ot extensive
commentaries in the thirteenth century by Thomas Gallo and
Albertus Magnus and his pupil Aquinas, as well as forming the
basis of a short treatise by another pupil, Ulrich Engelberti of
Strasbourg.*’^ The tendency of all these w'ntings was to tip the
balance of the traditional, Ciceronian and Augustinian defi¬
nition ot the beautitul as proportion united with softness
{suai’itas) ot colour in favour of light {hiDieii or claritas) as its
single erticient cause. Colours, for example, were seen to be the
more beautiful the more light they incorporated. Albertus
Magnus is particularly interesting on the way in which forms in
the cratts {forma artis) are less luminous {clara) in baser materials
and more luminous in nobler,*’® tor this reflects a widespread
thirteenth-century re-assessment of precious stones and other
materials as above all the vehicles of light. Pseudo-Dionysius
had reterred to only four types of gemstones, classed according
to their colours, all of which were at the light end of the scale.
The w'hite {Icukas) symbolized light, the red (enithras) fire, the
yellow' {xaiithas) gold; a fourth colour, the troublesome chloras,
which Eritigena and the mid-twelfth-century translator of the
Dionysian corpus Jean Sarrazin interpreted as ‘pale’ {pallidas),
stood for youth and the flowering of the soul.*’'^ Many late
tw'ehth- and thirteenth-century w'nters on gemstones traced
their origin to light itself; Herrad of Landsberg in her
encyclopaedic Garden of Deliplits (c. 1176/96) characterized the
twelve stones on Aaron's breastplate (Ezekiel 28:13) as the
74
vestments of the first angels, which she saw' moving like a
glittering army.^" Hildegard of Bingen wrote in the lapidary
included in her Physics {c. 1131/8) that every sort ot stone was
compounded of fire and water and that precious stones and
trems were ttenerated in the rivers ot the eastern world, w-'here
the sun is hottest. The sapphire, for example, was created at
noon and thus incorporated more fire than air or water.This
view W'as expanded by Vincent of Beauvais in his widely read
encyclopaedia, the The Great Mirror of the 1260s, w'here he
recorded that the most valuable stones and glasses w'ere those
created closest to the sun w'hich thus had the virtue ot being
most resistant to fire.^“ Thomas of Cantimprc, in another
influential encyclopaedia written in the first quarter ot the
thirteenth century, also maintained that precious stones were
those washed out of the east by the rivers of Paradise and that the
most valuable were precisely those most replete with light. The
darkest w'ere those composed of the most earthy ‘vapours’, the
lightest of the most watery, the blue ot the most airy and the red
the most fiery. But Thomas made it clear that the carbuncle w'as
by tar the most important stone because it could transform
night into day. Even the most inferior quality of carbuncle, the
halatisttis (balas ruby), he regarded as nobler than the sapphire
and the jasper.^^
Albertus Magnus in his alphabetical lapidary, the Book oj
Minerals {c. 1230), gave the fullest account of the background to
this change from the primacy of the sapphire to the primacy ot
the carbuncle: he cited an unspecified body ot Hermetic
writings which
say tliat this is the reason why precious stones, more than anything
else, liave wonderful powers — because, that is, they are in substance
more like things above in their brightness and transparency. On
this account some of them say that precious stones arc stars
composed ot elements.
For in the upper [spheres], they say, there are, as it were four
colours, W'hich are also the colours found most frequently in
precious stones. One of these is the colour of the starless sphere,
which is called sapphire by everyone; and this colour is pre¬
eminently that of the sapliirns from which it is named. . . The second
colour is that of most stars, which is called bright, shining w'hitc;
and this is the colour of adamas [diamond], beryl, and many other
stones. The third is called fiery and flashing; this is the sun and Mars
and certain other [stars]; and this is pre-eminently [the colour of]
the carbuncle ... And therefore they say that the carbuncle is the
noblest, having the powers of all other stones; because it receives a
pow'cr similar to that of the sun, w'hich is nobler than all other
heavenly powers.
In his account of the carbuncle here, Albertus stated that it was
to the other stones as gold to the other metals: ‘When it is really
good It shines in the dark like a live coal, and I myselt have seen
such a one.’^'’^
His account of the colours of stones also stressed their
transparency, and in his earliest discussion of their nature in the
Book of Minerals he related this transparency to that of glass.In
the Aristotelian tradition, transparency w'as a central issue with
writers on optics because it was seen both as the condition of the
propagation ot light and images and as essential for the
prociuction of colours; in many contexts in these w'ritings w'e

cnccHiiitor the example of a ray ch light passing uiimodihed
through glass. This was an image already used by St Bernard as a
metaphor for the Immaculate Chmception, hut there the
implication was that the glass, which remained intact although
penetrated by the sun's rays - a miraculous instance of the co-
extension of two material bodies was colourless.'^'' Now,
however, the glass was usually coloured, to illustrate some
aspect of the proposition that light and colour are distinct but
that light, the vehicle (hypostasis) ot colour, has the capacity to
activate it.^’ In several instances the glass was descibed as a
window, and although we may be dealing with mental
experiments rather than actual experiences, the freqtienc)' of the
allusion and the rather difterent forms in which it was presented
suggest that ciunng the thirteenth century stained glass was
usually expected to transmit light, rather than to retain it in the
manner of gemstones and some twelfth-century windows.It
is striking that an early thirteenth-century and an early
fourteenth-century text both specified red glass to illustrate this
point, tor unless it is 'flashed' onto a clear glass base or is
lightened by some complicated interfusion with colourless
glass, ruby glass appears almost black and has very little power
to transmit light at all.^"^ As in Antiquity, redness was given
almost supernatural powers.
This intense interest in the characteristics of transparency
affected the presentation of gemstones themselves. Jewellers had
always made use of, for e.xample, the natural crystalline
structures of the emerald and rock crystal; quite elaborate
cutting and facetting had been practised on stones such as the
garnet, the beryl, the amethyst and the cornelian since Roman
times.®'’ But the e.xploitation of the refractive properties of
colourless or highly transparent stones like the diamond seems
to begin in earnest only in the thirteenth century; it depended on
an increasingly precise knowledge of the phenomenon of the
refraction of light through transparent media of varying
densities, which only the optical researches of that century could
supply.®’ We are moving towards the Renaissance, when the
diamond with its elaborate facetting became what it has usually
remained, the most precious of stones.®^
The passion for clarity and translticency which permeates the
language and the imagery of Gothic poetry®^ is also reflected in
developments in metalwork, especially in the new translucent
enamels introduced in the late thirteenth century, at their most
magnificent in the Royal Cfold Cup (British Museum) or the
Merode C'tip ("Victoria and Albert Museum), which includes,
indeed, the motif of stained-glass windows in the technique
known as pliqiic a jour.^'^ Some of these techniques used
colourless enamels over a coloured ground or foil, in a manner
similar to the contemporary setting of coloured gemstones. It is,
too, in the manuscript illumination and mural painting of the
later Middle Ages that we encounter an increased use of glazes
over a light or coloured ground and the finishing with varnish,
which was to be exploited fully with the refinement of oil
painting in the fifteenth century.®-®
11 'orhiJitifiship versus viatcrials
riiis chapter has attempted to show that the medieval values of
art depended on the physical as well as the metaphysical
\ 1 > 11 : \ ^ M \ \ \ 1 M I I
Bisluip Henry nt Hlois (helore i i~i) presemmii .i gilt ot ,i 'Irr.is',' shrine in
winch - .iccording to llie inseripiion .iiui eontr.ir\ to the nu'die\ .il love ot rich
ni.iteri.ils - '.in is .ibove gold .ind gems'. I he relkjii.irs .ippe.irs to he dei or.ited
with tliree roundels. (47)
characteristics of raw materials. Medieval people were no
strangers to the glamour of expense and, as Suger's w ritings
suggest, self-ad\'ertisement could be efl'ective precisely in terms
of cash-v-alues.®'’ Many precious objects from the early Middle
Ages seem to us to be little more than agglomerations of
pirecioLis stuff. The mitable preference for polishing rather th.m
cutting gemstones in this period, which often produces bizarre
contrasts with the refined Classical intaglios with which they
were so often set, may well have been due not only to a shortage
of skills but also to a reluctance to waste any of the valuable
material. The high social status of goldsmiths in the period (we
recall that Sutrer claimed to own a wonderful cross bv the
canonized goldsmith St Eloy) was also, it would seem, chiefly a
function of their elevating contact with noble materials.®'^
Nevertheless, it would be hasty to assume that the monetary
evaluation of the raw materials and their symbolic functions 47
e.xhaust the range of categories in the medie\'al appreciation ot
art. Suger supplied his readers with what was perhaps the most
frequently cited aesthetic tag from Classical poetry, (Aid's
climax to his account of Mulciber's silver doors tor the Palace ot
the Sun: Material}! siipcrahat opus, ‘the workmanship surpassed
the material'.®® The force of the idea is of course lost unless the
material itself is precious and all the early uses ot the tag are in
the conte.xt of metalwork or jewellery. But throughout the
Gothic period, when there was, in general terms, a revaluation
of the role of the artisan and an increasing respect tor some
categories of manual skill,®‘’ the phrase and the concept seem to
have been applied more and more to ordinary materials ot little
intrinsic worth, with a shift in favour ot a more exclusive
delight in sheer craftsmanship.Perhaps the most graphic
indication on this changing attitude is the inscription on a mid¬
twelfth-century enamel plaque, possibly from a cross imide at
Winchester, which shows Bishop Henry ot IMois holding the 47
shrine of St Swithun. ’Hie difficult inscription has been
translated as follows: 'Art is above gold and gems; the ( Teator is
above all things. 1 lenry while living gives gifts ot brass to (loii;
whom, equal to the Muses in intellect and superior to Marcus in
oratory, his remnvn makes acceptable to man, his morals to (lod
A |)l( )^^ SIA\ \PSI Hi IK
.ihitxc.'''' What IS striking here is the opening phrase, airs .-ii/rn
( ,'(7i/i;//.m/i/(' Prior, and the explicit reference to the base metal
copper or brass {oc<). The plaque is made of an opaque clianiplcvc
enamel on copper, the implication being that these ordinary
materials .ire, because of their fine workmanship, superior to
mere gold and gems,*'- At exactly tins time the philosopher
|ohn of Sahsbtiry developed a radical notion that art is a
transformer ot nature, improving on nature's own methods by
her nifthodou, or purposeful plan, ‘which avoids nature’s
wasteftilness and straightens out her circuitous wanderings'.
Such a recognition of the craftworker’s transtorniation ot
base materials into a valuable object also perhaps accounts tor
the increasing number of allusions to artiticial (glass) gems in
late medieval inventories. Although they were often drawn up
as a guide to valuing the gems as plectges - the compilers
sometimes pointed out that the artiticial stones haci no value'^'^ —
there was now at least a frank admission that what in earlier
periods had seemed to be genuine natural stones were in tact the
product of htnnan skill.The use of glass to counterfeit stones
had been practised since Antiquity and there w'ere simple tests to
detect it; but the admission that many stones on important
liturgical objects were in fact cheap substitutes does not seem to
have been a feature of the earlier descriptions. Ihuring the
thirteenth century, just as light began to lose its transcendental
status and to be studied simply as a manifestation ot the
terrestrial laws of optics,so gems began to be accepted not tor
their magical properties but simply as elements in a design and as
evidence ot technical skills.
The scciilarizatiof] of li^ht
Even in fourteenth-century Byzantium and fifteenth-century
Russia a revived interest in Pseudo-Dionysius served to rein¬
force the modern view that light was essentially an earthly,
physical phenomenon which only symbolism could really
associate with the Divine. It has been suggested that the
Calabrian monk Barlaam, who went to Constantinople in the
early fourteenth century in search of pagan philosophy and
stayed to combat the movement ot mystical spirituality called
Hesychasm, was influenced by Western Scholasticism. How¬
ever this was, Barlaam found himself using Dionysius’s concept
of the unapproachable God to underline the separation of the
realms ot the earthly and the Divine. He cited the example of the
Transfiguration, arguing that the light which overwhelmed the
Apostles on Mount Tabor was a purely earthly light, apprehen¬
ded by their senses alone; it could only be a symbol of the
Divine, not divine in itself.Paradoxically, Barlaam’s oppo¬
nents, who eventually won the day and who argued for a
continuum between God and man through the incarnation ot
Christ, also stimulated a demand for a more naturalistic
rendering of light and the modelling of the human figure, most
vividly m the Russian painter Andrei Rublev (1370?—r. 1430),
whose interest in the observation of nature has been emphasized
by both contemporaries and modern critics.
Perhaps the clearest indication that by the fourteenth century
the Neo-Platonic and early medieval understanding ot light as
an intrinsic property of matter and a direct emanation of the
Divine had given way to an almost exclusive interest in its
76
function as revealing the optical properties ot surtaces, is m the
remarkable display of painted decoration in the Upper Church
of S. Francesco at Assisi, which was undertaken 111 the years 46
around 1300. Its extent and variety seems to be unprecedented:
the lowest register ot the nave and transepts has a band ot Active
hangings with geometrical designs, which are close to several ot
those represented in the Old Testament and St Francis cycles
above, and to the designs of the Spanish 'Alhambra' silks ot the
late thirteenth century.Above this sumptuous base is a
painted cornice supporting the lowest register ot frescoed
scenes, and above them another cornice, partly carved and
coloured, supporting two registers ot scenes and the stained-
glass window's that are perhaps the most unexpected feature ot
the decoration. The rich, jew'el-hke windows of the choir give
w'ay m the transepts to tar lighter panels and m the nave to an
array of pale colours and white. Yet the design ot even the
latest windows is old-tashioned by northern standards and still
reflects the traditional links with metahvork rather than with
architecture or painting. 'Fhe borders of the St Francis window
share some of the decorative motifs of the most impressive
e.xample ot early Italian transclucent enamel, the Guccio di
Mannaia cup, made for Pope Nicholas IV and given by him to
the church about 1290.'°' The link is also reflected in the
palettes of both the glass-painters and the enameller,^°“ suggest¬
ing that the lightening in tone of the glass was less an echo of
northern fashion than a response to the need to combine stained
glass and fresco in the same scheme, a combination wfliich was to
be characteristic of central Italian monumental decoration until
the High Renaissance.^®^
The vaulting-ribs in each bay are decorated wnth a repertory
of geometrical patterns adapted chiefly from Cosmatesque
mosaic, which is also represented prominently in the narrative
scenes and the Active architecture of the Upper Church. It
was a type of painted decoration that follow'ed Giottesque
painting wherever it wxis practised throughout the fourteenth
century.
All these decorative ideas have strong papal associations, since
they had been more or less the prerogative of papal patronage
and they At well with the Roman and papal emphases of the
narrative cycle. In the nave they are also characterized by an
extraordinay subtlety and restraint. Although the Spanish silk
and gold cloth which was a model for the textile-painting
would have given an excellent pretext for the application of real
gold. It w'as hardly introduced at all; the same is true of the
Cosmatesque ornament, although there w'as much gold and
glass in the abundant Cosmati mosaic in the earlier Lower
Church. The choir and transept vaults of the Upper Church
were partly gilded and there are still traces of what might have
been intended as the beginning of gold mosaic work on the
vault of the crossing.^®®
In a document ot 13 ii the basilica of S. Francesco was
described as ‘lumen et status salutifer . . . totius civitatis et
districtus Asisij’ (the light and health-giving condition. . . of the
whole city and district of Assisi). ^®^ The use of the term Itiineti
may be a casual one but it corresponds closely to the character of
the decoration, which replaces reflective, apparently light¬
generating surfaces or dense, light-holding glass with the soft
textures of cloth — whose beauty depends on the fall of light on

its folds - Hght-transniitting pale glass and the matt surfaces of
fresco, which allows far greater play than mosaic to the
representation ot light-erfects like shadow in the figurative
scenes.*””
For the aesthetic context of the novel decoration of S.
Francesco we might well turn to St Honaventure, Minister
(leneral ot the Franciscans, under whose direction the tirst
statutes of the order to embody clear aesthetic recommend¬
ations, the Statutes of Narbonne (1260), were framed. These
Statutes are remarkable in that they refer specifically to stained-
glass windows; they permit far more of them than did the
twelfth-century Statutes of the (listercians, whose fear of
ettriositas affected all subsequent monastic attitudes towards art,
including those represented by the Franciscans at Narbonne.
This Council sanctioned coloured figurative windows behind
the high altar, listing the Cruxifixion, the Virgin, St John, St
Francis and St Anthony as admissable subjects, which suggests
that the framer of this Statute (111, i k) may have had in mind the
already existing windows at Assisi, the order’s mother-church,
that show the life of Christ and its Old Testament types.'””
Honaventure had a liking for glass: he used the example of the
making of glass from ashes as a striking instance of the presence
of light in even the most despised of substances.''” Nor can he
be regarded as an ascetic, since he presented a precious silver
ciborium to S. Francesco.'" In the e.xceptionally sensitive
account of artistic production which he gave in his On the
Stihordiiiatioii of the Arts to Theology, Honaventure laid great
emphasis on knowledge, pleasure and the desire for praise,
motivations which can be seen in the e.xtravagant inscriptions
displayed by the Cosmati on many of their works.ITe was
not always careful to distinguish among /ii.v, lumen and splendor
(reflected light), categories of light which taxed the ingenuity of
so many of his contemporaries,' but it now seems clear that he
was chiefly concerned to e.xplore the nature of lumen, a type of
light which did not lend itself to metaphysical speculation.'In
his aesthetics, the emphasis on harmony and proportion and the
characterization of colour as mi.xture were in tune with the
rejection ot absolutes implicit in the decoration of the Upper
Church.'
Dante on the psycholoffy of lifflit
Ikinaventure may help us to understand the aesthetic tone of
this decoration but he cannot tell us much about the assump¬
tions of a wider and essentially secular public. We have a guide
to these assumptions in the vernacular encyclopedia appended
to a group of Dante’s love poems and composed in the first
decade of the fourteenth century. The casual reterences to
vision, light and colour in the third part of the Feast, together
with many passages in the Divine Comedy, especially the
Ihiradise, give us some sense of an unspecialized level of
knowledge about these topics in the period. Dante showed
himself to be particularly fascinated by the passage of rays of
light through transparent substances, such as glass,"” but also
by their reflection from polished surfaces, d’he phenomenon of
dazzle, which in a Honaventuran vein he characterized as
destroying the harmony of the eye, was one to which he
returned again and again in the Comedy and not simply in the
\ |)|( )\N MW \l Mill II.
Ihnadtse, that blinding zone ot'light.''' I hn is .1 siguiti..int
emphasis, tor dazzle is .1 subjectn e. psxchologual phenomenon
and we see 111 I )ante. as in S. F rancesco, ,111 interpret.itioii ot the
role ot light and colour in essentialK hum.m terms.
1 )ante‘s sympatln- w itli this shift in the aesthetics of light mas
best be seen in a well-known pass.ige in (kmto .\1 of the
Ihns^atory, w here the poet recognizes in the ranks of the Hroiul a
miniature painter he may perhaps bas e encountered in the flesh
m Hologna in the izSos:
'Oh,' diss' 10 Im. 'noti se' lii (tdeiisi,
I'oiior d' Aytddno e I'onoi di ./i/(7/’anc
I he " dllummar'' iluiiiuaui e m Farm?'
'I'laie,' diss'eyli, 'pm ndoii /c larie
the peimelle^ii^ia F'raneo litdoyiie.-e:
I'onor e unto or siio, e inio iti parte . . .' ('9 .S41
(‘Oh,’ 1 said to him, ‘are you not CXlerisi, the honour of (lubbio,
and the honour of the art that is called "illmninatuui" in Hans'"
‘Hrother,’ he said, ‘the pages FTanco ist Hologna paints smile
more: the honour is now his and mine in part . . .') .Art-
historical commentators on this passage have usuallv wanted to
match surviving manuscripts with the hands of Uderisi da
Uubbio, who is recorded at Hologna between iztiS and 1271,
and ot Franco Holognese, who is entirely undocumented.''”
Yet what strikes the casual reader nuist about this passage is
Dante’s selt-conscious choice of a French term, alluminar (his
version of enluntiner), rather than the standard Italian word
miniare (from minio, red oxide of lead). Did he siniplv need a
rhyme tor ‘Uderisi’? I think not. for the French term gave him.
as the Italian did not, the crucial implication of light.
The earliest texts to apply the Latin word tor ‘lamp-lighter’,
illuminator, to painters in miniature date from the first halt ot the
tw’c'ltth century, precisely the time when Fheophilus uses the
tern illuminare to refer to high-lighting in painting.'An early
usage by William of Malmsbury links illumination specifically
with gilding. This seems to have been a common association in
Italy in Dante’s time, where the northern term had been
introduced at least in papal circles, perhaps as a result of the
removal of the popes to Asignon.'^” Hut whatever the origins
of the usage, there can be little doubt that Dante intended an
allusion to light, for the point of the contrast he drew was that
("tderisi was an honour to the art of illumination but Franco was
even more so: Franco’s pages smiled more than his.
'Fhe notion of‘smiling’ colour in painting Dante may have
found 111 Alain of Lille or more probably in Haudri ot
Hourgeuil, who used the same image to evoke a manuscript ot
his poems decorated with gold and vermilion or green by
Uerard of Tours, so that the letters ‘smiled’,*-' Hut 1 )ante had a
profounder interest in the coupling of smiling and light. St
Hernard had already in his sermons on the Song of Songs
described the motions of the mind as lights shining from the
body — but had been rather surprised that laughter should be
among them.*-- For Dante the link was inevitable: he used
ridere in the sense of‘light up’ elsewhere in the Purgatory (!. 19)
but he also gave the idea a psycholtigical twist in Paradise (XIV.
76-S<S); in the Feast (11, viii. i i) he asked: ‘What is a smile ifnot a
flashing-out of the soul’s delight, that is a light
|/himc| manifesting what is within?’ Fhat a smile lights up the
77
 A l)l( )N^ SI \N At S I III I IC
The lauliies Virgin, Sens, 1334, one ofniany smiling images of Mary. (4H)
tacc, and especially the eyes, was a commonplace ot descriptions
of women 111 the French and Italian romances of the period; in
French usage riant (‘laughing', ‘smiling’) became almost a
synonym tor cler.^-^
Such a visually and psychologically compelling notion could
not but find an expression in art. Around 1270 broadly smiling
angels make their appearance in the sculpture ot Rheims; in the
almost contemporary Douce Apocalypse the association ot
49 smiling and light is quite explicit in the Great Angel of Chapter
X, 1—7, whose facies .. . erat sol.^^‘^ The artists ot this sombre and
painterly manuscript supplemented the traditional symbolism
of precious materials with a new complexity of psychological
expression, which became increasingly subtle in the long series
of French sculptures of the Virgin and Child of the early
78
The Great Angel of the Apocalypse, Douce Apocalypse, 1270. (49)
fourteenth century. In the Jaulnes Virgin at Sens the regal 4^’
splendour of the crowned and enthroned Mother is perfectly
counterpointed by her warm and engaging smile.
By the filteenth century, in the writing ot the Florentine
Neo-Flatonist and Dante scholar Marsilio Ficino, the expe¬
rience of the light of Heaven itself had become an experience of
laughter. ‘What is light in the heavens?’ he asked in a little
treatise On Light: ‘Abundance of life from the angels, unfolding
of power from the heaven, and laughter of the sky.’^^^ By the
Renaissance, light had become not only an essentially optical
property, it was a psychological one as well. Symbols were
giving way to experience but, as 1 hope to show in the ne.xt
chapter, experience had long been enrolled in the shaping of
these symbols themselves.
 5 • Colour-Language, Colour-Symbols
Basic colour terms ■ I he colours of heraldry ■ Secular ami sacred in colour-meaiiluy
Post-medieval perceptio)is of heraldic blazon
And indeed the pure colours do not even have special ctiininonly
used names, that's how unimportant they are to us. [Ludwig
Wittgenstein, Rciiuirhs on (Colour II. 67]
I SH()Wi:i) in Clhapter 1 htiw in the nineteenth century the
scholarly understanding ot early colour-terniinology hardly
kept pace with the archaeological investigation of ancient
polychroniy and it must be admitted that in our own times the
gap has widened even further, because the remarkable develop¬
ment of studies in colour-languages over the past twenty years
has not been matched by a comparable development in the
study ot colour in the visible worki, particularly in the world ot
art. For the student of languages the chief problem has been to
account for the fact that although the human eye is capable of
discriminating some millions ot colour-nuances, most colour-
languages, in all cultures and throughout recorded history,
include a vocabulary of from eight to eleven 'basic' terms.' The
notion of'basic' terms is a relatively recent one which has been
brought very much into the foreground by a seminal study,
Basic Color Teruis, published by Brent Berlin and Paul Kay in
1969 — it has generated most of the important discussion ever
since.- From a survey of ninety-eight spoken languages or
dialects, Berlin and Kay proposed a model for the universal
development of colour-vocabularies, which showed a seven-
stage evolution. At Stage I a language would have terms tor
black and white; at Stage II, red would be added; at Stage III
green or yellow; at Stage IV yellow or green; at Stage V blue; at
Stage VI brown; at Stage VII purple or pink or orange or grey,
or several of these, until the series of eleven 'basic' terms was
completed. The detailed criticism of Berlin and Kay's work,
chiefly by linguists and ethnographers, has generally concerned
levels above Stage II, although it has been pointed out that Stage
1 languages rarely distinguish 'black' and 'white' but rather
'dark' and 'light' or 'cool' and 'warm' or 'moist' and 'dry'
colours. From the point of view of the historian of culture, what
is most unsatisfying about Berlin and Kay's approach to colour-
language is the assumption that subjects tested will respond in a
‘natural' way to the presentation of small chips of coloured
plastic from the Munsell System used by the researchers, a
system which itself grew out of nineteenth-century assumptions
about 'primary' colours. ’
Clolour-salience as revealed by language must be related to
the wider e.xperience of colour in a given culture, this
e.xperience differing among the different groups within this
culture to whom colour is of some concern.'* Clhildren may be
one such sub-group, in whom the development of a colour-
vocabulary may be close to the Berlin and Kay scheme,'’ but
women, as a group, are not and they have long been recognized
as being particularly precise and discriminating in their handling
of colour.'’ Other distinctions ma\ be drawn between groups
who ha\'e a more ot less professional interest 111 colotir." one ot
the most interesting ot which tor the histori.in is the group ot
horse-breeders and traders, who ha\ e played .111 important role
in European cultures since Anticjuitv .md beyond. I .ue-.mtKiue
writers like Falladius in the fitth centurx' and Isidore ot Seville 111
the seventh listed thirteen horse-colours in Faun, some ot w Inch
are rare and highly specialized terms.” Byzantine (ireek others a
shorter list of some eleven terms but some of these are also
extremely obscure.'* An Arab-Latin glossary of around 1000
lists eight colours and a Spanish thirteenth-century treatise on
horses fourteen."’ In the horse-breeding eountries ot Eastern
Eurtipe and Clentral Asia 111 more recent times the number ot
terms for horse-colours has been appreciably larger, from some
thirty among the Kirghiz of the Steppes to nearly twice that
number in western Russia." Cllearly when the need .irose,
colour-discrimination expanded to meet it and precise terms
were devised to communicate these nuances to other people.
And yet, of course, colour-space has never been more than
partially and crudely mapped by colour-language. There has
been a far more remarkable tendency towards the 'basic' than
tow'ards the development ot more aiicf more subtle discrimin¬
ations. Most of the ethnographic material gathered tor the study
of colour-vocabularies has come from non-European cultures,
but exactly the same story could be read from the examination
of European texts and artefacts. Already in late Antiejuity the
Roman philosopher Boethius pointed to the tact that 'black'
was used to describe rational man. irrational crow and inani¬
mate ebony, and 'white' equally to refer to swans and marble,
men and horses, stars and lightning - which meant that colour
was a mere accident, quite incapable of informing us about the
true nature of things.' - Berlin and Kay's first three terms, black,
white and red, have shown themselves to form the most
fundamental colour triad 111 Africa and Asia and also throughout
Europe; in a study of the most salient terms in modern fiction,
these three have been found to be used tar nuire than any
others.'-’ Even though many people are capable ot discriminat¬
ing a very wide range of nuances, and of communicating many
of these discriminations, it remains that tor most purposes a
highly reduced and abstract colour-vocabulary is all that seems
to be required. It is also clear that for many people, unless they
are professionally engaged in colour-technokigy. this reduced
colour-vocabulary has a powerful efiect on perception itself. Sti
colour-perception and colour-language turn out to be chisely
bound up with each other; since symbtilizing is essentially a
linguistic function, the available colour-s'ocabulary must have a
decisive role in the creatitin of any language tit colour-
symbols.'"* As cohiur-termuKihigy is sti vague, this presents real
COl OL'R-I ANCLAGR. (A )L( )Li R-S> M B( )LS
problems for tlic modern reader of historical texts, no less than
for contemporars' spe.ikers of diflerent languages.
The problem was already a tamiliar one in Antiquity. We
saw in Ch.ipter 2 how in the second century Ai) Aulns Clellius
introduced the question of colour-vocabularies into his Attic
Xii^hts (II. xxvi), where Favorinus pointed out that the eye sees
far more fades (nuances) ofcolour than language can distinguish
and that (Ireek w as rather more discriminating in this respect
than Latin. The Latin nifus, he said, comprehended many
colours, from purple to gold, where Clreek had tour terms —
xantlios cnirliros. piinos and Idrros - to cover the same area as
I'lifiis. Favorintis's compaiiion Pronto retorted by listing seven
Latin terms for red: ftilinis. flainis. riihidiis, poeniceiis, riitihis, liiteus
and spadix, d'he precise identification of two ot Fronto’s terms,
flai’iis and nihidtis. might well have been rather crucial 111 ancient
medicine, for two late-antique north Italian Latin translations ot
the very popular Greek medical writer Oribasms — in the course
of a discussion of the colour of urine as symptom — used either
flai’us or nihcus as a translation of Oribasius’s xaiithos, a term
wdiich, in Classical Greek, could refer to fair hair, or honey or
wine or the whitish-yellow of parched grass.Clearly there
was no consensus about the appropriate term for a given and
important phenomenon, even within the same language in the
same geographical area.
We have also seen how 111 the case ot purple late-antique
lawyers sought to stabilize the concept by referring not to a
chromatic term but to a method ot manufacture; medieval users
of colour attempted to do the same with their textiles by
isolating not the hue but the quality of cloth that the most
precious dyestuff were used to colour. This has, of course,
created some puzzles for the post-medieval interpreter of
medieval te.xts. In .Spain purpura w'as, as early as the tenth
century, the name of a silk fabric, not a colour. It continued to
be so in Europe at large until the Renaissance, so that we hnd
many ‘purples’, from white and yellow to blue and black, as
well as red and green. That purple had come to mean
essentially a hue by at least the middle of the seventeenth
century is suggested by the heraldic controversy mentioned
below (p. 82). The history of the much more recent colour-term
‘scarlet’ suggests a similar progression from material to abstrac¬
tion. The tw'o colours had a close relationship as dyestuffs in
Jewish culture; but the term ‘scarlet’ itself appeared in the
German-speaking world 111 the eleventh century to signity a fine
shorn woollen cloth of great value. ‘Scarlets’ of many colours
trom black and blue to white (undyed) and green are documen¬
ted in the early literature but since the complement to the most
valuable woollen textile of the period was, understandably, the
most valuable dye (which in the Middle Ages was the bright red
kennes or coccus), it seems that by the thirteenth century the most
usual ‘scarlet’ was that dyed with this colour. Fdence came the
confusion of the colour with the cloth. The thirteenth-century
French prose romance Merlin was already able to use the term
cscrelate as the paradigm of all bright reds and by the following
century it could refer simply to the red dye itself^ ^
Very much the same pattern of development may lie behind
the more mysterious medieval term perse, which has remained
problematic because it fell out of use in the sixteenth century.
The origin and nature of perse have resisted analysis for many
80
years: linguists have similarly found the word to apply to many
hues from light blue to dark red. When it first appears at
Reichenau in the eighth century it is used as a synonym tor the
purplish-blue liyacintliiuus', one of its last recorded appearances,
111 Dolce’s Dialoirite oji Colours in the middle of the sixteenth
century, is as the colour of rust [ferruc’iueo)Nor is there any
agreement among modern scholars on the origin of the word:
some have derived it from late Latin pressus, one of Pallatiius’s
horse-colours.^'^ Others have related it, through pressus, to a
group of Spanish and Portuguese words meaning ‘black’.
Others again have traced the term to the blossom ot the peach
(jicrsica), which is usually a bluish-pink, or to the similarly
coloured Persian lilac or to the blue-violet cornflower {per-
sele).~^ Certainly in northern Europe m the later Middle Ages
the word, when applied to cloth, seems to have meant the
darkest and most expensive shade of blue (called sathlaeu in
Flemish), although a fitteenth-century heraldic writer stated
that while bluish, pers w'as not as dark as blue.^- One of the most
circumstantial texts, in a late tourteenth-century French hand¬
book of household management, underlines the problem of
interpreting perse. In a chapter on the cleaning of garments the
anonymous author stated that stains on a robe de pers could be
removed with a detergent, ‘And if any other colours of cloth
whatever are stained . . .’, as if pers was a colour; but at the end of
this passage she or he wrote ‘To take spots out of a silk, satin,
canielot, damask or other dress (robe) . . .’, as if pers was one ot a
number of cloths rather than a colour.The notion that perse
may be related to ‘Persian’ has found little favour with recent
scholars,but that one of the earliest, eleventh-century texts
speaks of ‘a tunic of gold perse cloth’ {tuiiicaui de paiitio perso
iuaurato) might well suggest a Persian origin.-^ Perhaps, like
‘purple’ and ‘scarlet’, perse was a term primarily used ot cloth, in
this case a silk originally from the Orient (although it wxis later
imitated in the West), which was usually dark but could be
supplied in a range of hues. If so, it was another example of the
way in which mecTeval users ot colour were able to stabilize
their fluid perceptions of hue by focusing on the material
substance.
The colours of heraldry
Perhaps the most striking instance of this sort of stabilizing
strategy is in the late-medieval artificial colour-language of
heraldic blazon. It is astonishing that the records of an obsession
with kinship and power, which are perhaps the most visible and
most attractive survivals of the medieval in the modern world,
have never been investigated thoroughly by anthropologists. A
characteristic document of the pow'er of armorial devices in
maintaining status is the contract of 1541 between a Spanish
grandee and the Dominican monks of S. Tehno in northern
Spain, for wToni he was having a new church and convent
constructed. The contract stipulated that the arms of the patron
and his wife w^ere to be ciisplayed in perpetuity, in stone and 111
painting, on columns, pillars, w'alls, vaults, arches, doors and
other parts throughout the main chapel, church and convent,
‘and that no other arms whatsoever of any other person of any
rank whatsoever should be erected or permitted to be erected
tor ever and ever’.^^ We are reminded of the proliferation of the

Kiiightsjousting, from a fiftcciuli-ceiuury
hiiglish Military lUill. I'lic kmgluN arc named,
but when helmetted in the field they could
only be identified by their coats of arms,
devised by the heralds in accordance with the
rules of blazon. The colours and tinctures of
blazon at the period included or (gold), jrgaii
(silver), actin’ (blue), (Jii/fs (red), I’eri (green)
and sable (black, after the precious black fur)
an evolving vocabulary of value. (50)
heraldic logo ot that great commercial sponsor Henry VIII in
King’s College Chapel, Cambridge, only a few years earlier,
although these arms never seem to have been coloured.
Conversely, retormers like St Antoninus, Archbishop of Flor¬
ence in the hlteenth century, specifically included coats of arms
among the superfluous vanities which should be kept away
from churches.-^
Heraldry has for the most part remained in the hands of the
genealogists. Only in the past twenty years or so have historians
ot ideas begun to look into the structure of these visible tokens
ot kinship, by tocusing not so much on historical coats of arms as
on those ot fictional characters such as the Knights of the Round
Table.’** Of most concern here is the development of a language
ot blazon, which has its beginnings in the twelfth century and
had become standard throughout Europe by the sixteenth; in
several respects it ran counter to the ordinary colour-
vocabularies ot the European languages. The history of blazon
as a language has never been traced, but what is clear is that it
took sev'eral centuries to reach its final form and that it was
essentially the creation t:)f an increasingly professional body of
heralds — guardians of the right of families and later institutions
to bear arms, and controllers of the forms these arms could take.
Hereditary devices or badges were not unknown to the
ancient Athenians-'^ but it was not until about the eleventh
century in northern France that the armorial shield seems to
have been conceived of as a precise means of recognition in
s^ battle.-*** The enamelled efligy of Cieotfrey Plantaganet of Anjou
at Le Mans, of about 1151, may include one of the first authentic
representations of a coat of arms, since the device of golden lions
on blue had been noticed at his investiture as a knight in 1123 or
1127 and it re-appeared as the arms of his grandson at the end of
the century.-*' The spread of the practice of jousting from
I < U < iL H-1 XNi.l \i .1 . > t ■! I a K-nN 1 ‘
France to the rest of Europe during the earlv twelfth centurv sc
made signs of identification more and more essential;-*- with this
increase in numbers went the need for regulation and the
development ot the oflice ot herald. But it took main decades
for a specialized language of blazon to evolve. The earliest
descriptions of shields are in French romances, which use the
same colour-language ot vcnneil or reiitjc, hliiiic, or and azur that
had been used by the author of the Cluvisoii dc Roland in the late
eleventh century.** Or and o'tir later became technical terms of
blazon, because they were the most precious metal and the mt-ist
precious and exotic blue pigment,*'* but at this early stage other
words for yellow and blue might serve just as well. Benoit de
Sainte-Maure's Roman de Troie {c. 1155) also describes shields ot
cir^cHf, vert, porpre or porprin. these last terms causing great
cc-)nfusion in the later vocabulary of heraldry. In the following
decade Chretien de Troyes's Erec cl Enidc introduced a tourna¬
ment near Edinburgh (Tenebroc) in which banners and shields
were described with several terms tor blue and gold, as well as
another troublesome term, sinoplc. At this time it probably
meant ‘red’ - it was regularly paired with aznr (11. 20y~ i ly)
but It later came to mean green. The poems ot Cihretien de
Troyes witness the emergence of protessional heralds, although
he seems to have had little sympathy with them: in Lanecloi: Ic
Chevalier de la Charetie (iiSos) he introduces a tournament at
which the Queen is instructed about the identity ot certain
knights from their coats of arms, not by a herald, but by other
noble spectators (11. .s773-yy); when a herald is introduced into
the poem (11. sfojfl') he makes a mistake about the crucial arms
of Lancelot.
It was not until the mid-thirteenth century that collections ot
coats of arms known as armorial rolls testify to the much greater
importance of the heralds and to a greater standardization ot
M
(.OHMJK-I AN(;UA<:F, coi.ouk-symbols
terms. The e.xactly eoiuemporary French Bigot Roll and the
English (hover’s Roll nse a vocabnlary oF eight terms - six
tinctnres (lines) and two furs. The tinctnres are now or, iir^n'iit (in
both ixdls still also c.illed hLuic), ii:iir, , I’crt and sable (called
noir in the Bigot Roll and sometimes in Cilover's Roll), and the
furs enniiic and I’air. '^ The new term tor red qiilcs. deriving
from the Latin oiila (throat) and used of the fo.x-tur collars,
including the head with its open month, that were tashionable
in the twelfth century.-’^ Gules also came to heraldry trom
poetry, where it had been in use at least since the 1230s, in a
poem. The Toiiniaiiient of Anticlirist, which had seen it as the
attribute of lechery and gluttony (('i/Zd). ’^ l ire other new term
was sable, also deriving from the fashion in tnrs but whose black
colour came from dyeing rather than trom the natural ap¬
pearance of the skin. By the fifteenth century, sable was the
most expensive tur ot all, known as ‘black gold’.-^'^ The two
other terms were derived directly from furs, the ermine, a semi¬
precious fur - which was, however, regarded as the finest in the
Arab world of the later Middle Ages,-’‘^ and vair (the squirrel,
seiunis uarius), whose characteristically stylized wave-patterns
can already be seen in the lining of Geoftrey ot Rlantaganet's
cloak. I 'air was generally regarded in the later Middle Ages as
the most valuable fur of all and it gave its name to the craft ot
furrier in German {Biiiitii’erker) and in the dialects of Venice,
Florence and Flanders.
Thus the vocabularv of blazon was essentially a vocabulary of
value: the two most precious metals, the most precious pigment
{lapis lazuli or ultramarine) and the tour most precious furs. The
looser heraldic language of the poets had been streamlined
according to a very precise understanding of aristocratic taste.
The only surprises in this arcane language are the presence of a
rather ordinary green, vert, and the absence of purple. The
importance of green as a colour in the Middle Ages can scarcely
be overestimated. We have seen how it was regarded in
Antiquity as the especially pleasing median colour ancf how
Innocent III sanctioned it in the thirteenth century as a liturgical
colour for the same reason. He was joined in this by the
Scholastic writer William of Auvergne, who thought green
even more beautiful than red because, he said (echoing the
Peripatetics), it ‘lies between the white which dilates the eye and
the black which contracts it.’*^^ But the problem in heraldry was
the humdrum French word vert, which although long used in
blazon was now confusing since it was a homophone with
vairA^ In practice the problem was generally alleviated by using
the adjectival form vaire,‘^‘^ but in spoken Norman-French this
must still have presented difficulties; the solution was eventually
to substitute the term siiiople, a poetic word echoing siiiopis
which, as in Antiquity, was generally used to denote red but
which had, paradoxically, come to stanci for green by the early
thirteenth century.{Si)iople, however, continued to mean red
in poetic usage for another two centuries.) In the most
comprehensive of early heralciic treatises, Jehan Courtois, as
Sicily Herald, had to explain in the 1430s to Alfonso the
Magnanimous, King ot Aragon and Sicily, that it meant green
in this context, and not the rather trivial green of dyes and paints
but the beautiful refreshing green of nature.It was, none the
less, an excellent addition to this specialized vocabulary for it
was ancient and exotic and had a meaning only the initiated
82
could understand. Although never a very widespread heraldic
tinctnre, it was firmly accepted into the canon by the early
fifteenth centtiry."^’
Purple also presented problems to the heralds and, unlike
siiiople, it was never generally accepted. About 1250 the
historian and painter Matthew Paris included it as one of his
reds, together with nibetis and pules, in his rather precise
descriptions of a scries of emblazoned shields.’**^ But, predict¬
ably, this was exactly the problem: as William Caxton put it in
his late fifteenth-century translation of Christine de Pisan’s Book
ofFayttes of Amies ami of Cliivalrye (140S/9), ‘the second coloure
IS ptirpre that we call red’.‘‘‘^ The earliest surviving treatise on
heraldry (c. 12S0/1300) had already pointed ont that very few
people thought of purple as a heraldic colour, '’'^ and almost the
only early blazon to inclnde it as a distinct tincture was the arms
of the King of Spam, whose lions were piirpure in two copies of
Glover’s Roll (r. 1235), although azure in another; the same is
true of the rather later Walford’s Roll (r. 1275), which has azure
in one sixteenth-centnry copy.-'’^ Seventeenth-century Spanish
heraldic writers compounded the confusion by using purpura for
the red of the field but usually the term for the lions was a more
straightforward red: rojoA^ It is no surprise that in one of the last
classic treatises of heraldry, C. F. Menestrier’s L'Art dii blasoii
jiistife of 166], the author sought to ban purple, citing the
vexing case of the Spanish King’s arms and arguing that it was
impossible for heraldic artists to decide how to render this
tincture: ‘Painters and illuminators do not know what colour to
use for the so-called purple: some make it out of mauve, others
wine-colour, some the colour of mulberries [iiiei/res'l, which is a
dark violet, others a colour like that of the husk of mulberries
[sue lies iiieures\, which is lighter.It was in heraldry indeed that
the demise of the concept of royal purple came about. An
anonymous, early fifteenth-century French heraldic treatise
stated that purple was not simple but a mixture of all the other
tinctures, and a little later Sicily Herald explained that since this
made it the humblest {la plus hasse) of colours, some authorities
excluded it altogether from the canon. He himself, however,
took the more traditional view that purple was the proper
attribute of kings and emperors — he clearly did not foresee the
fate of the Spanish arms, now blazoneti in pules A"'’
Secular aud sacred iu coloiir-uieauiug
The slow assimilation of siiiople as green and the virtual
exclusion of piirpure from the language of blazon suggests that
the requirements of that highly artificial vocabulary were
abstraction, in that it should be removed from everyday
language, and at the same time the concreteness of association
with objects of great material worth. Even the four furs were
included because of their monetary value not because the
animals from which they came (the fox, the sable, the ermine
and the squirrel) had any special place in the medieval bestiary,
which fulfilled an essentially moral function. But if these terms
were scr abstract, and if symbolism depentis upon words, hciw
could they fulfil those symbolic tasks which, especially in the
later phases of heraldry m the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,
were increasingly thrust upon them by heraldic writers and the
wider public? They did so by using the standard strategies of

medieval symbolizing, by the free use of the imagination and by
a refusal to think in terms of the universal.
Romanticism and thejungian psychokigy of archetypes has'e
led us to expect that a symbol .should have some unisersal
s’alidity. should respond in some way to a deeply felt human
need. lUit this was not the way symbolism was understood in
the Middle Ages. Then symbols were Huid; inventions of the
imagination, whether or luit they were subsequently endorsed
by repetition in some institution such as the Cihurch. They were
functions of the 'colours' of rhetoric, those ancient techniques of
amplification and embellishment that enjoyed such a \'i\-id life
in medieval theories of poetry.Thus in an early Byzantine
hymn the Virgin might be compared to a score of objects from
nature and art, and a late fourteenth-century English preachers'
manual could give sixteen meanings to the peacock.The
theorists of symbolism from Augustine to Dante emphasized
this ambiguity: m the twelfth century, for example, the
exceptionally full discussion of symbols by Refer of Poitiers
included the argument that the same object might have opposite
connotations — the lion, because of its ferocity was sometimes
compared to the cievil but since it was fearless it could also be
compared to Christ.So it is not at all surprising that modern
students of medieval colour-symbolism have been hard put to it
to reach any general conclusions about the meanings of
individual colours, even when they have been able to identify
lOJ them. The regal purple of Christ’s robe may be the same as the
scarlet of sin.-'’*^ In the essentially secular context of heraldry the
urge to symbolize was accommodated on the one hand by an
eclectic borrowing from religious ideas, a solution which
proved in the long run to be very popular, and on the other by a
more scholarly attempt to extract colour-meanings from the
material characteristics of the colours themselves.
Early signs of a wish to attribute meaning to heraldic colours
appear in the writings of Matthew Paris. The division of the
shield of Prince Henry (who had died very young in 1183) into
fields of reci and black gave Matthew the occasion to think of
red as a colour of life and black of death.He was also attracted
Si to the idea of the knight as bearer of the ‘Shield of Faith’ {Scutuui
Videi, from St Paul’s metaphor in Ephesians 6:16), a theological
diagram, which had probably originated with Robert Cmosset-
este, presenting the relationship of Father, Son and Holy Cdiost
in the form of a coloured triangle. The field was green, a colour
sometimes associated with faith, although not it seems in later
heraldic contexts.^*’ The roundels bearing the names of the
Persons of the Trinity are in red and blue.^' This combination
of red, blue, and green was also deployed in the rather earlier
diagrams of the Trinity by the Italian theologian Joachim of
ss Flora, where in one instance the Father was beige, the Son red
and the 1 loly Spirit blue, and green was used, as here, to e.xpress
the unity of the (iodhead. But neither in Joachim nor in the
artists of the Scutum Fidci was there any standard distribution of
colours.^’- This impressive image is interesting chieHy as an
indication that by the middle of the thirteenth century it was
possible for a medieval spectator to interpret a coat of arms in
metaphysical or moral terms.
A far more comprehensive indication that arms might be
read in this way is offered by a stirring account of some dozen
shields and their bearers in the thirteenth-century Icelandic
( ()l ( )l K-l \ \ (,l A(.l . ( ()1 ( )l K-s'i \\H( >1 s
Didrcchs Sux’ii. in which the guests .it the b.inquet ot King
I heodoric (Didrecki of Bern were .ill knights with expressue
armorial bearings. Theodonc himself'bore .1 red shield, ,is did
another knight. Hildebr.iiul. to show th.it he w .is 1 heodoric's
man. I hat the .luthor of the s.ig.i w .is f.miih.ir w itli some of the
functions of heraldrx is shown b\ his .ittnbution of the s.mie
coats of arms to members of'the s.une t'.miiB . .Most ot'his mor.il
interpret.itioiis of the slnekis depeiuk\l upon the .inim.il de\ lies
on them but there was also some interpretation of colour. I leine
the proud, for example, carried .1 blue shield w Inch signified his
cold breast and his grim heart; Fasokl and his brother Ecke bore
shiekls with a reil hon, whose colour expressed their lose of
fighting.''-’ In the Didrcchs Sd^u one knight. Hornbogi of'
Wendland, .ind his son Amelung bore brow n shields, sigmts ing
wisrth ami courtesy. I his underlines the Cierm.imc culture
within which this poem w.is composed, for brown w.is ,1
tincture of blazon common in Ciermany from the earls'
thirteenth century but sshich did not find a place (.is tduiic or
Mil’ll)') in French or English heraldry until more th.in .1 centurs'
later.'’'’ Another symbolizing des'elopment 111 late heraldic
usage svas the association of the tinctures svitli precious stones,
svhose tradition of moral interpretation ssas svell established.
The late fourteenth-century (lerinan herald Peter Suchenss irt
introduced pearls, rubies, diamonds, emeralds, mother-of-pearl
and ‘brosvn sapphire’ into his blazon, in a number of heraldic
poems.By about 1400 the idea had been taken up 111 fTance
and England, svhere it svas immediately expanded into a
comprehensive system of correspondences.'’'’ The anonymous
French treatise in the Bibliotheqtie Mazarine in Paris provides
each tincture not only svith its appropriate gems and moral
qualities but also with its metal, its humour, its element, its
planet and signs of the zodiac and its day of the sveek. Thus aciir
connoted the sapphire, praise, beauty, luuitcuid the sanguine
temperament, the planet Venus. ('Femini, Libra and Aquarius,
air, fine silver (because this was used in the manufacture of a
number of fine blue pigments) and Friday.'’^ When Sicily
Herald came to propose a similar scheme in the mid-fifteenth
century his correspondences were by no means the same: he
agreed about sapphire air and the sanguine temperament but his
moral associations tor ozur w-ere with loyalty, ‘science’ and
justice; he introduced childhood but also autumn; his blue
planet was Jupiter and his blue day Tuesday.'’*’ These correspon¬
dences had a particular vogue in English heraldic writing in the
fifteenth century, where there were further local variations: we
seem to be dealing with the free associations of rhetoric rather
than w'ith any practical concerns. Yet we learn that at the end of
the century professional heralds making a visitation - an
inspection of family records to maintain the proper heraldic
procedures —of the north of England were using the vocabulary
of precious stones.'’" .Small wonder that the instructions to
heralds drawn up by 'Fhoinas Duke of C.'larence about 1420
included the study of books on the properties of colours, plants
and stones, ‘so that by this [reading] they may more properly
and conveniently assign arms to each person’."^'’
The association of the colours of blazon w ith astrology and loj
with the calendar brought them into the realm of costume, and
we know that in fifteenth-century Italy, w here Sicily 1 lerald
was employed by Alfonso at Naples, this was an aspect of the
(■( )i ( )L'r-lan(;ua(:h, coiour-^ymbols
interpretation ot'eolour which had some resonance at the courts.
Alfonso’s son-in-law Leonello d’Este. Duke of Ferrara, was
known to choose the colour of his clothing according to the
position of the planets and the days of the week;^' Alfonso
himself was always a careful dresser, preferring black, which, as
Sicily Herald explained, signified melancholy and pruticnce; it
was the colour most in demand for clothing in his day, ^poiir la
sciiiplicitc i]iii cst eii vile'. Black was the equivalent of the diamond
and some of the best black cloths were as expensive as scarlet.’^-
Ciertainly we might expect the moral values of heraldry to be
expressed frst of all in clothing: a popular mid-thirteenth-
century French poem, the Onleiic de Chcualcric, described how
at his investiture a knight would first be dressed m a white robe
to show his cleanliness of body, then in a scarlet cloak to remind
him of his duty to shed blood in the defence of the Church. He
would then put on brown stockings to remind him of the earth
in which he must finally he and at the end of the ceremony he
would tie on a white girdle to signify his chastity.Dress had
always been regarded as expressive. One of the earliest medieval
debates abotit colour was the long discussion (t. 1127-49)
between St Ik'rnard of Clairvatix and Peter the Venerable on
the subject of whether monks should wear white like the
Cistercians or black like the longer established Benedictines at
Cluny. St Benedict himself, the founder of Western monasti-
cism, had left the matter open, recommending the cheapest
cloth or leather available, but Peter the Venerable now insisted
that only black could express the appropriate humility, penit¬
ence and abjectness of the monks in this vale of tears. White was
expressive of joy and even glory, as in the Transfiguration of
Christ, and was thus quite unsuitable for this purpose. Peter
brought anthropological as well as theological and historical
arguments to bear on the question; black, he said, was a funereal
colour in Spam, for example. The ciebate is an indication of a
remarkably sophisticated level of interpretation in questions of
colour-meaning.^'^ We are reminded of the dismay aroused in
Pope Alexander VPs Master of Ceremonies in 1495, when the
Pope wanted to dress in white a procession praying for the
abatement of a great storm which had flooded the Tiber and left
many casualties: white, explained the official, expressed ‘happi¬
ness and rejoicing’ and he was able to persuade Alexander to
substitute the more appropriate violet.
84
As these examples suggest, it was within the Christian
Cdiurch that the expressive value of colour in vestments had
been most commonly recognized. Yet the history of the
liturgical colours shows that there was similarly little agreement
about their precise connotations. Black and white presented tew
problems. Pope Innocent III, the promoter of one of the earliest
canons of liturgical colour about 1200, proposed that red should
be used for the feasts of the Apostles and martyrs because of its
association with blood and the Pentecostal fire; but his contem¬
porary Siccardus of Cremona argued that red vestments and
hangings signified chanty.It may well be that the growing
thirteenth-century interest of the heralds in the meaning of the
tinctures was stimulated by the concern of the Church to
establish a more standard canon, reflected in the popular and
bulky Rationale Diinnonini Officiorinn of Guillaume Idurand,
Bishop caf Mende. Certainly Sicily Herald referred to the
liturgical use of red tor the feasts caf martyrs and his black Friday
was discussed by Durand as appropriate to the Friday penitential
feasts.From the point of view of the liturgy, yellow had the
same function as green, which must have depended upon their
traditional confusion, and violet the same function as black. But
in both the secular and the religious spheres painters were
becoming more precise in their use of allegorical colour.
Ambrogio Lorenzetti, for example, in his Good Government
fresco (1338—9) in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena, coded his
figures of Temperance, Justice, Fortitude and Prudence with a
scheme of colours - blue, green, diamond and carbuncle —
derived from a recent exposition of the meaning of gemstones;
in his Maestd at Massa Manttima he even labelled the three
theological Virtues Faith, Hope and Charity by words as well as
colours.There can be little doubt that colour and its meaning
was becoming a more central concern in the lay consciousness of
meciieval Europe. Secular love-poems such as Hadamar von der
Eaber’s DieJagd der Minne (c. 1335/40) includeci lengthy sections
on the amorous connotations of colours, in this case six; green,
white, red, blue, yellow and black; in fifteenth-century Ger¬
many there was a popular poem devoted to the six or seven
colours and their interpretation m a multi-coloured dress, which
later became a rhyming game.'^^
Another way in which heraldic blazon came to bear meaning
was far more specialized and more scholarly. From the
The arming of a knight, in a late fourteenth-
century illumination of Benoit de
Sainte-Maure, Roman de Troie. (51)
 Heraldic blazon

lUTtUv

tcnfig^

.rptrtH4t\:Ugi»'

'Oiwd uolilcaj^

mcojb ^ I

Tm o^» w

The cnaincl funerary plaque of Geoflrey

riantagcnct (33) shows the earliest known
truly heraldic device, of rampant lions on
shield and bonnet. I le is also wearing a cloak
lined with squirrel-tur {vair), whose
formalized design became the heraldic version
of this blazon. (leotlVey's device of lions may
well svmbolize what the inscription proclaims,
that he was a courageous defender ot the
Church, but it was perhaps not for a centur)'
that the colours of blazon were read
symbolically. The virtuous knight from
I’eraldus (52) carries the green Faith on his
shield, but true to the improvisatory character
of medieval symbolism, this was only one ot
the colours attributed to that I'heological
Virtue.

32 Knight be.iriiig .1 'Shield of ImuIi'. from

I’cr.ildus. Suiiiiiiii lie I 'tin.-, c. ia40/.S.s
53 Funeral etfigy of (ieorirey I’l.intagenet. i i s 1 60

S3
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55

Diao;rams
O
of colour

The medieval love of systems which gave us these magnificent 54 Attributed to Hyrtfcrth of Ramsey, The jour-jold

diagrams should not lead us to suppose that colours were symbolic in system ofAhicrcccsm and Afieroeosm. from a collection

any standard way. Byrtferth's correlation of the four humours, the of scientific texts, f. ioSo/90
55 The Haly Trinity, from Joachim ot ITira, Liber
four seasons, the four points of the compass, and so on (54), was only
Fi(;nrarnm. twelfth century
one of many similar schemes which provided an abundance ot
colours for each of the four elements. A single manuscript ofjoachim
of flora (55) has different colour-equivalents for the Son and the
1 loly Spirit on different pages. Colour provided imaginative
embellishment, rather than e.xpressing any notion of objective truth.
M\.

fourteenth century the right to display particular armorial
shields had to be defensible at law;”*’ an Italian jurist. Bartolo of
Sassoterrato, seems to have been the first to draw up criteria tor
the attribution ot blazon in arms. For Bartolo there were five
tinctures; he argued on scientific grounds that gold was the
noblest colour since it represented light; the ne.xt was red
{jnirpurcus sii’e nihctis), since it represented fire, which was the
noblest of the elements. Thus only princes might bear gold and
red in their arms. The third tincture was blue, the representative
of air, 'which is a diaphanous and transparent body, and
particularly receptive to light’. Ot the remaining two colours,
black and white, said Bartolo, citing Aristotle, white was noble
because of its lightness and black the least noble, since it was
opposite to white. This hierarchy ot colours, besides relating to
the social hierarchy, could also, according to Bartolo, atfect the
arrangement of blazon on shields or banners, with the nobler
colours uppermost and the others downwards in succession.”*
These highly constricting recommendations do not seem to
have been acted upon even in Italy, and towards the end of the
century an obscure English heraldic writer, Johannes de Bado
Aureo (‘John ot the Ciolden Bucket’, or ‘Measure’), launched a
critique of Bartolo’s ideas, with a much greater battery of
scientific writing behind him. Johannes drew on the opinions of
his master, one Francis, ot whom nothing is known. Master
Francis had divided the colours into three groups: the primary,
white and black; the secondary {medius), blue, yellow and red;
and the tertiary {siibnicdins). Black could not be the least noble
coltsur, although it was interior to white, because it belonged to
the primary set. Of the secondary set, blue was the first, because
it represented the ‘noble air’ and was composed equally of light
and dark. The next was yellow {aureus), which was not as noble
as white since it was not as close to light. Red was, confusingly,
also equidistant between white and black and the reason why it
was more appropriate to princes than any other colour w'as
because it signified ferocity and fortitude. Green, on the other
hand, as a tertiary colour mixed from the two secondaries blue
and yellow, was not properly admissible in arms at all and
incieed it had not been used by the ‘ancients’.”- Unlike the other
heraldic writers, who associated the diamond {adamas) with
black. Master Francis gave it to blue, and one of the reasons why
blue was nobler than yellow was because this colour was sent by
an angel from God to form the basis ot the Emperor
Gharlemagne’s arms, which were three gold flowers on an azure
field.Yellow, continued Master Francis, was inferior because,
according to Avicenna, it needed the admixture of red, white
and black and it could also be produced from ‘the vilest colour
in the world’, that is the tertiary green. Red was inferior to blue
because in its noblest form, fire, it required the presence of blue
air to give it light.”'*
This juggling with the constituents ot colour in order to
construct a hierarchy of tinctures more ‘scientific’ than Bartolo’s
Faith. Hope and Charity form the steps up to the Virgin’s throne,
and eacli is given its appropriate colour white, green and red.
56 Anibrogio Lorenzetn. f. 1335 (detail)
col ()l K-1 Wi.l A(.t . ' ( )I : )l K-S^ \\Mi >1 s
IS typical ot the late Schol.istic splitting hairs. But \\ hen in the
1430s Bartolo’s scheme came under .itt.uk troiii the It.ih.ui
humanist Lorenzo V.ill.i. it w.is iin the grounds neit ot his
physical descriptions ot the tinctures but l.irgeK on the b.isis e.t
eseryelay experience eniboihei.i in vinliiuirs l.iiigu.ige, W e i.in
see. said Valla, that the sun is not golden. .i colour whuh we
would call /i(/ri(.s, rutiltis or i ri)ici(.'. but rather sil\ er\- ■ ,n\'( iiti lo ■
or white {ia)ididih\. But why should white be considered
superior to all other colours, as B.irtolo had it incoiisistentlv
later in his treatise? 1 )o we prefer pearls and ciwstal to
carbuncles, emeralds, sapphires or top.izes; or white linen to red
or purple silk? And as tor black, both the r.i\ en and the sw.iii are
sacred to Apollo, and the eye, which is the sole ludge ot colour,
has been made black in the centre: it c.in h.irdly be the most
despised ot colours. And what tit the order ot precious stones
prescribed by God tor the decoration of Aaron’s bre.istpl.ite tir
for the walls tif the Fleavenly Jcrus.deiiT Etunigh said, con¬
cluded Valla; it is stupid to want to lay down the law about the
dignity ot colours.”” Note that Valla did not ridicule the
principle tif attributing values to ctilours as such but Bartolo's
reductive and illogical system. After he was expelled by the law-
students of Bavia for his attack on thepinst. Valla moved in 1437
to Naples, to the court iit Altonso I, whose Sicily Herald, as we
have seen, had incorporated a very wide network of colour-
associations into his Blasoii des (dnileurs.*'^'’
Just as the legal-scientific system of late heraldic blazon came
under attack from an Italian humanist, so the more popular and
unsystematic correspondences of Sicily Herald were held up to
ridicule by the greatest French Renaissance writer. Franyois
Rabelais. Rabelais’s monstrous comic creation Gargantua. true
to the current fashions, had to be furnished with a tamily device,
which was blazoned argent {hlaiic) and azure {bleu): white
because it meant ‘joy, pleasure, delights and rejoicing’, to
Gargantua’s lather, and blue because ot its reference to celestial
things. But, said Rabelais, readers might object that white
signifies faith (as in Lorenzetti’s Macsta) and blue constancy. s6
Who says so? .Some ridiculous little book call Le Blasoii des
Couleurs, so disreputable that it has prudently no name attached
to it and which is hawked around by cheapjacks. It is nothing
short of tyranny to want to impose these regulations on the
making of badges 'without any other demonstration or valid
arguments’.”’’' Rabelais went on to say that he himselt hoped
some day to write a book proving 'as much by philosophical
reasesning as by ancient authority’ what colours there are in
nature and what is signified by each ot them (as tar as we know,
he never did so). Later in (jari’aiittia he turned to the Aristotelian
arguments tor the opposition ot white and black, used by
common consent tor rejoicing and tor mourning. He cited Valla
against Bartolo and a whole range of ancient authors to show
that just as white expands the eye, so it expands the heart, and
concluded that in Gargantua’s blazon 'blue certainly means the
sky and celestial things by the same symbolism by which white
signifies joy and pleasure’.””
In spite of such weighty criticisms, the explication ot the
meanings ot heraldic blazon became very much a part ot courtly
entertainment in Italy during the Renaissance. Early in the
sixteenth century Lodovico (Tinzaga composed a treatise on the
subject (now lost) and it was originally considered as one ot the
COI OL U-I AN(;L A(.r. (.OLOUH-SYMBOLS

possible topics ot’eonversation in that most influential ot Italian

treatises ot eourtes\. Ibiklassare Ciastiglitnie's Book of the (.oiirlier
(i saS)/*' F. F. Morato's On the Mednin<^ of Coloiiis. whieli owes
a good deal to SieiK' 1 lerald, ran into a dozen editions in the
sixteenth eentnrv alone and an Italian version ot Sicily Herald’s
own Bhiion. which had been published in French in 149s and
again in i saS. w as reprinted twice in Venice towards the end ot
the eentnrv. A rix al Italian publication, Lnca Contile's Discourse
ofDei’iees (Ihu ia, isyg), followed the same pattern but chose a
rather diflerent set ot correspondences between the tinctures and
the davs of the week (bine Thursday, black Friday and
Satnrdav). None of the Italian publications used the standard
French vocabularx’ ot blazon, which was never adopted in
Italy.'"'

Post-fficdieval pcrceptiofis of heraldic blazon

The idea that heraldic blazon embodied an authentic language
of colours was reinforced in the many seventeenth-century
treatises on heraldry in which the art coagulated into its present
form, and it re-appeared most influentially in Baron Portal’s
great Romantic synthesis of colour-meanings early in the
nineteenth century.'^' Portal revived the medieval notion ot the
ambivalence ot colour-symbols in his ‘Rule ot Opposition’, by
which red, for example, might equally signify love and hate.'^-
But, even it he was aware ot it. Portal was not able to
accommodate the antithetical perceptions ot a common term
such as sinople, whose red/green connotations exemphtied the
nineteenth century’s principle of complementarity.'^-^ Com¬
plementarity depended chiefly on the physiological pheno¬
menon of coloured after-images: one colour-sensation ‘deman¬
ded’ another. For the Middle Ages the relationship ot red and
green was probably closest because they were both seen as the
median term on the colour-scale,and beauty and harmony
were understood to consist in the mean between extremes.In
costume the combination ot red and green was one ot the most
popular in the later Middle Ages, especially in northern Europe
(the Church Synods at Cologne and Liege ciecreed 111 1281 and
A more psychological way of interpreting colour symbolism developed
1287 that priests w'ere not to wear these colours wnthout special
during the nineteenth century, and began to affect the interpretation ot blazon.
reason).Whether this pairing is to be accounted tor primarily
D.P.G. Humbert de Superville’s 'Synoptic Table’ otTSzy characterizes red a.s
on aesthetic or on economic grounds is a nice question; w’e
‘violent’ and 'expansive’; blazon identitied the colour with vertical lines, in
know that m Tuscany at least in the late fourteenth century these
accordance with its dynamic power. (57)
were by tar the incast expensive cokaurs ot cloth, more than a
third more costlv than blue.'^^ Nor was the contusion between
red and green unique in medieval colour perception. It is
perhaps even more surprising to us that three words in Latin and speech-communities, however, technology seems perhaps too
Lrench much used in the later Middle Ages, glaiiciis, cenileiis and specialized an occupation to have aflected perception in such a
hloi, could be used to signity either blue or yellow, another pair wddespreaci way. Other commentators have referred to the facts
wfliich came to be known as complementary in the later of colour-vision, which may manifest deficiencies precisely in
nineteenth century.'’* There may be a technological back¬ the perception ot the red/green and yellow/blue pairs. How'ever
ground to both these anomalies, tor just as medieval glassmakers we account for these anomalies - and there have been few
used the same copper oxide to manufacture red and green glass, extended discussions ot the problem - these extreme examples
simply varying the time of heating,so a comparable chemical ot the fluidity of colour terms in the medieval period make it
colour-change, from yellow to blue, must have been noticed very clear that we must be wary ot translating colour
during the manutacture of the blue vegetable dyestutT w'oad, symbolism into modern psychological language, as was done so
wfliose leaves, shielded from light, were an intense yellow and trequently in the later nineteenth century.
only turned blue on exposure to it. Both colour-phases were It may indeed be doubted whether the colours of heraldic
described as isatis (woad).^“° Since we are dealing with large blazon were ever as important as the forms they embellished.

90

Altlunigh plain caiknircd shields were very ctniiinon in the
nniianees, they hardly figure at all in historie euats ut arms,
where meaning has always tended tii reside in the heraldic
devices. Many of the earliest arms were on monochromatic seals
or tiles'”' and when, from the fifteenth century, engraving was
applied to the reproduction of armorial bearings, there was no
attempt for more than a century to devise a graphic system tor
suggesting the diti'erent tinctures, and no widely accepted
system of this sort for a century after that.'”- A Flemish system
of 1623, using diagonal hatchings for gold and dots for blue,
never became general.'”-^ The first widely adopted system,
using dots tor gold, vertical hatching ttir gules, horizontal ttir
azure and so on, was published by P. .Silvestre de Petra-.Sancta in
Sii Dc Syinholis Ucroicis (1634) and Tesserae Genrilitae (1638); it was
spread very widely by the theoretical treatise on heraldry by
Marc de Vulson de la Ciolombiere in 1639.'”-^ The system was
still current in the nineteenth century and even became part of
the general vocabulary ot colour, being used outside the
i s_? heraldic conte.xt, tor e.xample by Moses Harris in the plates tor
his Xatural Systetii of Colours, originally about 1776. It is
something of a paradox that this graphic scheme, cievised as a
matter ot pure convenience in the seventeenth century, many
decades after the code of colour-meanings in blazon had reached
a more or less general acceptance throughout Europe, should in
the intensely psychologizing atmosphere ot fut-de siccle Paris
have been seen to embody some protound psychological truths.
Already in the Romantic period the Dutch mythographer
1). P. (i. Humbert de Superville had published an outline of the
The coat of arms of ('rcorge tacld (1777-1 SS4) illustrates the persistence ot
graphic conventions for armorial colours into the nuidern period, (isild is
symbolized by dots, blue by horizontal lines. (58)
( ( )l ( )l K-1 \\(, I \i .1 . I t )I ( il H-s'i \1 Hi II s
relationship between the direction ot'lines .md the imp.ui -.'t
colours, but this had rested on a \ei\ t.ir-tetchcLl notion ol
cosmic correspoiuiences.'Hie rehitionshp' w.is guen ,m
empirical, psychological and m.ithem.itical twist b\ Setir.it’s
friend ( diaries I lenrv in his Prolraneur ('.liroiuantjue ot 1 s.ss; m ,m
article a tew years later in the Reiuie de IKur- the .lesthetk i.m Paul
SoLinati brought the whole question into the context ot the
hatchings of traditional blazon:
At first sight It is nut e.isy to ini.igine luw\ w e c.m est.iblish .in\ sort
ot analogy between p.ir.illel lines dr.iwn in such .iiul sueh .1
direction, and green or or.inge. \e\ertheless. the hori/ont.il
strokes, which .igree with the h.ibitn.il nuwements ot the e\es
better than the others, h.ue .1 sort ot sweetness which in.ikes them
appropriate tor expressing nature's neutral tints, the tone ot dist.int
objects, the softly grad.ited nuances ot sea or sk\. t )n the other h.md
the s’ertical strokes, since the\' present the opposite to our e\e,
sonieching abnornial and misleading, will rather express sli.irp .ind
lively colours. Wlw in the eiigras ing ot blazon is red s\ niboh/ed
precisely by the wrtical lines and blue by the horizont.il?. . . Instiiu t
leads I the engras'erl to express ditlerences ot colour by ditlerences ot
direction.'”'’
.Souriau was writing at a time when cxpcrmieiital psychology,
especially in France and ('lermany, had made it seem possible to
see choices and combinations ot coknirs 111 artefacts as the
expression of psychological states; but we shall see that this w.is
scarcely more certain a procedure than it had been tor the
synibohzers of the later Middle Ages.
01
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The story of Noah, from Aelfric’s Paraphrase of the Pentateuch and Joshua,
eleventh century. The medieval illuminator has tried to convey with many
bands the 'thousand colours' of Virgil's account of the rainbow. (59)
 6 • Unweaving the Rainbow
I-roifi Titian to Icsta ■ The Roniantics ■ Prisniatics and hannony
rwcnticth-ccntnry cpiloync
... Do not all charms Hy
At the mere touch of cold philosophy?
T here was an awful rainbow once in heaven:
We know her woof, her texture; she is given
In the dull catalogue of common things.
Philosophy will clip an Angel's wings,
Clonqtier all mysteries hy rtile and line,
limpty the haunted air, and gnonied mine -
Unweave a rainbow.
(John Keats, Lamia, iSiy)
In one of the earliest histories of optics the eighteenth-century
English chemist Joseph Priestley remarked that ‘of all the optical
appearances in nature, the rainbow is perhaps the most striking.
Accordingly, we have found that it has always engaged the
attention of philosophers.’^ So indeed it had and has continued
to do so ever since.^ Another contention of Priestley's, that in
the bow ‘the reypilar order of the colours was a . . . circumstance that
could not have escaped the notice of any person’,^ raises many
problems, for his owm abundant evidence suggests that the
number and even the order of the colours has been far from clear
to all observers, and in both the literary and the visual record w'e
have a very large number of differing analyses. This will hardly
come as a surprise if we recall that the identification of the
colours in the far more easily standardized spectrum of w'hite
light has presented difficulties to spectators m laboratory
experiments even in recent times.A young late nineteenth-
century observer could see only four colours in a well-defined
bow, wdiich should help us to understand the very common
four-colour bows of the Middle Ages; the almost equally
familiar two-colour bow of medieval art may be partly
explained by the greater salience of the red and the green still
often observed in the spectrum.'’ What is clear is that the very
delicacy of the transitions in the bow, which was to commend it
to some theorists as a model of colour-harmony, makes it
extremely hard to number and name the colours. This has made
the phenomenon especially apt for interpretation according to
any of a number of prevailing schemata.
Like all the phenomena of the heavens the rainbow and the
related manifestations of prismatic colour, such as haloes and
parhelia, have been the subjects of intense scrutiny by astr¬
onomers in many cultures and all periods.^ In Jewish myth the
(y-fi bow could be a hopeful portent, as in the story of Clod’s
convenant with Noah, and in the Jtidaeo-Clhristian tradition it
could be the symbol of Dis'ine power at the Last Judgment,
recorded in Ezekiel (i:2<S) and the Revelation of St John (4:3). In
a secular context the bow could usefully indicate both good and
bad fortune: as late as 1K06, when Napoleon conferred a crown
on the Kiirturst laiedrich .August ol S.ixony. the rainbow w hu h
appeared in the neighbourhood w as read as ,1 good omen, but in
the event it proveti to be ,ui augur\ ot turther war and the
eventual partition ot the new kingdom.'
In spite ot its enormous religious and political signiticance,
the problem ot analysing and representing the rainbow re¬
mained intractable. Ancient writers tVom I lomer to Isidore ot
Seville had handed down notions ot'the btnv \ arying troin one
to SIX chromatic divisions; CTid and V'lrgil had indicated the
imptissibihty of counting by proposing a thousand.'* Nor h.ul
the order remained stable: Aristotle's well observed sequence tit
red (jdioinicotin), green (jyrasinon) and purple {halouryon) had 111
late Antiquity bectime yellow, red. purple, orange, blue aiul
green in the Stoic philostipher Aetius and the Roman historian
Ammianus Marcellinus.'^ The few surviving visual records give
rather more evidence of a considered study ot the phenomenon
itself among the Clreeks and Romans. It the probably sixth-
centtirv illustrator of the 1 'eryilius Romanus (a manuscript w Imse
prototype w as perhaps of the fourth) condensed the author's
thousand colours into three red, white and green “*
mosaicists made the most of their opportunities tor conveying
the shimmering, luminous qualities of the phenomenon. The
remarkable rainbow mosaic from Lergamon ot the second
century bc introduced ten ctilours in thirty rows ot tesserae,
blending at the edges and with yellow at the centre. Lhe tar
more modest fragment of pavement from a third-century .mi
Roman bath at Thessaloniki has a sequence ot five colours red,
pink, white, yellow and green with, like the shawl ot Iris in the
I ’eri^ilius Ronianus, wdiite as its luminous centre.''
What IS striking in a number of medieval renderings ot the
bow is their closeness to some contemporary conception ot the
number and disposition ot the colours in observable rainbows,
where the colouring ot other objects in the image is tancitul or
conventional. In the sixth-century I 'ietina (fenesis, tor example, b,f
the rainbow marking Clod’s Clovenant with Noah is shown in
the two colours ot blue-green (water) and red (fire), as set out in
the almost contemporary eighth homily on Ezekiel by St
(Iregory the (Ireat and quoted, despite the growing number ot
rival versions, until well into the Renaissance.'” Other artists
preferred the Aristotelian three-colour bow. which did not tail
to be glossed as late as the seventeenth century as a symbol of the
Trinity; Aelfric’s Anglo-Saxon I\iraplirase of the Pentateuch and
foshua illustrated the story of Noah with a rainbow divuled into sq
six bands of colour but with each band divided into a number ot
smaller units. These suggested again the vagueness ot Virgil’s
‘thousand colours’, which had passed into medieval Old
Testament literature through St lerome’s cx>mment.irv i>n
Ezekiel.'^

R.iinbuw in tlic story of Noah, from the 11 'cltiliroiiiik {Nurci)ibcr<^ Chronicle) by
1 lartmanii Schedcl. 1493. Four bauds arc in line with the tourtcenth-century
thcor\ ofThcodoric of Eacibcrg, but elsewhere the Chronicle lays down that
there are two bands (red and green) in accordance with St Gregory. (61)
There are even examples of medieval rainbows which
approach the Newtonian seven-colour tormula: one is in a
6s magnificent Norman Book of Hours executed in the second
quarter of the fifteenth century, when the study of refraction in
northern and central Europe, was already well developeti. It
reminds us that Dante had revived a seven-colour theory in the
Divine Comedy and had even conceived ot the secondary bow as
a reflection and hence an inversion ot the first.
The illuminator of the Aelfric manuscript also made a
distinction between the quasi-histoncal how of the Noah story
and those other Biblical bows of the Maiestas Domini (Christ in
C'llory) whose mandorlas were described in Ezekiel and Revel¬
ation simply by analogy with the rainbow.It is as if in
showing such a singular and significant event as the Covenant,
the illuminator was anxious to get as close as possible to its literal
truth. A similar attempt in the sixteenth century is implicit in
the contrast between what must be one of the earliest, as it is
certainly one of the most beautifully observed, rainbows in a
66 landscape, Griinewald’s Stnppach iMadonna, and the wholly tran-
102 scendental glory of the Isenheim Resurrectioti.^ ^ Griinewald’s bow
was not his own invention; it depended, like the rest of the rich
symbolism in his picture, on the Revelations of St Bridget of
Sweden, where the Virgin described herself as a rainbow,
mediating between earth and heaven against the dark clouds of
sin and worldliness.^® Yet the painter did not follow his source
slavishly: the dark clouds are not behind the arc,^"^ both ends of
the bow are not firmly planted on the earth and, possibly
through the effect of the Madonna’s own nimbus, the sky inside
the arc gives a convincing effect of heightened luminosity. In his
sensitivity and close observation, this Lutheran painter contra¬
sted strikingly with Luther himself, who opposed Aristotle’s
94
rainbow theory on the grounds that it clashed with his own
observations (he seems to have noticed a solar halo), but
admitted bafflement and, with the excuse that reason is more
reliable than the eye, retreated to the traditional, two-colour
version of St Gregory.
We saw that the second important Christian symbolic use ot
the rainbow was apocalyptic, and the ambivalence ot the image
continued to be felt until the Romantic period. Before the ninth
century the rainbow glory had transferred its properties to
Christ’s throne — which for St Jerome had been ot sapphire-' -
and it was this type of Maiestas Domini, sometimes with a second
bow as a footstool, which was developed tor the specific
representation of Christ in judgment right up to the work ot the
Rococo decorators.-- It was also this type that was adopted by
the iconographer Cesare Ripa as the emblem ot Judgment Oo
(Ginditio) Itself, in his early Baroque dictionary ot allegories.--'
Given a Newtonian interpretation, Ripa’s image might bring us
close to Blake’s Ancient of Days,-‘^ but he used his rainbow, like
his contemporary Tommaso Campanella, not as representing a
reduction to rigid simplicity but as the aggregation ot strands ot
experience into a psychological complex: ‘To explain the
rainbow, we shall say that everyone who rises to public notice in
any way must learn judgment from a multitude ot experiences,
just as the rainbow results from the appearance ot many colours
brought together by the sun’s rays.’--^
From Titian to Testa
The emblem of Judgment is not the only rainbow in Ripa’s
Iconologia, for in his commentary on the personification ot the
Italian province Umbria, he made an exceptionally long
excursus on the bow spanning the falls ot Piediluce on Lake
Velino. This, he was careful to explain, is not a rainbow but
rather ‘special, anti only formed on days when the sky is very
clear’.-^ The same bow had been celebrated by Pliny in his
Natural History (II, Ixii, 153) and it became in the later
eighteenth century an important staging-post on the Grand
Tour. But the element of surprise and wonder in Ripa’s account
may help ns to understand why the phenomenon was so rarely
introduced into earlier attempts at a more independent sort of
landscape. It we look at a picture-book of the Renaissance,
Hartmann Schedel’s Weltchronik (1493), which has been noticed 61
for its wilful duplication of images, we find among a dozen
comets and incidences of fire from heaven a record of only two
rainbows, which are represented as quite distinct. The story of
Noah has a how with four bands, although the text (xi) asserts
the truth of St Gregory’s symbolic two-colour bow against the
theorists of five and six colours, but the great rainbow seen to
the accompaniment of fire from heaven in the reign of Pope
John IV has three colours and, said the text (cli), it did not fail to
suggest in the minds of many the coming of the end of the
world.
Despite the indications in Ripa’s Umbria anci somewhat
earlier in Leonardo-^ of an interest in the rainbow for its own
sake among an nnspeciahzed public, it can scarcely be found in
the newly emerging genre of landscape in the sixteenth century.
Pintuncchio’s Departure of Aeneas Sylvius for Basle hardly
qualifies as pure landscape but the rainbow and its attendant

clcHids were luit in the preparatnry drawings. Altluuigh the\
might be interpreted as toreshadnwing the stormy jonrnev or.
conversely, the Pope's extraordinary success on his political
mission,-'^ it is very likely that the)- represent that loosening of
landscape imagery which has been noticed in the period and
may, in other examples too, account tor the appearance ot the
rainbow where it is hardly demanded by the stor\'.-‘' Yet, in
spite ot a developing interest in sensational eftects ot weather in
(horgione's I'cnipcstii or 1 )osso Dossi’s .-Idoriition or Altdorfer's
Battle of Alexander the landscape theorists of the period did not
use the rainbow as an example of the reach of colour, even
though in the Italian comparison of the arts, the parai^oiie. from
C'.astiglione at the beginning ot the century to Cinstotoro Sorte
at the end, it was the versatility ot colour in the portras’al ot
storms and night-scenes, of dawn light and conflagrations,
which was seen as the particular glory of landscape art. '”
One of the few sixteenth-century Italian painters to make
much use ot the motit ot the rainbow was Titian, who
introduced bows ofgreat complexity, sometimes with upwards
of six colours, into his compositions I 'eniis and Adonis and Diana
and Callisto.-^^ Titian’s predominanth' warm rainbows begin¬
ning and ending their set|uence with warm pinks and purples —
may partly be due to the poor or dirty condition of some of the
paintings but they are also very much in tune with the account
ot the bow in an encyclopaedia by (liorgio Valla, published in
Venice in 1501. Valla listed five colours, three tif which,
pnnicennt, ostrinnin and purpurenni, were reds.-'- It may be more
than a coincidence that the Florentine philosopher Antonio
Brticioli chose Titian - whom, he said, surpassed nature in the
proportions and colours ot his tigures — as the interlocutor with
the architect Serho in a discussion ot the nature ot the rainbow in
one of his dialogues. Brucioli set the conversation in Titian’s
house and started it with a reference to a bow in one ot his
paintings. Titian asks about the rainbow of the Ciovenant and is
assured that it had the two colours of water and fire which, in
balance, assured mankind that no further Hood would occur in
foreseeable time. Yet the scientific explanation ot the bovs- is
entirely Aristotelian, introducing the three colours purple
(j)ai^onazzo), green and red.-’-' If Titian read this dialogue, it can
hardly have meant very much to him.
For most of the nineteenth century Ch-iinewald’s Stnppacli
Madonna was regarded as the work ot Rubens.-'"' For Cionstable,
66 as for Reynolds, Rubens’s landscapes meant ‘rainbows upon a
stormy sky — bursts ot sunshine, - moonlight, — meteors. . He
numbered the rainbtiw landscape which is now in the Wallace
67 Collection, London, among the painter’s finest works. '-'' I'hat
this was a Romantic and even a specifically English conception is
suggested by the fact that Rubens’s nuist liberal early bi¬
ographer, Roger de Biles, never devoted any specific attention
to the motif.-"’ (I le had introduced the idea ot those ‘accidents ot
light’ -■ of which the rainbow was certainly one ot the most
striking and which became a commonplace ot nineteenth-
century landscape criticism-'^ — and he had discussed two
rainbow landscapes by Rubens in the collection ot the Due de
Richelieu.) Moreover, versions ot at least five ot the seven
rainbow landscapes known at present were in English collec¬
tions early in the nineteenth century.-"' Cdearly the taste had
something to do with the English love ot weather.
I \\\ I A \ IM. I III K \ I\H'
Rubens, who used the r.nnbow eiju.ilK to .ucomp.ms
disaster as m the Shtpiereik ol St I’anI :.Adler .iiul tlu-
sumnier\- hopetulness ot the h.irsest. m.i\ h.i\e deseloped .111
interest in its pictorial tiu.ihties m the 1 Ishenner cirt le m Ronu-.
tor there is ,1 small p.mel b\ f.lsheimer's nmt.iior loh.inn Konig.
where the bow is introduced r.tther treeK into I he Road to
linnnaeus.'''' 1 )e Biles described the Slnpiereih .is h.ising been
painted in It.iK and the Lou\ re Randunr h.is ,dso been .issigned
to the painter’s It.ihan period (the 1 lerimt.ige s'ersmn is tluuight
ti-) be rather later)."*” But Rubens's rising interest in the
phenomenon soon became tar more dwerse; he began to
introduce it into figure subiects. ot w hu h the first w .is perh.ips
fnno and .-h;y//.s (<. 1 61 o). 1 lere Iris ,111 d her emblem w ere brought 11^
into the Ds-idi.in stt-irv ot m,in\ -e\'ed .Argus. 1 he picture, w Inch
was painted at the time ot Rubens's invoKement in the
illustratitms tt-ir Franytiis d’Agtiilon's tre.itise on optics, has been
interpreted as an allegtu")- tit'optics aiul especuilR- colour."*' It
may well ha\’e been the st.irting-ptiint tor .111 e\en greater
interest in the rainbow-, tor the painter intrtidiued it no less than
three times into his great cycle ot the hte ot M.irie tie' .Medici,
and we know trtun .1 letter that he discussed at least one with his
ads’iser Beiresc."*- Fhe presence ot the bt-iws m.i\- lu-it be due
solely to the rather exaggerated good tortune ot the (,)ueen, tor
the badge t-if her predecessor (kithenne tie' Medici had been a
rainbow with the motto Luce apporto, e honaceiii (1 bring light
and stability)."*-' This may well have been Rubens's intention
even it, as in other instances in the cycle, it was luu a case ot
mistaken identity."*"*
Fhe symbolic rainbows ot Rubens were composed ot red,
yellow and blue or green, but in his landscapes they were much
more complex and bear witness to a degree of t-ibservation
w hich, although erratic, has deserved better ot the critics. It w as
not long after the completion of the Medici Hyde in 162 s that
Descartes worked out his fundamental theory ot the rainbow"
both mathematically and with newly developed principles ot
observation and experiment.'*-'’ But Rtibens, like (loethe, w ho
excused his illogical lighting for the higher imperatives ot good
picture-making,"*'’ wxis only a (proto) Romantic because he w as
everything; to the painters and critics of the Romantic period to
whom observation w as as important as imagination, it w as this
high-handedness in the face of the data ot the oiu-ot-doors
which helped to make him in their eyes no more than a model ot
technique. Riiskin noted cif the Wallace Cudlection painting, 67
wdiich may well have been a good deal darker th.in it is
now, that the bow was ‘a dull blue, darker than the sky, in a scene
lighted from the side of the rainbow-. Rtibens is not to be blamed
for ignorance of optics, but tor never having so much as looked
at a rainbow- carefully.'"*'’ Turner, w-ho saw- the Louvre
landscape in i(S02, had been eciually tiamning;
The Rainbow- appears to me the most considered as a picture. Not
but this as w-ell as the rest ot his landscapes is detective as light and
the propriety of nature, fhe woman in blue strikes the eye and
prevents it straying to the confused and ill-judged hues, but as to tlie
figures in the Middle which is lit from the opposite side. .1 proof tli.it
he wanted light on that side and rather cliose to commit .111 error
than continue the liglit by means of the ground to w here the sky is
placed, fhen it is led by the yellow within the trees to the sky .uui
•L'i
 UNWI .W'lNC I III RAINBOW
Pietro Testa’s 'rriiiiiipli of on Parnassus (detail), a witness to the
painter's (ultimately fatal) obsession with the rainbow. Goethe owned an
impression of this engraving. (62)
thence to the Bow, which is hard and horny by the use of the vivid
Blue in the distance, which is another instance of his distorting what
he was ignorant of- natural effect.
It is certainly in the seventeenth century that we must look for a
proto-Romantic attitude to the rainbow but it is to be found less
in Rubens than in Jacob Ruisdael and Pietro Testa.
As Rembrandt was for Goethe the thinker among
seventeenth-century painters, so Ruisdael was the poet. It was
lor his poetry and economy ot means, so different from the
exuberance of Rubens, that he was admired by Romantic
painters as diverse as Delacroix and Samuel Palmer, Constable
and Caspar David Friedrich. The Romantic understanding of
Ruisdael focused on a symbolic interpretation of his imagery,
nowhere more so than m that sudden burst of colour in two
6S versions of The Jewish Cevietery at Dresden and Detroit. Of the
Detroit version ). Smith wrote in i<S3 5:
The grandeur and solemnity of the scene is strikingly enhanced by
the rolling stormy clouds, in which may be perceived
evanescent colours of a rainbow. In this excellent picture the artist
has evidently intended to convey a moral lesson of human life, and
in addition to this there is a sublimity of sentiment and effect
reigning throughout the composition which renders it worthy of
the jiowers of Nicolo Poussin.
Smith’s interpretation was essentially the same as Goethe’s
y6
commentary on the Dresden version.'’^' But neither critic seems
to have known that the cemetery was Jewish and had been
studied by Ruisdael in some unusually detailed drawings.
Nothing IS known of the circumstances of the commission but
whether the painter had introduced the rainbow as the Christian
symbol of judgment or the Jewish symbol ot reconciliation, it is
clear that the pictures were for Ruisdael, as they became tor the
Romantics, far more than picturesc]ue topography.
The case of the Lucchese painter Pietro Testa is very different
because although we know a good deal about the man very tew
of his works have survived, (ioethe owned a number ot his
prints, including two with the rainbow,"’- but in general Testa
seems to have been virtually unknown in the Romantic period
when his psychology and his obsession with observation,
stimulated very much by Leonardo da Vinci, would have made
him a congenial figure. His seventeenth-century biographer
Baldinucci wrote:
His temperament was somewhat melancholy and as a result he
always had a peculiar bent for very old things, and tor depicting
night scenes and changes in the atmosphere and in the sky. His
works prove how much he had to study from the hte, until one day
a doleful accident betel him. He was standing on the bank ot the
Tiber, drawing and observing some reflections ot the rainbow in
the water, when, whether because he was jostleci, or because ot the
softness of the slippery bank, or for whatever other reason I know
not, he tumbled into the river . . .^^
Testa cirowned in 1650 and, although this is not the only
account of his death in Baldinucci,®'^ it is possible that in the
broacier sense at least we have in Testa the first martyr to optics,
since some of the precepts he left m his notes on painting point to
the laborious and ’scientific’ preparation of his pictures and help
to explain why so few were made:
The practice of painting is a continual observation of the beautiful,
and an absorbtion of it, so to speak, through the eyes, and with the
hands to put it well into practice through lines and colours and
chiaroscuro, always copying [iniitaiido], and at the same time
endeavouring to find out why the object seen is and seems to be
what it is . . . From imitation we move to observation and from
thence to mathematical certainty as by stages . . . When a good
technic]ue has been acc'|uired we move on to the understanding of
causes [al’inteiidere per le sue chaiise]. When these are understood,
since we are now well-informed and eager, we start work on the
picture . .
Testa introduced the rainbow into a painting and an
engraving of The Triumph of Painting’. The painting cannot now
be traced but to judge from a poor photograph of it®® he seems
to have understood the contrast of light and dark inside and
outside the bow (Alexander’s dark band) and to have counted
six bands of colour; this might well support Baldinucci’s
the
account of his interests. The rainbow as a symbol of chromatics
became commonplace on the title-pages of optical treatises and
painters’ handbooks, but as an idea it had a particular attraction
tor the Romantics tor it suggested an area where art anci nature
might meet on an equal footing: Testa’s brief career and the
intensity of his optical interests look forward to the work of the
Cjerman painter-theorist Philipp Otto Runge.
Rainbows and what caused them had been
subjects tor investigation and speculation since
Antiquity. Until the close of the Middle Ages
the rainbow was thought to be a sort of
reflection of the sun on a dark cloud, rather
than the re.sult of the variable refraction of
light through drops of water, represented here
by circles in an elegant eighteenth-century
diagram byJ.J. Scheuchzer. Schetichzer shows
the workings of single refraction in the lower,
primary, bow, and of double refraction (with
an inversion of the order of the colours) in the
upper, secondary bow, while the circular bow
IS demonstrated in the spray of a waterfall.
Although this account is based directly on the
work of Sir Isaac Newton (O/ificks, 1730), at
the same time it fulfils the far more traditional
function of explaining the bow marking the
Old restament Uovenant between Clod and
man in the Hook of (Jenesis.

63 I'he formation of the rainbow. J.J. Scheuchzer,

Physicii SiiiTiJ, 173 I

<>3
 64 God’s Covenant with Noah, the I 'ientia Genesis,
sixth century
65 Noah’s Ark, from a Book ot Hours,
Normandy, c. 1430/40
66 Matihias Grunewald, Stuppach Madonna,
1517/19

64

The bright bow

of promise

Christian imagery teems with

representations of rainbows, but they are
rarely shown in the same way. For the scene ot
God’s Covenant, the Early Christian artist of
the Vienna Genesis (64) used a two-colour
scheme: the green of water signified the
Deluge and the red band below the tire ot
Judgment Day. The Norman illuminator (65)
may have been aware of fourteenth-century
research which suggested that the colours were
formed in prismatic order by the refraction ot
light, for he paints a bow with the colours of
the spectrum; in the Renaissance Grunewald
(66) illustrated the analogy between the Virgin
Mary and the rainbow which he had found in
the Revelations of St Bridget of Sweden, while
perhaps drawing partly on an earlier metaphor
of Mary as a rainbow in St Bonaventure {Laus
Virginns, 6), which dwelt on the blue as an
image of virginity and the red as an image ot
charity, two colours prominent in
Griinewald’s bow.

65

98
100
 The natural phenomenon

The mysterious beauty ofthc rainbow has

often been observed and painted, but it was
chiefly the Dutch and Flemish masters of the
seventeenth century who introduced it into
the repertory of landscape. Ruisd.iel >68 still
had symbolic concerns, using the bow
together with ruins, flowing water .iiid
tombstones as an image of transience and
mortality, but Rubens (67) seems to have been
interested largely in its brilliant efl'ect. I lis
treatment ot the bow. predominantly in pink,
blue and yellow, is often barely credible from
the point ot view of lighting, but his rainbows
look more like delicate atmospheric
phenomena than any before the nineteenth
century.

67 I’rriK I’.sfi Rritiss. Ratiihoir

163 ('>/><
68 J.^{OH v.SN Rl isD.M 1. Thi' Ifwiih < rmilcry.
1670s (det.iil)

I■ V
 The uses of the rainbow

Since it included all the colours of light in

a fixed order, the rainbow offered painters a
‘natural’ key to the harmony of colours. Both
Angelika Kauffmann (69) and her friend
Goethe (70) were interested in the idea -
although the anti-Newtonian Goethe has
arranged his colours in an ‘Aristotelian’
sequence (engendered at the junction ot light
and dark seen through a prism), with blue at
the top. In the Romantic period, rendering the
fleeting appearance of the bow also became a
sought-after test of the painter’s sharpness of
observation and dexterity of hand. According
to his own inscription, Glover’s watercolour
recorded the bow ‘while the effect lasted’ (71),
and Turner swiftly brushed the changing
effects of light into a tiny sketchbook (73-4)-
Constable’s growing interest in unusual
phenomena in the 1830s led him to document
this extraordinary double bow near his home
in Hampstead (72).

70

69 Angelika Kauffmann, Selj-portrait as ‘Painting’,

c. 1779
70 AfterJoHANN Wolfgang von Goethe,
Mountain Landscape with Rainbow, 1826
71 John Glover (1767—1849), A Rainbow
72 John Constable, London from Hampstead, with a
double rainbow, inscribed ‘between 6 &' 7 o’clock
Evening June 1831’
73-4 j.M. W. Turner, Durham Cathedral with a
Rainbow, 1801

102
I
 y>
The purest form of rainbow art — a series of Rainbow Splashes made
and photographed in remote English beauty-spots by the artist Andy
Goldsworthy in 1980. They are in direct succession to the bows
admired by tourists such as Scheuchzer’s (pi. 63), visiting the
waterfalls ot Italy and Switzerland since Classical times.

75 Andy Goldsworthy, Rainboio Splash, River ll'harf, Yorkshire, October igSo

104

111C Romantics
It Roniaiuic artists interested in the prnhleins nfeliroinaties and
weather looked hack to the example of their sixteenth- and
seventeenth-century predecessors, this was because the
eighteenth-century tradition of landscape had coinparativelv
little to offer. It followed, broadly speaking, the styles of
edaude, Salvator Rosa and Nicholas or Claspard Poussin, who
had hardly used the more extravagant effects of light; where in
Watteau or (lainsborough the Rubensian landscape provided a
model, it was shorn of Rubens’s less conventional observations.
Nor was the most important and most international of the
eighteenth-century approaches to landscape, the Picturescjue
movement, favourable to chromatics, for it too proposed a set
of norms which were themselves based on the experience of
-Salvator, the Poussins and Claude. Characteristically enough,
Salvator himselt, who seems to have been the first painter to use
the word ‘pittcaresco’ of landscape, in a letter to C. B. Ricciardi
ot May 1661 in which he enthused over the mountain scenery
between Loreto and Rome, went on to describe the falls of
Term on Lake Velino — those tails which in the Romantic period
were to be a constant source of rainbow studies — only in terms
of the ‘orrida Bellczza’ of their half-mile of crashing water and
dying spray.Salvator ot course may simply have run into dull
weather and not seen a bow. His eighteenth-century English
follower William Cilpin — who toured the British Isles for many
years preparing a dozen guides to the Picturesc]ue appreciation
ot scenery, which to judge troni many translations and several
satires were widely read throughout Europe - never reported
having seen a rainbow on his travels. Cilpin’s rather timid
reconimendations about colouring make it unlikely that he
would have wanted it to be introduced into the painted
landscape even if he had. Only after his death were some ot his
designs embellished with colours and rainbows in John Heavi¬
side Clark’s Practical Illustrations ofCIilpin's Day Not
that Cilpin was uninterested in the weather: he had studied it tor
many years and had prepared a book on weather-forecasting.
It was perhaps this very searching for regularities, for the norm,
which made him advise landscape artists ‘to avoid every
uncommon appearance in nature’.^" But for the following
generation it was the uncommon in every sphere which was so
attractive and which, through the habit of observation, itself
became normal.
The permanent rainbows over the watertalls at Tivoli had
become an important tourist-attraction early in the nineteenth
century.^' An English traveller wrote of them in 1S30:
At the different points of view are little cabins (which would be
very picturesque if they were less rudely constructed) for the
acconiniodation of artists and other travellers. . . riie rainbows are
\'ery various, seen from different points; from the middle, where
the river rushes from the vortex of the great tall to plunge into
another, the stream appears to be painted with a broad layer ot
divers colours, never broken or mixed till they are tossed up in a
cloud of spray, and mingled with it in a thousand variegated
sparkles. Above, an iris bestrides the moist green hill which rises by
the side of the fall; and, as the spray is whirled up in greater or lesser
abundance, it perpetually and rapidly changes its colours, now
I \U t \\ IN(. 1 111 R \I\HI |\\
disappe.inng altogether .md lU'w be.nmng with the utimwt
s'lvidiiese. 1 he m.m told me th.it .it night the im'on term' .1 white
rainbow on the hill . .
By the classic tails ot Lerni Lope I’lus \ | h.id constructed .1
summer-house, .iiul other shelters were put up tor tourists .u
other \ aiitage-points there to gi\ e ,1 perfect \ lew ot'the bow s.'’'
E\eii 111 Sw itzerl.iiid, w here so m.iiix' rn .il sublimities were .ipt
to (.listract the traveller, the rainbow s .it the fills ot'Sch.iffliausen
be came a stand.ird sight and Sw iss \ iew-p.uiiters siu h .is C '.isp.ir
Wolt began in the 1 770s to introduce bow s into their w ork.'”* In
1S16 Byron was fascinated by .1 bow ,it the limgtr.iu I .ills,
princip.tlly purple and gold; the bow mo\ ntg ,is \ ou iiuw e; I
never saw anything like this . . But the excitement ot'
discovery may best be illustrated by the accounts ot' three
nineteenth-centuiw painters.
In 1X23 the landscape-painter (kirl Rottman wrote to his
fiancee from Miirnau. a village in the mountains to the south of
Munich (later to be made famous by Kandinsk\- and .Miinter):
1 am thinking of an indescribable storm effect which 1 must show
you some day. for 1 have partly sketched it and partly noted it down
in words since as usual the whole thing was o\ er in a tew minutes.
The atmosphere was a fiery grey, like the dark waters of the
Wallersee, and the mountains at the other side of the lake. On the
right was a chapel of the monastery in the pine-woods lit up on a
green hill; and a rainbow arched down into the water on the left,
and in the middle ot it a stream ot red rain coming dtws n through
the lightning. I should have been pretty well carried awav with
astonishment and the thrill of it, if it had gone on anv longer, but
the impression that this sort of thing leaves with me is quite
remarkable ... a strange mixed feeling .. . of unknown life, of the
world of spirits.*’'’
A decade later the young French painter Laul 1 hiet visited the
Vallon d’Enfer in the Auvergne and recorded a comparable
e.xperience in a letter to his sister: ‘1 had never seen anything
quite so extraordinary, twenty tir thirty miles ot horizon around
me and at my feet the wildest of precipices; below me. in the
direction we had come from, dense clouds with rainbows
springing trom them; above my head a clear sky . . .’*’^ In iSso
the American genre-painter and biographer ot Clonstable, Cl. R.
Leslie, noted in his diary his first sight cit that rarest and most
Romantic of natural phenomena, the lunar bow:
I remarked, as we often sec it 111 the solar bow. that the mist on
which it appeared was ofa uniformly darker shade outside the arcli.
rhe prismatic colours were not perceptible to my eye, but it
appeared ofa soft pale light nearlv white. It seemed the ghost ot the
magnificent double bow which 1 had seen in the morning not very
far from the same place in the heavens.*’**
Clonstablc himself in a remarkable waterccilour recorded an
unusual rainbow effect over I lampstead I leath and a sepia
drawing bvjohn Sell C.'tnman fixed the ‘curious and beautituL
phenomenon ot the parhelion, which he observed in iSi s.*’*' In
ins youthful sketchbook of 1S24 Samuel Palmer projected a
painting of‘A Twilight in Saturn with the ring diverse color’d
and . .. all manner ot colours . . . CV . . . Like an immense
rainbow’.'^" But these more abstruse phenomena rarely iHCur in
I Os
I NW I A\'l\(, I III RAINBOW

anything more ambitious than memoranda. Rottman intro¬

Uc&tui; duced only a number of common bows into the (Ireek
landscapes he prepared for King Ludwig I ot Bavaria;^'
^cA
folemih:
. —* Constable's rainbows in Ins large landscapes are similarly rather
^ cixnu^ standard; 1 have discovered only one large lunar btiw, in a
wonderful and eccentric painting by Caspar David Friedrich.^- yS
'S'^- >,<■■
Although 111 England as early as iSo.S an anonymous critic, alter
recording several appearances of the lunar halo, asked ‘why
should it not attract attention as well in Art as in Nature?',the
only e.xample of such a rarely e.\perienced phenomenon 1 know
tv( {.e
is the solar halo ot Turner's Staffd: I-iii<^dI's Cdvc (1832).^“^ That
to I the experience lying behind this picttire aflected the artist deeply
is suggested bv the way it provoked one ot the very rare letters
fi tt}m\ relating directly to his art.^-'’
>Ucixn6 The problems of the exceptional effects of weather were tor
landscape-painters not only problems ot observation but also, as
we have seen, problems of pictorial tradition. Sir Joshua
Reynolds, in a rather confused passage in his tourth Discourse
(1771), did not endorse the use of‘accidents of light' in landscape
painting, and his successor as President ot the Royal Academy,
it1<Vtidii\./rnVft«^rtini
Benjamin West, noted on Bromley Hill, south ot London in
The rare and curious parhelion, a bow formed in ice crystals around the sun, as 1813 ‘the freshness of the fields and the general appearance ot the
recorded by two distinguished painters. Matthew Paris represented the landscape, but observed that however agreeable in nature, such
'\s onder in the sky’ that he saw in 1233; |ohn Sell Cotman fixed the 'curunis scenes and colours wd not do in landscape painting'.Never¬
and heautiful' phenomenon in a drawing ot iRi 3. (76,77) theless, towards the end of the eighteenth century, perhaps
stimulated by some hints in Roger de Riles, the view that the
landscape could be animated by changes in the sky and the
weather was gaining grcitind; it was here that the northern
countries had the advantage over the south. A precocious
English essay on landscape of 1783 argued: ‘We have ... a great
advantage over Italy itself, in the greater variety and beauty of
our Northern skies, the torms ot which are otten so lovely and
magnificent, where so much action is seen in the rolling of the
clouds; all this is nearly unknown to the placid southern
hemisphere [s/r|.'^^ In a letter ot 1838 Raul Htiet complained
that it was his northern background which made the clear skies
of the Midi so difficult to manage.Even Blake, whose
contempt for the ‘vegetative eye' (that is, the observation of
nature) is hardly in e]uestion, showed in his watercolour ot
Felphain and in a passage of Ins Public Address of 18oy that he was
on the side ot ‘accidents ot litrht'.^*^
O The tension between the
rival schools ot thought was perhaps acutest in the work of
Rierre Henri de Valenciennes who as a pupil of Vernet inherited
the Franco-Roman tradition of sketching from nature in oil and
produced, perhaps as early as the 1780s, many free and subtle
studies, including a number of rainbows.But it is clear from
his sketchbooks that Valenciennes saw landscape composition
very much in terms of Ciaspard Rotissin; Ins larger paintings do
little more than gather his observations of light and shadow into
an essentially seventeenth-century format.
Not that a belief in that format was invariably hostile tes the
most rehned atincsspheric effects, for the rainbow was intro¬
duced into the mainstream of nineteenth-century Clerinan
landscape by the Austrian Josef Anton Koch, whose compo¬
sitions were usually well-swept versions of the Roussinesqtie
type. Koch had been much affected by Ins experience of the
rainbows spanning the Rhine tails at Schafniatiseii in 1791”^ but
in Ins first important oil, ot 180s, the motif was introduced as an

106

(Caspar David I riodnch. Landscape irii/i Lunar
Rainbow. iHoH. Friedrich, like Turner (pi. N5).
interested hiinselt in the rainbow in many
moods. 1 lis apparently moonlit
nuHintainscape provides the weary traveller
with a rare and oddly tapering inoonbow. (7S)
attribute of the Sacrifice of Noali.*^- Koch was also an admirer
ot Rubens and it was probably his example which led him to
bring the bow into heroic landscapes where it had no obvious
place, such as the large canvases in Munich and Karlsruhe and
the Rider Rcttiniiii^; in a Thundcrslonn (c. 1830).^-^ He became the
acknowledged master of the southern school of (ierman
landscape. His most important followers — Rottman, the Scot (1.
A. Wallis and the Nazarene landscape-painter Ferdinand
Olivier — all showed an interest from time to time in the
rainbow as a motif, although it was usually in ways which must
be read as symbolic.This was a double concern; the marriage
ot sharpened and exteiuled observations with a symbolic or
even metaphysical purpose, which constituted the originality of
Romantic landscape. In both these aspects the great barrier
which separated the Romantics from their seventeenth-century
forbears was not eighteenth-century landscape or even the cult
of the Picturesque, hut Sir Isaac Newton, for whom poetry had
been ‘a kind of ingenious nonsense'.”"’
Prism cities ami harmony
Perhaps the most agreeable episode in Romantic anti-
Newtonianism was the ‘immortal dinner’ with Wordsworth,
Keats and Cdiarles Lamb given by the heroic painter H. R.
Haydon on the evening of 28 December 1817. He recalled:
Lamb got exceedingly merry and exquisitely witty . .. he then in a
strain of humour beyond description, abused me for putting
Newton’s head into my picture [('.Inisl’s Ilntry into Jcnisalcni\
fellow' said he, ‘who believed nothing unless it was as clear as three
sides of a triangle’. And then he and Keats agreed that he had
destroyed all the poetry of the rainbow, by reducing it to the
prismatic colours. It was impossible to resist him, and we all drank
‘Newton’s health and confusion to mathematics’.”'’
Ciritics have enjoyed this passage, but their attentitm has usually
• V
focused tm Keats, who cryst.dhzed his i.ib)ection to New ton in
LiVnia a tew years later, or on WTrdsworth, who was tar trom
being an anti-Newtonian but had a personal and poetical
interest in the integrity of the rainbow and, after some
hesitaticin, also joined in the toast.”" Haydon himself, whose
diaries demonstrate a prcifouiui interest 111 problems of colour
and technique and who had a deeply religious apprehension of
nature,”” was among Newton’s warm admirers. For the
problems presented to the painter by Newtonian optics were
very different from those Newton offered the poet. Fhe poetic
prejudice against unweaving the bow was certainR- persistent:
Ruskin — who at the age of sewen had been a child tif the
Enlightenment and wht) had a written a didactic poem on the
rainbow whose tone was still that of a Fhomson or an
Akenside”'^ by the time he came to write the third volume of
Modern Painters in the late 1840s was pronouncing: ‘1 much
question whether any one who knows optics. Inuves’cr religious
he may be, can feel in equal degree the pleasure of reverence
which an unlettered peasant may feel at the sight of the
rainlunv.''^'’ I lere Ruskin was wholly the poet; but it we look at
the circles of painters, we are more likely to find anti-
Newtonianisni among those with an eighteenth-century back¬
ground, such as Louis-Hertrand Clastel tir (loethe, James Itarry
or William Blake, than in the Rtmiantic period itself, when
Newton was admired by Haydtm and Runge, Falmer and
Olivier, the Nazarene Friedrich Overbeck and I timer.Even
Dante (Libriel Rossetti, who had a foot in both painterly and
ptietic camps and was an admirer of both Blake and Keats
‘a
(whose response at the ‘immortal dinner' he later thought
‘splendid’ and ‘magnificent’*'-) found a place for Newton,
together with C'olumbus, CTomwell. Haydon, Isaiah, loan of
Arc and many others among the lower ranks of the
immortals.*''
I'oets like Keats and Fhoinas Oampbell seem to h.ive taken
the early eighteenth-century interpretation of New ttm’s rain-
107
I:N\\ I .WINl. I III liAlNBOW
binv at tacc-valuc: science had indeed unwciven the hnw and all
the I^nmantics did was to reserse the moral. I shall keep tor
Cdiapter <; a discussion ot the nature ot Newton's theory and ot
Its lollow inp in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Here I
oid\' note that the ancient dehate about the nuniher ot colours in
the rainbow was now transtornied into a debate about the
luimher ot colours w Inch could he called 'primary': how many
strands ot colour, in short, went into its weaving? Newton had
seemed to propose three, although his rainbow spectrum was
dis ided into se\en luiesd^'* other theorists proposed as tew as
oite.^'-'’ That tins debate was a source of perplexity to painters
was to he expected, ddie Irish historical painter |anies Barry w'as
Newtonian enough to include him among 'those great and
u:ood men ot all acres and nations, who w'ere cultivators and
benefactors of mankind' in his niysiiiiii (17X3-1801) decorating
the Society ot Arts in London,but in his Royal Academy
lecture on colour in the early 1790s he summarized the painter's
difhcuhies in accepting Newtonian optics:
for iny own part, I teel hut little conviction or satistaction in the
splendid theories deduced trom prismatic experiment, which have
been handed down tor some time past with so much confidence;
where it is pretended to be demonstrated by this three-sided wedge
ot glass, that the solar light is not homogeneal . . . but is combined ot
scweii dirterenth' coloured pencils or rays ot diherent retrangibility
. . . such experiments appear to be, if not foreign to the real object of
enquiry, yet at least very vague and inconchisix'c, and have been
made by men little practised in the progrcssional aflinities or
differences ot colour, d o other one instance ot this, our philosophers
have pretended to discover in the rainbow just seven primitive
colours in that plienomenon. hut it they mean by primitive
colours, colours simple and unccanipounded of any others, wdiy
seven, when there are but three? If they mean only to enumerate the
differences, without regarding the actual fict of the procreation of
the compounds trom the primitis’cs, why more than six?, or, why
not double that number, or even more, if all the intermediaries are
attended to?. . . we may quote the testimony of Aristotle, who has,
with his usual accuracy, tallen upon the tripartite division.'’^
It was Barry’s younger friend 'William Blake who developed
the most hitter opposition to Newton in England. Yet, in
contrast with the earlier poet Christopher Smart or with Blake’s
Cerman contemporary Novalis who scathingly derived the
term 'Enlightenment’ trom a toying with the more trivial
aspects ot light,Ncwtoi’s optics was barely mentioned in
Blake’s polemic; in the freL]uent ramhows and rainbow glories
that appear throughout his work, the number and set]uence of
cokaurs is always essentially Newtonian.
Blake divided his light in a Newtonian way because he
needed an image in colour of the divided state of the material
world; to his admirers this colour w'as simply 'beautifully
prismatic’.'To the more facetious critics of Turner or John
Martin 'prismatic’ meant diseased: they both seemed to have
prisms tor eyes. '■ In no aspect ot Romantic painting more than
colour was the teverish casting about for formulae and recipes
the subject ot speculation and attack. In the rainbow and the
prism artists tound, so they thought, a scheme ot colour-
harmony sanctioned by masters such as Leonardo, Raphael and
Rubens and recommended by nature herself. 'If you wou’d have
108
the neighbourhood of one Colour, give a Crace to another’ said
an eighteenth-century English version ot Leonardo’s Trattato,
'imitate Nature, and do that with your Pencil, which the Rays
of the Sun do upon a cloud, in forming a Rainbow, where the
colours fall sweetly into one another, without any stiffness
appearing in their extremes.'‘Leonardo's recommendation
embodied something of a paradox, tor Aristotle and his
followers had laid great empliasis on the impossibility of
painting the rainbtnv, whose light-bearing colours could not be
matched by anything available in the way of pigments.
Chapter 2 showed how Aristotle’s commentator Ale.xander of
Aphrodisias (who tirst recorded the dark band which bears his
name) had looked in some detail at the reasons why the
immaterial, unmi.xed colours ot the bow could not be rendered
by material mi.xtures. I shall show in Chapter y how this
separation ot immaterial trom material colours was not resolved
until the seventeenth century. This Peripatetic problem had not,
of course, deterred even medieval artists from attempting to
record these remarkable phenomena in colour. Matthew Paris, 76
in some brilliantly observed studies, painted the parhelia which
were seen near 'Worcester and Heretord in 1233. He wrote that
some of more than a thousand spectators 'in commemoration of
this extraordinary phenomenon, painted suns and rings of
various colours on parchment, so that such an unusual pheno¬
menon might not escape the memory of man.’^°‘^ Yet the
notion that the rainbow was unpaintable persisted well into the
nineteenth century, when a German commentator noted that
even the most brilliant efforts of Rubens, Poussin and Koch had
not disproved it.*'^’'"’
Leonardo’s advice owed nothing to optics or even to the
theory ot painting, tor it was a paraphrase ot a passage in a late
Antique treatise on music by Boethius who in Ins turn was
elaborating on an earlier discussion ot musical harmony by
Ptolemy. In On Music (V, v) Bcaethitis had written:
just as when a rainbow is observed, the colours arc so close to one
another than no definite line separates one colour from the other -
rather it changes from red to yellow, tor example, in such a way
that continuous mutation into the following colour occurs with no
clearly defined median filling between them — so also this may
often occur in pitches.
What was surely the most exciting possibility for Leonardo was
that a link between the chromatic stuiuato of the rainbow and
musical pitch might also be a link with the principles of colour-
harmony. Boethius was not forgotten m this context in the
seventeenth century, wdien the Dutch scholar Franciscus Junius
discussed the Greek concept of harniogeii — harmony, reported
by Pliny (XXX'V, xi, 29) as a transition from one colour to
another. It was, said Junius:
an unpcrccivablc way of art, by w'hich an artificer stcalingly passeth
over trom one colour into another, with an insensible distinction
.. . when we behold how the sea and sky do meet in one thinne and
misty 1 iorizontal Stroke, both are most strangely soft and
contounded in our eyes, neither are wee able to discerne where the
one or other doth begin or end: water and aire, severall and sundry
coloured elements, seeme to be all one at their meeting ... Yet doth
the Rain-bow minister to us a clearer proof of this same /Liniioyc,

rhc I'rcsuicnt iit tlic lUiyal Ac.niciny. Hcnj.imin West, lecturing on tlic
prismatic principles of colour harmony in painting in 1K17 (portrait by
riiomas Lawrence). West's diagram of a sphere graded with a sei.|ueiice of
prismatic colours is displayed on the wall hehiiul the easel. (71;)
when she hegtulcth onr sight into the scarce distinguished shadovves
of melting, languishing ifs leisurely vanishing colours. I-'or allhoui^h
there doe shine a ihoiisoiid sei’erall colours in the Rain-hott’, soyth Ovid
. . . their transition for all that deeeiveth the eyes of the spectators; seelin’
her colors are all one where they touch, thoin’h farther off they are nnich
different.
The example of the how thus suggested to painters how tliey
might manage subtle transitions from one colour to the next, a
skill very much deployed in the shot draperies of Mannerism
and recommended, perhaps independently of Leonardo, by
Veronese’s patron 1 )aniele Barbaro.'**'* It was not the only way,
though, in which the bow might be seen as a model tor
chromatic harnumy. Another seventeenth-century l)utch theo¬
rist, Karel van Mander, who gave rather detailed instructions
abtnit how the six rainbtiw' coltnirs might be matched by-
pigments, also argued that the btnv demonstrated an intrinsi¬
cally harmonious juxtaptisititm ot these colotirs: blue looked
especially well next to purple, purple to red, red with iirange-
yellow and so on."*'^ In Romantic England such notions
received the stamp of Academic authority: when in 1.S04 the
Royal Academy Clouncil was debating the remosal ot Sir James
rhornhill’s copies t)f the Raphael Clartoons, the President, West,
stressed the advantages ot studying these copies, rather than
I S\\ I \\ IM. 1 HI l< \1NH( >\\
prints, ,is the arran^^einent ot the toloiir> could be known b\ them
... .md th.it .irr.mgement w .is as in.isterK .is the ( ompe-sumn
w .IS superior.'' '" .‘\g.nn. in 1 s 1 \\ est
spoke ne.irly Ii.ilt ,111 hour .iiui ii.xteinpoic. .md with gre.it selt-
possession. .ilso w ith .1 re.idmess of lielu er\ bes oiul w h.it h.ui been
before he.ird from him ... to prove th.it the oidei ot (ioloui> in a
Ratnhow is the true .irr.mgement of c olours 111,111 1 listi'rie.il pu ture
\ 1/: exhibiting the w .inn .md bnlh.mt colours in ,1 pu ture w here the
pnncip.il light f.ills c\ the cool lolonrs in the sh.uie; ,ilso th.it .is .111
.icc'om(\m\ing refleciion. .1 we.iker r.iinbow often .iccomp.unes the
more powerful r.imbow, so it m.iy be .idvis.ible to repe.it the s.mie
colours in .mother part of the pic ture I le remarked th.it m the
picture in the I atican .it Rome |i.e. the Stanza of I lehodorn.'^] Raphael
h.ici not .ittended tti this priiuiple. but that I le felt and .irranged his
colours .igree.ibly to it in the Oartoons . . . w.is m.imfest.'''
It was at this impromptu lecture that West show ed .1 painting ot'
two spheres or globes, one colourless and the other tinted \Mth
prismatic colours, the Litter of w Inch w as to 'show how the
colours tit the rainbow expressed the ditfereiit degrees ot'light,
halt-light and reHection, and shewed how perfeetK' well the
arrangement ot these colours was adapted to the purposes cit'
pamtiug’.' I'his was the apparatus shown next to a small copv
ot the Raphael cartoon I'he Death of Ananias in the tornial
portrait ot West painted by Lawrence in iSiS.'' ' 1 he pictures
ot globes were described in great detail by a member of West's
audience on that occasion, the landscape-painter A. W. Ci.illcott,
who said that the first, more purely tonal one on the left at the
lecture was larger than the second, prismatic one on the right,
file first was a dark brown with a slight variation on the light
side, beginning with a reddish tone, then a yellowish, then blue
and ‘wholly neutrar. Lhe second was composed
of the most positive colors commeiicing with red this eh.mgmg
into orange from this to yellow, from yellow to green, from green
to blue t'x from this to darkness, fhen on the rerieeted side the same
order of colors was repeated . . . Lhe arrangement on this ball was
the only unerring principle on which colors ot light and dark could
be arranged in a picture.' '■*
CLillcott noted that West applied his theory to several tif
Raphael’s CLirtoons, including the .diiiifiLis-, ‘ ‘ but that he did
not mention the (Life of the 'I'emple {The llealiini of the Lame
.Man) whose colour-organization was in direct contradiction to
it. Only in the course of the lecture did C'allcott remember that
the order of colours in the secondary rainbow was reversed,
although West had not allowed for it.
I his exposition of West’s rainbow theory was by no means
the first, for he had been toying with it long before he attained
high academic office. In a niemorandum compiled for a (lernian
pupil 111 the late lySos, West had used Rubens as an exemplar ot
the arrangement which he later saw supremely 111 Raphael; but
at this stage he was thinking more in terms ot the balance ot
warm and cool colours according to the rainbow order, any
intringenient ot which would ‘bring on such distraction and
discord to the Eye that it turns away disgusted as the Ear |to| .1
discordant sound'.'''’ In an Academy lecture of 1797 he h.id
argued that blue, grey or purple were the best grounds for
showing up the prismatic colours, ‘tor those colours partake ot
 L'Nwi AViN(; rm- uainkc)W
the complexion of the watery sky in wliich the rainbow
appears'.' The practical conclusions he drew from this do not
seem to be either \'ery original or \'ery consistent. What was
new was the projection of these precepts derived troni a study ot
nature on to the interpretation ot the Old Masters. I lere, as he
later confessed, 'he could only trace the observance ot this rtile,
as .1 principle, in the later works ot Ratlaelle . . . He admitted that
in Titian's "Peter Martvr” the arrangement ot colour is on a
pl.iii exactly contrary.'''” And yet, however improbably in
practice, the assumptions that he behind this theory - that nature
has revealed the secret of colour harmony in the structure ot the
prismatic spectrum -- were tar trom peculiar to West and
continued to occupy the attention of painters trom the
Romantics to Clezanne.' ''''
We saw- how West had first articulated his notions ot the
rainbow' as a guide to colouring in the conte.xt ot Rubens, and it
was Rubens, wdiose idiosyncratic analysis ot the colours ot flesh
had long been recognized as ‘prismatic’ or ‘primary’,'who
first suggested a version of the rainbow theory among the
French Romantics. Delacroix’s pupil Andrieu recalled how as a
young man his master had found new' principles ot colouring in
the rainbow, condensed as it w'cre into a drop ot water, and
introduced the idea into his first major painting, the Barque of
Dante (1822).'-' Andrieu may have had the story trom
Delacroix himself, although the water-drops on the torso ot a
tormented soul are now tar brighter than any ot the other
colours in the painting and could w'ell belong to a re-workmg ot
the picture in the late 1840s. But they are a thoroughly
Rubensian motif and may have been adapted trom some drops
in the Medici Cycle, then in the Luxembourg Palace, trom
which Delacroi.x macie a number of painted studies in the early
1820s. In a later conversation with George Sand, Delacroix, like
some of his English contemporaries, spoke ot a Rubens nude
child in terms of‘the rainbow melted into the flesh’.Unlike
West or Turner, however, Delacroix was little inclined to
pursue colour-theory very far or for very long — although he
turned to it again towards the end of his life {see Chapter 9).
Painters, he suggested in a dratt entry for his unctampleted
Dictionary of Fine Htfs, should avoid illusions of universality and
stick to their lasts.
Far more theoretically engaged was the German Romantic
painter Philipp Otto Riinge, who was convinced that the
developments of chromatics since Newton must form the basis
of the new' landscape painting, which would eventually absorb
all the other genres.Unlike West, he felt that the rainbow-
spectrum presented too monotonous a series to torrn the basis ot
colour-composition and to represent the infinite variety and
texture of natural things.'-^'’ The Times of Day, of which only
162 iMorninq came to be painted, were to be, as Runge stated clearly
111 a letter, a practical manifestation of‘the astounding diflFerence
between invisible and visible, transparent and opaque
colours’.'-^ He drew a Newtonian rainbow in the decorative
So and symbolic border of Day, to represent the visible colours of
nature which ‘lade into white \_qefit iti Erniattunq des Weissen
liber]', instead of rising to the perfection of [transparent] light, as
they did in Morniny’F-'^ Clearly, like Blake, he thought the
tormation ot material colours was a tragic degradation of light;
commentators who have interpreted the rainbow here as a
I 10
symbol of the heavenly pact are surely wide of the mark.'-” It
has been suggested that Runge introduced the Mosaic snake
among the passion flowers of the border in reterence to Stjohn’s
Gospel (3:14), w'here it symbolized the striving ot the earthly
man for God; the idea is even clearer in an earlier version ot the
design, W'here the Mosaic Tables of the Law w'ere introduced in
place of the flow'crs.'-^ But just as Turner’s Liqht and Colour idg
(Goethe’s Theory), which also introduced the snake tor a similar
purpose, cancelled the optimism ot its imagery in the bitter
pessimism of its caption,'-^" so Runge in Day presented the
rainbow as a materialization of light, final reconciliation w'ith
God coming only at the end ot the series, w'hich he designed but
did not live to paint.
Rtinge’s interest in the rambow'-spectrum was, his many
experiments show, as much technical as philosophical; he
w'illingly divided light into the New'tonian seven parts or into
the three primary colours; to do so w'as essential to his symbolic
system. Like many other painters ot his day, he was being less
than Romantic. But the scientific analysis of the rainbow did not
stop with Newton, whose scheme begged many questions
which were to tease artists and scientists alike. Henry Howard
told his Royal Acatiemy students m the 1840s;
The simplest mode of harmony is where one of the primary colours
is pure, and the other two are combined . . . The fullest and richest
harmony is where the seven prismatic hues are all displayed
together. In either of these cases there is a just proportion of cold
colour necessary to counter balance the warm. It would seem to
follow, that, to produce an agreeable effect of light in painting, the
1,
same proportion of warm and cold colour should be adopted as we
perceive in a dissected solar ray; but . , . these proportions do not
appear to have been accurately ascertained.'-^'
Despite the attempts of Samuel Galton and Matthew Young to
1 establish the proportions of the prismatic colours 111 white light
at the beginning of the century,'^- Howard was right; the
question was hardly illuminated by the observation of the
rainbow in natural conditions.
Joseph Priestley’s history of optics cievoted a chapter to
eighteenth-century observations of the rainbow and related
phenomena, which showed many deviations in colour, wddth
and number of arcs from the Newtonian norm.'^-^ As early as
1722 the Rector of Pet worth in Sussex had observed and
recorded four completely distinct bows, from which he
j concluded ‘that the rainbow seldom appears very lively without
something of this Nature; and that the stipposeci exact Agree¬
ment betw'een the Colours of the Rainbow and those of the
Prism, is the reason that it has been so little observed’.He also
noted the difl'iculty of recording the fleeting appearance of the
bow, precisely what was to fascinate many observers in the
Romantic period. As Wordsworth w'rote in his Ode on
Intimations of Immortality (II), ‘The Rainbow comes and goes
!
Iffiilipp Otto Runge, Day, 1803. At the top of his allegorical drawing Runge
introduces a seven-banded rainbow, over-arching the triangular symbol of the
1 loly Trinity, which he interpreted in terms of the three primary colours: blue
1 (the Father), red (the Son) and yellow (the Holy (Ihost). (So)
I \\\ I A\ l\C. I HI kAINIK i\\

I I I
I N\\ 1 AVINC. rH! RAINBOW

In Act 1 of the Second Part C)t /-a/of, (ioethe drew the

moral:

I )er Wasscrxturz, ilas FeKennrt diirchhrausend,

Ihn scliau ich an nnt waehscndein faitziicken.
Von Stuiv 7U Scinven walzt cr jetzt in tausend.
1 )ann abertausend Strdnien sich cr^iessciKl,
1 loch m die Liifte Schauni an Schauine sausend.
Allein wic lierrlich. dicscni Stnrni eiNpnessend.
Wiilbt sich des bnnten Hopens wcchseldauer,
Hald rein Ltezeichnet, bald in Lutt zerfliosscnd.
Umber \ crbrcitcnd duttip-kiihle Scliaucr!
b)er spicgolt ab das menschliche Bestreben.
Him sinnc nach, und du begreitst genauer:
Am farbigcn Abglaiiz haben wir das Lcbcm

d watch the water-fall, with heart elate,/The cataract pouring,

crashing from the boulders,/Split and rejoined a thousand times
111 spate;/ T he thundrotis water seethes in fleecy spume,/Litted on
high in many a flying plume,/Above the spray-drenched air.
And then how splendid/To see the rainbow rising trom this
rage,/Now clear, now dimmed, in cool sweet vapour blendeci./
So strix'C the figures on our mortal stage./This ponder w'ell, the
mystery closer seeing; In mirrored hues we have our life and
being.''-'*-'' Pespite his passionate plea for the study of colour in
nature, the basis of Cloethe's exposition of a theory ot colour
depended on experiments with the prism, tor he was anxious
to refute Newton on his own ground. Only one. unimpressive,
rainbow drawing has been associated with his illustrations to
the Theory of Colonrs^^^ and the promised supplementary
section on the phenomenon never appeared during the poet’s
lifetime.'-'^ In an undated fragment he did, how-ever, treat the
bow', w-hich he claimed had led students of chromatics into an
Carl Custav C.iriis. Allcyory of tlw Death of Goethe, 1832. Carus includes a
rainbow in his ineinonal, as the phenomenon which had engaged Cioethe’s
curiosity for most of his life. (8 1)
David Lucas, mezzotint alter John Constable, Salisbury Cathedral front the
Meadott's: The Raiiihoii', c. 1835. Constable was probably prompted to study
the rainbow as a geometrical problem by Lucas’s large print after his landscape
of 1831 (National Callery, London). In the print the atmospheric conditions
necessary for the appearance of the bow are more correctly observed than in
Constable’s original painting, where it tunctioned largely as a symbol of hope.
Constable’s diagrams of r. 1833 record the formation of colours in drops of
water. (82,83)
obsession with refraction. Although he observed Alexander’s
dark band between the arcs ot the double bow, he does not
seem tohaverealizeci that the diflerencesot luminosity outside and
inside the arc w'ould support his own theory of the generation
of colours through the interaction of light and dark.
The evanescent phenomenon had fascinated Goethe all his
life. About 1770 his urge to write poetry had been renewed by
the sittht of a double bow in Alsace, ‘more marvellous, more
colourful, more pronounced, but also more fleeting than 1 had
ever seen’;'-^'^ in the late 1820s, when the passage quoted trom yo
Faust was written, he was still planning his supplement to the
Theory on that difl'icult topic.Only a month before his death
in 1832 he was still returning to the subject in corresponcience
with the antiquarian and collector Stilpice Boisseree, whom he
warned never to feel that he had reduced it to manageable
terms.It was surely to this life-long preoccupation that the
scientist anci painter Carl Gustav Carus referred 111 his Alle^^ory
oil the Death of Goethe where a rainbow arches behind the poet’s Si
lyre. Carus had been a friend and correspondent of Goethe tor
many years up to 1831 and in the early 1820s he had discussed
several colour-problems with the poet.'"'“
In landscape-painting perhaps the most subtle expressions ot
the physiognomy of this fleeting phenomenon were in the work
of two Emtlish artists. Constable and Turner. One ot
Constable’s biographers has used the rainbow to characterize his
subject'''-^ and it did indeed become one of his preferred motifs.
When, in his lectures on landscape in the 1830s, Constable came

112

to deal with the art of Ihiolo Uccello, it was the Sacrifice of \oali.
for the Clhiostro Verde in Sta Maria Novella in Florence, ‘the
whole arched by the rainbow’, that he chose tor illustration.
Uonstable’s own rainbows have aroused the admiration of a
meteorologist'"^^ but the idea that he was 'never guilty of giving
-the wrong sequence ot colours in either primary or secondary
bow’ is surely exaggerated, for m the first recorded rainbow
study, a small oil dated i(Si2, he failed to reverse the secondary
colours.''^'’ At least before the 1830s Uonstable’s interest in
rainbows was no more purely scientific than his interest in
clouds, and he did from time to time represent impossible
situations of weather. But how unusually convincing his
treatment of the rainbow is may be seen in a comparison
In the Medieval Town on a River (1H15) Karl
Friedrich Scliinkcl uses the rainbow nuich as it
had been used in the Middle Ages, as a symbol
— here, of the aspiration of the soul towards
(iod. 1 tis bow IS too implausibly narrow and
the sky too uniformly dark to suggest the true
atmospheric conditions in which a rainbow
might be observed. (84)
I \\\ I W l\(. I HI K \ IMU
between Salishury ('.atlicilral tram ilii .\/< .ji/i'ir.' \s ith tlr
superticially similar Medieval I'oini hy a Rivu b\ the (icrinan
architect and painter Karl Friedrich Sihinkel. Both were to .1
degree symbolic pictures: C onstable described the sentiment of
his as ‘solemmts, not gaietv';' ■*' his w ite h.id died w hile he \s as
planning the design and he was also shaken b\ the C'.itludu
Emancipation .'\ct ot iN2<;. w hich suenied to cut the .•Xiighcan
Cdnirch at the root. It has been suggested that the bow ottered
Clonstable a symbol ot reeoneihation with hte .md that its
ending on the house ot his friend .'\rchde.icon Fisher suggested
too that there was hope fir the C diun h,' 1 he sub)eet nia\
stand on its ow n, too, as representing the weather erfeet ot the
title he gave it in 1836: Suiiuiier Afleniooii: a retinin^ I eiiijH s!.
Schinkel, on the other hand, designed his picture .is a pendant
to his (ireeh l.aiidscaped to exemphts a contrast between the
earth-bound (Ireek and the heavenw ard-stri\ itig (lothie .irehi-
tecture. 1 he rainbow, wlneh Schinkel had picked up troiii Koch
in Roine,'^" was simply a symbolic attribute, reintoreing the
notion that the ('lOtliic ‘expresses and mamtests the Ideal, so that
Idea and Reality are completely fused, so that 111 the outward
appearance ot the building we see what ctninects us directly
with the supernatural, with Clod, whereas before onl\ the
earthly, with all its limitations, was the subject of works of
art’.'^' He introduced none ot the necessary weather-
conditions and, like Koch, who made drawings tor his rainbow
compositions without including the bow.'^- he prtibably
painted it directly on to the canvas. As it happens, this was
probably Uonstable’s procedure in the Salishury, too: none ot
the sursiving sketches, including the full-size one,''’’ show the
bow (there are a number of earlier, unrelated rainbow-
studies''’'^). It reminds us that Constable’s process ot picture-
making was essentially traditional, for no thortiughgoing
outdoor painter would have imagined that such a complex
atmospheric phenomenon could be understood outside the
I 1 }
 11NV\ 1;A\'IN(; llil-; RAINBOW
context of a total landscape effect. Turner, for example, does not
seem to have made rainbow studies as such but sometimes made
written notes of its colours on a complete landscape sketch^^^
7?-,^ and in two small early watercolours ot Durham Cathedral he
showed his recognition that it was the fleeting consec]uence ot a
changing effect of weather and lighting.
The study involved in introducing the bow into the
Salisbury, his most important late picture, had a notable effect on
Constable’s conception of landscape in the 1830s. The compo-
82 sition was reproduced in mezzotint by David Lucas and
Constable took endless pains to ensure the accuracy of the print
which is, as has been pointed out, truer to the necessary weather-
conditions than the painting. Constable changed the title to
The Raiiihou’, which, he later said, ‘forms the subject of the
picture’.‘If It is not exquisitely done,’ he wrote to Lucas in
1H35, ‘if it is not tender — and elegant - evernescent [sic\ and
lovely — in the highest degree - we are both ruined. 1 am led to
this having been very busy with rainbows — and very happy in
doing them — by the above rules.’What these ‘rules’ were is
not clear but it is possible that the painter consulted his friend the
17? colour-theorist and technologist George Field, who had been
adapting his ingenious circular prism, the Chromascope, for the
projection of a semi-circular spectrum. This, he claimed,
‘affords a method by which a rainbow, of any arc or diameter,
may be superinduced upon a picture, into which the artist may
design to introduce the phenomenon, so as to try its effect, and
the best way of producing it’.'^^ During the production of
Lucas’s plate the width of the bow decreased from ly inches to ^
1 14
|. M. W. Turner, Ihiitcriiicrc Lake, with part oj
Cromaikwatcr, Cimthvrland, ashoii’er. 1798.
Thompsons’ poem 'Hie Seasons spoke ot 'every
hue' in the ‘grand ethereal bow’, but Turner's
painting is truer to the phenomenon he had
observed. It sliows the rare fog bow, in which
the drops of water are very small, and the bow
is almost white. (1S5)
inch (3.8 to 2.2 centimetres), which may reflect the use of some
proportioning device such as Field’s.
Rainbows became more numerous in Constable’s work ot
the last years and he began to produce coloured preparatory
sketches, such as the two for the large watercolour ot Stone¬
henge, one of which is perfectly plausible in the disposition ot the
sky.^*^^ This is the period when we find Constable interesting
himself in scientific meteorology and copying diagrams to
illustrate the formation of colours by refraction through a drop 8j
of water.A measure of his achievement as a painter ot the
rainbow may be had by comparing the sensitivity ot his late
double bows with those of Koch, who seems never to have
noticed the inversion of the colours, or with the work ot English
landscapists like John Glover, who missed the effect even in 71
front of the motif, or, even more astonishingly, a Pre-
Raphaelite such as Millais, whose second bow in the Blind Girl
was only corrected (for a supplementary fee) when this
inversion was pointed out to him.^^-^
When Constable’s Salisbury was exhibited in 1831, the critic
of The Morning Chronicle called it ‘Mr Constable’s coarse, vulgar
imitation of Mr Turner’s freaks and follies’,and if any
painter has the right to the title of ‘Rainbow-master’ m the 83
Romantic period, it is surely Turner. His first exhibited
rainbow, in Buttennere Lake, already announces an unusual
sensibility, for in tune with the sombre landscape it is almost
white; the painter had to edit severely a passage on the rainbow
from Thomson’s Seasons in order to provide a suitable caption
for his own representation.'^^ Thomson had written:
 I \\\ I W 1\(. I in W MNHI )\\

Meantime, refracted from yon eastern cIolkI. he did not illustrate it, the poet doubted the .ulequ.u \ of s. leiu c
Ik'striding earth, tlie gr.nul etliereal bow to interpret the me.ming ot'ihe bow :
Slioots up immense; .md e\ ery hue unfolds.
\\ Ill'll SiR'iue from C re.itu'ii's l.in-
In fair proportion running from the red
I iK hamniciit's \ i'il w itlulr.iw s.
I t) where the eiolet f.ules into the sk\'.
Wh.u lovely \ isioiis \ leld their pl.iee
1 lere. aw tul Ness ton. the dissols ing clouds
I o cold m.iteri.il l.iw s! ‘
form, trontmg on the sun, thy shoss ery prism;
And tt) the sage-instructed eye unfold When lurner's own portmanteau-poem. I'he I allOiio ot I lope.
The s-arious tss ine t)f light, by thee discloseti re-appeared .ifter a long absence in the Rowil .•\c.idem\
brom the sshite mingling blaze. (.S'/iriny i i.ao.t i-) Exhibition c.italogue of 1S39. u was to .unplifv .in ,illegor\ of
great abstruseness called The 1-01111101^ ol l■\llla^y. the dispenser ol
l urner's versittn ot 179S r;in:
’rainbow-dew’.'The prismatic bubbles in l.ipht and (ioloiii
Till in the ss estern sky the dtiss nss ard sun (Cioeilie's I heory) were, according to this poem. ’Hope's i(\)
Lotiks out eflulgent the rapid radiance instantaneous strikes harbinger’, but they were also ’epheuier.il as the summer ti\.
rh'illumin'd mountains - in a yelloss- mist which rises. Hits, expands and dies’.In the last grotip of
Bestriding earth the graiul ethereal boss- paintings rurner exhibited, the year before his death, it w.is
Shoot up immense, and ewery hue unfolds. . h'/icii.) relating his Story to Dido w hich included the last rainbow
- in this case a moonbow - a picture w hose caption might well
A watercolour sketch of 1797 with a nuniber t)f revisions in the have given the title to that same lugubrious poem:
bow suggests that Turner was not quite sure how to handle this
l-allacious I lope heneath the inooii'.< pale cre.<ceiit shone
evanescent etiect; yet the painting has all the elements of
Dido listened to Troy heinp lost and won.''-
I nmer’s later interest in landscape colour: the diaphaiutns bow
atmospherically extended into a reflection in the water. It was
the starting-point of a long series of rainbow studies and pictures TuT’iitictli-ccinury cpiloyiic
in sketches and watercolours, oils and engravings throughout a
Fascination with the rainbow as a pictorial motif has continued
long career. The delicacy of observation in these works is
into our own century, particularly with the Neo-Romaiitics of
unprecedented: in a written note of oSiS Turner recorded the
-South Ciermany before the First World War. Wassilv Kandin¬
variations 111 the width of the bow, according to the conditions
sky had already introduced a quite orthodox, seven-coloured
of the background, sky.*^^ He was also very conscious of the
bow into his gouache Tunisian Sheep Tesrival in 1903 and. like
limitations of medium: 1 know of no rainbow oil after
his friend Franz Marc, was also interested in the phenomenon
Biittcrnicre until the early 1S3OS, by which time Turner had
about the time of the formation of the Blaue Reiter (Blue Ruler)
brought the technique of oil painting to a pitch of refinement
group a few years later.Much later, it has re-appeared in the
comparable to his watercolours. The 1840s were Turner’s
purest form of all in the ecological performance art of Richard
greatest rainbow period, for it was then that he used the image as
Long and Andy Cioldsworthy. But we may agree with Paul ,~s
a vehicle of expression, of the gathering pessimism of his last
Klee, who told his students at the Bauhatis as early as the 1920s
years. In 1847, when his failing health allowed him to offer only
that it had ceased to have any compelling symbolic or
a rather clumsily reworked canvas for hanging at the Royal
theoretical power.
Academy Exhibition, he made a last, hunt gesture of
Varnishing-Day magic by painting the rainbow into Daniel
Maclise’s Sacrifice of Xoah.'^'^ Two years later, when he next
exhibited, only one of his paintings was new, an early marine
which he had taken six days to transform, again with a rainbow,
into the fragile brilliance of 'I'he H'reck Turner’s
captions of this time make it perfectly clear that the rainbow was
no symbol of hope or reconciliation. In 1837 he prepared a
vignette of a rainbow-landscape to illustrate Thomas
Chmipbell’s poem I'lie I^lcastircs of Hope, whose well-known
opening scene invoked the enchantments of aerial perspective
which might stand as a commentary on Turner’s own work.
But Ciampbell, whose poem included a eulogy ot Newton,
based his optimism on domestic happiness and the salvation ot
the soul, both ideas being closed to Turner as an unbelieving and
unmarried father who lived in squalor. Apart trom the rainbow,
the artist chose to illustrate only those episodes in CkimpbeH’s
Poems which could be interpreted as disasters: the toundering
ship, the fall of Warsaw to Napoleon, the awtul tirigin ot the
Mosaic Law. In a later poem devoted to the rainbow in
Ciampbell’s collection, which rurner must have read although I r.mz .Marc, liliie I torses wiih Rainbow, lyi.l. (Uti)

I > .s
 7 • Discgno versus Colorc
Alhcrti and ('itf)' • Ohihcrti and perception ■ (Holonr-syndHdisnt in the Qinittrocento
I'he importance ot materials ■ Leonardo da I nici
I 'enetian colour in the sixteenth century
Thf- ANcn.NT NoiioN that an adequate representation might be
made with line alone, eolonring being an inessential adjnnet to
torm, received a new impetus in the developing art practice and
criticism of the Italian Renaissance. A key te.xt, bhilostratns’s
Life of Apollonius of Tyana {see Cihapter i), was translated into
Latin by the Florentine Alenianno Rinuccini by the end of the
Quattrocento and into Italian by the Venetian journalist Dolce
in 1549. The ancient model ot the historical progress ot art in
Pliny (XXXV, v, 15—16), in the first-century .ad rhetorician
Dionysius ot Halicarnassus {Isaeiis 4) and in Isidore ot Seville
{Htyiiioh\yies XX, 19.16) presented a development from line in
the earliest period to chiaroscuro and finally to colours. That this
process could be seen as the making of a single work, even by
late medieval lay people, is suggested by an ingenious spiritual
exercise proposed in the early tourteenth century by the
Franciscan mystic Ugo Panziera. According to Panziera the first
act in making Christ vividly present to the mind is to imagine
his name; the second to imagine him drawn {diseiinato), the third
with his outline shaded {oiiibrato), the fourth embodied {iiicar-
iiato), which includes a notion of colouring, and finally turned
from a flat image into three dimensions {rilevatofd But neither
here nor in the ancient histories was there any sense that the
earlier stages were more important than the last. It was not until
the Romans attacked bright pigments - because ot their
association with luxury - that colour was seen to be interior to
design. These were attitudes which re-emerged among the
Italian humanists of the fourteenth century. Ciovaimi Conver-
smo of Ravenna, for example, wrote that a painting was
admired not so much for 'the purity and exquisite quality ot the
colours {coloriini piiritateiii ac elec;aticiani), as for ‘the arrangement
and proportion of its parts’: only the ignorant were attracted
simply by the colour. None the less, the beauty of the pigments
(jhy’iiientoriiiii pulchritudo) could add to the beauty of propor¬
tion.- Certainly in the iconoclastic movements ot the Mitldle
Ages and in Lenten observance towards their close there was
occasionally an appeal for monochromatic images. In the late
fourteenth-century grisaille painting on silk, the Parament of
\'arboiiin\ and in related liturgical vestments made tor Lenten
use, we have perhaps the first great post-antique works ot
specifically monochrome drawing. ’
A belief in the sutficiency of drawing has much to be said tor
it on psycho-physiological grtmnds. Intants tend to tocus on
Fr.i H.!rtolomco, l\ihi drlla Si(iiiori<i. c. 1512. Tlunigli little more th.m .i v.ist
moiioclirome dr.twiiii' in oils, this tine ex.iniple ot I loreiuine disc^tio was
thought worthy to serve as an altarpieee in the ehnreh ot S. Loren/ti troni the
sixteenth to the eighteenth eentnry. (Sy)
contour m their process ot discosering their einiromnent;
colour-blindness otten goes nndetecteil tor ni.m\ \e.irs because
hue-perception is tunctionalR less important than the percep¬
tion ot light and dark \ alues. Late t\\ entieth-ceimirs w tuT on
the mechanisms ot colour-vision suggest th.it the e\e has two
independent systems ot polychrom.itic .iiul moiuichrom.itic
receptors. It has also been well kiuiw n since tlie earls nineteenth
century that sensations ot colour \ ellow. green and light blue
- may be stimulated bv the rapul altern.ition ot light and dark,
an ertect not uncommon when watching black-and-white
television.’’ We are all used to experiencing the world as black
and white images m photography and tilin: these images are the
successors of the monochrome engr.u ings first produced m the
fifteenth century that until the nineteenth were usually regarded
as adequate even for the reproduction of paintings and by
painters themselves. In sixteenth-century Venice, where the
polemic ot the colourists against the ‘designers’ developed tor
the first time, it was still not unusual for painters to present their
ideas to patrons in the form of a grisaille. ’’ 1 lere I want to look
especially at the development of inonochroinatic art and trace
the polemic ot disey^iio (drawing, design) against colore.
Alhcrti ami C]rcy
There can be little doubt that in Italy by the end ot the
fourteenth century there was widely developed sense ot the
distinction between design and colour as aesthetic values. In a
letter of 1395 two Tuscan patrons spoke of a Driicifixion which
was ‘drawn \diseyiiato\ so well that it could not be improved,
even if (uotto had drawn it’.'’ 'Fheii, as now, (liotto was seen to
be supreme as a designer and draughtsman.’^ About the same
time the earliest theorist of Italian art. Clennino Ciennini. who
having been taught by Agnolo Claddi. the son ot (Iiotto’s pupil
Taddeo (laddi, was proud to be seen as (liotto’s great-grandson,
yet recognized that Agnolo’s colour was more ‘beaiuitul and
fresh' {vayio e fresco) than that of his more (liottesque tatlier.”
True to his Tuscan tradition, Clennini also gave a good deal ot
attention to several techniques of drawing, including the
elaborate preparation of softly modelled brush drawings on
tinted paper, of which one example by Faddeo Claddi has
survived.'' Nevertheless there is in (lennini no sense ot any
antithesis between drawing and colour: both were seen as
fundamental to painting (iv) and chiaroscuro drawing on tinted
paper was seen to be a stage on the way to colouring (xxxn).
Ceniimi compiled his book tif recipes in the 1390s, addressing
himselfessentiallv to professional artists. When torty years later
two other Fuscans, the architect and hum.imst Leon B.utista
Alberti and the sculptor Lorenzo Cihiberti, turned to the theory
DISK,NO VI HSi:s COIORI
of an, they li.id \'ery different audiences in mind: it mattered to
them \'er\' nmch to distinguish between the various facets of the
\ isu.tl process.
Alberti w.is an amateur painter and cl,limed in his treatise On
to be writing as ,i painter; yet his shorter Italian version,
probably of 143s. was dedicated to the architect Brunelleschi
•ind the fuller L,itin version (/)c Picfina) to the Prince of Mantua:
It was far from being a practical text-book.'" But particularly in
Its Latin version the treatise includes a discussion of colour
which throws important light on the understanding of chiaro¬
scuro in the early C)uattrocento. Alberti divided painting into
three parts: circumscription, or drawing the outline, compo¬
sition and 'reception of lights’ (n'ceptio liniiiniini). which in¬
cluded colotir (II, 30). That colour was thus for Alberti a
function of light was important for his lengthy and repetitive
treatment irf black and white (11, gf*-?):
while the kinds [ye/icnil of colours remain the same, they become
lighter or darker according to the incidence of lights and shades . . .
white and black are the colours with which we express lights and
shades in painting; and . . . all the other colours are, as it were,
matter to which variations of light and shade can be applied.
Therefore, leaving other considerations aside, wc must explain
how the painter should use white and black .. . all his skill and care
should be used in correctly placing these two ... You can very well
learn from Nature and from objects themselves. When you have
thoroughly understood them, you may change the colour with a
little white applied as sparingly as possible in the appropriate place
within the outlines of the surface, and likewise add some black in
the place opposite to it. With such balancing, as one might say, of
black and white a surface rising in relict becomes still more evident,
(io on making similar sparing additions until you feel you have
arrived at what is required ... if . . . the painter has drawn the
outlines of the surfaces correctly, and clearly sketched the border¬
line between lighter and darker, the method of colouring \ratio
coloramii] will be easy. He wall first begin to modify the colour of
the surface with white or black, as necessary, applying it like a
gentle dew up to the borderline. Then he will go on adding another
sprinkling, as it were, on this side of the line, and after that another
on that side of it, and then another on this side of this one, so that
not only is the part receiving more light tinged with a clearer
\aperiior] colour, but the colour also dissolves progressively like
smoke into the areas next to each other. But you have to remember
that no surface should be made so white that you cannot make it a
great deal whiter still. Even in representing snow-white clothing
you should stop well on this side of the brightest white. For the
painter has no other means than white to express the brightest
gleams of the most polished surfaces, and only black to represent
the deepest shadows of the night. And so in painting white clothes
wc must take one of the four kinds of colours \qiiatluor qeiierihus
coloruni] which is clear and bright \ aperliiiii el claruni\', and likewise,
in painting, for instance, a black cloak, we must take the other
extreme which is not far from the deepest shadow, such as the
colour of the deep and darkening sea. This composition of white
and black has such power that, when carried out skilfully, it can
express in painting surfaces of gold and silver and glass.
Consequently those painters who use white immoderately and
black carelessly should be strongly condemned. I should like white
to be purchased more dearly among painters than precious stones.
It would be a good thing if white and black were made from those
pearls Cleopatra dissolved in vinegar, so that painters would
become as mean as possible with them, for then their works would
be more agreeable and nearer the truth. It is not easy to express how
sp.iring and careful one should be in distributing white in a painting
. . . If some indulgence must be given to error, then those who use
black extravagantly are less to be blamed than those who employ
white somewhat inteinperatcly; for by nature, with experience of
painting, we learn as time goes by to hate work that is dark and
horrid {iilruni cl liorrciidum], and the more we learn, the more we
attune our hand to grace and heauty. We all by nature love things
which are clear and bright liipcrla cl clina\. So we must the more
firmly block the way in which it is the easier to go wrong.''
I have given this passage in extenso because it seems to me to be
one of the most important statements in the history of colour
and as fruitful for the development of Renaissance attitudes
towards painting as Alberti’s far better-known discussion of the
single-point perspective system. The account at sfiiniato model¬
ling is not of itself very original: Cennini had used the same term
{a niodo d'lin fiiinnio heiic sfimiatc) in his chapter on chiaroscuro
drawing (xxxi). Unlike Cennini, however, Alberti was concer¬
ned to provide a rationale for his modelling procedure; his use of
the term apertns (‘open’) for light colours shows that he had in
mind the Classical theory of the functioning of light and
darkness in the eye {sec p. 16). For all his disclaimer that he was
not writing for philosophers (1, 9), his instructions were backed
by what appears to be the first coherent account of the values
(light/dark content) of hues, towards which medieval writers
such as Avicenna at the end of the tenth century and Theodoric
of Freiberg in the fourteenth had been groping in vain.'“
In a more theoretical discussion of light and colour earlier in
his book (I, 9~io), Alberti had argued, against the ancient and
medieval tradition, that ‘the admixture of white . . . does not
alter the basic kind [^c/ins| of colours, but creates species. Black
has a similar power, for many species of colours arise trom the
addition of black.’ For the painter, he continued:
white and black arc not true colours, but, one might say,
moderators ot colours [coloniiii altcralorcs], for the painter will find
nothing but white to represent the brightest glow of light, and only
black tor the darkest shadttws. Furthermore, you will not find any
white or black that does not belong to one or other of the kinds of
coloLirs.
This last, crucial, observation explains what Alberti meant in
Book II when he said that white ancj black objects should be
painted not with the extremes of white and black pigments, but
with values of the four genera of hues, slightly darker than
absolute white and lighter than absolute black. It also helps us to
interpret what has seemed to be a puzzling feature in Alberti’s
account ot the tour colours. Fde associated the tour I’cragenera of
colours with the four elements {see Chapter 2), identifying red
with tire, blue {cclestis sen caesitis in Latin, celestrino alone in
Italian) with air, green with water and ash-colour {cinerciini in
Latin, higia e cenericcia in Italian) with earth. Starting from
modern preconceptions about the ‘primary’ colours, some
recent commentators have sought to introduce yellow into this
set, by arguing that higia and cenericcia could have been

uiKlcrsttH)d as ‘dark ycdlow'.' ’ C)uitc apart fnmi the extreme
riuidicy ot the ciilour-terms used in tlie supporting texts (only
one of whieh, C\'nnini, pre-dates Alberti), the /)<■ /Vrnm; states
quite clearly (1, 9) that the coknir of the earth is a mixture of
black and white {Tcrrac quoque color pro alhi ci )iiqri iuli)ii.\tioiic
stills species hiihet). Two ot the sixteenth-century manuscripts of
the Italian version are helpful here because the\' gloss the
identification ot the earth with hiqhi and ceiiericcia with the note:
‘and because the earth is the detritus of all the elements,
perhaps we are not wrong to say that oil the cokmrs are called
grey \hixi\ like the detritus of the ea'-th’.'-^ All colours were thus
seen tt) partake of grey: grey was the key to the tonal coherence
ot the pictorial composition, as Alberti’s perspectival system
was the key to the coherence of its linear space.
We saw that since Antiquity yellow had been repeatedly
interpreted not as an independent hue but as a light species of
green, and this continued to be so in Alberti’s Italy.What he
needed was not a tourth ‘primary’ but a colour which would
express the mean between black and white seen as abstilutes, just
as saturated red and green were btith means between the
extremes ot their genera, and his sky-blue (emphasized in Latin
by the use of two terms, since blue was usually considered to be a
dark colour) the mean in the scale of blue. It was essential to his
understanding of the art of the colourist that Alberti should give
equal status to grey and the other three ‘true’ colours, from
which many mixtures (species) could be produced.*'’
In his account of the management of ‘black’ and ‘white’
Alberti stated that they could represent shining objects, even —
and somewhat paradoxically until we remember that they are
coloured — gold. His repeatedly expressed wish that gold and
gems should be rendered in paint (e.g. II, 25) has often been seen
as a new Renaissance attitude towards materials, in marked
contrast to the medieval reverence for precious metals and
colours, as represented by Cennini’s Chapter xcvi. But when
Alberti reviewed the question at some length in his second book
(49), mentioning the gold ornaments on the costume of Queen
Dido, he made it quite clear that from the single viewpoint
required by his system of perspective (52), the use of real gold
would make an ambiguous impression, since from some angles
the gold would appear light and from others dark, which would
destroy the carefully arranged tonal unity of his picture. Alberti
had no objection to the use of precious materials as such, for he
went on to say that the architectural elements in painting
(perhaps he was referring to frames) might well be of such
materials, since ‘a perfect and finished painting is worthy to be
ornamented even with precious stones.’ Quite apart from the
well-known taste among humanist collectors for International
Cothic art which made much use of such materials, we shall see
later in this chapter that all kinds of patron stipulated in
contracts that precious metals and pigments were to be used in
the execution of religious art. What is perhaps most striking
about Alberti’s book is that it made no reference to any but
secular painting: although he was a notable designer ot
churches, he was here thinking exclusively of the decoration ot
palaces, where the light-levels were higher and more even than
those creating the environment of religious painting and
sculpture. In his rather later treatise on architecture Alberti
emphasized light-reflecting surfaces in secular buildings, ad¬
/)/s/ (. N( I \ I Ksl s = r 1/. t;,-j
vocating the use o( waxed and polished plaster on the .111. I'-iit
model, as w ell as w hat he i.illed the newR dis. 00 eii d'
technique ot painting w ith linseed oil, both of w hu h w erv \ ct \
liur.ible .md g.is e theetlei t ol lewelsor ‘flow ing gl.iss' Both
these techniques were prim.inls for decor.itne usv but. nioie
surprisingly. .Mberti also recommended mos.iu in imit.ition ol
painting, bec.iuse ot'the sp.ukle of its highlx relk-cti\e cubes .in
argument which was appealed to .1 centurx later. 111 the lontext
ot the debate between ilr.iwing .iiul mlour. b\ ,1 1 lorentine
critic, Anton f rancesco Horn, m his polemic .ig.nnst the
perishable oil-painting ot the new Veneti.m ni.isteisi 'So
Alberti was thinking ot the demands ot p.imting as being quite
dirterent in diri'erent architectur.il I'ontexts; the secul.ir subjeits
he described in l)e Pictiira were cle.irlv to be executed on .1
portable scale.
For all the great and lun el emphasis on black, w hue .iiul gre\
in Alberti’s book, it was in no sense .111 argument lor tli.^eqiio
against colore. It a painting should be well dr.iwn (heiie
coiiscripraiii). it should also be excellenth (opiiiiie) coloured (II.
46). In contrast to the ancient painters who were thought to
have restricted their palettes, Alberti argued th.it ‘all the kinds
and species ot colours’ should appe.ir in .1 p.unting, ciiiii qrolio el
iiiiteiiitiUe (II, 4S). I le proceeded to describe a tile ot nx inphs m
the train ot Hiana, one dressed in green, the next in white
(CiiiiiUdus), the next red (jnirpiireiis), another yellow and so on, ‘111
such a way that light colours are always next to il.irk ones ot a
dirterent genus’. ’This tamous passage may be applied verv
effectively to the group of muses deployed across Mantegna’s
I\inhissiis painted much later for Isabella d’Este. where thev 9.
appear in ‘azure to royal blue |. . .| gold to orange, now green,
now rose, now gleaming white’.'*' Perhaps, too, Mantegn.i had
felt the force of Alberti’s remark that there is a kind of sympathv
(coiiititiiirio in Latin, aiiiicitiii in the Italian) between certain
colours, for in indixidual figures he used the contrasts of red and
green and red and blue which Alberti had specified: ‘It red
Iru/icHi'l stands between blue Icec/c.sfi.'j and green [the Italian has
the looser formulation ‘near’, /)rc.w| it somehow enhances their
beauty as well as its own [here the Italian is far more specific,
stating that they confer on each other honour and visible
respect, I'briij. White [tiii'etis in Latin, hiiiiico in Italian] lends
gaiety [hilaritiis, letitio], not only when placed between grey
(ciiiereiis) and yellow, but almost to any colour’. 1 lere, although
there are clearly medieval precedents for the notion of the
harmony of, for example, red and green, and the whole
conception of fulness and variety has a very medieval flavour,-'’
Alberti was probably echoing contemporary workshop prin¬
ciples. 1 lis contrasting and complementary pairs of red and blue,
particularly his view that a large proportion (one third) of white
will always render the whole work ‘joyful’ and highly visible
(coiiiparascente), appears slightly earlier in a treatise on glass¬
painting by Antonio da Pisa, who was working in F lorence
about 1400.-' Alberti’s love of light, gay colours also emerges
from his treatment of clothes in another book, on the family,
where one of the interlocutors recommended above all those
which are ‘joyful’ (lieti) and clear (operli), both terms encoun¬
tered in the De Idcliiro.-- Lluis Alberti brought an unusu.dly
wide range of experience to bear on w hat w as effectively the
first sustained theoretical discussion ol visual art.
1 19
nist(,\() VTUsus coioiu
Ghiberti iiiid perception
Alberti's understanding; of the ‘reception of light’ on surfaces
w as, as he said, the result of ‘experiment’ (I, (S) and he was
generally ditiident ahotit invoking the authority ot the ‘philoso¬
phers’. 15ut his contemporary Lorenzo (Ihiberti had no such
qualms: in the longest section ot a very substantial treatise on art,
the Coiiniiviitarics (late 1440s), the sculptor pltinged into the
centre of the most ahstrtise branch ot medieval optics, to
discover the behaviour o f light in the most complicated
circumstances and, more particularly, the interrelation ot eye
and brain in perception. Clhibertrs text is long and unwieldy,
incorporating a more than respectable proportion ot direct
quotations from ancient and medieval sources; this has led most
commentators to bypass its problems and to treat it as irrelevant
to his highly original art.--’ But in the present context the I'hird
Coniiijciitary offers a number of important insights into the
development of an attitude towards light and shade that
emerged half a century later as the debate between the claims ot
disi'i^uo and those of colore. Clhiberti opened his discussion with
the bald assertion, ‘O most learned [reader], nothing can be seen
without light’,which alerts us at once to his double pre¬
occupation with light and with seeing: that is, with the
subjective effects of light or its absence. His experience as a
designer of stained glass at a time when there was frequent
opposition to the darkening effects of this glass in church
interiors {see Chapter 4), will have made him sensitive to the
relationship of colours to levels of illumination, a topic which he
often broached in his book.“^ He was even more concerned
with the lighting of sculpture and since contemporary sculpture
was sometimes coloured, he was able to bring colour into this
argument too. A common topic ot discussion among the
thirteenth-century perspectivists so often quoted by Ghiberti
had been the effect of strong or weak lights on the appearance of
hues,“^ a topic also implicit in Alberti’s definitions. This was of
the first interest to Ghiberti; in a discussion of fine sculptural
detail, invisible in a weak light, he turned his attention to colour;
Again wc find how' solid bodies [carpi densi] coloured with
sparkling colours such as blues and sky-blues [azztiritii e celesti] in
dark places and in a weak light will appear as murky [torhidip'^
colours, and when they are in a luminous and light place, they will
appear sparkling and light, and the more so the more the light on
them increases. When the light is small that body will appear dark,
and vision will not be able to distinguish its colour and it will seem
almost black . .
Unlike the rather generalizing perspectivists, Ghiberti, as we
might expect from an artist ciesigning glass, was careful to refer
to specific colours, which suggests that he had tried the
experiments himseffU'^ But it was a specificity also characteristic
of the professional perspectivists of his day, such as the Pole
Sandivogius of Czechel (r. 1410—76) who, while working very
much along the lines proposed by Alhazen and Witelo, brought
greater refinement and concreteness to their ideas.As objects
of perception, light and colour now seemed less separable than
in earlier centuries, an interrelationship that was particularly
clear in the growing number of depictions of night scenes in the
fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, both in Italy and in
120
northern Europe. Taddeo Gaddi’s several representations of
night in the cycle of the Life of the Virgin in the Baroncelli
Ghapel at Sta Groce in Florence (i jjz-.S) already show a severe
reduction of local colour but not its total elimination, as there is
in scotopic vision, using the photoreceptors on the retina called
rods.’’ Among Ghiberti’s younger contemporaries we might
well have expected to find examples of night scenes without
colour in a scientifically oriented writer such as Piero della
Francesca. Indeed we do in his Srigniarizadoit of St Francis in the
predella tif the Perugia altarpiece but not in the slightly earlier
Dream of (Constantine in S. Francesco at Arezzo.-’- One of the
most striking instances of the new perception is in a close
associate of Ghiberti himself. Fra Angelico, who in his Annunci¬
ation at Cortona shows a fully lit foreground in rich colour set b’
against a distant night-scene with the Expulsion in a colourless
grisaille.-’-’ Monochrome images were thus not simply a matter
of taste or technique; in the Quattrocento they could be seen to
reflect the processes of vision itself.
Colour-syniholisni in the Quattrocento
The development in the fifteenth century of a sense that colore
and discyino were antithetical was hindered by this growing
recognition that colour was a perceptual function of light and
that It incorporated tonal values willy-nilly, and also by the
heavy investment of the early Quattrocento in symbolic
attitudes surviving from the Middle Ages. 'We saw in Chapter 5
how both the Este and the Medici families took up in their
liveries the colours associated with the Theological Virtues. But
I have also shown the contingency and local character of systems
of medieval colour-symbolism, features long familiar in Renais¬
sance symbolism, where several different and conflicting ‘sys¬
tems’ were in place at the same time.-’'^ Lorenzo Valla’s attack on
the heraldic scheme of Bartolo of Sassoferrato and Rabelais’s on
that of Sicily Herald are signs that even contemporaries were
finding such symbolizing tedious. Several writers in sixteenth-
century Venice began to compare the various opinions and to
find that they had very little in common. In a series of dialogues
on love, where, of course, the expressive force of colours was
seen to play a vital role, Mario Equicola in 1525 admitted the
dampers of talkina; of colours at all, because of the differences in
ancient and modern terms and because different authorities gave
different equivalents for the colours of the elements or the
planets; worse, ‘the meanings of colours are somewhat different
among the Italians, the Spanish and the French’.Equicola
sought to resolve the problem by proposing that ‘variety’
shotilcf govern colour-juxtaposition, variety conceived in terms
of chemistry; those colours whose chemical constituents were
the same should not be put side by side. Another Venetian
writer of this period, Fulvio Pellegrini Morato, suggested more
significantly in a book on colour-symbolism that the eye should
be the only judge of colour-assortments, irrespective of mean¬
ing. He proposed grey (herettino) with tawny (leonato), yellow-
green with red or flesh-pink, blue (tiirchino) with orange,
maroon with dark green, black with white and white with
flesh-pink, which combinations should, above all, please the
eye. An assortment of colours according to their meaning, said
Morato, might even have a very disagreeable aesthetic effect.
 The tapestry-like meadow and the deployment ot neh studs and
precious ornament in Fra Angelico's AiiiuiihiiUioii suggest an attitude
to colour more medieval than Renaissance. Yet the numochrome
treatment ot the distant scene ot the hxpulsioii, which is sliown at
night, indicates that the painter was aware ot the more scientitic
approach to colour-vision which his collaborator Lorenzo CThiberti
was beginning to introduce into the discussion ot art.

88 Fra Angelico The AiiniiiiciiUio)i. c. 1434

I j 1
 The value of dyes
89 Attributed to Beni.detto di Bindo, Madouthi cj
HinnilitY and St Jerome translating’ the Gospel ojjohn,
Siena, c. 1400
90 Sassetta, St Francis renonneinc; his heritai^e.
1437/44
91 |an van Eyck, The I ’ir(;in with Chancellor Rolin,
c. 1437 (detail)
Since the brightest dyestuffs of the later Middle Ages were also
the most expensive, sometimes they had spiritual connotations. In the
left panel of the diptych (89) the Virgin Mary has been spinning
brightly coloured threads to be woven into the curtain ot the
Temple. All the colours of the threads were used at some time or
another to represent her costume. In the traditional Italian fashion she
IS dressed in a purplish-blue mantle, probably painted in the most
expensive pigment blue, ultramarine. In many of van Eyck’s
paintings such as this scene (91), where she is shown as Queen ot
Heaven, and described on the borcier of her mantle as ‘like a garden
of roses’, the Virgin is in red. Red was the most precious cloth in the
late Middle Ages, suitable to be worn by Fathers ot the Church such
as Jerome (89). "When St Francis renounces all his possessions for a lite
of poverty, they are represented by a red robe (90).

122
The joy of variety

In a canvas painted for Isabella d’liste,

Mantegna has followed Leon Battista Alberti's
advice that friezes of figures should be dressed
in contrasting ctilours to give the greatest
variety, including a good deal ot white to
make the other colours more joyful’.
{Oi'crlciiD

92 Andri .s M.snii UNA. Apollo iiiul ihc S'liic .\hises.

detail ot I’ortiossus, 1497

■1
BT By , u^ fl
mIL
■HA '>^ JH
Hys V
L-4# V
B ^.B
 93 Leonardo DA Vinci,

Ginei'ra dc’Benci, c. 1474

94 Michelangelo, lunette with Eleazar,

Sistine Chapel, Rome, c. 1510

93

The colour of drawing

It has been usual to contrast Florentine disegiio (drawing) and
Venetian colore (colour). Yet two of the greatest Florentine
draughtsmen, Leonardo and Michelangelo, were also snpireme, and
supremely diverse, colourists. Leonardo gave a tonal coherence to
foreground and landscape background in his p>ortrait of Giiievra
dc’Bciici (93) which surpassed his Netherlandish models (pi. 92), and
which depended on the same mastery of chiaroscuro that he showed
in his drawings (pi. 98). Michelangelo, who despised oil painting,
introduced an unprecedented range of colours into his frescoes in the
Sistme Chapel (94) and, as the recent cleaning has revealed, he
adopted at the same time a very bright palette which looks backward
to the Quattrocento, and an astonishing use of shot effects which
looks forward to Mannerism.

126
I
 The use of small colour-studies in the very
thorough preparation of altarpicccs such as
Barocci’s, as well as the adoption of the soft,
‘painterly’ medium of pastel in drawings (see
pi. too), suggests that by the second halt ot the
sixteenth century, at least in central Italy, the
traditional opposition ot disegiio and colore had
lost its force. It was, however, revived on a
more theoretical level by the French Academy
of the later seventeenth century and again in
France in the 1820s.

95 Federico Barocci, II Perdouo di Assisi. 1574/6

12S

It is iK)tablc that Morato's views were copied in tlie i S(')Os by
Lodovico Dolce, who was close to Titian.
In the early C)uattrocento the syinbohsni oTcolour, even in a
religious conte.xt, had begun to take on a very niateriahst
go iiiHectitin. One panel in Sassetta's series The Life of St L'roiicis. in
which the young saint is seen giving his cloak to a poor knight,
has allowed a modern coninientator to propose that the
ultramarine ot the garment would have given it special
symbolic resonance to contemporary observers.These obser¬
vers might well have been interested in the cloak of mid-blue,
with Its deep purple shadows, which might (or might not) have
been read as shot silk; but they vs’ould surely have been more
impressed by the rich wine-red gown that the saint did not give
away but kept to discard when on the eve of his religitnis career
he renounced his earthly hither. The investigation tif damage to
these red areas in both the panels has revealed that Sassetta
sought to enhance the brilliance of the fabric by grounding it
with a layer of silver leaf under the transparent crimson glaze.
The pious spectators might even have recalled that at an earlier
stage in his life Francis, tearing death, had thought it prudent to
dispose ot some supremely lu.xuriotis pannis scarlaticis at Foligno
and, although they would probably not have been aware of this,
the painter himself might have thought that the pigment he
used tor Francis’s dress, the insect dye kenties, was appropriate
precisely because it was the primary dye of scarlet cloth.For
scarlet w'as still by tar the most expensive cloth in fifteenth-
century Tuscany: in a Florentine dyers’ manual crimson
{eherinisi) was characterized as ‘the first and the highest and the
most important colour that we have’, so that it was specifically
cited in the Florentine sumptuary regulations of 1464.'^'^
Writing to her son in Naples not long after the painting of
Sassetta’s altarpiece, Alessandra Macinghi Strozzi, of the Fltrren-
tine patrician family, was delighted that her daughter had been
given tor an engagement present a waistcoat of crimson velvet,
which, she said, was ‘the most beautiful cloth in Florence’."^' On
the other hand, in Tuscany blue cloths were of very minor
importance, hardly worth mentioning, said the Florentine
manual, and could be dyed at nearly half the cost of crimson.
Similarly, the ultramarine which is lavisheci over the building in
Sassetta’s picture would surely have been read as an architectural
wash rather than as a precious pigment in the painting itself: we
have accounts of the wholesale painting of plastered walls and
vaults in the secular architecture of early Quattrocento Tuscany,
even in blue and golci; in a Bolognese text of the period there are
two recipes for cheap blues for walls.Although many among
Sassetta’s public will have themselves been patrons or donors
and known the cost of paintings and their materials, it is surely
more plausible to imagine that even they looked rather at the
subject of the picture than at its precious techniques.
In this sense the use of evidence from contracts is rather
misleading. Ifenaissance contracts were specialised legal docu¬
ments which, as they referred to materials and workmanship,
represented the interests of the commissioning patron in the face
of the professional artist, whose own interests were represented,
and whose production was regulated, by the guild.Not that
these interests were necessarily at odds: in fact the references to
materials in contracts echo the requirements of the guilds that
cheaper colours and so on were not to be substituted tor the
/)/s/ (.\f) \ I ksi s ( oil im
most valuable ones: the tourteemh-ienturs regul.itions ot
idorence, Siena and I'erugi.i, tor ex.imple. torb.ule substitutions
ot siKer tor gold, tin tor siKcr. .izurite tor ultram.irine blue,
indigo or other \egetable blues tor .izurite. imnium tor
vermilion: just the precious pigments which we tiiul stipul.ited
in Italian contracts well into the sixteenth centurs.-*^ lh.it
precious pigments such as gold, ultr.mianne and \ erimhon w ere
sometimes provided by the patron is suggested b\ .1 number ot
recorded cases not reterred to in contracts themselves. .A
document ot 14S9 suggests th.it while S.ino di Fietro was
working on a tresco ot the .Madonna begun In Sassetta in .1
gateway at Siena the town authorities had charge ot the gold
and ultramarine; twenty years Liter (ihirlandaio’s patron tor the
La.'it Slipper at Passignano noted in his account book that the
colours had been prinided by himself'*'’ A particularlv intrigu¬
ing case is that ot Francesco (ionzaga. Marquis of .Mantua in
1493, one ot whose agents in V'enice sent a batch of colours for
Mantegna by a ‘Master [iihi('.'7ri)| who makes ultramarine blue,
and other pertect colours: who comes to live and die 111 the
service of your Lordship’. Nothing more is known of the
colour-maker but it would surely ha\ e been quite extraordinary
to have one specifically attached to a court, even one so active in
artistic patronage as that of Mantua.'*'^ Fhe control of expensive
pigments by patrons may be interpreted as a bid for durability
but it also recalls the criticisms of Vitruvius and Pliny in
Antiquity {see p. 15) and may be read as an indication of a
patron-led taste at odds with that of the artists themselves.
Ihitrons and contracts might prescribe which materials were
to be used but they could not dictate how exactly they were to
be employed. A memorandum on Fra Angelico’s Liiioiuoli
Tabernacle in Florence stipulated ‘colours gold and blue and
silver of the best that can be found’ (and suggested that the
painter’s conscience might allow him to reduce the fee); but the
central figure of the Madonna in the main panel is in a very pale,
desaturated and now slightly greenish blue (Pazurite), whereas
her smaller self in the Adoration of the Mai^i below is in a saturated
and immediately recognizable ultramarine.'**^ Piero della
Francesca’s contract for the the S. Agostino altarpiece in
Sansepolcro in 1454 made the usual stipulations about ‘good and
fine colours’, gold and silver, but in one of the figures, the St
Michael - where we might well have expected a deployment ot
gold and silver similar to that in Filippo Lippi’s slightly later St
Michael - the golden armour has been painted in an Albertian
vein and gold is reserved exclusively for the saint’s halo.'*'* An
early fifteenth-century Sicilian contract suggests that a patron
might even seek to control this manner ot handling the precious
materials, so that they would be apparent to all spectators and
seen to be well up to the expected level ot display. In 1417
CPorardus de ChotFu was to paint for two patrons an altarpiece ot
the Virgin, which was to be executed
as well as he knows how to and is able to do it. with tine colours and
especially tine gold, fine ultramarine blue and tine lake. . . . with
used. Which colours, gold, blue and lake are to be used in .1 similar
way to those which are on a certain image in the chief
church at Palermo, on the altar tdrmerly constructed there by one
Master Florem de Cusario . .
Thus in the references to materials in contracts we are dealing
I2ij
 nisi (:\(> VI Nsi s (oi oui:
cs\cnti.ill\- w nil lc”:al com cntions; they were often regarded as
inessential, gist as references to standards of workmanship were
not in\ an.ihK' included in guild regulations. T'hey can hardly be
used as indications of .lesthetic or syinholic attitudes without
further qualification; the suggestion that they became less
prominent in the later Reiiaiss,ince is not borne out by the
documents. Andrea del Sarto's i s i s contract for the Madonna of
the Harpies required that the robe of the Virgin be painted with
ultram.irine blue of at least fi\-e broad florins the ounce, just as
two hundred \ e.irs earlier Pietro Lorenzetti’s gold used in the
altarpiece in the Pieve at Arezzo had to be 'at one hundred leaves
to the florin'; and the stipulation of i 320 that here the Virgin and
Cdiild and four of the other figures should employ 'select
Liltramanne blue’ was already interpreted by the painter in the
most liberal fashion, for the Virgin is not dressed in blue at all,
but in gold brocade.-'’^
Nothing suggests more that the religious colour-symbolism
of the Renaissance must be subsumed under a more secular
semiology of material value than this question ot the colour of
the Virgin’s robe, so often mentioned in Italian contracts in
terms of the most expensive grade of ultramarine. The heavenly
blue ot the Virgin’s mantle has indeed seemed a.xiomatic to
some twentieth-century commentators, just as it was to some
writers of the later Middle Ages, for the access to an understand¬
ing of her nature odered by colour. For the Catholic phenome-
nologist Hedwig Conrad-Martitis in the 1920s, Coethe’s asser¬
tion that blue was a ‘negation’ showed why the colour was
especially emblematic of Mary’s humility; wdrile tor a more
recent cultural historian the traditionally male connotation ot
the colour gives an insight into her 'fields of operation which are
above gender’ {iihcrgi'schlcchtliilicr Gcwalrenbcreiclu’).^- 'When
modern historians of art have encountered Mary in other than
this supposedly canonical colour, they have tried to argue it
away on technical or liturgical or expressive grouncis.^^ Yet it
was shown long ago that blue was tar troni common tor the
mantle in northern Europe before iqoo,^'^ and it was certainly
not invariable after that date. Perhaps the strongest tradition of
late medieval and Renaissance colour-usage is encapsulated 111 a
Sg small diptych attributed to the Sienese painter Benedetto di
Bindo, dating from about 1400. The Virgin has interrupted her
work to feed the Christ Child and has left on the table the
bobbins of coloured thread with which she has been occupieci;
white, vermilion and two nuances of blue. The darker blue is
that of her own mantle. The allusion is to that episode in her life
recorded in the Protoevanpitdiinn of Janies which we encountered
111 tourteenth-century Byzantium {sec Chapter i). Mary was
44 among the group ot virgins chosen to weave the curtain of the
Temple from gold, cotton or linen, hyacinth-blue, scarlet and
purple. They drew lots for who was to spin which colour and
the young Mary drew first the scarlet and then the purple; while
she was spinning at her house, the angel Gabriel visited her and
toretold the hirth of her Son.^^ As Benedetto di Bindo’s image
indicates, there was a direct link hetween the colours of the
Temple Curtain and those of the Virgin’s robes, for both Jewish
and Christian traditions attached great symbolic importance to
the colours ot that sacred drapery.For the first-century ad
Jewish writer Flavius Josephus Jcu’isli ll'ars V, v, 4) the curtain
was embleniatic ot the universe, with the colours symbolizing
130
the four elements: scarlet fire, white linen earth (because it was a
vegetable fibre), blue air and purple water (because it was
derived troni a shelltish).
These equivalents were taken up by many other writers in
Byzantium and the 'West, who brought turther attributes to
bear on this most resonant set ot tour colcaurs. Isidore ot Seville
{Hryinofo'^ies XIX, xxi, i-(S) added a widely influential mystical
interpretation: the blue signified heaven, the purple martyr¬
dom, the scarlet charity and the white linen chastity and purity.
Ill the twelfth century Hugh of St Victor related this double
exegesis to the material constituents ot man in the tour elements
and his spiritual side through the four cardinal virtues, wisdom,
justice, temperance and fortitude.Hugh also argued that
Mary’s role as Queen of Heaven made purple a particularly
appropriate colour for her and in the Byzantine tradition she
had often been robed in purple: when 111 the seventh century her
mantle was transferred for safe-keeping from the church at
Blachernae to Hagia Sophia, it was tound to be ot a miracu¬
lously imperishable purple wool.^*^ It was a Byzantine icon of
the Virgin and Child, dressed 111 a pale red robe and a blue
overniantle, which is said to have been the prototype tor this
coinbination of colours, so common in 'Western Europe from
the fourteenth century.In ultramarine, with its purplish cast -
si heflo I’iolante, as Ceiimno Ceiinim calls it (Exii) — and very high
price, 'Western painters found the perfect pigment equivalent of
Imperial purple, hence its use to serve this noble function in so
many versions ot the image ot the Madonna. Her second chosen
colour for the weaving of the Temple Curtain was scarlet,
which was very trecjuently used 111 comhination with the blue in
her dress. In The Netherlands 111 the fifteenth century, where
scarlet was by tar the most valuable dyestuff for textiles, the
Virgin was often clothed predominantly in this colour, which gi
because of the loose connotations of the Eatiii piirpnreiis {see
Chapter i) could itselt be read as purple without difficulty.
The Virgin’s companion in the Benedetto di Bindo diptych is Sg
St Jerome, occupied with his translation of St John’s Gospel into
Eatin. The saint is dressed as a cardinal and is thus depicted in
two very expensive varieties of red, vermilion for his hat and
crimson for his robe. 'Were Alberti to have described this image
to his literary friends in Eatin he might well have picked up the
distinction; among his own family he would probably have
been content with a single vernacular term for both.^^ On the
other hand, according to the tightly regulated dress codes of
official Venice in the High Renaissance — where, we are
surprised to learn, both scarlet and deep purplish pavonazzo
could be colours of mourning, black having been pre-empted
for other social functions — a nice perception of the difference
between a yellowish or a bluish red was essential to reading the
political signs. The guarciian of official orthodo.xy, the diarist
Marin Sanudo, was careful to note the colour of the Doge’s
costume and that of his Council: during the war crisis in 1509, he
saw on the important feast of Corpus Christi that Doge
Eoredan, during a campaign of austerity, continued to wear his
usual crimson velvet, while some of the senators wore scarlet
and others black or pavonazzo, according to the degree of
sorrow they wished to express.^- hike the theorist of colour
Morato, political commentators were having increasingly to
use their eyes.

In the history ot the ohieial dress ot tlie Roman Cduireli. tlie
distinctions in St Jerome’s costume were also far from tru ial.
Ihipe Innocent IV had decreed in tlie thirteenth century that his
cardinals should wear the red hat. the emblem of martyrdom
tor their faith, but their traditional purple robe was retained
until 1464. when Raul I allowed them to dress in scarlet. This
was a direct consequence of the closure of the Byzantine purple
trade after the Turkish conquest of 14S3 and the discovery of a
rich supply ot alum, an essential ingredient in k’cri/ic.s dyeing and
formerly imported from Turkey, in the Papal territories in
1462.Why then do so many painters of cardinals before I4(')4
give the robe the same colour as the hat or, as in our Sienese
example, a red which is only faintly purplish?^'* As we ha\ e seen
so often, the answer must be that our modern discrimination of
purple and red was still quite foreign to the early Renaissance
and that, as in the case of the Virgin’s robe, scarlet, purple and
the painter's vermilion, crimson lake, and ultramarine were
cognate colours, united in symbolic value by their beauty, rarity
and extraordinary cost.
'Flic iifipoytciiice of ijuitcricils
It is no surprise that the nuu’Stro of pigments who was bringing a
batch to Mantegna in 1493 came from Venice, for Venice in the
Renaissance was the great emporium of artists’ colours, not least
the ultramarine blue which came from Budakshan (in what is
now Afghanistan) and hence from ‘beyond the sea’, as opposed
to azurite or ‘Clerman blue’, which was imported from northern
or central Europe.^'’ Patrons knew that if they wanted the best
materials they might have to bear the extra cost of fetching
them from Venice, and contracts sometimes allowed for this
cost. Thus Filippino Lippi’s contract for frescoing the Strozzi
C'hapel at Sta Maria Novella in Florence (14S7) included a
provision that some of the fee should be kept in hand for when
‘he wants to go to Venice’; Pinturicchio’s contract for the
extensive series of frescoes in the Piccolomini Library at .Siena
(1502), which were to be painted ‘with gold, ultramarine azure,
green glazes and other colours as are in accordance with the fee’,
also allowed for 200 gold ducats to be paid at the outset ‘in
Venice to buy gold and necessary colours’.
Venice, besides selling the raw materials, was also a manufac¬
turer of the processed pigments ready for use.^^ But here it had a
rival in Florence, where the lay confraternity of the (iesuati in
the Cionvent of S. (liusto alle Mura made a particular speciality
of the highest quality lapis lazuli and azurite blues.It would be
hard to overestimate the importance of this increasing specializ¬
ation in the manufacture and sale of artists’ materials, for it went
hand in hand with the growing independence ot artists as a class
and the shift in emphasis from workshop and guild to academy
for their training during the course ot the sixteenth century.
Even Cienmni had avoided detailing the various and compli¬
cated recipes for artificial vermilion made from mercury and
sulphur, saying that if he wanted them, the painter could make
friends with /run' (xl), by whom he may well have meant the
Florentine (iesuati.'’'^ Leonardo da Vinci, whose notebooks give
ample evidence of an active interest in the chemistry of painting
materials, was also a patron of the confraternity: his contract for
97 the unfniished AdoriUioii of (he Moi’i includes the unusual
Ill'll (.\- > \ I Hsl s ( ( 1/ ( )h‘l
condition that he should get his n>lours tri>m them. ' B\ tlu'
middle ol the sixteenth centurs the priu i ssing nt r.iw pignuaits
into paints must ha\e become \ery r.ire in the p'.unters’ studu-s.
even 111 \'emce: a painter from the X’eneto. P.mlo Pln^^ m his
/)i<i/oyu(' oil PiiiiKiiix’ 'is4‘'' wrote Ciintemptu.HisK th.it he
would not go into the nature of the s.irioiis colours which, he
said, es eryone knew . .iiul e\ en those w ho sold them knew how
to use them in pictures. Beauts, s.iid Pino, did not me.in
ultramarine .it sixts- sduh the ounce, nor .1 be.iuiitul lake, colours
which are just as be.uititul in the box as m the painting.''
Specialization was partis a function of the iiu re.isingls
sophisticated technology of paint-manufacture, most notice.ible
in the des elopment of oil painting in the fifteenth centurs. for
svhich the purification of oils and the distillation of spirits for
thinners required skills and app.ir.itiis not usualls found in the
artists’ ss'orkshops. Mere again the (Iesuati shosved th.it thes'
svere able to supply the needs of a des eloping fashion.'- I he
vast contribution of consers ationists to the studs of' historical
techniques in the lyyos and Sos has at last laid to rest the pleasant,
surprisingly unis-ersal, story of the ‘discovers’ of oil painting bs
Jan van Eyck. Oils had been used in the making of paintings for
stmie centuries: Urso of Salerno, a doctor, gave tosvards the
close ot the tsvelfth century svhat may be the first account of the
distinct techniques ot oil and egg-tempera, mixed ss ith the juice
ot tig-shoots.What seems to have happened in the fourteenth
and titteenth centuries is that these tsvo methods became more
and more mixed, so that ssell iiitti the sixteenth centurs- in Italv
it has sometimes proved very ditticiilt to identifs- precisels’ the
medium of a given svork.~'^ What Van Eyck brought to the 41, 10
technique svas essentially a complicated method of glazing
transparent colours over a light ground and about the precise
origins of this refinement there is still little agreement. It has
been pointed out that Van Eyck had associations ss ith painting
on glass,and it is also clear that several of his contemporaries
also painted sculpture, svhere a traditional technique of glazing
such transparent colours as red and green over gold or sils er leaf
svas also svell developed.Another technique related to the
nesv oil methods is painting on a tine canvas {I'iichleiii) svith thin
paints bound in glue and svater. svhich svas much used in Flie
Netherlands in the early fifteenth century. We may svell
imagine that the painters, including Van Eyck, ss lm used this
method might have ss ished to transfer the very thin layers and
continuous modelling, svhich depended on a fluid medium, to
the more durable and more expressise context of panel
painting.That they svere able to do this depended on their
development ofdistilled thinners (svhich are, hosvever. docum¬
ented in Fhe Netherlands from the early fourteenth century).'''
Whatever the origins of the nesv Netherlandish method, its
consequences svere vast. The smotnh, Jess el-like surfaces of Van
Eyck and his supremely refined detail could easily be transfor¬
med — by thickening the oil, by adding resins and by making the
complicated palette-mixtures that ssere nosv permissible
because each particle of pigment ss as locked into an envelope of
oil svhich protected it from the chemical action of its neighbours
- into the combination of broad impasto and subtle glazing
svhich first deveUiped in Venice in the sixteenth century. Most /j
importantly, in the nesv capacity for the ilhisiomstic treatment
of detail, as ss ell as the durability of the medium as opposed to
•} I
m.'^l CM) \ I KSl'S COI Oltl
Workshop ofTaddco (kiddi, Prcsciilatioii of the \ 'irfiiii. after 1330. The use of a
toned ground (as here) was already traditional in Tuscan drawing before the
htteentli century, and the sense ot cohesion it could provide was soon to be
exploited in oil painting. (96)
the colours, oil technique slowly led to that devaluation of
pigments as indicators ot worth in painting, reflecteci in the
scathing remarks of Pino and Dolce. Yet although this was
originally a Netherlandish development, it was in Italy that it
first made its aesthetic mark.
The new Flemish methods first came into Italy in the 1430s
and 40s in the work of Filippo Lippi in Florence and Antonello
da Messina in Naples.That it had already become quite a
widespread but also very e.xpensive practice by the 1450s is
suggested by a document referring to the painting of the
refectory at S. Miniato al Monte outside Florence by Andrea del
Castagno and Paolo Uccello. In February 1454 they were paid
an extra ten florins for their work, done, in the event, in oil
‘which they were not obliged to do’.*'’ Not long after this in
Milan, the architect Antonio Averlino (Filarete) gave the first
substantial account of oil painting in any language, citing Van
Eyck and Van der Weyden, from whose Milanese pupil Zanetto
Bugatti he may have learned the details. The technique, said
Filarete, could be used on panel or on wall and the ground
might be of any colour, including white (hiacca):
132
Then on top of this put as it were with a white shadow [uiia otnbra di
bianco], whatever you want to do. that is. give form to figures or
buildings or animals or trees, or something [else] that you have to
do. with this white [/niia'ii|, which should he finely ground. And so
should all the other colours be finely ground, and each time you
should let them dry well, so that they combine \s’incorpori\ well
with each other.
Forms should be made with white and shadows with any
colour, ‘and then with a light touch give them a thin coat with
the colour you have to cover them.’*'
The reference to the thin layers of fnely ground pigments
suggests that Filarete had been well informed about Netherlan-
dish procedures but what is most striking about this account is
its prescribing w'hite drawing on coloured grounds, tor this does
not correspond to northern practice but was used, tor example,
by Uccello in oil painting in these years.The recommend¬
ations remind us of central Italian techniques of drawing as they
had developed since the fourteenth century. Drawdng, often in
silverpoint, with a good deal of white heightening on a toned g6
paper, was a method which became one of the best-knowm
graphic techniques in the Italian Renaissance and was practised
by Uccello himself.** The importance of the tinted ground is
that it established the tonal unity of the image from the start;
when Vasari came to discuss the various methods of drawing a
century later he wrote:
Other drawings in light and shade arc executed on tinted paper
which gives a middle shade; the pen marks the outlines, that is the
contour or profile, and afterwards half-tone or shade is given with
ink mixed with a little water which produces a delicate tint: further,
with a fine brush dipped in white lead mixed wfith gum, the high
lights are added. This method is very pictorial and best shows the
scheme of coloring [c qnesto ntodo c niolto alia pitloresca e mostra pin
I’ordine del ro/onfo].®'*
Uccello’s sense of colour was no less conceptual than his sense
of linear space; he liked sharp contours and bright contrasts
which work against the sense of an overall tonal unity; but when
married to a feeling for perceptual coherence and to a method of
working from nature this technical device of the nnd-toned
ground was able to work a revolution in the understanding of
tonal relationships within the picture. The technique of drawing
on toned paper was, 111 fact, especially developed among
Florentine painters such as Filippino Lippi and Ghirlandaio, for
whom the close study of nature was a primary concern. This
concern was not confined to Italy. Diirer was no stranger to the
blandishments of‘the most beautiful colours’, when it came to
persuading a patron to increase his fee.** As an outdoor sketcher
he saw at the same time that the function of colour was to match
the tones of nature; in the only fragment of his treatise on
painting to have survived {see Chapter 2) — the passage on
drapery painting — he argued for a tonal unity which avoided
both the extremes of light and dark and the extremes of colour-
contrast 111 shot materials: the sort of broad and unified effects
we see 111 the Apostles (1526).*'’ Diirer’s great German contem¬
porary, the sculptor Tilinan Riemenschneider, was also intro¬
ducing a conception ot overall tonal unity into wood sculpture
in these years, by abandoning the traditional polychroniy and

'colDuring' particular areas of his rchcf-altarpiccos with a [.'.(\’(/i>| ot thiN IS that it you put a tr.tiisp.irent blue gl.iss. v>r green,
repertory of graphic marks loosely related to the new tonal
eoinentioiis o( eiigras ing that were developing in (‘.eriiianv at
this time, iiotahK' iii the h.iiuls ot Htirer. I lie now tr.igmeiiteii
and dispersed Miimierstadt Altar of the earl\- 1490s.
Riemeiisehneider's first large-scale work and the earliest mono¬
chromatic altar 111 (ierniany, caused such a scandal th.it 111
response to parish pressure it was painted by another sculptor.
Veit Stoss, early in the sixteenth centnrs A"
So monochrome, and the related downgr.iding ot the
inherent values ot nnnuHinlated colours, had become a centr.il
part ot the \ isual experience ot Western Europe by 1 sOO. I he
theorist ot this development, as well as its most distinguished
exponent in painting was Leonardo da Vinci.
Lcofhirdo (la I 'iiici
In Leonardo the prejudices ot Vitruvius and Pliny against
extravagant colouring and the developing practices of the
Quattrocento towards a more coherent and lower-toned
harmony ot the picture-surtace came together in the most
commanding and influential of painterly styles. Lhe study of a
wide range ot medieval writers on optics had brought him into
touch with many ideas about the supremacy of light; it is bv no
means clear why he turned so decisively against them — perhaps
out ot a well attested spirit ot rivalry and a belief in the
importance of novelty”^ — but turn against them he did. lie
translated the pretace to Pecham’s Pvrspcctiva CAVunimiis
(1269/79) w^here, ‘Among all the studies of natural causes and
reasons, light most delights the contemplators’; but when in the
opening passage ot his book Pechani wrote that ‘when the eye
sees bright lights, it surfers greatly and endures pain’ (I, i.i),
Leonardo softened this to ‘the sight when seeing light surfers
somewhat’.”'^ Light as a subjective effect was already losing its
power. Leonardo’s reading in his medieval sources, particularly
Alhazen, Bacon, Witelo and Pecham, brought him into touch
with a range of problems in physiological optics and much of his
work may be seen, like Clhiberti’s, as an attempt to test, refine
and extend these issues by reference to his own experience of
nature, which was vast.
His approach is well illustrated by his treatment of the blue
colour of the sky. Medieval scholars had argued that it w'as due
to the mixture of white air with the darkness of space. The
thirteenth-century Tuscan encyclopaedist Ristoro d’Arezzo, for
example, had drawn his explanation from an experience of art:
‘Although according to the learned the sky ought not to have
any colour, let us see the reason why it seems a blue colour.
Learned painters who use colours, when they want to simulate
|a))/rrij/<jr(’| blue colour, put two opposite colours together, the
light and the dark, and from this mixture results blue colour.’
The same was true of deep water and of the different blues of the
sky by day and by night: ‘And because it is the nature of the dark
and the light, when they mix together, to produce blue colour,
accordingly learned painters who use the mixture of colours, . . .
when they want to simulate a light blue put in more of the light,
and when they want to simulate a dark blue they put in more of
the dark.’ The sky cannot be blue because of blue vapours, said
Ristoro. because then the stars would seem blue, ‘And the proof
lUsi (. N( ) \ 1 HSI s ? f 1/ ■ ih'l
or red. or another colour |between sou ,uid the nbjeiti wni
wouKI see them ot th.it cidour. and espen.ills it sou see (M1 the
other side |ot the glass| things ss itli .1 light colour.’ 1 he blue sks
ss itli ss hite st.irs, Ristoro l onclui-ied. ‘seems more noble .uul
deliglutul to the eye than .ms other tolours'.''" 1 ei'ii.irdo’s
.iccount incorpor.iteil seser.il ot these uft'.is but his .ippro.ich to
the problem ssms quite ditlerent. In the (.'i'(/c.v I 1 1 sot) (;)
he ss rote:
I s.iy tli.it the blueness ss e see in the .itinospliere is not iiurinsie
colour, but IS c.uised by ss.irni s.ipoiir es.ipor.ited in iniiuite .ind
insensible .itonis on ssliicli the sol.ir r.iss t.ill. reiulering them
luminous ag.unst the intinue i.i.irkness ot the tiers sphere ss Inch lies
beyond .uul includes it. .^lul this m.is be seen, .is I s.iss- it. bs .ms- one
going up .Monboso, ,1 pe.ik ot the .Mps ss huh siis uie 1 r.nice trom
Italy . . . There I s.isv abos e me the d.irk skv. and the sun as it fell on
the mountain svas far brighter here than 111 the plains beloss,
because a smaller extent of atmosphere lay betss een the summit sit’
the mountain and the sun. .Again as an illustration ot the colour ot
the atmosphere I ss ill mention the smoke ot okl aiul drs ssoiui.
svliich as it comes out ot a chimney, appears to turn s ers blue, svhen
seen betsseen the eye and the dark distance, but as it rises, and
comes betss een the eye and the bright atmosphere, it at tnice shosvs
an ashy colour \icncri\i;iiolo\', and this happens because it lui longer
has darkness beyond it, but this bright and luminous space. If the
smoke is from young, green ss'ood, it svill not appear blue, because
not being transparent and being full of superabundant moisture, it
has the effect of condensed clouds svliich take distinct lights and
shadosvs like a solid body. The same occurs ss ith the .itmosphere.
svliich sshen overcharged ssith moisture appears sshite. and the
small amount of heated moisture makes it dark, of a dark blue
colour; and this svill suffice us so tar as concerns the colour ot the
atmosphere; though it might be added that, if this transparent blue
svere the natural colour of the atmosphere, it ss'ould tolkisv that
svherever a larger mass of air inters’ened betss een the eye and the
element of fire, the azure colour svould be more intense; as sve see m
blue glass and in sapphires, ss hich are darker in proportion as they
are larger. 15ut the atmosphere in such circumstances behaves in an
opposite manner, inasmuch as svhere a greater quantity of it lies
betsseen the eye and the sphere of fire, it appears much sshiter. This
occurs tosvards the horizon. And the less the extent of atmosphere
betsseen the eye and the sphere of fire, the deeper is the blue colour,
as may be seen es'en on losv plains. I lence it folloss s. as 1 say, that the
atmosphere assumes this azure hue bs’ reastm of the particles of
moisture svliich catch the rays of the sun. Again, sve may note the
difference in particles ot dust, or particles ot smoke, in the sunbeams
admitted through holes into a dark chamber, svhen the former ss ill
look ashy [cci/crcol and the thin smoke ssill appe.ir of a most
beautiful blue; and it may be seen again in the dark shadosvs of
dist.mt mountains svhen the air betss een the eye and those shadosvs
svill look very blue, svhile the brightest p.irts of those mountains
svill not differ much trom their true colour. But it anv one svishes
for a final proof let him paint a board ss ith various colours, anumg
them an intense black; and over all let him lay a vers thin and
transparent ss hite. 1 le ss ill then see that this tr.msparent ss hue ss ill
nosvhere shoss a more beautiful blue than over the black but it
must be very thin and finely grotind.’''
/J/s/ (,\( I \ I KM S COIOlil
This wide-ranging discussion introduces a number ot recurrent
themes in Leonardo’s investigation ot nature: the importance ot
mountains for the study of aerial perspective; the fascination
with smoke, that traditional pre-occupation of the Quattro¬
cento artist concerned with tonal modelling, but here brought
into the realm of colour;'^- and the wish to test ideas about the
natural world by experiments in painting. Where Ristoro put
painting betore the study ot nature at large — and was content
with one or two experiments - Leonardo only arrived at it after
a long series ot examples and then in a way which suggests that
he had not really attempted the experiment. The creation of a
beautitul blue-grey by overlaying a white ground with transpa¬
rent black had long been known in the studio - it was to be used
by Titian, tor example in the sash ot Tarqtiin in the late Tdrqiiiii
and Liicrctia in Cambridge‘-'-^ - but the reverse procedure, white
over black, was far more problematic, not least because of the
ditiiculty ot tmdiiig a uear-transparent white. The white-lead
(hiacca) specitied by Leonardo is a particularly deuse and
LU
The unhmshed oil painting of 14.S1 {AdoriUioii
of the and pen and wash sketch ofc. 147S
{The Madoiinit and Child with cal) show how
remarkably similar Leonardo’s drawing and
early painting procedures could be in the use
ofbroad tonal areas of light and dark. (97,98)
covering w'hite; and one modern scholar who has repeated the
painter's ‘experiment’ has found it to result only in ‘unpleasant
greys with a greenish cast’.^^*^
Leonardo’s handling of the problem of the blue colour of the
sky IS characteristic ot the obstacles presented to the student
anxious to understand Leonardo’s attitudes to colour: an
abundance ot graphic but disparate examples strung together
without pause and wuthout a clearly articulated theme. It seems
to be empiricism run mad. Leonardo’s notes, although they
were clearly intended to torm the raw material ot one or more
publications, are repetitive and sometimes contradictory, and
this is not the place to enter into the many intractable problems
of dating and interpretation which they present.Ldere 1 can
only indicate some of the mam issues in the painter’s approach to
colour and attempt to relate his theory to his extraordinary
practice.
Lerhaps the most immediately impressive feature of
Leonardo’s view ot colour in both theory and practice is his re-

valuation ot darkness. 1 showed in the eontext ot mosaie and
again ot stained glass how darkness eaine to have a positive,
inystieal value in the earlier .Middle Ages and that this was
largely the result ot a partieular reading of Fseudo-1 )ion\ sius.
I he revival ot interest in the l)ionysian eorpus in the Italian
Renaissanee. with new translations by Ainbrogio 'I'ras'ersari (a
scholar in touch with (ihiberti) in the 1430s and by Marsiho
Fdcino in 1490, might simply have reinforced the exoteric links
between this theology and the metaphysics of light. Yet there is
some reason to suppose that in painterly circles at least, after
I >00, the negative and mystical elements of his doctrine re¬
asserted themselves. Fra Bartolommeo’s i s i s Mddoinhi della
Misericordia places a dark cloud immediately below the figure of
Cdirist in a way which is both I )ionysian and in the spirit of the
Sy painter’s mentor, .Savonarolaf^'’ Fra Bartolommeo was also one
ot the first to adopt Letmardo’s new principles ot structural
chiaroscuro. Leonardo may not have been aware of, or
interested in, the Dionysian mystical theology but there is no
doubt that he conceived of darkness in a far from passive way:
‘Shadow is of greater power than light [/iuncI’, he wrote about
1492, ‘in that it can impede and entirely deprive bodies of light
and the light can never chase away all the shadows of bodies.
Me planned to write seven books on the taxonomy of shadow,
notes for several of which have survived. What was perhaps of
the greatest practical importance for painting was his distinction
between shadow {oinhra) and darkness {tcnchre), for he argued
that shadow stood between light and darkness and it could
either be infinitely dark or have an infinite degree of absence ot
darkness.Where the medieval metaphysics of light reejuired a
plurality of types of light and was amplified by the Neo-
Rlatonist Ficino, who held colour to be ‘opaque light’ and in his
twelve-tone scale ot colour troin light to dark included tour
tones at the light end,‘^‘^ Leonardo posited an intinite scale ot
shades. In a note of about i sOcS he berated contemporary
painters who ‘give to all shaded \ iiitiiscarc\ objects — trees, fields,
hair, beards and furs — four degrees ot darkness in each colour
they use: that is to say first a dark foundation, secondly a spot of
colour somewhat resembling the form of the details, thirdly a
somewhat brighter and more defined portion, fourthly the
lights which are more conspicuous than the other parts of the
figures; still to me it appears that these gradations are infinite
upon a contimuuis surface which is in itself infinitely divisible.’
And he went on tti give a mathematical proof of this
proposition.'"*’ This concept of the infinity of shadows forms
the philostiphical underpinning of Leonardo’s sjuiiiato, that
method of infinitely subtle gradation of tone for which he
developed a number of new graphic media and techniques. The
late sixteenth-century report of Ltimazzo attributed to him a
new type of soft pastel, which he used to study the heads of
Cdirist and the Apostles in the Last Supper in drawings, none of
which have survived although others in soft red chalk have.'*”
A very large-scale drawing such as the cartoon of the Madoiiiia
and Child with St Ainie uses charcoal and probably chalk, as
white chalk heightening, and there seems to be a good deal ot
smudging with the fingers in the heads.Cdinservatiiin has
revealed fnigerwork in a nuinber of Leonardo’s paintings, too.
Qt from the early Aniiuneiatioii and Cinevra de’ Beuei, to the late,
London, version of the Madonna of the Rocks: the tine texture of
nisi (.\( > \ 1 Ksi \ ( 11/ (ih'i
the fingertips prosuled the subtlest me.ins nt in,iking the
nuances that l.eonardo resiuired in modelling .iiul. In ,1 sort >'l
symp.ithetic magic 111 the h.indhng, tr.iiismitted smiie ot its nn n
softness tti the painted flesh."”
Frue to the Florentine tr.uhtioiis di' the C^u.ittrocento.
Leonardo made use both tit tiiuetl p.iper tor his dr.iwmgs. e\en
tin the scale tit the Ltiiultin t.irttitiii. .iiul .iKti the .ill-tner tu
partial underpainting tit'btuli wall .iiui p.ineK in tme tir nitire
darkish ttines."” .As he wrtue tit tlr.iwing in his Ireatne I'li
Raintiiu^, ‘ Lti draw tibjects m rehet. p.iinters shtuiltl st.iin the
surface tit the paper with .1 tint ih.it is methuni d.irk. .iiul then
put tin the darkest sh.ides, and tln.illy the princip.il lights in little
sptits, which are thtise first hist tti the e\ e at .1 slun t thst.ince.’
Ntithing denitinstrates nitire clearK the tiverruhng rtile tit sh.ule
in Letinardti’s ctinceptuin tit the making tit an image; e\ en w hen
he began w ith a light grtuind, as in ni.iin th aw mgs, tir 111 the tnl-
paintings which he had barely begun, such .is the . Idoration tir
the St Jerome, he seems tti sipieeze his hiiiued lights sKiw Iv tint tit
a matrix tit darkness.
Letinardti has been regarded as the lather tit chiartiscurti but
this technical ctnicept dties iitit appear as such in his written
works, e.xcept in the Treatise, where it is describetl as .1 science tit
great imptirtance {di i^ran discorso). It may well be that the ule.i.
which became current in Italy tiiilv in the 1 s20s, was interpti-
lated intti his luites by the edittirs tit the Treatise in the ttilltnving
decades."’" It sti, his failure tti think in terms tit a specific
concept which might be set beside disej^ino and colore ctiuLI well
be due tti a ctiminuing ambiguity in his attitude ttiwards ctiltiur.
which is exemplified in his use tit the term hello, tir ‘beautitul’.
It has long been rectignized that in stiine ctintexts Letinardti’s
hello simply had the connotatitin of‘light’ or ‘bright’."’’’' (ireen
might thus be made nuire hello by adding yelltiw; the light sky
near the horizon is nnire hella than at the zenith; it ctiltiurs are set
in a luminous space they will have the more helle:::a the nuire
the light has s/i/cni/tirc.This may be nti nuire than the surs ival
of the exoteric Dionysian aesthetic but, as another section ot the
Treatise demonstrates, it had important consequences tor the
handling of ctilour:
Which nuance |p,irte] 0/ one and the same hue shows it.selj as more
beautiful in painliipi
1 lere we must note that the degree of the same colour th.it looks
more beautiful in nature is cither that which has the lustre, or that
which has the highlight, or that w liich has the mid-tone, or that
which has the true transparent shadows l.wiirc rero in iraraspareniia
(.uV)]. Here we must understand wliich colour we need, since
ditferent colours have their beauties in dirierent v.ilues ot
themselves; and this shows us that black has its he.mty in tlie
shadows and white in tlie light .ind blue and green .ind t.iw ny in the
mid-tones, and yellow and red in the lights and goLl in reriectioiis
aiul lake in the mid-tones."’*'
1 lere Leonardo was setting up a model ot beauty in colouring
which depended on a tonal or value scale in which red was
close to light — and which it would have been especially ditlicult
to translate into painting while gi\ ing due attention to rehet. In
an earlv note (1492), subsequently incorporated into the
Treatise. Letmardo had argued that ‘You should invest your
figures with the brightest colours you can, since it you m.ike

Mariotto Albcrtinclli, The Aiiniiiniaiioii. 1506-10. Striving to enhance the
ehiaoseuro in his altarpiece, Albertinelli developed a new and torcetnl white,
although he ruined the painterly qualities ot the work with constant revision.
(yy)
them of a elark colour they will be of little relief and little in
evidence trom afar ... if you make a vestment dark there will be
little difference between light and shadow, but in the bright
colours there is great variety.’^And in some disparaging
remarks about paints, which look forward to the Venetian
attitudes of the sixteenth century, he asked:
Which is ot greater importance: that the form should abound in
beautiful colours, or display high relief? Only painting presents a
marvel to those who contemplate it, because it makes that which is
not seem to be in relief and to project from the walls; but colours
honour only those who manufacture them, for in them there is no
cause tor wonder except their beauty, and their beauty is not to the
credit ot the painter, but of him who has made them. A subject can
be dressed in ugly colours and still astound those who contemplate
it. because of the illusion of relief.' ^ ^
I have quoted enough to suggest that Leonardo tound himselt
facing a dilemma in respect of beauty, which he came to teel
must be sacrificed in the interest ot relief. Yet it seems that he
saw this sacrifice chiefly in terms ot dress, where he was also able
to deploy, at least in a minor way, those harmonious contrasts
which he identified in colour-pairs, such as the yellow and blue
of the Virgin’s robe and its lining in the early Madonna oj the Pink
or the London Madonna of the Rocks. These swags of sculptur¬
esque and rather random drapery, although they clearly
originated in Netherlandish art, were used tor purely abstract
effect and it is not surprising that from the 1470s onwards several
workshops in Florence, notably Verrocchio's, where Leonardo
trained, made a particular study of elaborate draperies as an
exercise in the handling of light and shade.**- Leonardo’s
dangerously experimental techniques of painting have deprived
us of any certainty that we see his works as he saw them: The
‘rosy and pearly tints’ which Vasari’s informant described in the
Mona Lisa have long since fled, although the overall tonality ot
this picture may perhaps be guessed trom the recently cleaned
workshop version of St John the Baptist in Milan. * *^
Leonardo’s belief in illusion, in the capacity ot painting to
render precisely the effects of nature, has a degree ot fanaticism
without precedent. In the Treatise he argued that, when
working outdoors, the painter should compare his colours
directly with those of his subject, ‘so that the colour you make
may coincide with the natural colour’, by holding samples
painted on paper against the real scene. **'^ His brilliant
observations of the effects of colour in shadow and in reflection
and the powerful impressions of colour-contrast have led some
commentators to think forward to Impressionism:
If you see a woman dressed in white in the midst of a landscape, that
side which is towards the sun is bright in colour, so much so that in
some portions it will dazzle the eyes like the sun itself; and the side
which is towards the atmosphere, - luminous through being
interwoven with the sun’s rays and penetrated by them — since the
atmosphere itself is blue, that side of the woman’s figure will appear
steeped in blue. If the surface of the ground about her be meadows
and if she be standing between a field lighted up by the sun and the
sun Itself, you will see every portion of those folds which are
towards the meadow tinged by the reflected rays with the colour of
that meadow . . .^*-‘’
We seem to be looking at a Renoir of the 1870s. But Leonardo
introduced such examples only to discount them; what con¬
cerned him was what he called the ‘true’ colour of objects,
unmodified by environmental reflections, whose effect, he said,
might be ‘very ugly’.**^ Similarly, strong contrasts ot tone,
which made things ‘ambiguous or confused’ to the painter,
were to be avoided. * *^ Just as Alberti had advised against the use
ot tonal extremes, so Leonardo now recommended an even,
subdued lighting for the painter, especially for portraits. He
should paint the walls of a courtyard black and cover it with a
lined awning to diffuse the light, ‘Or when you want to take a
portrait do it in dull weather, or as evening falls, making the
sitter stand with his back to one of the walls of the courtyard.
Note in the streets, as evening falls, the faces of the men and
women, and when the weather is dull, what softness and
delicacy you may perceive 111 them.’****

In order to bo able tet match his perceptions Leonartlo
experimented with complicated pigment mixtures and witli
new sorts ot oil and turpentine media, with the disastrous
consequences so evident in the List Supper.But he had
already programmed himself for disaster by an attitude which
sought to reconcile the irreconcilable demands of hue and of
^7 tone. We do not know why the Acioriitioii and St Jerome were
abandoned at such an early stage; Leonardo was already buying
some expensive pigments for the former in i qS i but he does not
seem to have used them and seems rather to have been
attempting to create colour through overlaid glazes.’-" We
may imagine that Leonardo struggled with this painting rather
as, thirty years later, Fra Bartlommeo’s assistant Mariotto
gg Albertinelli struggled with his .■\nuuuciiUiou which, though
signed and delivered, is now an over-worked ruin, both in the
lights and in the darks. Vasari reported how the painter tried to
reconcile softness (dolcezza) and force:
This work was undone and re-done by Mariotto several times
before he could bring it to completion, switching the colour from
light to dark, now more lively and fiery, now less, but he could get
no satisfaction from it; and because his hand did not seem to have
earned out the idea in his mind, he wanted to find a white more
powerful [/icrc)| than lead-white, so he set himself to purify it so as
to be able to carry the light even beyond [the value ot] the main
lights in his own way. Nevertheless, since he was not able to
execute what his genius envisaged, he rested content with what he
had done ...
Albertinelli’s patrons, the Compagnia di .S. Zenobi, were not
happy with the result but they were overruled by a committee
ot assessors made up of painters.’-’
Juggling with tonalities was perhaps the logical consequence
ot an emphasis on matching the precise tones of nature in the
painting, an emphasis so marked that what is apparently only a
Sy large drawing in oils. Fra Bartolommeo’s Pala della SJ^iuoria,
could be accepted for display on an altar.”’- This was the
apotheosis of disei^iio but, as I have tried to show, it w'as disej;iiio
with a colouristic background and colouristic force.
I \'ncti(iii colour iti the sixteenth century
When in the sixteenth century the criticism of Titian’s style
polarized the debate of disej^no versus colore, the Florentine
master of drawing was seen to be not Leonardo but Michelan¬
gelo. I’he cleaning of the frescoes of the Sistine CTdling and the
less controversial cleaning of the Dotii Tondo in Florence have
gg revealed Michelangelo to be a colourist of unsuspected origin¬
ality and power, fully in command of a highly saturated palette
in some respects close to that of the mid-Quattrocento. We can
no longer be surprised that one of his first acts on receiving the
commission to decorate the Sistine Clhapel in i 50(S was to send
for some ‘beautiful blues’ to the Clesuati in Florence.It is a
palette and a manner of painting, too, that makes Michelangelo
far more the forerunner of the sharp Mannerist colourists,
Andrea del .Sarto, Pontormo, Bronzino and even Rosso
Fiorentino in the 1510s and 1520s, than he seemed before the
cleaning. This is the sort of colourism to which 1 itian’s
supporter Lodovico Dolce might have been alluding when in a
nisi (.\i I \ I V ( 1 1/ . )A'/
letter ot about i 551; he eontr.i'-ted ,i Sta ( ait nmi .■( th> \ ■•n>‘ti.m
master with
th.it di\'ersit\ ot colours ubub mosi g.miti.rs uow.ui.U' .itti. t r-
tbcir works, wliuh. quite .ip.irt from our knov\.ing tb.it thev .u,
used to give rebel to the figures .iiui ple.oe tiu e\es ot tlu leiioi.mt.
.ire .ilso outside the bound ot [srob.ibilits l'>r it is not vUt.ii
perh.ips ne\er tli.it you see nu-n ot in.m\ liss-ries
together, so th.it some .ire clothed in red, others m \ e]lo\\, others m
purple others in blue .ind still others m green.'
In the dialogue on p.nnting u hu h I )olce published ,it this time,
he looked at drapery p.nnting in more detail, echoing Leon.irdo
and Paolo Pino:
Let no one think th.u the power ot colour consists m the choue ot
beautitul colours, like be.uitiful lakes, beautiful blues, beautiful
greens and so on, since these colours .ire gist .is be.uuitul u itliout
being set to work, but rather it consists in know iiig how to handle
them appropriately. [Some painters] don't know how to inmate
the dirterent nuances ot'cloth. but put the colours on fulK’ s.itur.ited
as they stand, so that in their works there is nothing to pr.nse but the
colours.'-'’
Another critic in Dolce's circle. Pietro .’\retino. had alreadv
compared such crude palettes tti those of the mimaturists who
could paint nothing but strawberries and snails, or mutate veh et
and belt-buckles, using the pretty colours of stained glass.It
is something ot an irony that Titian himself asked .Aretino in
1548 to procure him half a pound of lake ‘so fierv and splendid
in its madder colour that by the side of it the crimson of velvet
and silk become less beautiful'.’-”
'Lhe requirement of Venetian colore was thus colour not in the
sense of bright hues and sharp contrasts but rather a particularK'
rich and resonant handling of the brush. Pmo argued that the
skiltul painter should be able to substitute one colour tor
another anti still achieve the required etiect. ’-" But this was also
a matching tunction to be achieved by mixture,and the
mixtures ot the Venetian oil-painters ot the sixteenth century
Titian chief among them were unprecedentedly complex.' ” 14
The soft shadowing of Leonardo, especially on the face, was
introduced into Venice around 1505 by (iiovanm Bellini m his
altarpiece in .Sta Zaccaria and by Cliorgione 111 his great
altarpiece at (iastelfranco. All this helped to lower the overall
key and chromaticity of the picture, a tendency increased by the
use of tinted grounds of the sort we have seen in Florence, both
in drawing and in oil painting.’-’- The palette ot the sixteenth-
century Venetian painters was scarcely distinguishable from
that used in the fifteenth century but the thickening ot the
medium, the development of impasto and the acceptance ot
mixtures were signs that the painter's handling was now the
chief object tif admiration to the connoisseur. Lliis notion ot
conspicuous handling had also devekiped from the practice and
appreciation of drawing.
During the course of the sixteenth century the dispute
between disec^iio and colore took on the character ot an
intellectual exercise in the growing number ot more or less
official art academies, the first of which, the Florentine
Accadeniia di Disegno, was tounded in i s^'i.t and attracted the
interest even of the leading Venetian artists, who w ere .inxious
D'7
 DI^ICSO VI.HSUS COLOlU
to loin. The ainbiguicics in the notion of disci^no between a
repertory oh graphic techniques, a capacity to rencier a three-
dimensional N'oluine on a two-dimensional surface by means of
these teclimques and the ability to visualize and execute an idea
in graphic form became inextricably interwoven, providing
food for discussion in and among these academies for several
centuries. The rather less crucial ambiguities between colore as
the chromatic embellishment of the picture and the tonal
arrangement of a composition were less fully explored, since
colorc was regarded, for reasons which we have seen cieveloped
essentially in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as at best a
secondary consideration,
rhe later si.xteenth century refinement of these ideas may be
illuminated best by the work of a painter who brought drawing
and painting together more closely than any other, a painter
neither from Florence nor Venice, but from the Marches,
ps Federico Barocci. Barocci’s exceptionally careful method is
attested both by his early biographer Bellori and by many
surviving sequences of work. After Barocci had settleci on a
subject he made life-studies m charcoal, chalk and frequently
100 pastel, a medium he had made particularly his own, although
Bellori claimed that he had been stimulated by the pastels of
Correggio, none of which are now known. Then Barocci made
mcidels of the individual figures in clay or wax, draped
according to their role in the composition, followed by a
chiaroscuro study of the whole arrangement in oil or gouache,
from w'hich a full-size cartoon was made in charcoal and
powdereci gesso or pastels. This cartoon was transferred to the
Fcdcrigo ffarocci, pastel study for the head of St Francis in the
Penloiio di Assisi, (pi. y6). (100)
I3<S
primed canvas. Then the painter made a small coloured
‘cartoon' in oil, in order to work out the colour-relationships,
‘so that all the colours should be concordant and unified among
themselves without hurting each other, and he said that just as
the melody of voices delights the hearing, so the sight is
entertained by the consonance of coloursjoined to the harmony
of the linear composition. And so he called painting music.’
Finally Barocci painted the large canvas on which he blocked
out the general colour-areas using a soft pastel-hke palette and a
melting sfinimto very close to the first pastel and oil studies from
the life.^'^"^ Flis was perhaps the first working procedure in
painting to emphasize equally drawing ancf colour, ’ although
it is notable that even he made his ‘inventions', the chiaroscuro
compositional sketches, before the colour ‘cartoons’. Neverthe¬
less we are not far from the seventeenth century and from El
Greco, whose colour has a great deal in common with Barocci’s
and who confessed in an interview a few years before his death
in 1614 that colouring was far more difficult than drawing, and
that Michelangelo ‘was a fine chap but did not know hcaw to
paint’. El Greco had of course been active in Venice and was
here echoing Venetian opinion. Among painters in that city in
the late sixteenth century the practice of ‘drawing’ sketches in
oils became a very standard one. The Venetian Marcantonio
Bassetti, working in Rome in the early years of the seventeenth
century, described how his ‘academy’ there, which used brush
and ‘colon’ to make studies from the life, was seen by his Roman
friends to be very much ‘alia veneziana’, but they agreed with
him that ‘inasmuch as you draw, you also paint’.
 8 • The Peacock’s Tail
Colour iudiCiUors ■ Leonardo on alehcniy ■ Alchetnieal yenderiny in fan van Lyek
Alclieiny in the Si.<ti)ie Chapel ■ Spiritual metaphors in nietalluryy
Pale, and Black, wyth talcc C'itrinc. unparfyt Whyte c'v Red.
Rekocks tethers in ctdnr gay, the Raynbow whych shall overgne
The sptHtyd Batuher wyth the Lynn greene, the ('renvys hyll bine
as lede;
These shall appere before the parfyt Whyte, & many other nine
Colctrs, and after the parfyt Whyt. Clrey, and falce C'itrine also;
And after all thys shall appere the bind Red invaryable.
Then hast thou a Medcyn of the thyrd order of hys owne kynde
Multyplycable.'
This bunoi.k of colour-images from a fifteenth-century poem
by Sir Cleorge Ripley indicates one area of experience where a
precise identification of colours was always indispensable: in the
practice of alchemy, for from the earliest times in Hellenistic
Egypt, it was closely intertwined with colour-technology.
Alchemy began, it seems, with the many changes in the
superficial appearance of metals and dyes in their working, that
is, with technology — although modern studies of the earliest
literature of this technology (the collections of recipes in papyri
at Stockholm and Leyden) have suggested that even at this stage
much of it was ideal desk-exercise rather than practical
laboratory experiment.- The notion of alchemy as charlatanry
has persisted, even among those historians ot science who have
seen in it the prelude to modern chemistry; one of the more
entertaining attacks on alchemy by such a historian is an essay by
(ieorge Sarton, ‘Ancient Alchemy and Abstract Art’, in which
both are seen as ‘a treasure ot nonsense available to every
irrational endeavour’.-’ Nowadays we might be inclined to
substitute economists tor abstract artists and invoke the occult
power of the market.
When in the twelfth century Hellenistic alchemy reached the
Latin West, largely through translations of Arabic versions,'* it
was not at first looked upon w ith any suspicion; indeed many ot
its concepts, based as they were on Aristotelian categories such
as the four elements, were in no way unorthodox. As early as the
tenth century the bishop-artist .Saint Bernward ot Hildesheim,
who had some reputation as an alchemist, had made a pair ot
large candlesticks that an inscription describes as made without
gold or silver, although modern analysis has shown them to be
largely silver-gilt."’ Ikit the technological hubris of the early
experimenters is well exemplified in the thirteenth century by-
Roger Bacon’s Opus I'erthun, where he stated categorically that
‘Alchemy is operative and practical; it teaches how to make
noble metals and colours and many other things better and
more abundantly by artifice than they are made by nature.’^ It
was this sort of attitude which brought upon Bacon the censure
of the Cdiurch. I'he reference to colours is crucial, since one of
the most ancient examples of the manufactured pigment was
artificial vermilion made from sulphur itirei .uui mercurs
(water), two substances considered to be the b.isic components
ol all metals.'^ The making ot \ermihon m,i\ help iis to
understand w h\' gold w as equated with red in the alchetnic.il
process.’*
I'he arrogance of the alchemists m the face of nature, coupled
with their usually selt-ser\ing concentration on the most
precious metals and dyes, led them increasingly, during the
ctnirse of the thirteenth century, to be outlawed by the Cdiurch.
In response they developed a far more hermetic approach to
their art: they plundered both the metaphorical language of
Cihristianity and the specialized terminology ot her.ildry in
order to shroud their operations in mysters ". they tell into the
secretix e habit of foisting their literature tmto respected religi¬
ous and scientitic authorities such as St d lumias Aquinas and
Albertus Magnus.** This spiritualization ot alchemy in the later
Middle Ages has made the practice of great interest to modern
psychologists in search of archetypal imagery, notably the
school of Jung, several of whose publications still provide the
fullest overview of the later alchemical tradition.'*’ It also otters
an insight into the attraction of alchemy to many artists, from
Bernward of Hildesheim in the tenth century to Marcel
Duchamp, Marc Chagall and Max Beckmann in the
twentieth.''
In our context, the great tascination in alchemy, however,
was that its adepts daily held in their hands the materials ttir
making the colour-changes which were essential to completing
the alchemical Creat Work, the Philosophers’ Stone which
could transmute base metals into gold. As early as the thirteenth
century it was recognized that wxirkers with the materials ot
nature could be divided into those who, like painters and
sculptors, generated extrinsic forms because they dealt with
secondary qualities such as colour, and those like physicians and
agriculturalists, who generated the forms ot nature from the
inside by acting on the four primary qualities, hot, cold, wet and
dry.'- But the process of transformation could still be moni¬
tored only by observing changes in surface appearance, w Inch
were largely changes in colour. 1 have already shown how in the
manufacture of stained glass and the dyeing of cloth, colour-
changes in the course of the same lengthy process could be
expkiited for the production ot different coloured materials;
conversely, in the seventeenth century the chemist Robert
Boyle’s development ot standard colour-indicators tor acids and
alkalis (for example, our litmus paper) was able to draw on the
experience of colour-technologists in the arts.' '
From the earliest times a colour-sequence was wen to be
essential to understanding transmutation but. .is we shoiikl by
now expect, the establishing ot such a sequence was not a
 I )il I>t A( ( )( K'S I All

straighttcM'ward matter. The oldest versiem. in writings attri¬

buted to the (hiostic Zosinuis, of the third or tourth century Ai),
started with black and proceeded through white to yellow and
violet, stages which were given the names inclaiiosis (blacken¬
ing), leukosis (whitening), xanthosis (yellowing) and iosis (trans¬
forming to violet). In the Latin alchemical tradition yellow
was dropped ind the final stage was changed from violet
(originallv representing purple?) to red. The sequence also
became far more complicated and by the iourteenth century
had embraced further hues and more indeterminate terms such
as grey and the ‘rainbow' or ‘peacock’s tail’, which was applied
to the shimmering irridescent surtace ot the heating metal. Thus
a fourteenth-century treatise by Simeon of Cologne reported
black as the putrehiction of the base metal; followed by red, but
not the ‘true red’ because it turns yellow; then green ‘which is its
soul’ {auiitia)-, then peacock-colour (‘know that almost all
colours, which today prevail in the world and which may be
devised, appear before the white’); then ‘true white’ in which
red is hidden, but between true white and true red is a certain
ash-grey colour, which is not to be despised; and finally the
‘crowned king, red’ {rex diadeuiate riiheo).^^ The validity of these
observations and categories is not in question here, although
they survived in the same form until the development of
modern chemistry in the eighteenth century,^*’ What is more
interesting in the colours of transmutation is their falling into a
dynamic senes which might give insights into colour-
relationships and that, in a particularly vivid way, they
represented colours inherent in black or white. As Simeon of
Cologne put it: ‘know that white is hidden in blackness’.
The dynamic of colour-change could issue in a picture of
colour as in a natural sequence, like that of the rainbow'-
spectrum: already in the thirteenth century it was suggested that
this sequence might be visualized as a circle. Albertus Magnus
The Peacock, symbol of immortality, from Gregory the Great, Moralia in Job,
wrote of the metals that, since they are similar m essence and
written and illuminated by the Spanish monk Florentius in 945. (101)
differ only in their form, ‘one may pass easily from one to
another, following a circle’.In the sixteenth century a
follow'd' of Paracelsus, the most important alchemical writer of Christian church the bird was frequently depicted on textiles as
the Renaissance, devised what is perhaps the first colour- well as in sculpture and mosaic because it was a symbol of
diagram based on a segmented circle: Hieronymus Reusner’s incorruptibility and immortality, shedding and renewing its
itys image of the White (silver) Queen as an ‘imperfect thing’ serves magnificent tail-feathers every year. A seventh-century
as a prelude to the perfection of the Red (gold) King: Byzantine writer underlined the physical beauty of the bird’s
varied colouring:
What made me white, that makes me red. The w'hite and the red
come out of the same root. This thing transforms [uerkelirt] a How could anyone who see the peacock not be amazed at the gold
thousand parts of quicksilver into the purest, clearest silver . . . interwoven with sapphire, at the purple and emerald-green
Now, my dearest, you have learned how to make the white, and it feathers, at the composition of the colors of many patterns, all
IS time to talk of the red. But if you do not make the white first you mingled together but not confused with one another? . . . Once
cannot make the true red happen or become, since none can go again, w'hence comes the beautiful peacock? The bird is refulgent
from the first to the third without its happening through the other, and star-like in aspect, clad in purple plumage, because of which,
and you cannot go from the black to the yellow except through the boastful and' arrogant in its appearance, it streams alone through all
white alone because the yellow is made up of much white and a of the other birds. This purple has twined patterns on the bird
proportion ot the purest black; thus w'hiten or make white the without its tail, and has mixed a plentiful stream of many colors.
black and make the white red, and you have mastery.^®
One of the fullest accounts of the ‘peacock’s tail’ stage of the
Implicit in this movement is the notion that the ‘root’ of all the alchemical process is in an alchemical notebook of New'ton, in
colours IS the same; here the most potent metaphor was the which he described how he mixed a ‘star regulus’ of antimony,
peacock’s tail w'hich, like the rainbow', represented the totality prepareci with iron, silver, common mercury and a little gold;
of colours. We saw' how the early ‘shot’ fabrics of Hellenistic this, by a lengthy and complicated process, w'otild produce a
Egypt w'ere described in terms of the peacock and in the early mercury capable of dissolving all metals, especially gold.

140

[ know whereof ! write, tor I have in the tire manit'old glasses with
gold and this mercury. F-or they grow in these glasses in the form of
a tree, and by a continued circulation [analogous to the peacock's
semi-circular tail] the trees are dissolved again with the work into
new mercury. I have such a vessel in the fire with gold thus
dissolved, where the gold was visibly not dissolved through a
corrosive of atoms, but extrinsically and intrinsically into a
mercury as living and mobile as any mercury foaind in the world.
For it makes gold begin to swell, to be swollen, and to putrefy, and
also to spring forth into sprouts and branches, changing colours
daily, the appearances of which fascinate me every day.-'*
Among the (Inostics of the second century ad, so much of
whose thought fed into tlie theory of alchemy, the idea of sucli
an array of peacock colours emerging from a single white egg
was the supreme mystery, analogous to Clod's bringing out the
many from the one.-* We may recall that m a contemporary
Coptic Clospel, his son achieved the reverse miracle, by
extracting one coltmr from the many {see p. 64). The presence of
all colours in potentia in white was expressed perhaps most
clearly in one of the many treatises attributed to Albertus
Magnus and published in an extensive seventeenth-century
anthology of alchemical texts:
All colours that can be conceived by men in the world appear there
[in white[ and then they will be fixed and complete the Work in a
single colour, that is the white, and in that all colours come
together. The whitening is namely the beginning and the strength
and will not be changed further into various colours, except the
red, in which the final goal lies. The becoming grey however
appears in the blue- and red-making and is not called a colour.-^
Since Newton acquired this text in 1669, during the early stages
of his work on the nature of colours, it may not he too fanciful
to suggest that his crucial and revolutionary concept of the
presence of all colours in white light, independently of the
modification of this light by darkness (as earlier theories had
required), owed something to his wide experience of the theory
and practice of alchemy.
Leonardo on alchcniy
In one of the earliest novels about the life of an artist, the
C'lcrman Romantic writer Ludwig Tieck sent his hero, Franz
Sternbald, to Florence where he met the sculptor friend of
Leonardo da Vinci, Giovan Francesco Rustici. Rustici was also
an alchemist and in conversation with him the young Sternbald
mused that everything must needs be transtornied into gold in
the hands of the artist, so why not metals?-^We should not
project Tieck’s high Romantic view of the artist’s calling back
into the period he was describing, although indeed it had some
of its origins there; we should also remember that Leonardo was
one of the most outspoken critics of alchemy in the Renaissance.
Leonardo’s attack depended on a fervent belief 111 the supremacy
of nature which,
is concerned with the production of elementary things. Hut man
from these elementary things produces an infinite number of
compounds; although he is unable to create any element except
another life like himself that is, in his children.
I HI I’l \( ( )( K 's I All
flld alchemist\ will be my uitncNve'', who base ne\er either in
chance or b\ experiment Micceeded m creating the Mn.illest element
which can be created b\ nature; however the ire.itors of
ctmipounds deserve unmeasured pr.iise for the usefulness ot the
things invented for the use of nieii. and w ould deserv e it ev en more
if they had not been the inventors ot noxious things like poisons and
other similar things which destrvn life or mind . .Moreover, bv
much study and experiment thev .ire seeking to ^re.ite not the
meanest of Nature's products, but the iiuist excellent, nanielv gold,
true son of the sun. inasmuch .is of .ill created things it h.is most
resemblance to the sun . . . .^nd if gross av.irice must driv e v ou into
such error, why do you not go to the mines vv here N.iture produves
such gold, and there become her disciple' She will in f.iith cure vou
of your ftilly, showing you th.it nothing which vou use in vour
furnace will be among any of the things vv Inch she uses in order to
produce this gold. Here there is no cjuicksilv er. no sulphur ot .mv
kind, no fire or other heat than that of Nature giving life to tsur
world; and she will show you the veins of the gold spreading
through the lapis or ultramarine blue, whose colour is unatlected by
the power ot the tire.
And examine well this ramification tsf the gold and you will see
that the extremities are continuously expanding in slow
movement, transmuting into gold whatever they touch; and note
that therein is a living organism which it is not in your power to
produce.-^
It was ot little iiiiportance to Leonardo in tins fanciful account
that he had never seen a vein of lapis lazuli and that the 'gold' he
described here was the particles of iron pyrites which are usuallv
found mingled with the stone.
Leonardo’s polemic has been dated to about i soN sti it is
perhaps no accident that during a period spent in Florence at tins
time he was lodging with Rustici, who was soon to devote a
good deal of time, as Vasari put it, 'trying to congeal mercurv’,
that is, practising alchemy.-'’ Among Leonardo’s notes on
metallurgy are a recipe for a ‘varnish’ (Ppatina) and an account
ot a mould expressed in alchemical language which may well
relate to Ins friendship with the sculptor. Gne of them reads:
The mould [sasjomaj may be of Venus (copper), or of Jupiter (tin)
and Saturn (lead), and frequentiv thrown back into its mother's lap.
And It should be worked vv ith fine [ | and what is moulded should
be of Venus and Jupiter impasted over Venus. Hut first you should
try Venus and Mercury mixed with Jupiter and make sure the
Mercury disperses. Then fold them well in together so that Venus
and Jupiter shall be allied as thinly as possible.-'^
Although in these recipes Leonardo’s use ot a specialist
language and a hermetic style sliows that he had access to
alchemical sources, it would be tinrealistic to assume that
alchemical ideas were the preserve of specialists at tins time.
Vasari records, for example, how the painter went to Rome in
1513 to see the new Medici Hope, Leo X. who was a devotee ot
alchemy and other occult sciences, and for whom he made some
amusing toys.-” The Medici had a long record ot sharing these
interests, going back at least to Gosimo il Vecclno, ttir whom
Marsilio Ficino made a translation ot a work attributed tti the
ancient Magus Hermes I rismegistus and who was himselt the
author of an alchemical treatise.-*' Martin Schaflner’s homely
141
 nil I'l ACI )( K'S I All
104 xAsiiui nt the 1 IcavcnK' Universe is a eheertiil reminder that the
ak'henucal notion ot oeeiilt correspondences among planets,
elements, htimonrs, seasons, colours and so on '*’ was a com¬
monplace oh aristocratic and c\'en bourgeois Europe by the
earl\- sixteenth century. For the remainder ot this chapter 1 shall
look at ,1 number ol'wa^'s in which it was manitested in a quite
unspecialized torm in the work ot some artists whose connec¬
tions with alchemy are well documented. The link is essentially
between a concern tor technical experiment and an tinderstand-
ing ot'the symbolic content ot alchemical ideas.
Alcliciiiicdl /// Jan nan Eyck
The earliest written account ot the art ot'Jan van Eyck to have
come down to us is that of by the Italian humanist
Bartolomeo Fazio, historian and secretary to Altonso V ot
Naples. In praising ‘the leading painter of our time’, Fazio
emphasized, predictably perhaps for a scholar, that he was not
unlettered since Eyck was taniiliar with geometry and ‘is
thought to have discovered many things about the properties ot
colours recorded by the ancients, and learned by him troiii
reading Pliny and other authors'.-" The notion ot an artist
learned in the theory of his craft seems convincing, although we
know little or nothing of the ‘authors’ who might have come his
way. But the collection ot technical manuscripts gathered
together by the French scholar Jehan le Begue in 143 i may give
us some idea of what was known in Van Eyck’s time in the
north. Some of the recipes in Le i3egue’s collection, in a
manuscript dated 1409, used the names of planets to reter to
metals, as we have seen in Leonardo, and the compiler provided
a key, lest they should not be understood by the layman.^-
Whatever the technical literature (apart from Pliny) that Van
Eyck consulted, the clearest evidence of his familiarity with the
metaphysics of the alchemists is in his portrait Giovanni Arnolfini
and Cjiovanna Ccnaini. To a painting that has been the subject of
numerous iconographical analyses I hesitate to add yet another
reading.But it seems to me that any understanding of its
symbolism must depend upon its visual coherence, which is
based on its stability of format, solemnity of mood and
symmetry of composition. The two protagonists stand on either
side of a central axis, established at the top of the picture by the
round mirror and at the bottom by the little dog (?Fido); then-
respective attributes are also carefully arranged on either side.
Giovanni Arnolfim (if it be he) has the outdoor light through
the window on his side, the light from the Paradise-garden
‘eastwarci in Eden’, since we can see the orange-trees beyond and
their truit on ledge and chest.-''’' On her side Giovanna Cenami
(it It be she) has domesticity: the bedroom and the brush with
which it is swept and dusted hanging from the carved figure of a
temale saint overcoming a dragon on the chair.Both husband
and wite - for this is a marriage-portrait — have jewelry.
Giovanni has a string ot amber beads hanging by the mirror,
Giovanna a double necklace of pearls. This jewelry is perhaps
the best introduction to the nature of a third level of
interpretation in Van Eyck’s painting, besides its status as a
realistic picture of the betrothed in their home and its role as
representing a sacrament, by the inclusion of the Passion of
Ghrist in the scenes around the central mirror.-'^ The third.
142
perhaps most fundamental, level concerns the gendering ot the
elements and the presentation of the mysterious union ot fire
and water.
In a very lengthy account of amber in the Natnral History
(XXXVIl, xi, 3t)-si), to which Fazio reterred, Pliny reported
that the Greeks called it electron, from their term tor the sun.
Elector, ‘the shining one’; he went c-)n to cite the opinion ot a
Greek writer, Nicias, that it was produced by moisture trom the
sun's rays in the evening and washed westwards by the ocean to
the shores of Germany. Pliny would have none ot this, arguing
rightly that amber was a hardened pine-resin, but he did agree
about the association with fire, since rubbing brought out its
‘hot spirit’ {caloris aninia), which had the power to attract, and it
was very easy for it to catch tire. Lie also reported the opinions
of one Gallistratus that when taken powdered as a medicine or
carried as an amulet amber served to remedy attacks ot madness
{lyinpliationes, from lytnplia, ‘water’) and problems with the
urine - probably by sympathy with the clear and the yellow.
One variety, chryselectnini or ‘gold-amber’, said Gallistratus, was
highly inflammable but could cure fevers when worn as an
amulet or necklace, and if powdered and mi.xed with other
substances, including honey, and a resin tamihar to painters,
mastic, could cure affections of the stomach and ears and weak
sight. The best amber, Pliny helci, was the dull yellow (/i//!'/(.s’)
variety, transparent but not too fiery: ‘not a fiery glow, but a
j mere suggestican of it, is what we admire in amber’. Best ot all
was that sort which looked most like white Falernian wine,
quite transparent and glowing gently. This seems to correspond
very well with what we see in Van Eyck’s picture, where the
i transparent beads pick up and concentrate the light from the
■w'indow; it establishes their identity as emblematic ot heat and
light.
Pliny was tar less circumstantial about pearls (IX, hv, 107-9),
although he retold a number of anecdc-ites about their prodigi-
j Otis value in the Roman world. He accepted the view that pearls
1 are produced in oysters filled with a ‘dewy pregnancy’ and that
their colour depends upon the complexion of the sky. Since
sunlight IS apt to give them an unpleasant reddish tan, deep-sea
pearls are the most brilliant because they are out ot reach ot the
sun’s rays.-'*' Thus the pearl is emblematic of water,
i The idea of the marriage of man and wife as a marriage of tire
and Avater takes us to what may have been the most important
key to the elemental reading of the Arnolfini marriage-portrait:
Its painted trame ot matt gilt with marbled shutters, which
seems to have been destroyed by fire in the eighteenth century.
This frame was decorated not only with the arms ot an early
owner, Don Diego de Guevara, but also, according to an
inventory of 1700, with a verse of Ovid which stated how the
man and the woman in the painting ‘were linked to each
other’.-''' The frequent use of often long and complicated
inscriptions on Van Eyck’s surviving frames makes it more than
j probable that this one was original anci that it was essential to
' the understanding ot the scene. A vague reterence to Ovici may
be a rather slender peg on which to hang an interpretation, but
there are in Ovid at least twe-) accounts of ‘marriage’ which
would fit the theme rather well. The first is in that most popular
ot his poems in the later Middle Ages, the Metaniorplioses (I,
I 430-3):

(Jiiippc ilhi iciupcricin siimpsi'rf itmoripn- idlorijiii',
(^oiicipiiini, cl iih his oriiiiiiiir iiincui liiiohiis,
(hiiihjiic sil ii^iiis iiqtiac /xiijN.i.v, rapor iiiiiiihis oiiuics
Res crctil, cl (hsiors coiicorcliit fclihus apui csi.
(‘fxir whon moisture and heat unite, life is eoneeis ed, and from
these two sources all living things spring. And. though fire and
water are naturally at enmity, still heat and moisture produce all
things, and this inharmonious harmony is fitted to the growth
of life.' [trails. Miller]). In his verse treatise on Roman religious
festivals, the Ihisti {I-'cslit’al ('alcndar IV, 7.S5-90), Ovid applied
this scientific view of the creation to the ritual of Rinnan
marriage, in which the couple touched fire and water on the
threshold of their new home:
An, ijitia ctiuihiniin comraria scini}ia rcnini
Stinl duo discordcs, i}^nis ci undo, dci,
lunxcruni clcnicnla panes opiuinquc puioruni
Iqnihus cl sparsa lanqcrc corpus aquae?
.^/l, quod in his vilac causa csl, hacc pcrdidii c.xul,
His novaJil coniunx, hacc duo nuurna puiani?
('Are we to suppose that, because all things are composed of
opposite principles, fire and water, - those two discordant
deities — theretore our fathers did conjoin these elements and
thought meet to touch the body with fire and sprinkled water?
C')r did they deem these two important because they contain the
source ot life, the exile loses the use of them, and by them the
bride is made a wife?' (trans FrazerEither or both these
quotations, extracted or combined, could have provided an
appropriate epigraph for Van Eyck's picture.
As it happens, Chs id's Mctainorphoscs was cited as an import¬
ant repository ot alchemical lore in one ot the several
tourteenth-century attempts to rationalize and spiritualize
alchemy, the l^rctiosa Marqarita \ovclla of Retrus Bonus of
Ferrara, written about 1330.'^' A chapter of this treatise is
devoted to the alchemical notion of male and female and to the
generative powers ot cold and wet in conjunction with hot and
dry."^' Besides Ovid and Virgil, Moses, David and Solomon
were cited as alchemical authorities, as was St John the
Evangelist who, according to Itonus, completed the unfinished
alchemical writings of Plato, for alchemy was 'above nature,
and is divine'. Bonus's book was, in effect, a sustained attempt to
reconcile alchemy with Cihristianity, since Clod is the prime
alchemist and his son the Philosophers’ Stone itselt: Bonus cited
the Persian writer al-Razi (Rhazes) that heat and dryness destroy
cold and wetness 'by divine reason’.'^'’ The identification ot
Cdirist as the Stone and of the cycle of his Passion as the process
of the (ireat Work gives a new force to the ten scenes around the
mirror in Van Eyck’s picture, from his night in the Darden ot
Dethseniane at the bottom to his Drucitixion at the top and
down again to the Resurrection. I he mirror, like the (Ireat
Work, is a speculum humanae salvatioiiisA'^
It is important to emphasize that the imagery of alchemy in
the Arnolfmi portrait was in no way unorthodox or esoteric: it
was in tune with that late medieval tendency in alchemy to
legitimize the art by assimilating it to the prevailing scientific
and religious systems. Van Eyck would have been especially
implicated because of his search for new painterly materials;
I III t'l \( IK K's I All
what is most nnmediatel\ striking about its etlci t 111 his picture i-
not the detailed use ot imagery but the effect on his iulour.
(iiovanm .Arnoltmi. .is befits .1 merch.mt of I lu <. .1. is w e.iring
a black bea\er h.it .iiul .1 bl.ick dress, stockings ,md shoes: the
sign, according to C'ourtois iSiciK Heraldi, ot' dignits .iiui
loy.ilty 111 merch.mts.'*'' t)\ er this sombre dress he w i .irs .1 tur-
trimmed ileep-purple surio.it, which seems, e\ en 111 its presi'iit
rather degraded state, to glow with some inner tire. Phis h.is
been identified w ith the It.ihan chlaniys tpurple clo.ik) and irosiiia
(tur clo.ik) prescribed tor marn.ige ceremonies.But purple, ot
course, had its own sigmtic.mce: Dourtois referred it to
'abundance ot goods', citing Dhrist's purple robe presers ed .it
Argenteuil, which grew as he did. Follow ing Isidore of Ses ille,
Dourtois also characterized purple as 'piiritN and light', 'for it
grows naturally in those countries of the world which the sun
illuminates most'. I he noblest scarlet is d\ ed purple and violet
as well as red, he said; and it may w ell be th.it it is tine scarlet ot'
(Ihent that Arnolfmi is we.iring in his house 111 neighbouring
Bruges. It was a colour between red and black but closer to red;
it was thus, like amber, a sign of light and heat,
(hovanna Denami wears a blue dress covered with a green
cloak lined with white fur. Blue, according to Ciourtois. stood
tor loyalty, triendship. nourishment and childhood, as well as
tor a sanguine temperament; it is a colour between water and air
but closer to air than to water. As is appropriate to Van Evek's
purpose, green shows the youthful beauties of spring in nature;
it was also, says Ciourtois, created by heat in matter half-way
between moist and dry but closer to moist. Among the Seven
Sacraments, he added, it represented the Sacrament of Mar¬
riage.Thus Van Eyck, the Arnolfmis and any well-informed
fifteenth-century spectator will have been able to extract some
very rich resonances even from the paired colours of the
costumes in this painting. Fhe overall impression must have
been that a bourgeois marriage was also, on an elemental level, a
coming-together of water and fire.‘^‘^ The painter and his
subjects must have been disappointed that such an over¬
determined union was not, in the event, to be productive of
children;'’" but the merchant Arnolfmi (for whom, incidentally,
alchemy was prohibited-'’') had ways at least of multiplying
gold.
Alchemy hi the Sisthie (Ampel
Van Eyck’s adoption ot alchemical notions in the Arnolfmi
portrait was, insofar as such a comprehensive philosophy could
be casual, distinctly understated. In Italy during the Renaissance,
on the other hand, there were artists who made no secret ot their
aspiration towards the most material rewards of the alchemical
quest. One such was the Florentine C?osimo Rosselli, a painter ot
mediocre talents called to high things. In his essentially hostile
biography Vasari mentioned that Rosselli spent his all in pursuit
of alchemy, with the usual lack of success,^- but another story,
which became one of the most famous in the whole ot art-
historical writing in Italy, suggests that some aspects ot Rosselh’s
alchemical outlook did indeed survive to make him a kiiul ot
dubious fortune.
Vasari described how the painter and his assistants Ihero di
Cosimo, ('ihirlandaio, IRitticelli and Perugino were commis-
143
 I HI t'l A(.()( K'S TAII
CoMiiui Rossclli was derided tor lavishing preeioiis pigments and even gold on
the frescoes commissioned for the Sistine tihapel (r. 14?' i)- That he did so may
reflect his interest in alchemy, tor Moses (seen here condemning the merely
material gold of the (lolden Calf) was widely regarded during the Middle
Ages and the Renaissance as a great alchemist. (102)
Stoned in 1481 by Pope Sixtus IV to decorate the walls of his new
chapel in the Vatican with ten scenes from the Life ot Moses and
102 the Life of Christ. Rossclli was oiven three scenes but because of
Ghirlandaio’s absence in Florence during 1482 he took on a
fourth, making him the most employed artist of the group. The
surviving contract for this work is unusual in that it stipulates
only that the murals should be painted ‘very diligently and truly
anc4 as well as they and any ot their assistants can do it and as it
was begun’.There was no reference to materials, but Vasari
wrote that the Pope was said to have proposed a prize for what
he judged to be the best work, and
Cosinio, tccling hinisclt to be weak in invention and cirawing, tried
to hide his detect by covering the wcark with the finest ultramarine
blues and other bright colours, and by highlighting his subject with
much gold, so that there was neither tree nor grass, nor drapery nor
cloud that was not highlighted, believing that the Pope, who
understood little of this art, would thus award him the prize . . .
When the work was unveiled, the others laughed at it, but the
joke was finally on them,
because those colours, as Cosimo had imagined, immediately so
dazzled the eyes caf the Pope, who did not understanci much about
such things, although he delighted greatly in them, that he thought
Cosimo had done much better than all the others. And so, when he
had awarded the prize to him, he ordered the others to cover their
pictures with the best blues that they could find, and to touch them
up with gold, so that they should be similar to Cosinio’s both in
colouring and in richness.
There are some difficulties about accepting this scathing
anecdote at face-value, since it is clear that the other painters did
not ruin their scenes with overpainting as Vasari claimed.
Ghirlandaio’s Calling oj Peter and Andrew, for e.xample, exhibits
very little gold at all, although it might have been that he did not
come back from Florence to finish it. Expensive gilded
144
decorations were, in any case, a sort of Vatican convention: they
were used by Fra Angelico for his frescoes in the Chapel of
Nicholas V in the 1440s, and in the 1490s they were even more
conspicuous 111 the gilt relief of Pintuncchio’s decorations for
the Borgia apartments, designed to appeal, as Vasari again
complained, to people who understood little of that art.^^
Rosselli had already used a good deal of bright colour and gold
in his two or three figures of the Popes between the windows of
the Sistine Chapel and it has been proposed that Sixtus was so
pleased with these that he took Cosimo away from that task and
gave him the lion’s share of the major new series underneath.
What seems clear is that the two Rosselli subjects in which an
unusual pairing of subjects suggests the direct intervention of
Sixtus in the programme, the Moses Gining the Law and the
Sermon on the Mount, are those which are most smothered with
the painter’s most extravagant colours.This is particularly so
111 the Moses who, unusually, turns his back on the worship of
the Golden Calf. We have already encountered Moses the
alchemist and a few years before this commission Marsiho
Ficino had restated this view in his De Christiana Religione
(1474), arguing that he was to be identified with Hermes
Trismegistus.^*^ Rosselli was thus exemplifying the late
medieval aspiration to Christianize the Great Work by showing
how Moses rejected the vulgar worship of material gold and
turned towards the spiritual gold of revelation. This argument
was reinforceef by Cosimo’s equally unusual treatment of the
Last Slipper (or The Institution of the Eucharist), where the table is
laden not with food but with a single golden chalice. Behind
Christ are represented the scenes of his Passion. It was a message
which Rosselli thought - mistakenly as it turned out - to
underline by the prolific use of the most valuable pigments.
The earliest account of the new paintings in the Sistine
Chapel - a conventional eulogy by a humanist — spoke simply of
the ‘pleasant and appropriate’ colours {colores . .. snaves et
appositi) but It may have been written before Rosselli’s most
extravagant scene of the Golden Calf had been completed.
When Michelangelo came to re-paint the ceiling of the chapel
from 1508 to 1512, taking his cue for the tonality of his own
work from the fifteenth-century frescoes underneath, he was
clearly expected by Pope Julius II to complete his work with
gold and ultramarine (applied on top of the fresco in secco) in the
canonical papal way. Michelangelo’s follower and biographer,
Condivi, who also tells us that the master ground his own
colours for the work, recorded a typical conversation between
the artist and the patron:
The incandescent vision of Christ as embodied light may well
depend on observations made by Griinewald during the processing
of metals, for he was probably engaged in the manufacture of
colours. The blue-green fringe of the fiery nimbus is perhaps the
earliest representation of a negative after-image. The robe of
vermilion, the manufactured red whease components of mercury and
sulphur were thought to constitute all metals, may identify Christ
alchemically as the ‘Red King’, the Philosophers’ Stone.
103 Matthias Grunewald. The Resurrection, Isenhcim Altar, c. 1515 (detail)
104

104 Martin Schai-fner, The Heavenly Universe, wooden table-top, 1533

105 The IVhite Rose, from H. Reusner, (ed.) Pandora: Das ist die edelst Gab
Cjortes, c. 1550
106 Jan van Eyck, Giovanni Arnolfini and Giovanna Cenaini ( The Arnolfini
Marriayie), 1434

146
 Colour and power
The hidden structures which the
Renaissance philosciphers detected in the
wurld included assuinptit)ns about colour.
Scharfiier (104) makes this clear in his poems
on the correspondences of the ‘sevens’: planets,
liberal arts, metals, virtues and days of the
week, on this table-top made for a Strasbourg
goldsmith. Thus Venus correspernds with
green, music, copper, Friday and obedience.
Van liyck (106) shows in the colours worn by
his couple at their betrothal, deep purple and
green, as well as by their jewels, that they
partake of the elemental union of fire and
water. The power of Alchemy was especially
manifested by colour: Reusner’s diagram of
the penultimate phase of the (Ireat Work of
transmuting base metals into gold (105) shows
the White Queen, prelude to the arrival ot the
Red King, and includes a segmented half¬
circle, signalling the alchemical progression
from black to red through white.

14

105

It |thc ccilitigl still lacked the final touches of iiltrarnarme ij sciio,
and the gold in st)me places, st) that it should seem richer. Iiilius
wanted Michelangelo to put them in. but he, considering the
trouble lie would have had setting up the scaffolding, replied that
what was missing was not important. 'You still need to re-touch
with gold', retorted the Pope, to which .Michelangelo responded as
familiarly as he was used to with his 1 loliness: ‘I don't see tliat men
wore gold (then|’. And the Pope: ‘It will be mean (/u)i'crii|'. ‘ Those
that are painted here’, he replied, ‘were also poor.' And they giked
together, and so it remained as it was.
C’ondivi added that Michelangelo had 3,000 ducats for the
work, of which he spent only 20 to 25 cm colours.'’"
Vasari re-told this story in the second version of his Life of
Michehvi^^clo (1568) hut added a reminiscence of the affair of
.Sixtus IV and Rosselli, specifying that it was certain back¬
grounds {campi), draperies and skies (ur/c) which were to be
retouched with blue and gold."' I showed in the last chapter
how careful Michelangelo was to get the best blues at the
beginning of the work, and the recent cleaning has shown his
use of gold in the fictive bronze medallions and other parts of
the lunettes,"^ so that his reputation as a despiser of such display
must be seriously c]uahfied.
■Whatever the rationale of Rosselli’s handling of colour in the
.Sistine Chapel, Vasari’s attack on it meant that it was handed
down as a prime example of the ignorance of patrons. In Venice
Lodovico Dolce used the story to put down those who thought
they w'ere praising Titian by saying that he ‘coloured well’ [tinp^e
bene): were that the case, many women would be his equals; the
greatest merit of painting was in the disposition of forms and the
imitation of nature, in which, said Dolce, Titian excelled."-^ In
the Baroque period, too, Vasari’s story was introduced by the
painter Pietro da Cortona into a discussion of delight to show
that the sensual pleasure of the eye can dazzle the light of reason;
later on, in the eighteenth century, when facility of handling
had again become a requirement in Italy, Rosselli’s absurdities
were used to point the moral that over-working a painting
would ruin it.""* Ikit nowhere was there any sense that subject-
matter and style of colouring might be one.
Spiritual uietapliors iu uietalliif^y
Unlike Van Eyck, Rosselli was no technical innovator but access
to alchemical attitudes and imagery through technical experi¬
mentation was not an uncommon experience among Renais¬
sance artists. Besides oil painting, which can no longer be
regarded as a peculiarly Renaissance development, the most
important innovations in visual expression were in print-
making, especially etching, which developed in Clermany and
Italy in the early years of the sixteenth century. The artist who
most of all brought a free style of etching into the repertory of
Is there alchemical imagery too in Parmigianino’s Madoiiini? The
infant Clhrist holds the red rose in his role as the Red King.
107 l’.AK.Mi(,a.\NiNO, 'I'hc.\iiuioimiiofilieRosi\ 152H/10
I III I’l \< (M K's ■ \:i
Italian ,irt was P.irmigi.imno. i>l whom \ .isari repo-rted th.it
towards the end of his hfe.
h.uing begun to studs .ikheniu.il in.itters. he .ib.iiuloned put<>ri.il
in.itters entirely, thinking in in.ike .1 ijuu k tortune b\ i unge.ilin;’
mercury . he w .isted tlu’ w hole d,i\ in nuw ing bits oi co.d. k>gs
.uui glass retorts .ibout. .md other such g.lines .iiui thus, httk b\
little he burnei.1 hnnselt out with Ins stoses . .iiul trom bi'iiig
refined .uui gentle he bei..imc. with his unkempt be.ird .md long
hair, .ilniost .1 wild m.m .uui unlike wh.it he h.ui been
mel.iiu holy .iiui str.inge.'’''
It is perh.ips no accident th.it one of P.irmigi.imno’s etchings, the
11 oi/hin SciilctI on the (ironnd. is a figure of .Mel.iiuholy b.iscd too
ultim.itely on I )iirer’s gre.it ciigras ing of' 1 s 1 4. w hose complex 110
imagery is almost .in anthology of .ilchemic.il uie.is .ibout the
structure of matter and the role of time."'’ Black mel.incluiK
was the lot of the alchemist .it the begimnng of his quest, .is
illumination was its final goal.
1 he heating crucible to the left of Diirer’s im.ige is the
clearest sign of its alchemical context, just .is 111.1 dr.iwing by the
northern Italian .irtist (liulio Uampagnol.i the urn .iccotnp.iny- /i\s’
ing the two philosophers suggests the same complex of ideas."'
Diirer and Uampagnola were among the first printmakers to
etch plates with acids;"" Uampagnola was a le.irned artist"" in
the circle of the poet (iiovanni Aurelio Augurelli, whose
alchemical poem, (ilirysopoeia of 151 s, dedicated to Pope Leo
X, was (.me of the more popular productions of its tvpe 111 the
sixteenth century. What is remarkable about Augurelh’s
approach to alchemy is that, in the tradition of pastoral poetrv in
northern Italy, he linked the search for the Philosophers’ Stone
with the landscape that provided its raw materials. In Book III
of his poem, for example, he recommended that fireproof
crucibles should be made from the white clay of the Euganean
Hills. He also spoke of the landscape-painting that could be
produced with the colours the landscape provided, which
brought him directly into relation with the practice of Cknnpag-
nola and (liorgione.^' Augurelli brought a quite new empliasis
to alchemical writing, in particular the belief that the natural
world and the seasons were the framework of the alchemist’s
enterprise; spring was the season when the laboratory should be
equipped to commence the (Ireat Work.
It was this emphasis on the cosmic significance of alchemv, as
harnessing all the forces of nature, that also informed
Parmigianino’s use of alchemical imagery. The Miidoniui of the
Rose offers at first sight a picture of such remarkable seiisualitv toy
that in the eighteenth century it was thought to have begun as a
I Vi/HS and CnpidP- It was originally painted for the journalist
Pietro Aretiiio, and it is in Ins popular devotional writings that
we find the conceptions of Cdirist and his Mother which link this
picture to the newer interpretations of the (ireat Work.’ * hi the
present context it is important that at everv turn in the hfe of
Cihrist, Aretino pointed to the cosmic implications of C hristian
events. After the Annunciatioii Mary was filled with the light tif
the high sun, glowing with it like a lamp m an alabaster vase;
Joseph proclaimed the coming of ’the precious stone, foreseen
by the Patriarchs’, on which was engr.ived without art the
image of a King; at Uhrist’s birth the ice melted and the desert
places of the world were ctnered with spring green, aiul when
14V
I III I’l A( ( )( k's I All
he returncci after seven years in Egypt the green also vanished,
‘for the parting of Christ turned it to antunin’. In short, ‘when
Christ was being born, living, dying and being resurrected, the
heavens, the earth and the abyss all felt it’C*^ Thus the globe on
which Christ rests in Parmigianino’s picture is directly express¬
ive of his cosmic role, and the red rose, too, plays a part in this
imagery: at Gethsemane that part of the sky to which Christ’s
prayer rose became so serene that ‘it was revealed like red roses
in a glass vase’; at the Ascension dawn let fall ‘the most beautiful,
the sweetest and the most coloured roses she had ever gathered
from her sacred places’C'^ When Christ died on the cross,
behold how the earth trembled and behold how the rocks were
split asunder, behold how the winds moaned, behold the veil of the
Temple rent, the mountains clashing together, the sun obscured,
the air sullied. The seas roll back, the rivers stop in their course, the
lakes overflow, the shores rage with storms, d’he leaves turn yellow,
birds no longer Hy, fish swim nor game run; the herds lose their
pasture and the flocks their watering; the elements were
confounded together and seemed to want to return to their primal
state . ..
Similarly, when Christ appeared again to the Apostles, he was
‘the dawn of the dawn, the day of the days and the sun of the
stin’.^'’
None of these images was entirely new — the rose held by
Christ in Parmigianino’s painting, for example, had haci a long
history in Christian iconography, as symbolizing his Passion —
but their emphasis in Aretino’s popular book suggests how
much a wide public in northern Italy was prepared to reaci the
Christian story in terms of the movement of the natural world,
that is, in terms coloured by alchemical ideas. In the sixteenth
century even the medieval romance the Roman de la Rose was
being given a specifically alchemical gloss.The brilliant
blood-red coral bracelet around Christ’s wrist also had a long
history in ancient and medieval thought as an amulet warding
oh all manner of diseases (coral can be seen worn round the neck
150
Cliulio ClanipagnoLi’s niy''tcri(ms landscape
drawing ofc. i sio may be hinting (with the
crucible-like urn) that the materials tit
alchemical transttirmation were available in
the countryside of the Veneto. (loS)
of the Christ-child in many fifteenth-century pictures, as a sign
of the staunching of blood) but here its proximity to the globe
suggests its more universal power to control the tempest.^*
The Mannerism of Parmigianino and Aretmo was simply a
reworking of very traditional ideas, presenting them in an
elegant and fashionable form. Other artists were able to
penetrate more deep>ly into the experience of alchemy and to
bring its processes into the visualization of spiritual experience
in a new way. We seem to see this in Grtinewald’s astonishing
vision of the resurrected Christ in the Isenheim Altar where, loj
perhaps for the first time in painting, a human figure is
presented as created c'lut of light. The movement of light and
heat had, of course, been recognized in the Middle Ages and had
formed part of the visionary vocabulary of St Hildegard of
Bingen in the twelfth century. In one of the visions recalled in
her treatise Sciinas, for example, she described
the most serene light (Iti.x), and in that light the sapphire-coloured
image of a man, who was burning with the gentlest red-glinting
fire. And that serene light infused the whole of that reddish fire, and
that reddish fire the whole of that serene light, and that serene light
and that red-ghnting fire the whole image of this man — thus one
light in one power , ..
This was a manifestation of the mysterious co-existence and co¬
extension of the Father (serene light), the Son (sapphire image)
and Holy Spirit (red-ghnting fire); but with the painterly
techtnc]ues and visualization at her disposal, Hildegard was able
to present these icieas visually only in the form of diagrams.
Griinewald was more fortunate, for not only had he to a high
degree the developed representational skills of a Renaissance
painter but it now seems clear that he had a considerable
experience of metallurgy and chemistry, as a manufacturer of
colours. At his death he left a large quantity of pigments,
notably artificial colours, which suggests that he was engaged in
their manufacture. Among them was the vermilion which
appears so dazzhngly in Christ’s robe and which was, because of
its constituents mercury and sulphur, the golden-red crown of
 -y—^ j V-

__
^^■Ai^was ut a T^mitn^ltouife utl Wtc SOM^ i]lP.
nvfiiyoJ in wiuch knofl^gp. iS tranaauitpil £vtn. ^eA£ ■
-r^kxticin iv bmentitoji
In m» M'.at duunhcr wcc^ * Dra^onHon.. cLnr^
ift^ ifie nthbisk £vai a ccu^ Jtvputk; trAui,a.
numher of Drc^pns Wfire hoUoviii^ ihe aa»te,
la. the .secalui ehamhtr tfasf a Vif> er &Um^ rvwH
Vtf noc^ ^ tift; caJ>a, an/l fftheni nhantxif^ it nmt ^hi
c-iilt/er amL pnectaus stands'4 —^
In tiic thlirl rJtaa ihsr u/asf an Ea^ig wdft wui^'
)tni{ iBOtruTS of air, Jte caint'etl tive oigirie I’f dte mve
tr; be utfinitr. eerewad rt/ere numbers' aP Ea^a tjtce ^
men, ^ihe built in the asanense cU^".
In tbe IvurtfL rkamber were L,ionS aP uaminh iii-e.
m^ut^ itround 8^ melting aietcdg litinp, mult.
In the bt/tb. c/ramier werellnnamJ.Erms, wbirb. >
cast the meiais into the expanse,
thmi Were ivcievci^^^ Hen u)!tc eccapiedl
‘the Satk chamber, and icok the Prats aP books A:
s.ere

AlclK'iin w.is a natural mtcrcst tor pnntmakcT' wiukinu uitli iin-taN ui.i
aLulv. I’armi^iaiiinoA cti limi; ot a woman <■ atial on tlin nioniul .. lu>v^ t!%
tma^niw ot AMbrni.lit ntircrb i.om|ili.-\ nngraMipi; A/i ii )io':.'/i,i isr }.. wa-.iv
iIk' luMtini; t lau ihli anil t alnbo\^ otlnr thi i li ai supei 'tion tbat tb. ' n- '
alihiin\ w I’ll among tls snb)i.'i.t‘-. William HlaknI A/■ i;.,'! I ■•-. li
UM-i the tiailitional s\ mboliMii ot ak lu-mv to -.ko. rib. ihi . H. at- ot -a;, imi m
In', 'bnnting bonsi' m I k'll , .mil aijii.itas the ehemii i aiiion -n .. ul- a‘ih
spiriin.il I k .msmg. ; io<;.: to, i i :
 Mil I'l A( ( )( K’S I All
the alchemical quest/" (Iriinewald's religicuis sympathies may
w ell haee allowed him to agree with l.uther that
I'lie art ot'alcheinv u realiv tlie philosophy of the ancients, which
appeals to me \ er\ much . . . on account ot its allegories and secret
meanings, which are quite beautiful, such as the resurrection ot the
dead on the last dav. For just as tire in a furnace draws out and
separates the best in matter, and releases spirit, hte, juice and power
into till- heas'ens ... so (lod will do the same through the Last
ludgnient: he w ill sift out, divide and separate the justitied trom the
godless, as it in ,i tire.'^ ^
In all the \ isionary elements in this altarpiece, Ciriinewalci has
represented the effects of incandescence: in the nimbus around
the risen Christ he has made his red light so intense that it has
induced an after-image ot blue-green. This is the sort ot
observation which could onlv have been made by the painter in
a metal-worker’s furnace: the unearthly light is in fact earthly
but far bevond the experience caf most of (Iriinewald’s public.*^-
(Iriinewald’s spiritualization ot metallurgy was the highest
point in the visual history of alchemy, although there were
many fiiielv illustrated alchemical texts in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries.But in the Romantic period another
great artist and visionary re-introduced the dual notion ot
alchemy as a chemical process and a spiritual quest into the arena
of visual art - William Blake. Blake it was who kept an
110 impression ot Diirer's Mt'lcncliolia besicie his engraving table”"^
and there can be no doubt that in the search for a technique in
which to print and publish his illuminated books of poems, he
lookeci cfeeply into the literature ot alchemy which, by his time,
was very extensive.In one of the earliest of his books, The
Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1793), Blake related his original
method of printing specifically to the search tor spiritual
puritication, 111 doing so drawing on the terniinology ot
traditional alchemy: ‘But first the notion that man has a body
distinct from his soul is to be expunged; this 1 shall do by
painting in the infernal method, by corrosives, which in Hell are
salutary and medicinal, melting apparent surtaces away, and
dispilaying the inhnite which was hid’.*^" How this was to be
111 done Blake showed a little later in his ‘Memorable Fancy’ of a
printing-house in Hell, w'here in the first chamber a Dragon-
Man was clearing away rubbish from the mouth of the cave
which houses the press; in the second a viper was adorning the
cave with gold, silver and precious stones; in the third an Eagle,
with plumage of air ‘caused the inside of the cave to be infinite’;
I s:
in the fourth were ‘lions of flaming fire, raging around &
melting the metals into living fltiids’; in the fifth were unnamed
forms casting the metals into the expanse; and finally in the sixth
chamber men arranged these metals as books into libraries.
Blake’s chief source for this imagery seems to have been the
seventeenth-century German experimental alchemist Johannes
Glauber, whose collected works had been published in English
in i68y. For Glauber the Dragon symbolized the corrosives salt
and nitre, as well as sulphur, and the eagle and the lion were also
acids and fixed salts: ‘Whatsoever the acid spirit thereof \sal
annnoniac], or the Eagle with its sharp claws cannot effect, its
fixed salt, or the fiery Lion, will accomplish’.The gold and
bejewelled serpent also appears in Blake’s Milton as the creature
of‘dark fires’ and may represent the ‘rainbow’ or ‘peacock’s tail’
phase of the Great Work, although in seventeenth-century
sources it could also stand for mercury of arsenic.®*^ Blake was
describing the progressively refined corrosion of his metal plates
in terms of a traditional chemical allegory.
In another ‘Memorable Fancy’ at the end of the book, Blake
presented an angel in conversation with a devil, whose
definition of God at first angered the angel but then convinced
him, so that he too was transformed into a devil (no bad thing m
Blake’s view of the relationship between Heaven and Hell).
Blake showed the angel receiving the devil’s words very much
in the same fluid state that Grtinewald had given to the angels in
his Isenheim Altar: ‘The Angel hearing this became almost blue;
but mastering himself he grew yellow, & at last white, pink and
smiling.’ At the end of the Fancy the angel ‘stretched out his
arms, embracing the flame of fire [i.e. the devil] & he was
consumed and arose as Elijah’.^"
In this chapter I have tried to show that alchemy in the
Western world was far from being a purely esoteric subject; that
it drew many of its notions and much of its language from the
prevailing conception of the structure and value of matter; that
it took on a spiritual colouring at the end of the Middle Ages;
and that its two strands, the technological and the spiritual,
remained intertwined at many levels until the Romantic period,
when only the spiritual content of the art could survive under
the assault of modern chemical doctrines and was eventually
rescued by twentieth-century psychology. The perception of
colour played a central role in the presentation of alchemical
ideas, which in turn made colour a language of movement. It
was finally to emerge as the colour-music of the twentieth
century.
 9 • Colour under Control: The Reign of New ton
riic colours of ■ Dorhncss uisihlc ■ I'hc prohloiii of colour scolcs ■ Xcwiou's C Upticks .uui
fill’ uses of classificatiofi ■ (llolour-spiicc from Xcu'fou lo Scuriii
I'hat (lod is Ciokninng New ton docs slicw;
And that tlic devil is a Black outline, all of ns know.
(William Blake, To I’ciiciiaii Artisls)
Tufi sf.vfnti.f.nin ciiNTUUY saw the most thortm^hgoing and
tar-reaching changes in the European understanding ot colour
as a physical phenomenon. Early in the century a ('lerman
scientitic encyclopaedia was still describing colour in an
essentially Aristotelian and medieval way: the 'noblest' colours
were white, yellow, red, purple, green, blue and black, and the
‘simple’ ones black and white alone. There were two sorts of
colours: the ‘true’ colours ot substances and the ‘apparent’
colours of the rainbow and other accidents ot lighting. There
were still two types of light, the medieval lux and ItiuiciiA A
century later the picture was transformed: The Danish physician
C. T. Bartholin wrote in his te.xtbook, Spccinicu I’hilosopluac
Xaturalis (1703), that all colours were ecjually real, that black
and white were not colours since they did not arise trom the
refraction of light, which is the cause of colours, and the
‘primary’ colours were red, yellow and blue. On the other hand,
all colours were equally unreal, since they had no c.xistence
outside the eye.^ Bartholin’s testimony is particularly interest¬
ing because he does not seem to have been aware ot Newton’s
w'ork which, until the publication of Opficks the year after
Bartholin’s book, had been available only in Oambridge
lectures and in a number ot papers in the Philosophical
Transactions of the Royal Society a quarter of a century earlier.
The development of a unified theory of light and colour had
been proceeding very fast since the beginning ot the seventeenth
centLirv. The mathematician and astronomer Johannes Kepler
had already argued in Brague in 1604 that the distinction
between ‘apparent’ and ‘true’ colours was untounded and that
all colours, except black and white, were transparent.-’ The
ancient distinction between apparent and real colours and
between lux and lumen were rejected by Descartes in his
Dioptrique of 1637, although they continued to be respected by
other writers until the middle ot the century.'’ The notion that
the colours were dependent not on the interaction ot black and
white but on the various degrees ot retraction ot light and that
they were, indeed, inherent in light, had been advanced and to
some extent demonstrated by Mersenne in 1634, by Marci in
1648 and by (Irimaldi in 1665.Yet Newton’s predecessor as
Lucasian Professor ot Mathematics at Cuimbridge, Isaac Bar-
row, was still arguing in the late 1660s, albeit somewhat
diffidently, that white and black were the origin of all colours.^
Newton himselt in tlie same decade telt bound in his early
experiments at Cambridge to test this traditional view by
examining black and white prints or monochrome drawings; he
found that
No colour u ill .inse out of \ nuxiurcN ot pure bl.u. k N \\ hue tor \
pictures dr.iw nc w'*’ inkc would be coloured or printed \\ ould seem
coloured at a dist.iiu c c\ \ ‘ s erges ot sh.ulou s u ould be coloured iS
l .inib bl.uk c\ Spanish whitciiig w ould produce colours whciuc
thev cannot arise trom more or Icssc rcricction or sli.ulows mixed
w‘'’’light.’
Not long after this a I hitch pupil of Rembrandt. Samuel \ an
Ihiogstraten, ridiculed the theory ot an English am.iteur. Sir
Kenehn Digbv, whose .Aristotelian notion ot the tmigin ot
colours was remtorced by seeing .i senes ot experiments .it the
English lesuit Dollege at Liege in which black and white surtaces
were viewed through a prism and the tonal juncticms were seen
to have coloured fringes. Digby. a trieiid and patron ot \’an
Dvck, had been rash enough to assert that the nature ot the
‘middling ctdours’ was clear from the way painters mixed their
colours on the palette: if white prevailed strmigly over a dark
coknir, red and yellow resulted; it the reverse, the product was
blues, violets and sea-greens. Hoogstraten tound this quite
impossible to accept, pointing out that the only binary mixed
colours produced on the palette were green trom yellow and
blue and purple from red and blue, 'as in the rainbow'.'’ Digby
had conceivably been thinking ot the glazing methods much
used by Van Dyck, by which (as we saw in Chapter 1) a blue
might be made bv glazing black over white; but lloogstraten
was alluding to one of the most important seventeenth-century
colour doctrines to have been suggested by the experience ot
artists: that all hues could be reduced to three ‘primaries'. I
showed in Chapter 2 how the theory of the primaries impinged
upon the older four-colour theory attributed to the Creeks; here
I want to emphasize that in the first halt ot the seventeenth
century the triad ot red, yellow and blue, which was certainly
not new,’’ became a central principle ot colour-organization //s
among painters in many parts of Europe. Poussin's Holy l ainily ii('
on the Steps is as much an exposition ot the notion ot the three
primaries and the three secondaries, laid out across the tore-
ground of the painting, as it is a demonstration ot perspectival
construction."’ It might well be that Poussin made the
e.xtraordinary range ot subtle greys in the cloiuis and architec¬
ture of the background trom these same three base coUiurs.
Interest in the idea of primary colours tirst emerged in the
literature of science: perhaps the first writer to outline it in its
modern form was V. A. Scarimhomus, I'rotessor of I heoretical
Medicine in Vienna and a physician to the Emperor Rudolph 11,
to whom his De Colorihus (1601) was dedicated. Scarmihoimis
proposed a sequence of five ‘simple’ colours: white, yellow, blue
(hyacinthinus), red and black, in this unusual order. 1 le gave only
two mixed colours (although red, yellow and blue were
effectively ‘mixtures’ of black and white), ptiniceiis (rorange) and
i.Tf
 ( ()l OLiK L'NnFR ( ( )N'II<()I,
green. I le was et)neerned that there should be hve basie colours
onl\ because, as 1 shall show in Chapter 13, he wanted tc>
elaborate a musical theory ot colour-harmony and needed the
colours to relate to musical fit'ths.' ' Robert Boyle, whose debt
to painters in the fornmlation of a three-colour theory was
noticed (sev p. 3 5^<'>), pointed out that with the three primaries
and black and white, ‘the skiltull Painter can produce what kind
of Colour he pleases, and a great many more than we have yet
N.iines for.' But Boyle went on to argue that this knowledge
was partictilarh' useful to the natural philosopher:
nuieh of the Mechanic.il use of Colours among Painters and Dyers
doth depend upon the knowledge ot v\’hat Colours may be
produc’d by the Mixtures of Pigments so and so Colour’d. And . . .
‘tis of advant.igc to the ccantemplative Naturalist, to know how
many and which Ciolours are Primitive (it I may so call them) and
Simple, because it both eases his Labour by confining his most
solicitous Enc]uiry to a small number ot Colours upon which the
rest depend, and assists him to judge of the nature of particular
compounded colours, by shewing him from the Mixture of what
more Simple ones, C ot what Proportions ot them to one another,
the particular Colour to be consider’d docs result . .
In England the technological anci commercial advantages of
such a reduction of colours w'ere repeatedly emphasized: Sir
William Petty’s account of dyeing, published by the Royal
Society in the 1660s, grouped all the several dyestuffs under the
three headings ot red, yellow^ anti blue, which, with the addition
of w'hite, were responsible for ‘all that great variety which we
see in Dyed Stuffs’,’^ When, early in the eighteenth century, the
first experiments in tull-colour printing w'ere made in Englanci
124—y by the German painter ). C. Le Blon, he made great play with
the reduction to three ‘primitive’ colours, which was the
economic basis of his method; he even had sets of colour-
separations pulled to instruct the ‘curious’.Indeed some of the
newdy developing science museums, to whom Le Blon was
clearly appealing, might now have a section on painting and
dyeing materials, arranged under these primary categories.^''’
Of course, the problem of the primaries was very far from
being solved in the seventeenth century, nor was it until the
middle of the nineteenth when James Clerk Maxwell did so
simply by ruling it out of court. Newton in his early lectures had
made the by now standard reference to painters, who were able
to make all colours from red, yellow and blue; but the thrust of
his optical work was to show that all rays in the spectrum -
including green, orange and violet - were independently
colour-bearing and could not be seen as mixed from any other
colours; hence the number of ‘simple’ or ‘primitive’ colours is
infinite.^'’ As we shall see, this was quite incomprehensible to
many eighteenth-century Newtonians. Newton’s most import¬
ant rival, the pioneer of the microscope, Robert Hooke, had
proposed in the 1660s an equally problematic conception of the
primaries in scarlet and blue, the former being sometimes
‘diluted’ to yellow. He found that by using hollow prisms filled
with blue and yellow-red liquids,
all the varieties of colours imaginable are produc’d from several
degrees ot these two colours, namely Yellow and Blue, or the
mixtures ot them with light and darkness, that is, white and black.
154
And all those most infinite varieties which Limners |i.c. miniature
painters I and Painters are able to make by compounding those
several colours they lay on their .Shels or [’alads, are nothing ellse,
but some coinposittiiii. made up ot some one or more, or all ot these
four.
Hooke’s work stimulated the Dutch scientist Christiaan Huy-
ghens to maintain that cmly yellow and blue were required to
constitute white light.' ^ It is perhaps no more than a remarkable
coincidence that in these same years the greatest Dutch
connoisseur of the visual attributes of light, 'Vermeer, should in iiy
so many ot his pictures have made yellow and blue the
dominant colours on his supremely luminous palette.
But, as Scarmilionius and Hooke already admitted, the
radically reduced palette of‘primaries’ was of little practical use
to painters, since the physical characteristics of pigments,
particularly their greater or lesser opacity, could not match the
ideal colours of the spectrum.This was an extension of the
problem articulated by Aristotle in relation to the colours of the
rainbow, which in the nineteenth century was to issue in the
distinction between the ‘subtractive’ primaries of pigments and
the ‘additive’ primaries ot light. What is surprising in the
seventeenth-century debate about ‘primaries’ is that until 'Van
Hoogstraeten made a passing reference to it in the 1670s, and
despite the scientific appeal to painterly usage, the notion of
‘primary’ does not seem to have played a part in the painterly
discussion of colour. That early visual anthology of colour ideas,
Rubens’s Juno and Hry’iO', which has rightly been related to the 114
comprehensive treatment of colour in Franyois d’Agtiilon’s
Optics ot 1613 — for which Rubens provided the illustrations and
which offered one of the first clear expositions of the new
scheme of primaries and secondaries - was painted with a far
from limited palette; nor did the painter, it seems, ever limit
himself in any way. Even the unusually restricted palette of the
London Samson and Delilah, dating from precisely the period of
his collaboration with d’Aguilon, made use of a number of reds
and yellow and, in the almost complete absence of blue, the
bright purples and greens of the draperies were mixed with
black.Although d’Agtiilon classified three types of mi.xture in
painting - on the palette, using glazes, and optical mixtures
using juxtaposed dots of pure colour — he did not refer to a
fourth method, widely used by Rubens and his school, of the
semi-transparent medium. This, according to the principles of
Rayleigh’s law ot the scattering of reflections from small
particles, and in the painterly techniejue of scumbling, could
produce new nuances of great subtlety over a dark or light
ground. Well might d’Aguilon protest that the complexities of
painterly mixture were beyond the scope of his treatise and
leave their investigation to artists themselves.-^
Similarly Poussin, whose attitude to colour seems on the lace
ot it to be so much more schematic than Rubens’s and whose
painterly methods, making a very limited use of glazes, were
certainly more straightforward than his, used a palette of a
dozen or so pigments.--^ Rubens certainly and Poussin possibly
wrote on light and colour but these works were never published
- perhaps an indication ot their quality, since the authors' fame
as artists would surely have guaranteed them a market as writers
— and they are now lost. It is likely that their treatments were

The great ilhisitinist ceilings eit'the Roman Haroque depended critically on the
discrimination of many tones of light and shade, (liovanni Lanfranco’s dome
of the Assumpiion (ifui/s, S. Andrea della Valle) was perhaps the earliest to
convey v'ast and contimunis space through tone; Haciccio's (!esii ceiling is one
of the most breathtakingly expansive (see also pi. I’l). The imaginary
'section' through the (lesit nave shows what the spectator on the ground sfenis
to he seeing. (112.113)
little iluire than the collections ttf notes such as we have seen in
C'lhiherti ttr Leonardo or Pietro Testa. Leonardo’s unsystematic
edited in the sixteenth century by Francesco Melzi. was
eventually published 111 France with illustrations by Poussin in
But whatever Rubens and Poussin discussed, it is
unlikely that the newly fashionable topic ot the primaries was
on their agenda. The more scientific spirit ot the age certainly
made itself felt in several of the seventeenth-century discussions
of (/Lsry’im and colorc. from the amateur (nrolamo Maucini at the
beginning of the century to the painter Ciarlo Maratta at the
end, in btith of whom the superiority ot drawing to colour was
related to their relative capacities to convey the being, or
essence, of a figure. We are already close to John Locke’s
discrimination of primary attributes ot matter such as figures
and secondary such as colour, published at the end ot the
century.-'’ But even in the extensive studies ot colour which
were promoted during the second halt ot the century by the
French Academy, the nature and status ot colour was rarely in
question. In 1672 the painter Itlanchard was asked to lecture on
‘the disposition of colours and their properties’ but it is not clear
whether this was to be about pigments and their use in pictures
or about the nature ot colour itself.-'’ Even Roger de Piles, and
the other supporters ot Rubens and the ‘colourist party in
France, argued that very tew ‘rules’ ot colouring could be
( ; i i< \ i ! M
devised, which put the subject beyond the reach of rational
enquiry.-^ Andre Felibien, the chief spokesman of the Pou><iii-
iflc faction, put the scientific investigation tif colours beyond the
scope of the painter, who was, he said, interested only in their
‘eriects’.-" We already sense the arrival of the modern period,
when the increasing specialization and protessionalization ot the
arts as well as the sciences have meant that the studv of colour is
fragmented and has proceeded along .1 number of distinct .md
unrelated lines.
Dcirhiic<< I’isihic
It the seventeenth century w.is, tor students of optics, the
century ot light juir cxccllcinc. when colour h.id finally been
relegated to a deri\ ati\ e. subordinate position, it was also, fur
painters, supremeR the centur\' ot darkness. Lhe It.ih.m uti'pi.m
writer Idmimaso Clamp,itiella wrote .it the beginning ot the
century that the decadent, e\ en hellish customs ol'that age of
materialism were expressetl in the unisersal love of black in
dress.-'' But we know that black h.ul been among the higlu-st
fashion colours tor the European aristocracy tor the previous
two hundred vears and that tor almost as long it had been
spreading dow nw ards ti) the binirgeoisie.So gener.il w as the
taste hir bl.ick clothes .imong .ill the we.iltlu J.isses m the
 ( OLOUK IINDI'U f'ONTHOL
scx'cntccnth century that a portrait-painter such as Frans Flals in
Molland or Nicholas de Larp;ilherc in France was obliged to
develop a subtle eye and a retined technique for rendering what
i/d van Cnigh noticed in Hals as ‘no less than twenty-seven
blacks'.'' Largilliere's procedure for painting black silk, satin
and \’elvet was of such a carefully structured complexity that he
called it ‘la couleur geoinetrale’.-'“
C'.anipanella’s negative assessment ot black in a moral and
religious sense was by no means the norm. Sir Thomas Browne,
111 Neo-Hionysian vein, wrote ecstatically in the i6_sOs:
Light th,it makes things seen, makes some things invisible; were it
not for darkness the shadow of the earth, the noblest part of the
Clreation had remained unseen, df' the Stars in the heaven as invisible
as on the fourth day, when they were created above the Horizon,
with the Sun, or there was not an eye to behold them. The greatest
mystery of Religion is expressed by adumbration, N in the noblest
part of jewish types, we finde the Cherubinis shadowing the
Mercy-seat: Life itself is but the shadow ot death, and souls
departed but the shadows of the living: All things fall under this
name. The Sunne it self is but the dark siiiiiilacniiii. &: light but the
shadow of God . .
What for Browne was productive of beauty and meaning in the
heavenly bodies had been for the astronomer Kepler the very
condition ot their being known and uncierstood, hence his praise
for the shadows of eclipses and of night. In the course ot the
century darkness was allowed to be more positive than even
Leonardo had felt possible: the Jesuit Athanasius Kircher argued
that It could not be mere privation of light, since it had the
power to induce blindness; in a long analysis of the problem he
concluded: ‘Thus darkness, shadow and obscurity [ohsciiritas,
umbra uDihratioqnc] are not ordinary states of privation of lux or
lumen, but are real entities which are called positive.
The most visible mamlestation of this new assessment of
darkness was a remarkable style of painting which spread from
Rome to the rest of Italy and from Italy throughout Europe:
120 tenebnsm, whose creator was Caravaggio. Where the spiritual
writers had sought, like the painters of the High Renaissance, to
find a balance between light and darkness, darkness now took
over most of the picture: Reynolds, who was used to studying
the Old Masters by making thumbnail diagrams of their
distribution of light, reckoned that Rembrandt introduced only
an eighth proportion of it into his compositions.^^ Where
earlier painters such as Tintoretto had made much use of night
and artificial light effects, the tenebrists used these effects in
daylight without any pretext except the closeness of the room
and the smallness of the windows.
The style of Caravaggio and his ‘school’ was well character¬
ized by one of its earliest critics, Girolamo Mancini:
This school has the peculiarity of lighting [the picture] with a
uniticd light that comes from above without reflections, as it were
from a single window in a room with the walls painted black, so
that with the lights and shadows very light and very dark, they give
relief to the picture, but in a way that is not natural, and unthought
of in earlier centuries or by older painters such as Raphael, Titian,
Correggio and others.-'^
It is curious that Mancini found this lighting unnatural, for most
156
of Caravaggio’s early critics — perhaps dazzled more by his
subject-matter - described his colour as far too natural.
Caravaggio’s stylistic origins were with the highly wrought
realism and dramatic lighting of the sixteenth-century Bresciaii
school of Savoldo and Moretto. This training may have been
given a tenebnst reinforcement by the positive attitude to
shadow in the circle of his early Roman patron. Cardinal
Francesco Maria del Monte, whose brother published a book on
perspective in 1600 which emphasized that drawing and shadow
were the fundamentals of painting.But this breadth ot
shadow had the effect of neutralizing the local colours to an
unprecedented degree; Caravaggio’s early biographer G. P.
Bellori noted that the painter showed no interest in beautiful
individual colours such as vermilion and bright blues, which he
always subdued, ‘saying that they were the poison ot tones
Caravaggio was certainly asked to use such bright colours
by his Roman patrons: the contracts of 1597 and 1599
for the Contarelli Chapel in S. Luigi dei Frances!, ot which 120
scheme The Calling of St Matthew is a part, made the usual
Renaissance stipulations about ultramarines and other blues but,
as seems not unusual in Rome at this time, they were to be
provided by the patron, not the painter.'*^ Perhaps painters by
this date were only too pleased to be spared the cost. In the
Contarelli Chapel Caravaggio does seem to have taken some
pains to pick up in his St Matthew altarpiece the golds and reds of
the earlier frescoes of the Cavaliere d’Arpino. The shocking
contrast between his approach to colour and that of a more
classicizing artist can be seen in the smaller and slightly later
Cerasi Chapel in Sta Maria del Popolo, where Annibale
Carracci’s Assumption of the Virgin (1600/01), probably already
in place when Caravaggio started his own work, seems to
belong to a totally different world from Caravaggio’s Crucifix¬
ion of St Peter and Conversion of St Paul (1601). We are reminded
of the heterogeneous colour-schemes of the Trecento, such as
those in Sta Croce in Florence, where there was no common
colounstic ground between stained glass, fresco and gilded
altarpieces.^^-
The Caravaggesque approach to shadow, although less
controversial than his vulgar treatment of religious subjects,
continued to vex artists in other parts of Italy. In 1625 the
Florentine perspectivist Pietro Accolti warned students at the
Academy not to lose the ‘abundance and variety of colours’ in
great highlights and deep shadows, as so many artists now did,
and he appealed for a rather Albertian use of contrasting hues to
give relief.When tenebrism spread to distant Spain, where
expensive pigments were far less easily come by than they were
in Italy, painters like Velazquez, Ribera and Zurbaran w'ere able
to achieve much more homogeneous colour compositions, in
which the abrupt transition from brightly coloured lights to
murky neutral shadows is far less marked than in Caravaggio
himselt. A more limited palette, a simpler technique and a
greater reliance on palette mixtures make this Spanish Caravag-
gism the most important watershed between an attitude to
colour that put great emphasis on the raw materials and one
wholly concerned with design and handling: what Annibale
Carracci laughingly characterized as ‘good drawing and colour¬
ing with mud’.'^"^
 Colour itself is the subject of Rubens’s painting, an allegt)ry of
vision. Juno with her peacock and Ins witli her rainbow examine tlie
many eyes of the decapitated Argus, some of which they ha\ e
already inserted into the peacock's tail. While he was u orking on this
picture Rubens was perhaps already making illustrations for branyois
d’Aguilon’s treatise on optics, which appeared in 1613 (pi. 1.S3), and
he himself was the author of a (now lost) treatise on light and colour.

114 Piter l^^ul Rum ns,/n/ic .1/11/.■lri>i(.>. 1611

1 S’
The idea of the primaries

The colour triad red, yellow and blue had been used in the Middle
Ages (115) because it could be represented in the three most precious
pigments, vermilion, gold and ultramarine. In the seventeenth
century (116, 117) it received a renewed impetus because, with white
and black, it was seen as in some sense ‘primary’. Vermeer’s approach
(117) perhaps relates to a later-seventeenth-century view that blue
and yellow were the basic colours of light; but he also had a medieval
attitude to materials, and used the most expensive ones.

115 Master of S. Francesco, Cnixifixioti, Umbria, thirteenth century

116 Nicholas Foussin, The Holy Family on the Steps, 1648
117 Johannes Vermeer, The Artist in his Stneho (detail), c. 1666—7

1 SH
The limited palette

The Dutch tenebrists (painters of shaduws) llS I KAN-- I I\l ■- .M.jii.; M,’ \u' ;
reduced their palettes virtually to 1 ly Rl MllKAMU \ AN ISlIN. / !.; /i H ' /i ,li

nionoclironie. Hals’s and Ueinbrandt's pnihabK luuf,

paintings were probably portraits, but even

the demands of matching flesh-tones have not
led to the use ot a very wide range of hues.
1 lals (I i8) is most concerned with nuances of
black and white (van (logh said he created
twenty-seven blacks), and Rembrandt (119) in
this late work was manipulating his limited
palette by glazing and scumbling (essentially
of black, white, yellow and red) into a
brilliant, rich harmony.

iiH
 was one of the first painters to restrict his light-
From darkness to light Caravaggio (120)
source - here a high window - in daylight scenes, thus throwing
most of his subject into shadow and creating a sense ot high drama. In
the much larger ceiling composition (121), caretully graded tonal
recession from the damned souls cast into outer darkness at the
bottom to the glowing letters of the monogram ot Christ in the
120 C'aravaggio, riic Cdlliiiii of Si Mdttlicit'. 1599/1600
centre, produces an effect of extraordinary spaciousness (see also the
121 Baciccio, The Adordlion of the Nome of Jesus. 1668/H2, ceiling ot the
imaginary projection of Baciccio’s ceiling, pi. 113).
Gcsii, Iconic

120 I2I

160
 Making colour prints

From three colours all the rest can be produced - this is the
idea basic to colour-printmaking, which depends on an
economy of plates and processes. Lc Blon’s colour mezzotints
(124-7) were probably the first to apply this notion, and he
issued sets of separations to illustrate the novel principle. Most of
the information is carried by the blue plate (124) which was
printed first, and in this case the sequence was completed with
red (126). Plate 127 shows a proof in two colours. But Le Blon’s
materials were far from perfect, and his enterprise failed because
of the need for extensive hand-finishing.

124-7 Jacob Christoph Le Blon after F.H. Rigaud, Portrait of

Cardinal de Fleitry, colour separations, before 1738

22

Establishing colour circles

The circular arrangement of colours used by most artists seems to

originate in a medieval scale devised for physicians diagnosing disease
by uroscopy. In a fifteenth-century scale (122) the colours run from
white to black through a series of yellows and reds. Newton’s
circular version ofhis prismatic scale (pi. 134) offered greater
coherence by showing the relationships of neighbouring hues, and
was quickly taken up by painters. The eighteenth-century colour
circle of Claude Boutet (123) replaces Newton’s two blues, indigo
and blue, with two reds, fire-red and crimson. Other circles reduced
Newton’s seven colours to six: three ‘primaries’ and three
‘secondaries’.

122 The colours of urine, from John of Cuba, Hortus Sanitatis, fifteenth
century
123 Colour circle, from Claude Boutet, Traite de la peinture en mignature,
1708 edn
123

162
$ STi r-1/

AS • Ki

■■KSSn^. '\^mf*>*- ff3Bii)^ lii

hflKviSk' ^Hl3^

I'lic prohlcfii of colour-scales
One ot the most striking novelties in the artistie eiiltnre ot'
iiaroque Italy was a general interest in identifying stvles of art.
I he drawing ot Michelangelo and the colouring of l itian had
been cliches ot sixteenth-century criticism but now Mancini
sought to distinguish, perhaps for the first time, at least four
‘schools’ ot Italian painting and a number of individual styles as
well. In the middle ot the century the Roman painter Pietro da
C,ortona used the C.ontarelh Cdiapel as a lesson in contrasting the
‘natural idiom ot the Chiravaggio oils and the ‘mannered and
graceful’, ‘beautiful and genteel’ frescoes of the Chivaliere
d’Arpino in the vault above.This chapel was only one of
several examples where the sharp juxtaposition of light,
frescoed vaults and dark canvases on the walls denuinstrated the
vast range ot tonality now as'ailable to the modern painter.
Another striking instance involves a single artist, (iiovanni
Lantranco, in the Chapel ot SS Agostino anci (iuglielmo
(c. 1616) in the Roman church ot S. Agostino, where e\'en
Bellori commented on the darkness of the oils.-^''’ But it was in
the great illusionistic ceilings of the Roman Baroque - where
space was opened up from near ground-level to the seemingly
intinite distance ot the highest heavens, beginning more or less
112 with Lanfranco’s dome of .S. Andrea della Valle (1621-5) and
developing through Pietro da Cortona’s Barberini ceiling
, 121 (1633-9) to Baciccio’s Gesti in the 1670s and Andrea Pozzo’s S.
Ignazio twenty years later - where the capacity to convey the
extremes ot light and dark in painting was stretched to its
farthest limit.The task that faced the illusionistic ceiling-
painter was considerable: preparatory oil studies by Baciccio for
the CJesu show a tar more colouristic handling of the space than
in the final ceiling fresco, where the more monochromatic
angels merge into the atmosphere itsehM*^ The painter had to
sacrifice chromatic richness and variety to a more precisely
gradated tonal scale, running from the dark clouds and draperies
below the gilded frame up to the glowing letters of the Name of
Jesus. What the Baroque decorator introduced to the art of
painting was not simply extremes of darkness and light but a
carefully graded scale linking them together: as Moliere said of
Pierre Mignard’s slightly earlier cupola of the Val-de-Cirace in
i^aris,
Lcs distributions, & dc I’onibre, dc luiiiicrc,
Sur cliacuii des objets, & sur la masse ciitiere;
Lcur degradation dans I’espace de Pair,
Par ditferens de I’obscur du clair . .
To depict the triumph of Light over Darkness, Delacroix had to
use very bright and sharply contrasted colours, red against green and
yellow against violet. I'lie format of his ceiling in the Salle d'Apoilon
of the Louvre was dictated by the seventeenth-century architectural
setting, which was (and is) rather poorly lit from one side. It was
perhaps with this problem in mind that he proposed to consult the
fTench expert on colour-contrast, M.E. Cdievreul, in 1850.
128 KugLnf. Dki .Ac.Hoix, 'I'lw I'riumph oj Apollo. 1850/1
(OKU HI M'l H ( I i\ I Hi >1
(‘The distribution of shade and light o\er each ■■b)ei. t. and .oer
the \\ hole composition: their gradation 111 acri.il persp;-. ti\v b\
distinctions of dark and light ... ‘i But luos could these tonal
scales be constructed' I he Aristotelian theors of colour had
supposcil that hue was itselt .i tunction ot the imxturi" ot light
aiiii dark, so the kle.i th.it each hue, or gi'iius. ot lolour t ould be
arranged in .1 senes ot lighter or d.irker species presented
extraordin.iry diflu'ulties ot org.imz.ition .iiul w as. tor the most
part, left out ot consideration. It w.is particul.irK ditlicult to
understand before the i.lc\ elopment ot .tn\ .ulequ.ite tet hnuiues
ot recording and calibrating the i.iegrec of reflection ot' light
from a surface. Aristotle's colour-system h.id been a liiie.ir scale,
which seemed at one moment to have a median of red and .it
another, green: a further complication was the instabilit\ ot'
('.reek colour-terms. An attempt b\ 1 Iipparclnis (second cen¬
tury lu;) to identity si,\ degrees ot lununosit\ in st.irs is recorded
by Ptolemy {AIduh’csi VII, 1) but he gave no iletaiK. We ha\ e no
further exidence ot visual sc.iles until in the fourth or titfh
century Cdialcidius introduced a simple tonal scale of five terms
- white, yellow (juilliduiti). red, blue and black - into his
commentary on Plato’s In the twelfth centurv, Urso
ot Salerno in a discussitm ot the colours arising from mixtures ot
the elements blue air, black earth, red tire and white water -
argued that there were too many intermediate tones to list and
anyway he did not know their names. ‘Hinvex er, a good painter
could really, by making them, demonstrate rather than name
the many median colours mixed from the colours of the
elements.* It Urso had been able to persuade a painter to carrv
out this interesting task, we might well have had a scale of some
complexity but nothing like it has yet come to light. In what is
by tar the most detailed and circumstantial medieval discussion
ot a colour-scale, in the Lihcr dc Sciiin ct Sctisitro attributed to
Roger Bacon, a scale (j^radns) of twenty or twenty-one colours
was proposed but the only way of arranging them was by their
composition, according to the various authorities Bacon had
consulted. In Latin the scale ran: ‘flavusor lit'idus, alhiis, candidits,
(^laticus, ccrulcus, pallidiis, citrituis, piitiiccus, riifiis, croccus, ruheus,
ruhicutidns, ptirpureiis, viridis, I'ciictiiis, lividiis [!|, laziiliis, fiisnis,
nif’cr'. From the lengthy discussion which preceded this scale,
the various terms may be identified as follows:
1. —Jiainis — golden-yellow, related tti white
2. — lit'idus: Aristotle has this as equal to fliwus. and a white, but
it is also the colour of lead (which produced white lead), so
it might be a dark grey as in 17 below.
3. —aihus — white
4. —caiididus = shining white
5. — i^lauius {karopos in C'.reek) = a yellow with more white
than yellow and red in it; the colour of camel-hair
6. —ccrulcus = wa.x-yellow
j. — pullidus = pale yellow, according to Avicenna
H. — cilriuus: = doctors say that this yellow is reddish in urine.
Avicenna says that it includes iiiiicus (fire-colour) and
croccus(11)
9. puiiiccus = 'orange; [in Opus Mains VI, xii Bacon says that
this is one of the grades ot 'C^laucus (5) of which the other is
cacrulcutu (6)|
to. — ru/us = red-gold (? as in red-lead)
165
COI OUN LINDPR CONTROL

I I. — crocviis: as in inicntal crocus and blood Scala Rubedinu.

\2.~ iiihciis {alhur'^oii in (ircck) = the median colour between
Grana Uenulque
white and black: moderate heat and cold m medium Gra<lus Grana
Cinna- proporlio
CJUS. ccruir*.
baris. minima.
matter
1 Satara Rubedo.
i }nihiLiiiidii.'i = darker red gr. 40. gr. X C- 4- Cl. gr.I.
14. “/R/r/nirciis {kiaitoi m (Ireek) = purple gt. 60. gr. IX. C. 6 c Ci. gr.i-
gi. 80. gr.VIIl. C. lo.O.gr.1.
I s. — I'ii idis = green 0.142 Ci.gr.I.
gr. !0O. gr. Vll.
16. —i'ciicm/<: Ax’erroes says that this is an ebony colour 6“’. gr. 120. gr. VI. C. 20.Ci.gr. I.

between blue {aziu'iiiii) and black, but Isidore says that it is gr. 140. gr. V. C28.Ci.gt. I.
4"'. gr. 160. gr. IV. C. 4. Ci. gr.
icnileo (6), so there may be two colours ot this name gr. III. Ci-TOgr.
gr. 180. C.6.
17. — lii'idiis = lead-grey ^r. 2Co. gr. 11. C.io.Ci.T4St-

18. — la:tiliis (lapis lazuli) = a blue-black, but with a beautitul i«. gr. 22Ck gr. I. C.22.Ci.,f2 8'-
Simplex albedo, balis (cals.
shine, which suggests that it has some white in it. Some say
It is a medium blue; if so, it should be between viridis and
Francis C'lli.sson, a physician concerned with the colours ot hair, devised
I’cnctitis
perliaps the first system to coordinate hues and values in a coherent way. His
19. — fiisciis = dark (not qualihed)
tables (1677) give the precise proportions of each pigment to be used in every
20. — ii/yUT = black
mixture. The ‘scale of redness’ lists mixtures of vermilion with lead-white,
from pure white to saturated red at step eleven. The ‘scale ot blackness’
This list suggests that despite all his efforts Bacon had the
(below) distinguishes twenty-three steps between white and black. (129,130)
greatest diff'iculty setting out a coherent scale and that, quite
apart from the ambiguities in glaiiciis and ceriileiis, he was
Scala Nigredinif,
particularly uncertain about the values of the yellows and the
blues. Nevertheless he made a remarkably effective attempt at a Grana a- Utriulque
Gradus Grana
scale running from shining white (although elsewhere m this tramenci proporlio
ejus. cerulT*.
fuliginci. minima.
discussion Bacon has the order candor, alhiis, fiaints at this point), Simplex Nigredo.
through yellow and orange, red and purple, green and blue, to 22^*. 100. gr. xxn. C. 4 TT ■
>I 150. gt.xxi. c. 7,;,f. I.
black."^^ 20“‘. 200. gr. XX. C. 10. F. T.
Since Bacon, m his discussion of the relationship ot light to 19“'. 250. gr.XIX. C. 13 2 F. I.
300. gr.XVlII. C. F. i.
colour, drew frequently from the On the Soul ot Avicenna, it is 18“’.

17“V 3=io. gr. XVII. C. 20 i4 1.1.

surprising that he did not discuss Avicenna’s important attempt I6''^ 4OO. gr. XVI. C. 25. F. 1.
to overcome the problems inherent in the arrangement of a IS''!. 450. gr. XV. C. 30. F. I.
I+“X 500. gr.XlV. C.bHF.i.
tonal scale without any means of testing the quantity ot reflected g.XUl, C. 42 jf F. I.
SSo.
light from a given hue. Avicenna had recognized before Alberti 12“’ 600. gr.Xll. C- S-F.-ri
650. gr.Xl,
that within each hue there were species of colour differing in J I S TT
Io^\ 700. gr. X C. 7. F.
their lightness and darkness and that there was even a ‘pure’ (i.e. yso. gr. IX. C.8 4F.Ti
9“*.
achromatic) sequence from white to black through grey. The 8"'. 800. gr. Vlll. C. 10. F. yff
S50. gr. VII. C. 1 2t^ f. 15
twelfth-century Latin translation of Avicenna isolated three 7“‘-
6“'. 900. gr. VI. c* 15*
such sequences; the first ‘pure’ way, through snbpallidnm and 950. gr. V. C. I9.F.t4

pallidum, the second through pale red {suhrnheiis) and red and the 4“t. looo. gr. IV. c. 25. F.^Z
1050. gr. HI. c. 3 3. F.
third through green and indigo.In the thirteenth century, I 100. gr, n. 0.35. F. rk
2“C
when Vincent of Beauvais included these scales in his ency¬ 1“’. 1150. gr.I. C. I r5‘

clopaedia The Great Mirror,Albertus Magnus ampliticd them Simplex Albedo, balls fcal^.

a little by adding fusens to the achromatic scale, croceum,

purpureum and indicum to the red scale and I’iride clartim and
intensa viriditas to the green scale. The contemporary Persian
commentator al Tusi saw that all the hues had their proper
species of light and dark and proposed a scale for yellow
through orange, tor red through purple and violet, and tor
green and blue, as well as grey.^^ Al Tusi’s work seems to have
been known to Thcodoric of Freiberg, who introduced this
scheme into his On Colours (e. 13 10) but did not develop it.^*’
The linear scales ot the Renaissance introduced a greater
refinement in the arrangement of values. Ficino in the late
fitteenth century, tor example, included a dark red {ruheus
plenior) and a light reci {ruheus clarior) in his series and Cardano a
century later proposed a precisely calibrated scale of values
between black (i) and white (100), in which fusciis stood at 20,
blue at 25, green at 62 and yellow at 65—78.®^ Such scales
continued to be devised in the seventeenth century,^® but it was
also at this time that the first serious attempts to integrate the
dimensions of hue and value into a single colour-system
appeared. The earliest such system seems to have been the
colour-sphere of the Swedish mathematician Sigfrid Forsius,
which was devised about 1611. Fcarsius proposed a four-colour
circle of red, yellow, green and blue, plus grey, forming the
central axis of his solid. However, he had clearly not attempted
to construct it or to co-ordinate his two dimensions of hue and
value in a coherent way: orange, for e.xample, should have
appeared between red and yellow at the equator, as it did in
Forsius’s two-dimensional colour-circle, hut in the diagram of
the sphere it appeared as the first stage between yellow and
black.This problem of co-ordination does not appear to have

166
 I ( i| 1 )l H I NDl R ( ( i\ 1 Hi >1

been solved until the second halfofthe century when an English l.iy in the field before d.i\ -bre.tk .ind into the night, so di.it he >. mild
doctor, Irancis ('disson, devised what seems to be the first le.irn to represent the reddening d.iwn. tlie sun s rising .iiu) setting,
coherent three-dimensional ctiloiir-solid, the ancestor of all the .is well .IS the evening hours re.ilK n.uur.ilK. .md when he h.id
modern systems, which he suggested (although we ha\e no closely observed the one or the other, he quuklv mixed pi iMpiui'i |
record ot his success) could be constructed with named his colours .iccordmgly. r.in b.ick home with them, .md .ipplicd
g JO pigments, ('disson accepted the primaries of red, vellow and them in the vv ork he vv ,is eng.iged in vv itli much gre.iter n.itur.ilness
blue; his grey-scale had twenty-three steps between black and than .my one before him.
white and was to be constructed using lead-white and black ink
Sandrart also stressed th.it (datide knew how to modulate the
{olroinculiiin) or ivory-black; his yellow scale used orpiment, his
‘hardness’ ot colours by mixing them so that thev no longer
red scale vermilion and his blue scale azurite (hiie), since
looked like themselv es but r.ither like those ’vv Inch he needed to
ultramarine was too light and indigo too purplish in hue.'’"
represent \ fi)rbildcii\': he did so .is ’a ni.ister ot perspective'. In .1
Modern estimates of the perceptible steps on the grev-scale
later passage Sandrart rem.irked that (daude onlv painted ‘the
propose around two hundred, and modern colour-systems
view trom the middle to the tarthest distance, tadmg .ivv.iv
work with from ten to twenty.'’’
towards the horizon and the skv". for which, ot cotirse. he
rhese edorts to articulate a coherent colour system, parti¬
needed precisely the perspectiv.il know ledge coditied bv Z.u co-
cularly a tonal scale, came together in Baroque Rome in the
lini.'’'’ What precisely were Cd.uide’s methods? 1 )id he set his
circle of painters and literati around the patron Ckissiano dal
palette in the field with a series of graded tones' Or did he
Rozzo, who shared with them an interest in the writings of
simply arrange these tones on board or paper? We know that his
Leonardo da Vinci. The most important painter of the group
most devoted eighteenth-century tollower. C d.iude-)oseph
was Roussin but its chief theorist was a lesser artist, Matteo
Vernet, used a book of home-made colour-samples to speed his
Zaccohni, who around 1620 had written, but did not publish,
work as an outdoor sketcher, simply referring to them by
what promises to be the most important, as it is certainly the
number.'’^ In either case, Cdaude’s samples must have been set
most compendious, seventeenth-century treatise on optics for
out as a scale. Some light may be thrown on this pr.ictice bv a
artists.'’- Zaccohni devoted a great deal of thought and
note among the manuscripts of the Flemish doctor at the C?ourt
experiment to establishing scales in aerial perspective, both the
ot (diaries 1, Fheodore Furquet de Mayerne. De .M.iverne
linear scale ot colours as they were transformed into the blue of
recorded a recipe, unfortunately un.ittributed, for the painting
the atmosphere at various distances - in the order black, green,
ot a landscape {La terre on pais), working from the far distance,
‘pale’ (yellow-green), purple (jyaoonazzo), tan, red, yellow,
which should be done in ‘the most beautiful ashes |? of
white — and the progression of each hue — green, purple, red,
ultramarine I and white, with a touch of lake'; the next plane was
blonde {biondo), yellow and blue, as well as grey — in a tonal
to be painted with ashes, blue and lake, with a little massicot
sequence ot eight steps.'’-’ Zaccolini’s treatment was concerned
[bright yellow], the next with ashes, yellow ochre and a little
to relate the abstract ordering ot tones to specific pigments used
Schir^’l’l•l\ tinally the toregrouiui with ashes, Sc/iitycc/ and a little
by painters, giving details about how to make mixtures; tan
lake.'’’’ This was evidently a conceptual formula quite unlike
{tone), for example, was made from red and black and was
Cdaude’s observation but it shows how artists of the period were
similar to a type of paoonazzo that ‘the Roman painters call
used to thinking ot landscape space in terms ot caretully
pavonazzo di sale', which had a lot of dark red but was mixed
gradated colour.
without a trace ot blue {tiirchiiio)\ the most beautitul green was
A similar procedure to Cdaude’s was also recommended by
to be mixed with light blue (biadetto) and Naples yellow
another acquaintance ot his, the history and landscape painter
(j^ialloriiio), with ultramarine ^nd jiiallo santo, not with ochre and
j.ll. Bourdon, in a lecture to the French Academy in
smalt or ‘ordinary blue’ because they destroy each other.
In the course of a discussion of the best times of day for the
Perhaps the most important feature of Zaccolini’s treatise for us
landscape artist, w hich like Cdaude he held to be morning and
is its Leonardesque interest in the colours of the natural world
evening. Bourdon spoke of a particularly vivid sunset in which
and how these might be interpreted in terms of the painter’s
‘the more bizarre the accidents [of light), the more it is necessary
scales. Red mixed with the grey called bcrcttiiio or ccucritio,
to make notes ot them, and as they are ot very short duration
mixed from white and black, makes the sort of violet seen in the
one must be quick to copy them as they are.’ lie then rather
clouds at sunrise or sunset. When red in the sky turns to blue, at
weakened the force of his argument by advising that these
one point a mixed colour is produced, like dried roses, or
extreme ertects were nature’s vices and should not be used 111
poi’oiiazzo, and clouds may change suddenly trom one colour to
painting without modification. Bourdon went on to give an
another.'’’ The scientific painter (i7 scicntijico Pirrorc) will know
account of the colour structure of such natur.il eri’ects: before
how to exploit such phenomena, he says, so it is perhaps not
dawn the sky should have few clouds:
surprising that the most concrete results ot Zaccolini’s approach
were shown in landscape painting. The emphasis on the clear if there .ire .iny, they should be liiiiiinoiis onlv .it their edges. The
discrimination of planes by colour reminds us ot Poussin’s lucid base or blue of the sky should also tend towards darkness; and
landscape spaces and Poussin is known to have made many notes observe that in the parts closest to the horizon the blue should be ot
from Zaccohni. The most striking parallel, however, is in a a lighter tone, both so that the sky can better form a vault, and
working procedure developed in Rome by another French because it is in this pl.ice that the light grows . .. the sky should be
painter, Cllaude Lorrain. According to his early painting- coloured with a verniihon Hush |ini-.ir»i.j/| which, spreading out
companion loachim von Sandrart, Cdaude parallel to the horizon, will form, up to a certain height, altern.itely

167
COI UNIJFli CONTROI
glided and silvered bands, vvliieh will get less brilliant the farther
the\' are awav from the origin of the light.
Again, Bourdon spoils the crtect ot'tliis highly specific observ-
atuin by ctincluding that he was simply describing a painting by
one of the 13assanos.'’‘^
Zaccolini's scales could only have been applied in a milieu
which believed in the precise analysis of landscape out ot doors
and there is miw more and more evidence that landscape was
treated in this way in the seventeenth century. Outdoor oil-
sketches and drawings from a Roman ambiance, or accounts ot
the apparatus used to make them, are emerging in increasing
numbers; from northern Europe there is even a little support tor
the view that full-scale landscape pictures might be painted in
front of the motif Such a method relics, of course, as Sandrart
said of Claude, on the capacity to match perceptions with
mi.xtures of paints; such mixing became the norm in
seventeenth-century painting practice.
The treatment of colour in the early seventeenth-century
German encyclopaedia quoted at the beginning ot this chapter
was already unusual for its rather detailed “ and thoroughly
eccentric - account of the nohiliorcs colores as mixed: tor
example, the blues were composed of much green and a little
black, and green itself from a mixture of black with less red.^^
So, too, a number of technical treatises for artists, such as the
anonymous Paduan Maiiiiscripr of the mid-century, gave a good
deal of space to mixtures, sometimes of up to five colours.^- At
the same time it became a common practice tor painters to
ground their canvases with a mid-tone mixed trom all the waste
colours scraped from their palettes.Caravaggio and Rubens
were painters much given to palette-mixtures early in the
century, when the ancient distrust ot ‘corrupting’ colours {see
Chapter 2) which had been reinforced by the use of intrinsically
valuable pigments in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, was
now no longer a serious issue.The most learned of the
Baroque historians of ancient art, the Earl of Arundel’s Dutch
librarian Franciscus Junius — whose book, The Painting of the
Ancients (tor all its indigestible density), was consulted by many
artists including Rubens and Poussin - cited the classical term
corrnptio without any sense of disparagement: in seventeenth-
century usage it had become a quite neutral technical term.^^
The painter most prized in this period for his capacity to
‘break’ colours in complicated mixtures was Rembrandt, whose
follower Sandrart was even more enthusiastic about this
capacity in him than in Claude:
It must be to his great credit that he knew how to break colours
away from their own character in the most rational and artful way,
and to use them harmoniously to depict nature's true and vivid life;
and in doing so he opened the eyes of those who in the common
way arc rather dyers than painters, in that they set the hard, raw
colours quite bold and hard next to each other, so that they have no
relationship with nature, but only with the colours in colour-boxes
at the dealer’s, or the stuffs straight from the dye-works..
The transition in Rembrandt’s practice from the use of a wide
palette of ten to a dozen pigments in the 1620s and early 1630s,
including the very expensive azurite, vermilion and malachite
green, to the use from about 1650 of roughly half this number of
168
largely earth pigments, is well established; it is equally clear that
a late palette such as that for The Jewish Bride was not lacking in 1 iQ
brilliance.In his early years Rembrandt was even prepared to
paint on gilded copper, a technique he shared with Vermeer,
whose old-fashioned attitude to precious materials I have
already hinted at.^® But it is perhaps indicative of Rembrandt’s
thoroughly modern attitude to colour that in the 1630s a so-tar
unique instance of his use of ultramarine, in Self Portrait with
Saskia. should be in a complex mixed brown and was probably
an accidental transference from a dirty brush.Rembrandt’s
late style did not depend entirely upon palette mixtures — a
painting such as The Jewish Bride makes use ot the whole
technical range of thick impasto, transparent glazes and semi¬
opaque scumbling - but there can be little doubt that Sancirart
was substantially right. Even as early as the Night Watch (1642)
the painter used palette mixtures of up to eight pigments in the
same layer, nearly all the colours used in the painting as a
whole.
This new attitude to mixing necessarily had an important
aesthetic dimension. Although the medieval notion ot the
harmony of juxtaposed colours, as articulated by Alberti, was
still current m Europe, a newer notion of the creation of
harmony through the mixture ot all the tones in a painting trom
the same ingredients began to spread. It had been adumbrated in
Leonardo’s chiaroscuro but its real origin was in the doctrine ot
primary colours. The French painter J.-B. Jouvenet
(1644—1717) was praised precisely for his capacity to harmonize
his colours in this way so that, it was said, ‘they seemed to have
been produced by a single palette’.*^^ I hope to show in Chapter
10 the extraordinary implications ot this view.
NeiPtoii's Opticks and the uses of classification
This painterly concern with mixtures, with shadow and with
the colour-scale from white to black ran counter to the most
important seventeenth-century research into light and colour,
crowned in 1704 by the Opticks of Sir Isaac Newton. The only
scale in Newton is the prismatic one which, in his Cambridge
lectures of 1669/70, he characterized rather exotically in its
principal (insigniores) steps as ‘scarlet, or purple [j)itrpnreus], red-
lead, lemon yellow, golden-yellow or sun-golden [Heliocry-
sens], dark yellow, green, grass-green, sea-green, blue, indigo
and violet’; eleven steps which he was late to reduce, signifi¬
cantly, to seven.®- Newton’s theory — which denied that there
was any specifically ‘primary’ set of hues, by arguing that all the
rays ot retracted light were ‘primary’, ‘homogeneal’ or ‘simple’
and that some, such as green, violet and even yellow, could be
manifested in either a simple or a compound form - might have
seemed to fly in the face of any technological experience; yet for
many years, and in every European country, the Opticks or
popular versions of it became part of the standard equipment of
the painter.
One ot the earliest technical encyclopaedias, published soon
atter the appearance of the Opticks, Harris’s Lexicon Technicuin,
carried an account of colour which was essentially Newtonian
but also a list ot twenty-one ‘simple’ pigments grouped in a
random order between white and black.®® This ambiguity in
the notion of‘simple’ as it referred to the colours of light and the

colours ot matter or rather of two sorts of colours of matter,
for Newton regarded light as material - is felt in perhaps the
earliest attempt to rationalize colour-mixing along Newtonian
lines, by Newton s Chmibridge collaborator, the mathematician
Brook Taylor. In an appendix to a new edition of his treatise on
linear perspective, Taylor tried tti apply Newton's mixing
I ^ diagram and in doing so discovered not only that light colours
overcome dark but also that the products of pigment mixture
were quite unpredictable:
If the nature of the material dolours, which arc used in Painting,
was so perfectly known, as that one could tell exactly what Species
of dolour, how perfect, and what degrees of light and shade each
Material has with respect to us C,)uantity, by these Rules one might
exactly produce any dolour proposed, by mixing the seseral
Materials in their just proportions. But ... these Particulars cannot
be known to suTicient exactness for this purpose, besides the
I'ediousness that would be in Practice . . . If the dolours were as dry
powders, which have no effect upon one another, when mix'd,
these observations would exactly take place in the mixing of them.
But some colours are not of such a Nature, that they produce a very
different effect upon their Mixture, to what one would expect from
these principles. So that it is possible there may be some dark
materials, which when diluted with white, may produce cleaner,
and less comptuinded dolours than they gave when single; as some
dolours do very well to glaze with, which don’t look well laid on
in a Body. But these Properties of particular Materials I leave to be
consider’d by the Practiticuiers in this Art.**'*
The gap between the scientists and the artists was widening
and the first enterprise that sought to exploit the growing
prestige of Newton’s name as a theorist of colour, J. C. Le Blon’s
Picture Office for the manufacture of coloured reproductions of
12^—7 paintings, which w'as set up in England about 1717, was soon to
experience this gap. In a treatise on harmony, published in
English and French in 1725, Le Blon wrote:
Painting can represent all visible Objects with three dolours,
Yellou’, Red, and Blue', for all other dolours can be compos’d ot
these Three, which I call Primitive ... And a Mixture ot thesse Three
Original dolours makes a DIach, and all other colours whatsoever; as
I have demonstrated by my Invention of Prititiug pictures and
Figures with their natural Colours.
I am only speaking oi'.Material colours, or those used by Painters',
for a Mixture ot all the primitive impalpable dolours, that cannot be
felt, will not produce Black, but the very contrary White', as the
great Sir ISAAd NEW TON has demonstrated in his Opticks."^
The chequered career of Le Blon and his manutactory, and the
eventual abandonment of this approach to colour-printing by
his successors in France, is evidence enough that tull-colour
printing with three plates was quite impracticable while
pigments or inks approximating to the ‘primary’ red, yellow
and blue were not available. We know that in France later on in
his career Le Blon used Prussian blue and a dark yellow lake but
that for a red he had to develop a complicated mixture ot
madder-lake, carmine and a little natural cinnabar (vermilion).
He was also obliged to use a tourth, black, plate and to make
e.xtensive recourse to hand-tinishing the other colours, which
subverted the economics of the whole project.Among all
( (II ( U H I NDl R ( ( )M H( >1
these contusions ot theors it \\ as perhaps m? .u cideiit th.it one ■ -t
the first proposals to te.ich colour at a F.urope.m .u.uienu ot .irt.
that tor the new Ro\ .il .Ac.Klemy 111 \'ienn.i in i —^2. should h.i\ e
included the principles ot ctilour-imxing as well as the more
traditional copying ot paintings.’''
Yet in the first h.ilt ot the eighteenth centurs \er\ tew
appeared to notice the problematic nature ot New ton's colour
ideas. 1 he Optick.' seemed to lend itselt vers directlv to the
imagination; Blake's sardonic verses at the head of this chapter
were backed by a century ot poetic eulogs . W e s.iw m C h.ipter
6 luiw James rhomson attributed to Newton rather than to
Citid the unras elling ot the mysters ot the r.nnbow ; now e\ eii .1
desotional writer such as j. J. Scheuchzer was .mxioiis to show gj
that the 'subtilissmius N accuratissmuis' Nesston h.id tinallv
revealed its secret, sti that where the mediesal interpreters of the
colours had referred to the Closenaiu or the Trimts. the
torturing of white light into colours by retraction was now seen
to be emblematic tit Cihrist's Passion.’''^ A precocunis Faiglish
plea that landscape painting should demonstrate the functioning
ot nature used as its paradigm the New toman laws of light aiul
colour;
The Laws of Light and Clokiurs, wliieli. properly speaking,
produce all the various Phaenomena of the visible World, would
afTord .. . an inexhaustible fund of the most agreeable
entertainment ... In short. Pictures which represent visible
Beauties, or the Ltfeets of Nature in the visible world, by the
different modifications of Light and Ciolours. in consequence of the
Laws which relate to Light, are samples of what these Laws do or
may produce.
It was clearly for natural scientists rather than for artists or
poets that the clarification of the nature and order tif colours
brought about by Newton had been a most urgent require¬
ment. As Richard 'Waller, a Fellow of the Royal Society,
complained in 16S6, no standard of colour had yet been
established for philosophers.Where in earlier scientific usage
colour had been more or less confined to the diagnostic
technique of meciicine, the scientific community now needed it 122, i pi
for the task of cataloguing the whole of creation. Waller had
provided a visual standard of painted samples but earlier
naturalists had to rely on the uncertain language of colour-terms
or, in the case of the magnificent biortus Floridus of the Dutch
artist Crispyn van de Passe, on almost equally uncertain
instructions for painting each copy. This multi-lingual
anthology of garden-flowers presented its own problems
because of the vagueness of technical terms in the varitius
languages; 'Van de Passe’s English translator excused himself 111
an end-note,
the names of the colours so much dirferitige from the original
language, that neither by search of bookes, nor conference with
painters, nor marehants beyond the seas, could surtieientlie expresse
the same to an Lnglishman’s understandinge. Yet by some that
made profession of that arte, being persuaded that they had all one
generall name; wheretif I myself knew better, have done them all,
or the most part of them, to be understoode of any F.nglishman,
onely in one coloure which the dutchemen call schyt-geel, whah
translated signifyeth a shitten yellow. I have in pkue thereof
Itiq
! ( ILOL H L'NDl li CON I ROI

(because of not oflemding modest cares) called it throughout the

whole book a sad yellow. It is that which the Lattines, trench and
Spanish, call Buxiis, that is box coloure. which is a sad or deadlykc
yellow.*^'

Although there was a moment in the late seventeenth century

when it seemed that colour might itselt provide an insight into
the principles of vegetable classification,'^- this conjecture was
soon overtaken by the sexual system of Linnaeus (Karl von
Linne). It was the cataloguing activities ot Linnaeus and his
followers that provided the greatest stimulus to the develop¬
ment of the colour-systems of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries. Sometimes these systems were evolved by naturalists
themselves and the most ambitious early attempt to establish a
comprehensive set of colour standards addressed itself to
naturalists, painters, manufacturers, artists and artisans, in that
order, and was, indeed, attacked by artists for its exclusive
concentration on the 4,(800 local colours which were ot use in a
scientific context.One of the most intelligent ot the new
colour-theorists, the 'Viennese entomologist Ignaz Schiffermiil-
ler, even suggested in 1771 that since animals, plants and
minerals now had their fully articulated systems, it was time that
colour was treated as a ‘iiatural’ system in the same way.'^''*^
Such a system was essential to the ciescriptive vocabulary ot
the naturalists, as it has seemed to be for some historians of art in
our own time.'^^ The painter 'William 'Williams told a touching
story of an old entomological illustrator who,

living in a remote country, unacquainted with artists, or any

rational system of colours, with a patience that w'ould have
surmounted any difficulties, had collected a multiplicity of shells of
colour, of every various tint that could be discerned in the wing ot
that beautiful insect [the butterfly]; for he had no idea that out ot
two he could make a third, by this method he had accumulated two
large hampers full of shells, which he placed on each side ot him,
and sometimes the individual tint he wanted, was halt a day’s
labour to find out. What excellence must he have arrived at, had he
Shells require a system ot eolour standards tor classitication but can offer
known how to have mixt his tints.
permanent eolour standards themselves. Both Rembrandt and Boucher
formed collections. Franqois Boucher’s frontispiece to Conchyliologie (1780) is Here coloured shells performed a systematic function but in the
a tancitul arrangement which juxtaposes exotic shells and pearly flesh. eighteenth century they also had aesthetic importance. It
Rembrandt’s etching of 1650 presents his shell for inspection like a rare Rembrancit’s wonderful etching of a Coinis niarnioreiis L. might J42
specimen in a U'liiidcrkaiinucr. (131,132) well have fitted the setting ot the Baroque IViinderkaiiimer,
Boucher’s equally woncierful design of shells fits no less clearly
into the aesthetic context of the Rococo. Basing themselves on i
the objects listed in Boucher’s posthumous sale of 1771, his
biographers the brothers Goncourt evoked the sensuous plea¬
sures of such a collection:

As he grew older, he collected about him precious stones, whose

bewitching rays warmed his vision, his talent, into life; he
encumbered his studio with their rocky brilliance, with quartz,
rock crystal, Thunngian amethyst; tin, lead and iron crystals;
pyrites and marcasite. Native gold, clusters of unwrought silver
like vegetation, copper iridescent like the feathers of doves and
peacocks, fragments of lapiis, Siberian malachite, jasper, flint, agate,
sardonyx, coral, the contents of Nature’s jewel-box seemed to have
been poured out onto his shelves and tables. And to this wonderful
museum ot celestial colours garnered from the earth was added a

170
 . ( )1 i 'I l< I \|!^ H ' 'N

cH)llccti(in ot'shells, w ith their thousand dehe.ue sliades ot colour,

their prismatic sheen, their changing reriections. their rainbow nnar-um Cum ^ot'ca

glisten, their pale, tender pinks like a drenched rose, their greens as
soft as the shadow ot a wave, their nuionht whites; there were
conchs, pnrpnrae. oysters, scallops, ninssels. Hor of pearl, mother of
pearl and enamel, arranged like sets of gems m Houle showcases, in
cabinets of amaranth wood, or spread out on tables of Oriental
alabaster beneath carved wood candelabra.''"^

C')nc Austrian entomologist, (1. A. .Scopoli. devised a colour- tjru a

ini.xing system with spinning discs of the sort which, so far as 1

L/tuula •
know, had not been used since the Middle Ages but was to he
developed very extensively in the nineteenth century. Scopoli
was unable to mix the hues of high saturation needed to match
the brilliant colours ot his insects; nor, of course, was he able to
record his disc-mixtures in a more permanent, stable form'"* 1 hs
work is one ot the many indications that the characteristically . i Clt7-ma.
£xacCa. i-^na m^o
empirical approach to colour systems in the eighteenth century Occ: iJOjrf: -

was unable to take the problem very tar. 'Ci-ocea ■

Su]>,-ruJmi.

Colour-space froiu Neu’tofi to Seurat

sat color In t-
Although Newton's Opticks should properly have removed
colour trom a centra! place in the study of light.it did no such
I thing; what Newton bequeathed to posterity, almost by ai aOdsifor,
I accident, was two ideas of compelling power. The first was that
colour-relationships could best be visualized in a circular
I arrangement, and the second, closely related to this, was the idea
s.^ of complementarity. We saw in a table of elements how readily
1 the medieval mind gave itself to expressing complicated ideas in
I simple diagrams and, in the tradition ot Isidore ot Seville, some
^ ot these diagrams were circular.Yet it is a turther indication
I of the difficulty philosophers experienced in reaching a clear
;. idea of colour-relationships that no colour-diagram appears to Robert Fludd's scale ot the colours ot urine, trtnu .t/ci/icina (iiiiholini, i6a<^.
I have been devised before the fifteenth century, when a circle of The colours are graded between north and south, both black through excess,
1 twenty hues was published in an anonymous Treatise on Urine. with orange (iinrca, golden) in the centre, .^s well as deviMug his own scale,
' 122 Colour was of course an essential diagnostic in urology and this Fludd re-pubhshed the medieval twenty-colour urine circle ipl. laa; in the
j circle, which runs from white to black, includes only those same book, (ipt)
I j colours which are relevant to this diagnosis; but it was the
ancestor of a more abstract circle published by the magus
! ] Robert Fludd in the i620s.^“^ In this seven-part circle black and
I white are adjacent, green is the median colour and is next to red,
* which is also described as embodying equal parts ot white and
I black. The choice of a circular arrangement seems to be quite
j arbitrary in both these cases.
P 1 Newton’s colour-mixing diagram, on the other hand,
although it is clearly based on Descartes’s arrangement of
: iSs mu.sical intervals, has a clear inner coherence because it was
simply an attempt to roll up the prismatic spectrum. It runs
trom red to violet in an unbroken seejuence ot hues whose place
j[ depends upon their intimate relationship to those on either side
of them. With some modification ot the number and area ot the
I component hues, this circular arrangement has remained
[ standard in painterly colour-theory until the present day. The
I first sign that this might be so was in the coloured circle Sir Isaac Newton, colour wheel \( Iplu k.'., l “oa). .Ness ton sets out the ■ ulour-

published in an anonymous supplement on pastel in the lyoS of the spectrum ni their order aiul proportion, locating the ■ omponents ot

f 121 Hague edition ot the Traite de la peinture en nni’natnre attributed mixtures geometricalls . and enabling mixture' ot prismatii ■ oKnirs to b-

I to edaude Boutet, a work first published in iHyj. which ran into predicted. ;t i4)

mi

1
(,<)l OPR LNOI R (ONIROl
Isaac Ncwtun's ‘colours of thin plates’ (O/R/ef’s, 1704), also known as
'Newton's ritigs', record the colours that appear on either side ot two
transparent plates when they are pressed together and illuminated by reflected
and transmitted light. The pairs (listed in the diagram) gave rise to the notion
of complementary colours, from black and white at the centre ot pressure to
bluish-green and red at the extremities. (135)
more than thirty editions by the end of the eighteenth
century. Newton, for reasons which 1 shall discuss in Chapter
13, had divided his blue into two but ‘Boutet’, more concerned
with the practice of painting, made his division in the red
section, knowing, like Le Blon after him, that a ‘pure’ red could
only be a mixture of the yellowish rouge de feu and the blueish
crimson. A more significant asymmetry was introduced into the
circle in the 1780s by the Berlin painter Johann Christoph
Frisch, who proposed an eight-part circle since, he argued, the
eye recognizes a greater distance between blue and red and blue
and yellow than between yellow and red. He proposed two
steps, violet and purple, between blue and red, and two, sea-
green and leal-green, between blue and yellow. This was
probably the first attempt to ground a colour-system on
perception and it had little echo until the work of Wilhelm von
Bezold in the 1870s and, particularly, Wilhelm Ostwald’s
twenty-lour part colour-circle at the beginning of the twentieth
century.
On the contrary, the symmetrical circle of three ‘primaries’
and three ‘secondaries’ became deeply rooted in the understand¬
ing of all concerned with the fine and the decorative arts. This
was hecause it seemed not only to embody the six key colours
but also to express their complementary relationship: red was
opposite green, which was the product of the other two
primaries, yellow and blue, and so on. The importance of polar
opposites was deeply rooted in Western thought: we saw in
Chapter i how Theophrastus could not accept the Democritan
theory hecause he could not see among the colours any
contraries but black and white. Leonardo had ciescribed the
most beautiful colour-contrast as the direct opposite {refto
coiitrario); but he had no single view of what these opposites
were — sometimes blue was contrasted with green and white,
green wnth dark violet or blue, white with blue or black — which
suggests that he had never laid colours out in the form of a
172
diagram. Newton’s view of opposite colours was ot a quite
different order: in a paper of 1672 he had already regarded red
and blue, yellow' and violet, and green and ‘a purple close to
scarlet’ as opposite. His w'ork on the concentric rings ot 1 ?s
colours generated when two plates of thin glass are pressed
together showed him that by reflected and transmitted light the
same circles were variously white and black, red and blue,
yellow and violet, and green and ‘a compound of red and
violet’. Although it is not a completely symmetrical circle,
Newton’s mixing diagram, which first appeared in the Opticks 134
of 1704, has these opposites very nearly in place. Newton
showed himself to be unhappy with the idea ot a mixture of
white with as few as three colours but claimed that he had been
able to mix his ‘mouse-colour’ (the grey that he regarded as
‘white’ in pigment mixtures) with only two: one part red-lead
to five of copper-green. So the ‘opposites’ were those pairs
which mixed to white.
The first use of the term ‘complementary’ seems to be in a
paper of 1794 by the American scientist Benjamin Thompson,
Count Rumford, in the context of the colours of shadows
(complementary to the colour of the light which causes them)
and of colour-harmony: two colours are harmonious when one
of them IS balanced by the product ot the two remaining
primaries.Rumford had been stimulated by the work of
Robert Waring Darwin on ‘ocular spectra’, that is the coloured
after-images perceived when a patch of a particular colour is
looked at closely for a considerable time. The after-image of a
patch seemed to be its complement, which gave many writers
on harmony, notably Goethe, an added confirmation that the
eye ‘demanded’ certain pairings.It is notable that although
all these early observations of after-images pointed out quite
correctly that the complement of red, for example, is not green
but blue-green, the by now canonical circular arrangement and
the doctrine of secondary mixtures made green the almost
universally accepted ‘complementary’ of red.
In due course these ideas filtered into the literature of art. One
of the most coherent of the early circular systems, the
entomologist Moses Harris’s Natural System of Colours of the 133
early 1770s, had been dedicated with his approval to Reynolds;
its second edition of 1811 was deciicated to his successor as
F^resident of the I^oyal Academy, West.^^° In 1803 the scientist
Isaac Milner was invited by the landscape-gardener Humphrey
Repton to contribute an essay, ‘Theory of Colours and

Shadows', to a hook on gardening, in which Milner said tliat
Kepton (‘tire gentleman who consulted me on this subject ot
shadows’) was in the habit of using a little diagram of the colour
relationships to assist him while painting.''' Such diagrams
became part ot the standard equipment of painters in England
and Erance by the 1820s, and by the middle of the century a
French chemist was asserting confidently:
I he colour circle |.'i/ici7r(' lirntLiircj ot six colours w as known to
Iitian, (iiorgione. Murillo and Rubens, since all
complementary ettects and all the harmonies which can be obtained
by the colour-circle can be tound eminentlv in their works, and
harmony can only be known by those who know antagonism.'
Chilour harmony had come to mean particular sets of
contrasts, a view given the greatest authority by the e.xhaustive
experiments of another French chemist, Michel Eugene Cdiev-
reul. Clalled in the 1820s to improve the brightness of the dyes
used in the (lobelins manufactory, Chcwreul discovered that
their apparent dullness was due not to the quality of the dyestuffs
but to the subjective effect ot optical mixture: adjacent threads
ot complementary or near-complementary hues were mixing
in the eye to a neutral grey. After extensive experimentation
Cdievreul, at the suggestion of the physicist Ampere, presented
his discoveries in the form of laws: ‘In the case where the eye sees
at the same time two contiguous colours, they will appear as
dissimilar as possible, both in their optical composition and in
the height of their tone’; and ‘In the Harmony of Contrast the
complementary assortment is superior to every other’. The
transforming effects of colour contrast had, of course, been
familiar since Aristotle and had reached quite a sophisticated
level of analysis among his commentators in the Middle Ages,
such as .St Thomas Aquinas, who noticed that purple looks
different on white anct on black, and gold better on blue than on
white: this was familiar enough to painters and dyers.' As we
have seen, Eeonardo was also concerned about the changes in
appearance wrought on colours by contrast and was as anxious
as Chevreul to remove these contrasts to reveal the true nature
of his subject. As Chevreul put it, ‘to imitate the model
faithfully, we must copy it differently from what we see it
(§333) • ^dis findings, first published in 1828 and soon incorpo¬
rated into public lectures at the Gobelins and elsewhere, were
widely reported in the art press from the mid-18305;"'“’ in 1839
Chevreul expanded them into a large illustrated book in which
they were applied to a vast range of topics, from painting to the
decorative arts, gardening and dress. 77ic LiJic of Harmonious
(folouriiiii was translated into Cierman and English and became
perhaps the most widely used colour-manual ot the nineteenth
century.
Chevreul’s taste in painting was conventional: he referred
only to the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century masters Titian,
Albano and lUibens in his book (§322); among contemporaries
his closest associations were with painters who stood some¬
where between the contending factions of Cdassicism and
Romanticism in his day.'''’ Gne important friend was Horace
Vernet, cine-time Director of the French Academy in Rome,
whose speciality was battle-painting. 1 le may have been
attracted to the scientist by Ins belief that military uniforms
should be in the most highly-contrasted colours, which would
( <>1 ()l K I \l)l k ( ( i\ I H( )1
the
Itcl.UToix .ul.iptcd Ills colour tn.mglc ot i . l s lo troiii .Mennu'c's colour ss.ilc
(pi. 176) to show the three 'prim.iries' (reJ. blue .uui yellow ■ in the corners,
and their 'second.iry mixtures (violet, green and orange; between. I Vl.uroix
added .1 note (also based on .\lerimee) that a mixture ot .i prim.irc .ind a
secondary colour (such as yellow-s iolet) ga\e a better grew than hhuk and
white. (I 36)
allow them to be used longer since the subjective effect ot
simultaneous contrast would compensate for the fading dve-
stuffs (^§b58rt).''
One painter whose relationship to Cdievreul remains prob¬
lematic is Delacroix, who had shown some interest in colour
theory from an early age but whose distaste for the positivism of
the period cannot have endeared him to an outstandinglv
ciogmatic scientist such as Cdievreul.
In 1852 Delacroix wrote:
I have a horror ot the common run ot scientists. .. thev elbow one
another m the antechamber of the sanctuary where nature Indes her
secrets, and are always waiting tor someone more able than
themselves to open the door a finger's breadth for them . . .
Scientists ought to live in the country, close to nature; thev prefer to
chat around the green tables of the academies and the Institut about
the things that everyone knows as well as they do; in the forest, on
the mountains ytm observe natural laws, you do not make a step
without finding a subject for admiration.'
A triangular colour-diagram in a 1 )clacroi.x notebook ot around /qb
1S30 conics not, as has sometimes been supposed, from
Chevreul, but from a handbook on oil painting by the painter J.
F. E. Merimee, with whom Delacroix was closely associated in /pb
183 1.' 1 )elacroi.x was perfectly tamiliar with the complemen¬
tary circle; he sketched one in a notebook about 1839 and
towards the end of his life seems to have kept a painted \ ersion
in his studio.This was the period when he was most anxious
to inform himself about the principles ot contrast, when he
acquired a set of notes taken in 1848 at lectures by C'hevreul and
when, about 1850, he proposed to visit the chemist himselt but
was prevented by illness.'-' Cdievreul’s view that the high
contrast of‘Hat painting’ should be adopted by artists working
on large-scale mural and ceiling decoration was particularly
important to Delacroix, who in the 1840s had been executing
such schemes tor the libraries ot the Chamber ot Deputies and
173
 li L XIM.K CONIROI.

nOUGE

Violet. Bleuindigo. Bleu Vert bleu. Vert. Jaune vert. Jaune.

cyanique.

Rouge. Pourpre. Rose fonce. Rose Blanc. Jaune Jaune d’or. 0rang6.
blanchatre. blanchatre.

Orange. Rose foncL Rose Blanc. Jaune Jaune. Jaune.

blanchatre. blanchatre. VEST

Jaune. Rose Blanc. Vert Vert Jaune vert.

Auguste Laugel's table of colour mixtures {L’Optiqiie ci
blancliiltre. blanchatre. blanchatre.
Ics arts, i86y) shows the component colours red, blue,
■launc vcrl. Blanc. Vert Vert Vert. yellow, etc., at the left and top, and their products, such
blanchatre. blanchatrc. as white, at the intersections. The scheme had been
devised by 1 lelmholtz, who formulated it using additive
Vert. Bleu Bleu d’eau. Vert bleu.
blanchatrc. disc-mixtures. Laugel's colour-star was based on a
diagram he had found in one of 1 )elacroix’s notebooks,
Vert bleu. Bleu (I’eau. Bleu d’eau.
and he claimed that though it was crude (it shows the

Bleu subtractive primaries and complementarics ot Chevrcul),

Bleu indigo.
cyanique. it was more practical for painters than Helmholtz’s

scheme. (137,13^)

the Senate and also in the Pans church of St Dents dti Saint-
Sacrement.In these works Delacroix developed a style of
modelling in forceful hatchings of brilliant reds and greens in
the flesh. Renoir, who was a close student of Delacroix’s
technique, argueci that this was the only context in which he
would have needed a knowledge of complementarity.'^^ In
1850 Delacroix w'as embarking on a new monumental task, the
12S ceiling of the Salle d’Apollon in the Louvre, which may have
been his most immediate reason for wanting
Chevretil. In 1851 an English critic spoke of this ceiling as
showing how France ‘is largely imbued with the ideas of
modern science' and mentioned the problem of painting so high
above the spectator. Certainly the colours, which outraged
another critic in 1853, were originally brighter than they have
become, so that van Gogh recalled the ceiling in the 1880s as
simply a simultaneous contrast of yellow and violet.'-^ It was
about the time of the Apollo, too, that the writer Maxime dti
Camp witnessed Delacroix making complicated mixtures by
overlaying threads of coloured wools and arguing that the best
pictures he had seen were certain Persian carpets; he was also
becoming more aware of the phenomenology of sunlight on
surfaces out of doors.
Of enormous consequence for Delacroix’s great reputation as
a colourist was his encounter at this time with the critic Charles
Blanc, Director of the Arts under the brief Socialist government
of 1848-50 and writer of one of the most important textbooks
for artists in the second half of the century.'-^ Blanc’s
Graimtiaire des arts dti dessiti of 1867, whose title was itself
indicative of the new positivism, argued that the traditional
view that colour, unlike drawing, could not be taught was quite
mistaken and that it was Delacroix, ‘one of the greatest
colourists of modern times’, whea demonstrated most clearly the
falsity of this position. Delacroix understood the laws, even the
‘mathematical rules’ of colour, and these laws and rules were
essentially those enunciated by Chevretil.Blanc was not,
however, a great admirer of colour per sc: he regarded it as the
‘feminine’ part of art, which must take second place to the
‘masculine’ drawing, and he felt that Delacroix’s sacrifices to
colour had sometimes been too great.For Blanc, the great
masters of colour were the Orientals but their superiority was
shown in the less important branch of the decorative arts. The
hatchings of red and green which Blanc saw in Delacroix’s
central dome m the library of the Luxembourg Palace seemed to
him to function like the colour-mixtures in a cashmere
to talk to shawl.Thus he found Chevreul’s principles exemplified
most extensively in the painter’s oriental subjects, such as the
IVoineti of Algiers (1834) to which he devoted a lengthy analysis
but, as Lee Johnson has shown, edited the optical data in the
interests of Chevreuhan system, and focused on just those
colourful decorative accessories which he felt were essentially
demeaning to high art.'-^" It is true that Delacroix was
fascinated by oriental textiles anci artefacts — many ceramics are
still preserved in his studio at place Furstenberg in Pans - but
we also know from a comparison between preparatory studies
and final paintings that he was prepared to make many colour-
changes as the work proceeded — and not usually 111 the direction
of Chevreuhan principles.'-^'
Chevretil’s career was a very long one, in the course of which
his views on colour scarcely changed. Fdis ideas were re¬
published in different forms but they were not revised and
treatises based on his principles of the 1820s continued to be
published 111 France at least until 1890.'-'- Yet the study of
colour had undergone great changes 111 mid-century because of
the more precise analysis of the processes of vision, which cast
doubt on the whole notion of primary colours and on the
colour-circle based on them. There was a revival of interest in
the early nineteenth-century work of Thomas Young, who had
argued that the colour-receptors in the eye are sensitive to red,
blue and green light; both Hermann von Helmholtz in
Germany and James Clerk Maxwell 111 England showed that
white light could be re-constituted from a mixture of only
yellow and blue. Newton’s coherent system was now re-

174

conipilicatcd hy the hirnial distiiutioii to be made between
additive and subtractive mixtures.' ’’ Chevreul appealed to the
experience of painters and other artists against what he tmik to
be the totally erroneous doctrines of I lehnholtz and his
followers in France;'but the publication of a translation of
Helmlioltz's great I landhooh of I>hYsioli\'’iCiil Optics in 1S67 had
been succeeded by a spate ot popular manuals designed to bring
these doctrines within the scope ot practising artists, the first of
; ?7-iS’ which, Auguste Laugel's L’Optiquc ct Ics arts, appeareti only two
years later.As recently as 1S57 a physicist aiul amateur critic,
Jules Jamin, had argued along seventeenth-century lines that
since the painter, unlike the scientist, was exclusively concerned
with effects, and since the powers of nature were beyond the
powers of art, the ‘realism’ vaunted by the current school of
French landscape painting was utopian to a degree.'-’'’ Ikit now,
with the rise ot Impressionism, a whole series of artists'
handbooks, drawing on Helmholtz, proclaimed that the newly-
discovered truths of optics were indeed being exemplified in
painting. Thus Edmond Duranty, a critic who had read
Armand Guillemin’s FH-lmholtzian La Liiiiticrc of i(S74, felt that
‘for the first time painters have understood and reproduced, or
tried to reproduce, these phenomena'.'-’’'' A somewhat later text
used by the writer J. K. Huysmans in his interpretation of
Impressionism, Eugene Veron’s L’Esthctiqiio of 1878, presented
147 Helmholtz’s findings about mixture in the form of a table; but
he made it clear that the only way in which this could be used
was in the context of optical contrast:
But these thc(-)ries are of little use to painters as aids in the
preparation ot tints, because the coloured powders which they
employ arc unfitted for their application. They are, however, a
great help to the comprehension of the effects resulting from the
juxtaposition ot different colours. Whenever complementary
colours arc placed side by side, they enhance each other’s brilliancy
13«
The proper exploitation of these discoveries would need a
wholly new technique; in his characterization of the Impressio¬
nists Veron laid emphasis on their ‘direct observation and
untlinching sincerity’ rather than on theoretical analysis, for
their ‘principle ot the discolouration ot tints when in full
sunshine’.
Thus, when the self-styled iiiiprcssioiiiiistc-linttinistc Georges
•Seurat exhibited the first example of what he called diroiiio-
liiiiiiiutrisiiic or pciiitiirc optiqued'^^'' Sunday Afternoon on the Island
lyd of La Grande Jatte, at the final Impressionist exhibition in 1886,
the theoretical ground was well prepared. This large picture had
been in existence for two years but during the winter ot i88s--b
Seurat re-worked much of its surface with a texture ot more or
less unitorm dots and strokes, which made it, in Meyer
Schapiro's words, the first selt-consciously ‘homogeneous’
painting, as it is also the first that makes an optical theory the
justification for a technique.''^' Perhaps the most substantial
change in the colour-organization ot the whole canvas was the
shift from a more conventional Ghevreulian notion ot contrasts
to a more subtle llelmholtzian one. Fhe 1884 sketch tor the
couple in the right foreground of the picture sets up a series ot
complementary contrasts in which the red skirt ot the woman is
set against the green grass.At some stage, probably in i88s.
( ( i| ( )l 1< I \|)M< ( I i\ I Hi i|
Seur.u decided to ch.inge this skirt to .1 purplish blue, as he did 111
.1 sin,ill oil sketch;''*' tor. .iccording to the Hehnholtzi.in
scheme, ot which Seur.u might haw le.irned trom t\gden
itood s .Modern ( '.lironiatics or. more import.ititK . trom ;
coin ersations w ith the scientist C ih.irles I lenr\ i w liotn he met in
October 08s), deep blue-purple ,md il.irk gri.'en w ere comple-
ment.iry. ‘ Another, more sigmtic.mt. .iddition to the (irande
Jatte w .is Its p.nntei.i border, w Inch (. h.inges hue .iccording to the
hue ot the area ot p.iinting .igaiiist which it is set.''*' 1 his
thoroughly abstr.ict des ice is ,i good index ot Seur.it's current
beliets about colour-contr.ist: it is clear th.it he sometimes felt. ,is
in the right-hand edge ot the painting ,md in the bottom centre,
that blue was the appropriate contr.ist to orange (.1 C 'he\ reuh.in
pair) and sometimes th.it .i bright purplish red w.is the
complement ot dark green, .is 1 lehnholtz ,ind Rood h.ui sought
to demonstrate. I hese contr.isting s iew s ot contr.ist ,ire .ilso
esident in the smaller landscape. Ihe Bee dn Hoc. begun in
Normandy in i88s, when the more expressis e brushstroke w .is
still very much apparent, but pnwided with si>me umtormh-
dotted rewisions and a coloured border prtibablv during i.ssn.
Here the blue-red ot the border is set against the blue-green of
the sea and the blue-orange against the \ er\' pale whitish blue of
the sky, but the contrast to the pale green grass is largeK' red. ''*'’
So Seurat's attitude to theory was eclectic, not to say ad hoc.
and this eclecticism is reflected in the substantial list ot his earls'
reading which he sent to the critic Felix Feneon in 1 S90.' '*''' Fhe
list included Rood’s up-to-date textbook in the French s ersion
ot 1881 - although Seurat did not say that he had read it. only
that it had been brought to his notice - and Gharles Blanc’s
Grannnaire. which may indeed have been the immediate source
tor Seurat’s extensive note on s'alue-contrast from Ghes reul
(which he entitled Refliwions snr la peintnre) and also for the quite
un-Rood-like notion that sunlight is orange,''*'’ But abos'e all
Blanc, as we saw, had presented Delacroix as the scientific
colourist par e.xcellence: when Seurat made notes ot the colour ot
some Delacroix oriental sketches 111 1881. he concluded that
they showed ‘the strictest application of scientific principles seen
through a personality’.''*'* It was perhaps at this time too that
Seurat took notes trom some passages in Delacroix’s journal
recording colour contrasts in nature:
From my window I see the sh.idow of people walking in the sun on
the sand | which is| s'iolet itself, but gilded hy the sun; the shadow of
these people is so violet that the ground becomes yellow.
Is it too daring ui say that in the open air, and abi've all in the effect
which is before my eyes, the reflection must he produced by the
ground which is gilded being lit hy the sun. th.it is to say yellow,
and by the sky which is blue, and that these two induced
tones would necessarily h.ise a green tone? . . . all m\- life I h.ive
painted white drapery truly enough in colour Iti'iil.
.So here are the testimoni.ils of which a scholar might be proud; 1 .im
even more so at has ing painted w ell-ci>loured pictures before being
aware of these laws. .
Seurat’s early training aiul tastes were well calculated to
inspire him with scientific ambititnis. A series trf articles on
visitni published in 1880 by the painter and aesthetician Das id
Sutter included the following instruction, against which Seurat
placed his cross. ‘We must find a clear and precise ftrrmula tor
17.-^
COI Ol'R UNDFR CONTROL
the rules ot liannony ot lines, ot light and ot colours, and give
the scientitic basis |ri70()/;| tor these rules ... In the arts,
es'erything must be willed.''"’’ This is in essence the aesthetic
credo which Seurat passed on to a friend at the end ot his lite; but
being a scientific painter, in particular a scientitic colourist, was
no simple matter and throughout his short career he continued
to use the superannuated but more easily remembered Chev-
reuhan scheme ot contrasts: red against green, blue against
orange, yellow against violet, which Sutter published here,
although on the basis not ofChevreul but of Goethe.Seurat
was very reluctant to expand on his principles, leaving that to
his friend Feneon, whose Roodian account of the Grande JiUtc
has shaped all subsee|uent interpretations ot the technique ot
Neo-lmpressionism, but who as early as i8S8 was remarkably
dirtident about the scientitic input into the method.There is
some reason tor thinking that the ex-Impressionist Camille
Pissarro, who in a letter to the Llealer Paul Durand-Ruel ot
November 1886 generously pointed to Seurat as the first painter
‘who had the idea ot studying protoundly and applying the
scientitic theory’, was himselt rather more tamiliar with the
scientific literature than his mentor. It is not always remembered
that in his outline of the history of his own work Seurat drew
attention to a (now unidentified) painting by Pissarro, shown at
a private gallery early in 1886, which was ‘divided and pure’,
that is, had, so Seurat thought, the essential characteristics of the
Neo-Impressionist division of light into its coloured constitu¬
ents.’^"’ In the letter to Durand-Ruel Pissarro referred quite
correctly to the crucial roles ot Maxwell and Rood in measuring
the precise constituents of the complementaries; about the same
time he was m touch with another painter, Louis Hayet, who
was experimenting with the construction ot colour-circles of
from 40 to 120 divisions. Hayet presented Pissarro with five
circles, only one of which, the simplest, forty-hue version,
appears to have survived.It represents an attempt to fill a
Chevreulian, forty-part format with the information derived
from Rood’s far more complex colour-space, and may be
compared with the way in which Seurat, when he drew a little
diagram of the colour circle in 1887, tried in vain to fit the six-
part Chevreulian scheme of complementaries into the eight-
part circle of Charles Henry, based on Helmholtz’s complemen¬
176
tary contrasts. Seurat probably shared the opinion ot Laugel that
although the Helmholtzian scheme represented the truth about
the colours of lights, in practice the crude {grassier) diagram of
Delacroix, based on his note of about 1839, was far more ijS
useful.’’’'" Even Pissarro continued to put Chevreul at the head
of those scientists who had made it possible for painters to teel
confident about their understanding ot light.
Recent studies of Seurat’s technique have tended to erode the
traditional view that he was an essentially scientific artist.’’’’’
'What they have not done is to show that his new methods
produced an optical context of such complexity that no painter
could be expected to have dealt with its problems and retain
freedom as an artist: this was one of the reasons why Pissarro
soon turned his back on the Neo-Impressionist technique.’®'^
Seurat wanted to create high contrasts in large areas of tone but
he also wanted to increase luminosity by the use of optical
mixtures and these are incompatible with high contrast, which
depends on sharp contours. We can see in the Grande Jatte how
he tried to firm up his contours by making his dots smaller
towards the edges of forms, hence more easily fusible at a
constant viewing distance. This optical fusion was itself pro¬
blematic, since different hues fuse at different distances.’^”
Unlike Pissarro, who was most concerned with optical mixture,
Seurat seems to have shown little interest in the question: he
painted his large picture in a very conhned space, in which
empirical judgments of this sort would have been quite
impossible.
Newton had apparently brought order into the chaos of
colour and had thus made it for painters as communicable a
subject as drawing. Yet, as the Viennese physiologist Ernst
Brticke stated quite categorically in a handbook for artists which
had some influence in France, the enormous developments in
the science of optics in the nineteenth century made it out ot the
question for the painter to be up-to-date in the manner of a
Leonardo da Vinci.’'"- So far from marking the beginnings of a
scientific aesthetic, the optical concerns of the Neo-
Impressionists signalled its demise, and helped to usher in that
disdain for the methods and discoveries of the natural sciences
which has had important consequences for the painterly study
of colour in the twentieth century.
Ogden Rood's contrast diagram (Modern Chromatics, 1879) shows only those
complementary contrasts established by disc-mixing techniques with specific
pigments - hence both its asymmetrical appearance and its usefulness to
painters. Seurat is known to have owned a copy of the French version of 1881.
(139)
 10 • The Palette: ‘Mother of All Colours’
I he palette as system ■ The well-tenipeyed palette ■ Delacroix's palettes
I'lie palette as paiiitiip^
l^raisc be to the palette tt)r the delights it oilers... it is itself a 'work',
more beaiitihil, indeed, than many a work. (Wassily Kandinsky.
One oi THE least studied aspects of the history of art is art's tools,
flistorians of science are beginning to see what a fundamental
effect the design and limitations of the available technology have
had on the development of scientific concepts^ but there is little
sign yet that the same is being done tor the techiuilogy ot art.
Here, with tew exceptions, the study ot equipment has so tar
been largely in the hands of those who feel that good
crattsmanshipi has been lost and ought to be recovered.-’ The
palette is one of the more important tools in the history of
painterly ideas, since its development is relatively easy to trace in
pictures of artists at work.'’ The method of its setting-out also
has an important history, which takes us from the tool itself to
the notion ot 'palette' as the overall tonality ot a picture. It is this
history which I want to outline here.
The use of the palette as a small portable surface on which
colours could be held and mixed is not clearly attested m
Antic}uity or the Middle Ages, tor reasons which seem closely
related to the early dislike of mixing as such (see Chapter 2).®
Most ciepictions of medieval painters at work show the
pigments in shallow containers such as shells or saucers, often
with a wide range of colours, as in the five or six shown in an
English fourteenth-century encyclopaedia, or the ten or eleven
in the late fifteenth-century Flemish representation of an
epistide in the life of the ancient Greek painter Zeu.xis.^ The
earliest representations of palettes in Europe, all in the hands ot
the women painters included in Boccaccio’s Livre des Fotunes
\ohles et Retioinifices (De Claris Miilierihiis) in two fifteenth-
century Burgundian manuscripts now in Paris, show smallish
bat-like palettes with a handful of colours placed in the centre,
so that it IS still unlikely that much mi.xing was done.^ It is, ot
course, impossible to judge what medium the women were
using in these tanciful illustrations of around 1400 but it could
well have been oil; it was surely the binding power of oil, with
its capacity to make a stiff and lastingly flexible paste, winch
made oil-coltmrs possible to hold easily on the palette. Certainly
what seems to be the earliest known description ot palettes, in
the accounts of the Dukes of Burgundy in the late 1460s, states
clearly that they were tor oil-colours: trenchers of wood for them
I painters] to put oil colours on and to hold them iu the hand.^ There
was still no reference to mixing and the early representations ot
palettes after the Burgundian ladies, all ot which occur in
northern painting c. i soo, show small surfaces holding the tew
pigments used to paint each section of the picture separately,
with no sign of blending between each little pile ot paint.’’
One ot the most interesting ot these e.irK represeiu.itions ot
the artist at work is the panel ot'.S'f laihe pamluiy the I ityiu b\- the
Swiss painter Niklaus Manuel 1 )eutsch. from .1 now fragmented 14
altar. The Virgin is represented in the standard wav. with .1
smallish, blue cloak, palette ot' white, ses eral blues and a red-
brown, which ctner a good part of the surtace; but in the
background his assistant is preparing a fir more extensive
palette, set with a large number ot pigments along the edge and
presumably intended ttir making a quite ditierent painting. 1 he
setting of a palette with many colours at the edge and a large
bare area in the centre is a sign of extensive mixture: technical
analysis of Niklaus Manuel's picture has shown that he did
indeed use many mixtures in a complicated medium ot oil and
probably emulsion. Tie also used a range of more than twenty
pigments, which might well tit the palette in the background.'*’
This arrangement is similar to that in a Flemish painting of St
Euke (f. 1520) where the saint's own palette is set in two lines
totalling eight colours parallel to the edge, with the lightest
(white) close to the thumb-hole and the darkest (blue) at the
farthest end.'' What these images suggest is that mixing
practices were developing very rapidly in tnl painting in the
early sixteenth century, which was making it important to
organize the palette in a quite new and regular way.'-
Most of our examples of early palettes are from northern
Europe but Vasari gives us a memorable picture of the
Florentine painter Lorenzo di CTedi, the fellow-pupil with
Leonardo in the studio of Verrocchio and a close imitator of
Leonardo’s early style. His chief claim to our interest is his
e.xtraordinarily meticulous and solid technique. Vasari de¬
scribed how Lorenzo would prepare his very finely ground
colours and distilled oils, and how ‘he made on his palettes a
great number of colour mixtures, so that they went gradually
from the lightest tint to the darkest, with exaggerated and truly
excessive regularity \cou troppo e verameutc soverchio ordiiie], so
that sometimes he had twenty-five or thirty on his palette, and
for each of them he kept a separate brush'.'-’ We should very
much like to know what this ordiue was and how Lorenzo
arrived at it; what seems clear is that his was the ancestor ot those
obsessively nuanced tonal palettes of pre-mixed colours which
we find so often in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Vasari disapproved of this degree of attention to the arrange¬
ment of the colours and there is nothing so regular among the
surviving representations ot palettes in the sixteenth century,
either in Italy or the north. 'T he only common principle seems
to be that the black and the white shall be kept as widely
separated as possible.''* As late as the 15X0S a north Italian
technical handbook could remark that the palette was essentially
a surface on which to dilute the colours with oil and that the
177
 mi i’AiMii
niixiurcs (it coKnirs ‘,irc m.Klc little by little as one works, since
this time one s ells, rather than covers, those details ot painting
w hich ha\'e already been well exeented'.'Here the atithor. Cl.
B. Armenini, is clearly asstnmng that mixttires are made by
glazing on the painting ,md not beforehand on the palette.
We saw in earlier chapters how around 1600 a new interest in
colour-svstenis based upon a notion ot primaries and their
mixtures began to adect artists; in due course this interest
brought about a completely new attitude to the role ot the
palette. Technical practices are notoriously conservative and
there is. so far as 1 know, little evidence of new arrangements
until the 1620s. C')ne of the first evidences of change is in the
palette held for ,St Luke 111 1 )onienichino's pendentives tor the
dome of S. Andrea della Valle in Rome, which shows a line ot
colours along the edge trom white near the thumb, through a
bright red and a bright yellow to the darks, incltiding yellow-
brown and brown. We shall see 111 Cdiapter 13 on music and
colour how sensitive Domenichmo was to precise tonal scales;
w'c know from the English traveller Richard Symonds how
Domenichino’s pupil Cliovanni Angelo Ckinini w'ould set his
palette about 1630 in two row-s, one of unmixed pigments from
wdiite, yelknv-ochre, vermilion and so on to charcoal black, but
without blue, and the second row' of mixtures of up to three of
these pigments. Clanim spoke, significantly, of 'putting his
palette in order'; he made wdiat w'as for his day a remarkable use
ot mi.xtures. and Symonds described how' 111 Anthony and
Cleopatra he painted a river-bank, ‘wch was colourd a sad
greene, he tooke a masse of Terra Verde (A niixt it dipping his
pencill into all the scuri [dark colours] as Terra Rossa, Lacca,
Terra d’ombra. Black a little, yet a sad greene pwayld in the
colouring above alb. When Symonds looked closely at the
cloucis in another painting by Canim, mixed out of six
pigments, he found that it was 'sch a pleasant mistigaglia’.
Rubens made more use of the juxtaposed touches of pure
pigments, and of glazes; although the future Queen of France
W'as instructed in painting, the palette Rubens gave to her in the
1620s in his Education of Marie de Medicis is still small, with a large
dose ot w'hite in the centre. Rembrandt in this decade may also
have used distinct palettes for each part of the painting: The
Artist in his Studio at Boston, probably a self-portrait of about
1629, show's the traditional small palette, as well as a much larger
one hanging on the w'all.^^ But the portrait by Gerrit Don of
about the same date shows him working with a larger oval
palette, on which the colours are set in a tonal order round the
edge.^*^ This order Rembrandt maintained throughout his life:
it is hinted at in his moving self-portrait of 1660 in the Louvre
and was adopted by pupils such as Aert de Gelder, in his
14s revealing sell-portrait painting an old woman. One of the
problems revealed by these palettes is an uncertainty about the
position of bright red 111 the tonal scale. Rembrandt, for
example, lelt that it was brighter than yellow-ochre, placing it
next to W'hite; de Gelder placed it beyond yellow' and many
other artists put it with other bright - and precious — pigments,
such as ultramarine, apart from the main series and usually in
much smaller quantities.
Around 1630 the arrangement and use of the palette became
as never betore a subject for discussion in painterly circles.
Turqiiet de Mayerne recorded at least two palettes, both
lyS
tinattributed, one which runs through nine pigments trom
W'hite to ivory- and lamp-black, with vermilion next to white,
and the other ot twelve colours in the same sequence, with an
extra brown, and (?ultraniarine) ashes and the lead-based yellow
massicot at the end, out of sequence beyond black. Mayerne
observed that 'the first function of the palette is to arrange the
colours, the second to temper them with oil. and the third
alliance et nieslain^e' — the most comprehensive definition w'c
have encountered so far; he also had a clear idea that arrange¬
ment W'as a principle, since in a later note on a palette set tor
portrait painting, he remarked that it was essential to put the
light colours at the top (i.e. near the the thumb-hole) and the
dark at the bottom.-^ It w'as increasingly assumed that the
palette should be laid out as a general one tor the w'hole ot the
picture: an English handbook of the early 1630s stated that it
should include 'a small quantitie of every such colour you are to
use', going on to list at least fourteen.““ It was also clear that it
should now be a tool for mixing. Pierre Ee Brim, writing in
Pans in 1635, characterized it as 'the mother of all colours, tor
trom the mi.xture ot three ot tour principal colours [the
painter’s] brush w'ill create and, as it were, cause to bloom all
kinds of colours’; he went on to describe a palette tor flesh-
painting which included ten pigments, blues and greens among
them, and was to be set for the painter by his 'gari^ion'.--^ The
common practice, going back to the Renaissance, ot leaving an
assistant to set the palette, must also have increased the need to
make a regular and repeated order of colours w'hich could
become a habit. Le Brun also stated that the white must
be placed in the centre of the palette, an arrangement we
saw in Rubens and which was not uncommon in the first half
ot the seventeenth century: a good example is the otherw'ise
very unusual palette of Juciith Leyster, in her self-portrait
ofr. 1635.-’^
What is most striking about the new rational and tonal
organization ot the palette is that variations were as much local
as personal. Velazquez, for example, painting himself into Las
Menihas (1656), used a tonal palette of ten colours, with
vermilion before the white and a wider range than usual ot
browns and blacks, just as we should expect cat him, but also
essentially the range and the arrangement prescribed in a
contemporary Spanish manual.-^
Probably the first treatise to give a good deal of attention to
the palette as such was Roger de Piles’s Les Premiers Elemens de la
Peintnre Pratique, w'ritten in collaboration with and illustrated
by the painter J.-B. Corneille and published in 1684 under his
name. The Elemens, as its title suggests, was directed at beginners
but It included very detailed instructions tor painting in oil and
in fresco and tor making miniatures. De Piles argued that there
were eight 'capital' colours, from wdneh all others could be
made by mixture, and Ins diagram of the order in which they
were 'almost always’ placed showed the by now conventional
secjLience, with yellow-ochre next to white. The only curiosity
seems to be the placing of yellow lake {stil de qrain) as the meciian
colour, between lake and terre verteA^ Another diagram showed
a palette set tor painting flesh, with vermilion placed as in the
Spanish examples before the white, adding Naples yellow,
carmine and ultramarine in a separate series. Half-tints for a
head, said De Piles, were made with three values of a greenish
Palettes can tell us much about painters'
attitudes to colour. Two English palettes of the
eighteenth century show contrasting
approaches to setting. Hogarth's palette (The
Analysis oj Beauty, 1753) has no room for
mixing. Black, white, and five 'bloom tints'
(red, yellow, blue, green and purple) are
placed in spectral sequence from the top at No.
4, each hue graded in seven values, from dark
to light (see also pis. 143-4). George Romney’s
drawing of his palette shows a tonal
arrangement of twenty-two colours, many of
them pre-mixed. The artist painted chiefly
portraits, and his palette probably reflects the
need to match Hesh-tones. (140,141)

mix, each with a little less white, and shadow tones in two
values, only the darkest with black. These tones were not mixed
in the process of painting but pre-mixed and set out over the
whole palette in two tonal series amounting to ten tones, getting
progressively darker away from the thumb-hole. They might
however be modified by further mixing, according to the needs
ot the developing painting, but this should be kept to a
minimum and the models to follow for the handling of‘virgin
tints’ were Veronese and Rubens.-'^
A slightly later brench manual by the amateur Bernard du
Buy de (Irez also laid great emphasis on mixture, citing a painter
friend who first prepared tints with his palette-knife on the
palette, then further blended them with his brush in the act of
painting. This is an early reference to the knife that was so much
used by Rembrandt as a tool for painting itself and which can be
seen in use in a portrait of the marine painter Willem van de
Velde the elder by Michel van Mtisscher of about 1665/7.-*^
Elaborate pre-mixed palettes began to be very common in the
last quarter of the seventeenth century, a tendency which was to
continue tor two hundred years. In the 1670s, tor example, .Sir
Peter Lely would arrange up to forty mixed tints on his palette
tor portraits and his rival in England (lerard Soest used three or
tour tones ot each ot his own imijor colours.-*^ This proliferation
both ot ‘primary’ pigments and ot mixed tones increased
throughout the eighteenth century. In a lecture to the French
Academy in I7sa the iiiiiiiialicr j.-lh. Oudry suggested that all ; SiS’
available colours should be used and that each td them should
have five or six pre-niixed light tones and as many mid-tones as
the painter could manage, to avoid ‘tiring’ them by mixing
with the brush. The pre-mixed tones should be arranged in
tonal sequence ‘in order better to evaluate the tone tif each ot
them and compare it with the others’. ’*’ We are close to the
large palettes of two ranges of pre-mixed tones used by jacques-
Louis David in his teaching” but, as we shall see, even these
were simple compared with the highly orchestrated arrange¬
ments ot 1 )elacroix in the Romantic period.

179
 I HI i'AU ri F
The ii’cll-tciiipcrcd palette
In a late scvcntccnth-ccnlury treatise oti watercoleiur-painting
the French artist Hubert (iautier expressed puzzlement at the
way uil-painters utten seemed to make a secret ot the arrange¬
ment of their palettes. His surprise at the rather standard tonal
^ettlngs which now prevailed may seem less unusual it we
consider his own bizarre chemical theory ot colours, which
made black, white, violet and yellow the primaries, and
blue and green derivatives, so that, for example, the alkaline
violet would be turned red by mixture with an acid.-’“ But the
growing individualism of eighteenth-century art brought a
range of unorthodox palette arrangements, from those ot
unschooled artists such as the barely teenaged Gainsborough in a
recently discovered self-portrait,'’-^ to the elderly Welsh
landscape-painter Richard Wilson, who moved from a rather
straightforward setting of some nine pigments and mixtures in
the 1750s to a far more eccentric range of eight or nine pigments
and a dozen pre-mixed tints tw'enty years later,The commer¬
cial value of some personal style of laying out the palette was
quickly appreciated by writers of handbooks, such asj. C. Le
Blon, who published some outstandingly complicated hand-
coloured illustrations of portrait palettes in his Coloritto ot 1725,
and Thomas Bardwell, a painter and author of one ot the most
popular treatises ot the period, whose palettes prescribed tor
portraits, with more than twenty pigments and tones, seem to
have been far more complex than those he used in his own
practice.-’® This individualism is also reflected in a new curiosity
about the palettes of well-known painters, evident in Paul
Sandby’s sketch of Wilson’s, or the portrait-painter George
1^1 Romney’s own remarkable diagram, showing an unusual
arrangement with all the mixtures round the edge.-®^ This
curiosity was to last well into the twentieth century; Sandby’s
was the ancestor of those anthologies of palettes which began to
appear in technical handbooks in the nineteenth century and
have been even more cultivated in the next.-®^
Perhaps the most idiosyncratic of all eighteenth-century
palettes was that of William Hogarth. In an early self-portrait
Hogarth represented a palette for flesh-painting made up of
white and vermilion and their mixed tones.But in the course
of preparing his treatise The Analysis of Beauty in the 1750s, he
devised a far more ambitious scheme, based on the analysis of
colour-relationships. Starting from Leonardo’s account ot the
rainbow {see p. 108), Hogarth proposed that the vigour ot the
primary tints could be maintained by observing the way in
which, in the bow, the adjacent colours were mingled without
losing their identity. The painter, said Hogarth, ‘by means of a
certain order in the arrangement of the colours upon his palette,
readily mixes up what kind of tint he pleases.’®'^ What this order
should be he expounded in the commentary to Plate II of his
140 book, where the ideal palette is at the centre of the tipper frame.
The five ‘original’ colours of painting are, besides white and
black, red, yellow, blue, green and purple, which Hogarth
placed in a vertical scale, as ‘bloom tints’ or what painters called
‘virgin tints’, at No. 4 in his diagram, as the median and most
brilliant class of colours, in spectral orcier from the top. To the
left each of these hues moves into white, at 7, 6 and 5; to the
right, 1,2 and 3 ‘would sink into black, either by twilight, or at a
180
moderate distance from the eye’. Nos 5, 6 and 7 are almost as
beautiftil as class 4, since they gain in light, whereas it is the
opposite with black. Hogarth went on to show how all the
colours on this palette might be used, at row 7, to make a
painting of the marble bust. No. 96 on his plate, m the right-
hand margin, with a ‘very fair transparent and pcarl-hke
complexion’.His chief concern was to keep his tints clear and
distinct, as he admired them m Rubens, and he lett no space m
his arrangement for palette-mixing, or tor black and white as
such. It was a palette which must have been virtually impossible
to use: although he kept the spectral arrangement on the palette
shown m his self-portrait of a few years later, Hogarth there 144
started the sequence with white, added an extra red (?crimson)
and left a good deal of space for making tints m the process ot
painting.
I know of only one painter hardy enough to take Hogarth’s
advice literally, the American historical artist John Trumbull,
who showed himself at the age of twenty-one with a copy ot 144
Hogarth’s Analysis and a palette derived from the argument
resting on it. But even Trumbull simplified Hogarth consider¬
ably and since the English artist was so disparaging about the
dark end of the scale, the American started with the tully
saturated hues and graded them in a series of six values towards
white."” In the event, Trumbull’s self-portrait seems to have
been no more than a youthful demonstration-p>iece; later in his
career he showed himself holding palettes with much more
conventional tonal settings.
The growing piractice of laying out a series of pre-mixed
tints, and of limiting the possibilities of mixture in the process of
painting, was, in effect, to impose a more or less nuanced grid
onto the perceptions of the motif. Where Claude had mixed his
tones out of doors and taken them back to his studio to make a
painting, an eighteenth-century painter, even the unconven¬
tional J.-B. Desportes, who was responsible for some ot the
freshest outdoor oil sketches of the period, would take a ‘loaded
palette’ on his expeditions into the country — and ‘loading’
meant loading in every sense.It had long been felt that the
colouring of a painting might reflect rather the character of the
painter’s taste than the character of his subject.Oudry m his
1752 lecture recalled how his master Nicholas de Largilliere
loved to watch Flemish painters at work because he could see
how the relationship of tints on the palette affected the same
relationship in the subject they were painting: ‘what he had no
less admired was that beautiful harmony which he always saw
throughout the gradations of these tints, and which seemed to
respond in advance to what he woulci find in the picture’.
Painters in their studios began to be represented from the late
Middle Ages onwards. In the sixteenth century, St Luke the artist
uses a small and limited palette for painting the blue cloak of the
Virgin, and does not appear to be mixing his colours very much. But
in the background an assistant prepares a far more extensive palette,
running from white to black, perhaps the palette used by Niklaus
Manuel for painting this very picture, 111 which a wide range of
mi.xed pigments has been identified.
142 Niklaus Manuei Deutsch, St Luke painting the Virgin. 1515
 The personal palette

143 William Hogarth, Sf//- During the eighteenth century the

portrait painting the Comic Muse,
c. 1758 (detail)
144 John Trumbull, palette set
according to Hogarth’s precepts,
detail of Self-portrait, 1777
invention of palette arrangements began to be
almost as personal as style. In his book the
Analysis oj Beauty (1753), Hogarth proposed
an elaborate, essentially spectral palette (pi.
140), but he does not seem to have used more
than a very simplified version of it himself
(143). Possibly the only painter to take it
seriously was the young Americanjohn
Trumbull (144), who in an early self-portrait
showed a similarly reduced adaptation of it
resting on his copy of‘Hogarth’.

145 Aert de Gelder, Self-portrait Rembrandt’s pupil de Gelder presents

as Zeuxis 1685 (detail)
himself as the ancient Greek painter Zeuxis,
who was said to have died laughing at his
portrait of an old woman, here represented
incongruously as Venus. Yet his palette is of a
classic late seventeenth-century type, arranged
in tonal sequence from white at the
thumbhole, through yellow, red and brown to
black. There is plenty of room for mixing.

182 145
 Of the Impressionsists, the artist most concerned with colour
theory was probably Pissarro, who later joined Seurat’s group of
Neo-Impressionists. In a witty demonstration-piece he shows how a
far from schematic landscape painting was created out of a palette of
six brilliant colours: white, yellow, red, purple, blue and green. Like
Seurat’s (pi. 148), this was an ‘outdoor’ palette and could be fitted
neatly into a portable paintbox.

146 Camille Pissarro, Palette with a landscape, c. 1878

1S4

Where in the late seventeenth century the phrase ‘made with
the same palette' had characterized a painting whose oserall
union ot tones had brought the whole into a pleasing har¬
mony/^ now in the eighteenth it became a term of abuse for a
work which too obviously reflected the arrangement of the raw
materials. We saw in the last chapter how the (iernian critic
1 lagedorn argued that it was the task of mi.xture to destroy the
evidence ot palette-arrangements the work should no longer
‘smell ot the palette’ — and the English portrait-painter |ohn
1 loppner sneered at his rival Romney, whose palette as revealed
in his paintings might ‘readily be traced back to the colour-
shop’.'^^ It was a new twist to the Renaissance debate about truth
to nature or truth to materials; what is certain is that by about
1750 the notion of the palette as simply another tool had given
way to the notion ot a particular range ot colours characterizing
a painting, or even a particular painter’s work as a whole. By the
end of the century a number of English landscape artists felt that
the character ot the picture was directly dependent on the
setting ot the palette."*^ In the Romantic period a group ot
artists, meeting at the house of the critic William flazlitt,
probably about 1X15, debated his cjuestion,
Whether a particular set of colours arranged on a painter’s palette
did not inriuence his style of art? - so much so indeed, as to be a
ejuestion whether any artist vs'ould not have painted in the same
style, scale of colour, and peculiarities, with any given palette, say,
for instance, of Titian, Rubens, or Rembrandt, — and that a painter,
with the palette so set of any one of these three, would have painted
in the precise style of Titian, Rubens, or Rembrandt?
The Scottish genre-painter David Wilkie thought that he
would, assuming that Titian’s palette had been set ‘with the
peculiar and particular primitive colours, so arranged with
gradations of tints and variations’. Hazhtt and Idaydon dissen¬
ted, as did the teller ot the story, the now torgotten historical
artist William Bewick, wdita pointed to an anecdote about Van
Dyck on a visit to Frans Hals, taking Hals’s palette to paint a
portrait — but very much in his own style.Wilkie, ot course,
who had made his reputation with modern versions ot Teniers,
was soon to become a not insensitive interpreter ot Titian,
Rubens and Murillo. Another English critic of this period, the
associationist Richard Rayne Knight, supported the idea that
colour was not a determinant of style, or the chief carrier of
meaning, by observing that ‘no person . . . ever tound pleasure
in hearing verse recited in a language which he did not
understand, or in contemplating the materials of the picture
spread out on the palette’.The later development of Roman¬
tic and Symbolist aesthetics was to show how very tar this was
trom being the case.
A new dimension in the understanding ot the palette as a
formative influence on the making of paintings may be seen in
the parallel increasingly drawn between its function and that of
a musical instrument. Already in the icSzos a Swiss painter’s
manual had presented its gradations ot colour as analogous to
the notes on a piano keyboard; certainly the range ot thirty-si.\
mi.xtures from nine basic hues proposed in this book reminds us
of the developing resources of the piano technology in the
Romantic period, not to mention the new orchestration of a
Berlioz or a Wagner. ‘Tuning’ the palette was seen to resemble
I HI I'Al I I I 1
tuning an instrument; ‘ 1 o tune a v.olour-tone, .md to bring it
into h.irmony with another, w hich is there lor cmnp.irison. is
just as sw iltly to be achies ed by the painter, .is b\ the imisu i.m
who tunes his instrument b\- comp.irison with another, .md
even swifter, it he is pr.ictised .it it.’'' Ikit .is the nineteenth
century .ul\ ancei.i, it w ,is the lush sonorities ot complex .md
subtly nu.inced mixtures which c.ime to sietenmne the iiistru-
nient.il role ot the p.ilette. It w .is the .ige ot W .igner-w orshi[\ in
which the art ot one ot Wagner’s greatest Trench idol.itors,
Henri Eantin-L.itour seenieil to expose hitherto unknown
possibilities ot tonal retinenient. That S\ nibohst lover ot black.
Odilon Redon, wrote of iMiitin in i SNz that e\ en his h.mdhng of
tone was not without its shortcomings: '1 lis [s.ilette. w Inch is the
true, the only palette, is .1 pert'ect piano which goes all the
degrees ot colours taken to itselt, admirable tor painting the
brilliance ot flowers, dazzling stutfs, but doubtless incomplete
when he asks tit it that tundaniemal yrey which distinguishes the
masters, expresses them and is the soul of all colour.’' * We
remember that it was another Wagnerite, Vincent \ an (login
who discovered twenty-seven blacks in fTaiis Hals.^ * Eantin’s
triend Whistler went some way towards answering Redon’s
objection and he, too, was impressed by the analogs' with
music. Not surprisingly in the painter ot Arraiipcuicui iii /Hack:
!\v'trair oj Seuor l\ihlo de Sarasate (nSSg), Whistler was conscious
of the palette’s relationship less to the piano than to the violin: he
told a pupil in the late nSejos that, ‘being the instrument on
which the painter plays his harmony, it must be beatitiftil
always, as the tenderly cared-for violin of the great musician is
kept in condition worthy of his music.’ Whistler would spend
up to an hour preparing his mixtures, which he laid out on his
palette in two scales: trom red to black and trom yellow to
bltie.-'’'^ An English contemporary of Whistler’s, however, ('■.
.Storey, gave the mtist circumstantial account of the uses ot the
well-tempered palette: Storey arranged his nineteen colours
like the keys of a piano, or at least arfording the possibility of
obtaining perfect chromatic scales by mixture . . . Wlien tlie colours
are arranged in a settled and rational order ... they are found the
more readily; and after some practice the artist comes to be able to
play upon them as a musician plays upon his instrument, well
knowing how and where to find the elements of his combinations.
A painter ot genre, he expanded on his theme:
I play upon it in this way. If 1 want blue, for instance. 1 take, say
Antwerp blue and white: it is too crude. I take some black: it is not
purple enough. 1 take some lake etc. So one colour counteracts
another, or modifies it; and although the number ot ditferent tints
or shades of colour is infinite, this method ot producing them is the
simplest thing in the world. We only require to know our colours
on the keyboard well to know exactly what they can do and
then making a tint becomes very like striking a chord in music.'''’
Delacroix's palettes
Undoubtedly the great virtuoso ot tlie palette in the nineteenth
century was Delacrtiix, to whom both Eantin and WInstler paid
homage in Eantin’s group portrait ot 1S64. Eantin, indeed, was
sometimes said to have adopted l)elacroi.x’s palette himselt; it,
iKs
I Ilf i‘M I n i

View ot Delacroix’s studio in 1853, with sonic

ot the complicated palette arrangements that
he put on display among his paintings. (147)

or rather they — for there were many Ihelacroix palettes - were which he transferred to bits of canvas pinned to the wall ot his
probably the best-known in the whole period. Paradoxically in studio. On each of these tones he carefully noted the composition
an artist to whom the musicality of painting was one ot its most and the destination (reflection, shadow, half-tone and light, name
important attributes, Delacroix compared his palette not to an of the figure, the feeling to be expressed, impasto or glaze, etc.).®^
instrument but to the arms of the warrior, ‘the sight ot which
These collections of numbered painted strips soon got into
gives him confidence and boldness’.Confidence was certainly
circulation. Those for the Justice of Trajan (1840) and Christ in the
something which he might expect to gain trom his own
Garden of Olives (presumably the painting of 1827, a sign that
palettes, for he considerably extended the old practice ot
Delacroix workeci in this way trom a remarkably early date),
changing their arrangement according to the character ot the
for example, were known in the 1850s among cjuite a wide
subject. From at least the early i <S40s each Delacroix painting
circle of artistsD'^ many were kept after Delacroix’s death by
had its owm ‘palette’, which he had pondered at great length and
Anclrieu anci were accjuired at his sale by Ihegas, who,
which made the e.xecution ot the work itselt relatively swift and
apparently, could use only the simplest of them, since some¬
straightforward. This was an approach to colour-organization
times they numbered more than fifty tones.'’'
particularly associated with the great decorative schemes where
These numbered senes of tones for each of the large
the workshop assistant who executed the work needed to be
compositions tormeci a remarkable reference library tor Dela¬
given detailed instructions for the colour compositions.-'’^ A
croix himself and they are a telling inciication of his essentially
Delacroix pencil-note of 1844, relating to the decoration of the
conceptual approach to the tasks of the colourist. Another
Library of the Palais Bourbon, suggests how these palettes were
inciication is the practice recorded by Charles Blanc ot using
to be set and recorded: tones contrasting and even complemen¬
samples from his huge collection of sealing-wafers for letters,
tary to each other were to be laid out side-by-side on the palette
which, like the shells collected by the English entomologist
at the same level of value and they were to be grouped together
c|uoted in Chapter 9, he had collected m all hues anci all values of
numerically with all those of a similar value.This sort of
each hue. These Delacroix would ap>ply to his canvas in a
complex tonal arrangement can still be seen in the loaded
secjuence of tones in order to judge the effect at a distance.
palettes preserved at Delacroix’s studio in Paris, although the
Nothing suggests more strongly than these ‘palettes’ anci this
deterioration of the pigments makes it difficult for the unaided
collection of wafers the justice of Blanc’s remark that Delacroix
eye to work out the rationale of each grouping now. One of his
possessed ‘the mathematical rules of colour’; but they were rules
assistants, Andrieu, gave turther details ot how they were set up:
which the painter constructed very much tor his own purposes
Delacroix bctorc starting on his large decorative pictures spent anci using his own cycT-
whole weeks combining on his palette the tonal relationships.

186

'The palette as pa'uitiapi
1 )clacroix. like Whistler, Kn-ed his palettes: Andrieii reports that
during his master's terminal illness he sent for one on which to
work out some mixture's and the pupil knew that he was dead,
he said, only when he found the colours dry.'’’ Ikit their
extraordinarily complicated arrangement slunvs that the tool
had become an even more personal thing than it had been in the
eighteenth century. I'he i S6os seem, like the 1620s, to be a
watershed, when the tonal setting going back some 250 years-
my choice ot exceptional examples to discuss should luit dispel
the impression of overwhelming standardization that emerges
from an examination of self-portraits - ceased to be regarded as
a ntirni. It is not easy to trace the breakdown of this norm,
although the handbook of Thenot in 1 S47 already regarded it as
tar from binding.'’’’ One of its clearest symptoms is a homage to
Cdiardin by Philippe Rousseau, Chardin ct scs inodclcs (1S67),
where the palette which is included runs from red near the
thumb-hole through blue to white, yellow and browns: cjuite
unlike the very orthodox tonal palette which we know Clhardin
himselt was used to, from its frequent appearance in his still-
lives, the Attributes of the .dif.'.'.'’-'’
For whatever reason, from the iS sos in France and elsewhere
the notion that the palette should be organized along tonal lines
lost its attraction. Painters as different as Clustave Courbet in
France and the more academic Alfred Stevens in Belgium
presented themselves to the public in a sort of painterly
deshabille, with palettes arranged according to no recognizable
principle.'’'’ The same goes for Custave Moreau (significantly
the master of Matisse), James Ensor, Sir Edward Burne-Jones,
John Singer Sargent and Lovis Corinth, to mention only
painters trained in the third c]uarter of the nineteenth century.'’’^
Even a French handbook of the 1870s, although it was
committed to 'valetirs', the French version of tonal painting,
and opposed to Impressionism, proposed a colour-sequence on
the palette running from madder lake to ivory black, with
yellows in the middle, which seems to us to be quite
unreasoned.'’” Sargent and Corinth were both much affected by
Impressionism and it was among the Impressionists that, not
surprisingly, the idea of a tonally based order was first widely
disputed. Sargent’s portrait of Monet at work in the 1880s
shows a palette in a fine state of confusion; but as early as the
1860s Monet’s arrangement had been far from traditional, as can
be seen in his Studio Corner (1861).'’'’ Cither associates of the
Impressionists, such as Bazille and Cuillaumin, also used
idiosyncratic arrangements in these years.A decade later the
more scientifically oriented Camille Pissarro gave an amusing
demonstration of the generative powers of what he called the
‘six rainbow colours’, by making them form a landscape on his
14O palette itself."^’ Here indeed was the palette as ‘mother of all
colours’!
Pissarro’s arrangement without black was a sort of compro¬
mise between the tonal scale and the spectrum, and we saw-
earlier how 1 logarth had tried to offer a rational alternative to
the tonal palette by invoking the rainbow. The ‘primary’ or
‘spectral’ palette was one (.if the most common variations on the
traditional tonal form throughout the nineteenth century. 'I'he
Cerman Nazarene painter Wilhelm von Schadow showed
I 111 I' \i I n I
Ron J HuC5 Of the
The p.ilettc (r. 1 Sy 1) used b\ Seur.it .it the tune ot'his de.ith is set \\ itli .t row oi
1 I pure lilies, rumiing in speetr.il sequence t'roiu \ello\s to green; .1 row ol
these lines mixed w itli w hue; .ind .1 row ol' pure w lutes, tor iise in liirther
mixtures. (1 qS)
himself with a ‘primary’ palette of red. \ellow and blue, in
descending order of luminosity, to black, in a self-portrait of'
about i8is in Berlin;^-^ the American artist CCharles Willson
Peale, perhaps taking his cue from rrumbull, was using a
similarly restricted range m a quasi-spectral order in the 1820s.
David’s pupil Paillot de Montabert, in his compendious
handbook of i82(;, argued that the three ‘generating’ colours
were, theoretically, suflicient and that it was only the unscrupu¬
lous colour-manufacturers who foisted unnecessary pigments
on the ignorant artist. Since it was not yet possible tti find
categorically ‘pure’ primaries, each of the three should be
bought or mixed in four values.’^’’ A (lerman painter and
theorist of the late 1840s proposed an extraordinarily extended
‘prismatic’ palette, divided into ‘warm’ and ‘ciHil’ sequences and
still running from white to black in twenty-three stages.'^'’ Even
the most famous of the ‘spectral’ palettes, those of Signac and
Seurat in the 1880s, made a compromise between the idea of a
spectral sequence and a t(.inal one, using eleven pigments fn.im
yellow near the thumb-hole to green at the far end. and with
separate whites for mixing next to each of these hues.^'’ There
are a number of anomalies about this palette: Ff'nf'on described
its arrangement as ‘I’ordre du prisme’. which it clearly is not,
and Signac, who claimed to ha\e introduced Seurat to it in
1884, recalled in old age that his own sequence at this tune ran
‘from yellow to yellow ... in order or gradation of the prism’.
What is certain is that this was not the only spectral palette
available at the time; it is something of an irony that the simplest
was published in i8yi by an arch-opponent of Impressionism
and of scientific theory, J.-(i. Vibert, the painter of cardinals at iqip
play and teacher of the most traditional techniques at the Ecole I'i)
des Beaux-Arts.^” Vibert’s spectral palette used thirteen hues to
match the spectrum as closely as possible, just as Signac and
Seurat used eleven or twelve: we are not dealing with the sort of
restricted palette characteristic of the Impressionists until the
end of their lives.
The spectral palette w as not the only more or less organized
arrangement of the modern period. I he (lernian theorist
187
 I III I'M [■ ri I

1 hnulcrt}ituiKl's attempt to arrange sequcnecs ot warm and cool

was the ancestor of a scheme by the Nabi painter Paul Serusier
w ho. beliex'inp in tlie incompatibility ot warm and cool in the
same composition, devised separate palettes tor each tonality.
And not only tor painting: the de.iler Ambroise Vollard recalled
■ill encounter with the painter in a Pans street when Serusier told
him. 'You see that woman in a violet coat in trout ot us? When 1
saw vou beside her in your brick-coloured overcoat, you have
no idea how much those two colours screamed at being
ju-xtaposed. It really made me ill.’”** From about 190S Serusier
proposed tliat painters should use two separate palettes, but
some \ ears later he tried to combine the arrangement on a single
surface, with the warm colours, topped by yellow, set apart
from the cold, ot which white, almost a light blue, was the
highest v.ilue. I le made something of a fetish ot these distinc¬
tions: he had, for e.xample, given up using Naples yellow
because he thought that some iiianuhicturers made it up trom
yellow ochre plus white — which could only belong to the cold
scale,”'
Serusier's intense involvement with systems was not matched
by his capacities as a practical colourist; but the most consider¬
able colourist ot our century, Henri Matisse, also had a highly
developed sense of order, ‘To put order into colour-
relationships IS to put order into your ideas’, he told an
interviewer in 1925.”“ For Matisse order could only be
established on the canvas in the course of painting; the many
loaded palettes which he left around him, and his several Matisse’s palette of 1937 shows a setting of 17 colours, running in what seems
ISO representations ot them in paintings and drawings, not to like an arbitrary sequence from peach-black at the thumb-hole to madder lake,
with several cadmium yellows and reds, cadmium purple and lemon-yellow,
yellow and brown ochres, two cobalt-violets, dark ultramarine, viridian and
Crimson . . " ■''
two mi.xcd greens. In the centre are placed large mounds ot white. (150)

Red .... j odd.

Red-orange mention the accounts he gave to the press, defy analysis, for they
differ markedly among themselves and seem to have no
Orange . . 2 even. common pinnciples of organization.”^ Some of the surviving
palettes are very lightly touched with colour and may well have
Yellow-orange . been, like his paintings, improvised as Matisse’s work
progressed.
Yellow . . . ^ odd.
The setting of the palette was clearly aspiring to the condition
of painting. Matisse’s contemporaries Paul Klee and "Wassily
Yellow-green . -i- fixed point.
Kandinsky had already seen that what happened in the paintbox
Gre en . . . 4 even.
or on the palette was more crucial to the making ot art than
what happened in nature, m the ostensible subject. In a diary
Blue-green . . . . ■— note of 1910 Klee described as a ‘revolutionary discovery’ the
recognition of his relationship to his box of colours; ‘I must one
Blue .... ^ odd.
day be able to fantasize on the colour-piano ot neighbouring
Blue-ultramarine - ■ — ■--- watercolour pans.’®'' And in the first important manifesto of
noii-represeiitational art, Kandinsky wrote about 1912:
Ultramarine . 6 even.
Letting one’s eyes wander over a palette laid out with colours has
two main results:
"Violet . . . —--
(i) There occurs a jiurely physical effect, i.e. the eye itself is charmed
J.-G. Vibert's diagram of a spectral palette {llte Science of Paintiuc’ 1890/92) by the beauty and other qualities of the colour. The spectator
dnades it intt) 37 degrees, represented by the lines, with the centre marked by a experiences a feeling of satisfaction, of pleasure, like a gourmet who
cross. Complementaries are represented by an odd and an even number, and has a tasty morsel in his mouth. Or the eye is titillated, as is one’s
tound by adding or subtracting 3. Hence the complementary ofyellow, at 3, is palate by a highly spiced dish. It can also be calmed or cooled again,
ultramarine, at 6. (149) as one’s finger can when it touches ice. These are all physical

lS,S
 mi !' \ i I n I

sensations, and as such can onl\' be ot short siuration. I hes’ are also
siiperticial, leaving behind no lasting impression it the soul remains
closed . . .
(2) 'Die second mam consequence of the contemplation of colour,
i.e. the psycliological eHect of colour. 1 he psychological power of
colour becomes apparent, calling forth a \ ibration from the soul. Its
primary, elementary physical power bectmies simply the path by
which colour reaches the soul ..

With such powerful effects front the palette alone, we might

well wonder what role in the artieulatictn ctl colttur was left to
painting itself.
One of the chief stimuli to this new, e.xpressionist under¬
standing of colour had been the art and writing of van Oogli,
whose letters to his brother flieo were not fully published in
(ierman until 1914 hut had been incliuied in anthologies much
earlier, hi his long process of self-education, van Clogh had soon
come up against the problem of matching his perceptions - the
colours ofhis subjects - with the pigments available to him, and
he had asked, ‘Mightn’t 1 presume . . . that a painter had better
Js2 start from the colours on his palette than from the colours in
nature?’ (Letter 429). He had begun with the by then cjuite
academic tonal arrangement of the eighteenth century; but his
encounter with Impressionism in Fans in 1S86 had thrown this
Jsi order into confusion, just as it caused him to re-organize his
colour-compositions on a hue-based, essentially complemen¬
tary structure which we shall look at more closely in Cihapter
11 Paris also introduced Vincent to the idea of the importance
of the palette for the understanding of the painter’s personality.
The collecting of palettes - usually unloaded — by admired
masters had certainly begun in England in the 1820s but
Delacroi.x was probably the first to use an C')ld Master’s palette
for the purposes of study. He had been given a loaded palette
ostensibly of Van Dyck’s and used its constituents, including
‘Vandyke brown’, in planning his own mural schemes ot the
1840s.Delacroix’s personal palette-arrangements, displayed
147 so prominently among the paintings in his studio, seem to have
started a fashion for showing these tools in public exhibitions.
C')ne appeared at a dealer’s e.xhibition in 1885 and in a mixed
show, including a handful of other modern artists’ palettes, in
Paris in i 887. When, in the following year, the Louvre opened a
new room of modern French art, these palettes were again on
show and attracted the notice of the press, since ‘on each of them
we recognize the painter’s manner of painting’.”^ Vibert in the
i8yos mentioned a private collection of artists’ palettes, which
‘still showed all the tones improvised in the act of painting, and
on many of them the artists had painted a little, according to his
own method’ — a collection which Vibert said was destined tor
the Louvre and would be a great lesson tor tuture generations.”'^
It is not clear what became of this collection but after the turn ot
the century Pans saw a number of exhibitions entirely of
palettes: one of a hundred at Bernheim Jeune in 1908 and in 1911 V.in C.ogh's Jiawiiig ofhis p.ilfttc in 1SX2 shows colours, running toiuilK

a sale of 123 at the Cieorges Petit gallery, which might .iiul quite convcntion.ill\’ from white at the tliumh-hole to verniihon, plaieil

conceivably have been the collection mentioned by Vibert. We unusually bevond black. Vincent described it as. "a practical palette with

are used nowadays to seeing palettes as a feature of both healthy colours. Ultramarine, carmine, and the like are addeii when strictK

temporary exhibitions and permanent displays of painting but I necessary.’ Hie Sclf-portr.ui of iXSS illustrates a palette with an arbitrary non¬

imagine that very few modern spectators look upon them as linear arrangement, largely til orange, resl, blue and green, suggesting the

anything more than just another tool. disintegr.ituig influence ot Impressiomsiii. : 1 si.i s2)

189
 Ri::)

JAUNE.

s/rfraii w ^ soiz/rt

1 / \
VEBT Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century colour-theorists were attracted to shapes Oran."e.

\ / such as circles and stars which emphasized the polar opposites. Moses Harris’s
colour circle {PrisniiUic Colours, c. 1776, above) was one of the earliest entirely
cap urine lOISS
symmetrical arrangements, and also suggested a solid by the darkening of the Capiiciue
tC,
hues towards the centre. The stars (left and riglit) of Charles Blanc and
Jules-Claude Ziegler (i8_so) are especially interesting tor their exotic terms tor
HLELI. ROIICE-
tertiar)- colours, based on flowers and vegetable colorants. (i S3“.s)

grenai cajTipaimle

VIOLET

IDEALES Violet.

Philipp C)tto Runge (i8oy) used the star in a more mystical vein (above) to
suggest the contrast between the ideal world of love, red, and the real world of
green. The masculine passions are represented by the warm side of the circle
(yellow and orange) and the teminine by the cool (blue and violet). (156)
 11 • Colours of the Mind: Goethe’s Legacy
('.olour as perception ■ The impact of C'joethe ■ '['he morality of colour ■ ‘ Ihiintiny is recoiiliny
coloured sensations' ■ h'rom Matisse to abstraction
Niwion's ()ptichs had sought to put the study of light and
colour oil an objective, quantitative, basis. In his e.xpennient to
deterniine the chromatic constituents ot the spectrum he had
enrolled the services of‘an Assistant, whose Eyes for distinguish¬
ing Colours were more critical than mine'.' Whether or not this
'assistant' was a rhetorical tiction, his role was to confirm that
the analysis ot the spectrum was in some sense independent ot
the observer, Newton. Newton deliberately avoided engage¬
ment with the colour-observations which could not be sub¬
sumed under the quantitative law: ‘as when by the power of
Phantasy we see Colours in a 1 )ream, or a Mad-man sees things
before him which are not there; or when we see Fire by striking
the Eye, or see C'olours like the Eye ot a Peacock’s Feather, by
pressing our Eyes in either corner whilst we look the other
way.'“
We saw in Chapter y how powerfully Newton’s beliet in a
quantihable colour-order affected the study ot colour in art until
the nineteenth century; we shall see in the last chapter how it
recurred rather more fitfully among the Constructivist artists ot
the twentieth century. But after Newton it was increasingly the
subjective colour-phenomena which he had left out of consider¬
ation that occupied the attention ofscientists who developed the
modern study of colour vision. In the seventeenth and eigh¬
teenth centuries, as in Classical Antiquity, scientists recognized
that these phenoniena had been identified and investigated first
ot all by painters and dyers.
Writing in iSis on ‘accidental' colours (i.e. the subjective
colours produced by psychological processes less extreme than
those mentioned by Newton), the Italian mathematician Pietro
Petrini argued that it was Leonardo da Vinci who had first
noticed the blue ‘complementary’ shadows at sunrise and
sunset.'^ He went on to describe in some detail the efiect ot
colour juxtapositions;
file mutual reaction of colours placed close to each other, so that
their appearance changes more or less noticeably, has long been
known to painters and has been named contrast by them. They
noticed, for example that a very slightly bluish
patch changes to a delicate blue IiI^ciutoI if it is surrounded by a
very light edge of red-violet. And there is no nuance which cannot
be changed into a very delicate, but also lively tint ot the same hue
by being placed on a ground of its complementary. You may also
effect a change of tone in a given colour equally successtully by
means of the neighbouring colour of the ground, or by a border
which serves as a ground. An orange card on a red ground will seem
almost yellow; on a yellow ground it will seem almost red. It it is
placed on a green ground, it will seem to be an even darker red, and
on a violet ground it will take on a lemon-yellow or sulphur
colour. Hut on .in indigo or purple ground, it will t.ike on its own
proper hue. that is. the hue it h,is when on ,i white ground, but
certaiiiK more intense th.m in this hitter c.ise.^
riicse (ibsctw atioiis w ere to be amplitied and coditicxl tn the
1S2OS itito a ‘law ot smiult.iiieous contr.ist' b\' C'luwreul, but
Pctritii was quite rtgbt to suggest that they h.id long been
current in the studitis ot painters. Ehew toruied part ot lh.it
empirical approach to colour which gathered uiouieuttim 111
late seveiiteeiith-ceutury Iltillaiid and was p.irticuhirly culti¬
vated in France. One of the first painters to ads’oeate a purely
perceptual procedure in colour-composition w.is the Hutch
classicizing artist (lerard de Lairesse, whose I let (iroot Sclnlder-
hoek (.drf of Paintiny, 1707) w,is one of the most w idely tiMiislateil
and studied treatises of the eighteenth century. Lairesse held the
harmonizing ot coltuirs in painting, as opposed to proportion,
or even aerial perspective, to be ‘mere chance'; he described the
use of chance in some notes on dividing the picture into three
coloured masses, light, half-tint and shade, w Inch he laid out on
his palette:
then I took cards, .ind seserally painted them with one ot the
aforesaid tempered colours; when they were dry, I placed and
replaced and shifted them so long till I had satisfied my judgement:
sometimes, when this would not answer my purpose, I shuffled
them; and then took a parcel of them at random, which, it they
happened to please, were my directors.'’
This was an even more radically abstract process than
Helacroi.x's judging the effects ot his coloured waters.
In a no less popular handbook Roger de Files argued that two
factors determined colour in painting: the accuracy ot perceiv¬
ing tones and the skill to give them their due weight. The first
was achieved by constant comparison between the ctffours ot
the motif and the colours on the palette; the second by a study ot
the effects of colours in juxtaposition and in space, where aerial
perspective came into play.^ This method ot constant ctnnpa-
rison on the palette and 111 nature at large was advoc.ited by the
French portrait-painter Largilliere, whose pupil Oudry recor¬
ded how he was instructed to paint a group tif white tlowers by
surrounding it with several other w hite objects tor conip.inson.
Ctudry himself, in a lecture of 1749 to the French .Academy,
described a still-life of a silver vase which looks forward to his
beautiful White Duck of 1753. 1 he wise was to be surrounded
with linen, paper, satin or porcel.iin so th.it ‘the different whites
will make you assess the precise tone ot white th.it you need to
render your silver wise, since you will know by the comparison
that the eolours ot one ot these w hue objects will never be those
of the others.'"
(.()I,()LiHS ()l TIIF MINI)
1 he discriniin.ition ot nuances which had made Boethius
despair of the (.)hjeetivity of col(.)nr was now to be eagerly
embraced. This exacting study ot colour-scales and relationships
\\ .IS most readib awnlable in the context ot still-lile, always the
nuist abstract of painterly genres and one in which Ondry’s
x'onnger contemporarv Cihardin especially shone because, it was
said, he kept his subjects at such a distance that he was no longer
troubled by details and could concentrate on shape and colour
alone.Such focusing on the tones of contingent areas also
affected French landscape, for the leading eighteenth-century
French specialist in this genre, Claude-Joseph Vernet, one ot the
earliest advocates of outdoor sketching in oil, argued in a short
essay of the 1760s or 70s that ‘if you really want to sec the colour
of things, you must always make comparisons between them',
citing the innumerable greens ot toliage or meadow.
This close painterly attention to the nuances and changes ot
colour-effects in nature and art led, not surprisingly, to
discoveries which were only later recognized and coditied by
optical science. One of the most striking was the Purkinje shift,
by which at twilight the switch trom rod (scotopic) to cone
(photopic) vision produces a change in the perceived intensity ot
the blue and red areas ot the spectrum. The phenomenon has
been named atter the Bohemian physiologistj. E. Purkinje, who
described it precisely in iSaj,'' but it had already been noticed
111 a studio context in 1685 by Philippe de la ITire, the
mathematician who was trained as a painter in the tradition of
his father:
The light which illuminates hues changes them considerably; blue
appears green by candlelight and yellow appears white; blue
appears white by weak daylight, as at the beginning of night.
Painters know hues whose brilliance is much greater by candlelight
than by daylight: there is also a number of hues which are very
bright by daylight but lose their beauty entirely by candlelight. For
example, verdigris appears a very fine colour by candlelight; and
when it is weak, that is to say, when it is mixed with a large cjuantity
ot white, it appears as a very beautiful blue. Those ash pigments
[ccfidres\ one describes as either green or blue appear by candlelight
to be an extremely beautiful blue. The reds which contain lake
appear by candlelight as very bright, and others like carmine and
vermilion seem dull.'-
By the beginning of the nineteenth century twilight had come
to be regarded in England as ‘the painter’s hour’, since it
lacilitated the study of the massing of light and dark without the
distractions of colour. Yet many artists recognized that it had
the disadvantage of distorting the relationship of the warm and
cool colours. Reynolds’s pupil James Northcote observed that
‘the reds look darker than by day, indeed almost black, and the
light blues turn white, or nearly so’; in a lecture of 1818 Turner
seems to have alluded to the same effect when he described red as
‘the first ray ot light anci the first which acknowledges the
diminishing of light’. It was, ironically, the decline of tonal
painting in the nineteenth century which led to the obsolescence
ot the ‘painter’s hour’ so that the American colour-theorist
Ogden Rood, himself an amateur painter, could attribute the
first discovery ot this phenomenon to Purkinje, rather than to
the traditional experience ot artists. When he was painting The
192
Daiiic about 1910. Matisse was startled to see its powertul reds
and bines vibrating in twilight, for this was a threshold
phenomenon he clearly did not recognize tor what it was.*"^
Clolour-contrasts and the Purkinje shift were striking
evidences of the instability of colour perceptions. Towards the
end of the eighteenth century another and very different
phenomenon in the psychology of colour came to be investi¬
gated by scientists, namely colour-constancy: the stabilizing
control by which the brain maintains a constant perception of
colour tinder varying conditions ot lighting. The classic analysis
was in a paper of 1789 by the French mathematician Claspard
Monge but he had already recognized it some time earlier,
while teaching at the royal Ecole de Genie. At e.xactly the
same time the Venetian architect and theorist Francesco Milizia
described the effect in the context of painting, reternng to the
colour scarlet seen tinder direct sun, tinder the light of the sky,
by artificial lights or through a more or less dense and e.xtended
medium, which none the less still appieared to be scarlet. Unlike
Monge, who argued for constancy as a function of our
perception of surface, Milizia interpreted this not as the result of
psychological adjustment but as reflecting the incapacity of
language to describe all the nuances of colour as perceived.'^
Monge had long interested himself in painterly problems (for
e.xample aerial perspective, in which he acknowledgeci Leonar¬
do to be the supreme master'’^) and in later editions of his
Gkv)ie!rie descriptive he discussed aspects of coloured shadows
and colour contrast as they affected painting, as well as repeating
his earlier discoveries on constancy.Fdis ideas on this pheno¬
menon were brought into the context of art chiefly by his pupil
L. L. Vallee in Traitc de la science dii dessiii (1821), which included
a very up-to-date account of contrast anci complementarity, as
well as instructions about how to deal with the inadequacy of
paints to convey the more extreme lighting effects of nature.
Colour-constancy emphasized local colour — the colour ot an
isolated surtace illuminated by white light (a notion increasingly
contested during the nineteenth century by painters such as
Delacroix, who drew attention to the transforming effects of
context and lighting-^). The primacy of local colour was
maintained in early nineteenth-century France by Delacroix’s
rival Ingres, who argued that the ancients had rightly kept their
figures distinct and that this could be aided by heightening the
contrast of colours:
The essential qualities of colour are not to be found in the ensemlde
ot masses ot lights or darks in the picture; they are rather in the
brightness and individuality of the colours of objects. For example,
put a beautiful and brilliant white drapery against an olive-dark
body, and above all distinguish a blonde colour from a cold colour,
and a fleeting colour trom that of coloured figures in their local
tints.. .“1
A belief in local colour is a belief in colour as substance: in
Aiitiochiis and Stratonice Ingres drew on the new tinderstanding 10
of Greek polychromy developed by his friend the architect
Hittorft {see Chapter 1).-- But it was precisely this emphasis on
the materiality of colour which attracted the bitter criticism of
Delacroix, in conversation with the novelist George Sand.
Ingres, he said, confused colouring with colour:
 The imperatives ot
observation
The discipline of still-life offered especially
rich opportunities for the manipulation of
colour. It became an essential feature ot the
French eighteenth-century emphasis on
observation, and was also a means for ‘editing’
what was observed. Chardin depicted his
subjects from a distance (157) in order to lose
detail and thus reveal their ‘essential’ character
of form and colour, rendering them m broad
painterly style. Oudry’s vision was more
sharply focussed, and he developed a precise
technique of visual comparison which,
I notably in this wonderful arrangement of
whites (158), was to turn this genre of paiitting
into pure demonstrations of the powers of
perception.

157 Je.an Simeon Ch.ahdin, ff Vase ofl-lowcrs,

c. 1760/3
158 Je.an-B.m’tiste CuDHY, The While Ihieh, 1753

157
193
 y./■// /7 ///rz/r/r,
Romantic artists sought to extract new
meanings for colours from their positions in
space. Runge’s sphere (159) was one of the
earliest attempts by a painter to co-ordinate
hues and values (light-dark content) into a
coherent whole. He used a set of three
primaries — red, yellow and blue — arrangecJ in
a complementary scheme around the ec]uator.
In the book that accompanied this diagram
Runge scarcely ventured beyond the visible
data, but in fact he shared a belief in the moral
connotations of colour with his
contemporaries, the poets Schiller and Goethe
(160) who related the polarities of colour to
the traditional tour temperaments —
optimistic, melancholic, phlegmatic and
194
• /„ ur/f/
Spheres of colour
159 !'hiiii’i> O rro Runge, Colour Sphere, 1810
160 Friedrich Schiller and Johann Wolegang
VON Goethe, The Tcinperaineut-vane
{ Teiiiperaiiieiitrose), 1799
161 [.M.W. Turner, Colour-Circle SJo. z. c. 1825
162 l^Hii ipp C^ iTO Runge, The small ‘ Moruiiig',
i8o<S
160
choleric. Such theoretical concerns find an
outlet in the series called ‘Times of Day’ —
Morning — Noon — Evening - Night — in
which colour could be used schematically. In
Runge’s Moruiuci (162) red is the dominant
colour for the dawn of life, with its Christ-like
baby and Venus rising from the sea, and the
red lily {mnaryllis foruiosissima), rising in the
border. Turner too (161) saw a universal
significance in the three primaries. He started
from the complementary diagram of Moses
Harris (pi. 153), but subordinated the
primaries in his own diagram to light - the
yellow which he later made the keynote of his 161
allegory of the creation of light out of
darkness (pi. 169).
 i he colours of passion

i63

His vision of the cafe at Arles was Van Gogh’s most ambitious
attempt to convey an emotional situation through colour. 'I have
tried to express the terrible passions of humanity by means ot red and
green’, he wrote to Theo. ‘The room is blood red and dark yellow
with a green billiard table in the middle; there are four citron-yellow
lamps with a glow of orange and green. Everywhere there is a clash
and contrast of the most disparate reds and greens. ..’

163 Vincent van Gogh, The Ni^ht Cafe. 1888

196
 T, ^. ♦ r,' ^
^

i' ^

' 'I ‘^r

r { -f^--

Gauguin’s quarrel with Van Ciogh sprang

partly from his distaste for the polar contrasts
favoured by his friend: he himself came more
and more to work with ‘mysterious’ close-
tones and subtle resonances, bluish-greens,
purplish-reds and orange-yellows (164). The
same rejection of sharp chromatic contrasts
characterizes the late paintings of the two most
perceptually aware artists of the nineteenth
century, Monet and Gezanne (165, 166), who
used the bright palette of Impressionism, but
tended to unify their compositions by
focussing each one on a single segment ot the
colour-circle, and working in a nuanced range
of warm or cool tones.

165

164 Faui Gauguin, The Loss of I 'irghiity, i Syo/1

165 Faui Chzanne, The ll'iiiditiii Road, c. 1902-6
166 C.iAVDE Poplars (Batiks of the Hpie), 1891

197
The responsive eye The unprecedentedly powerful all-over colour in Matisse’s Red
Studio (167) may have been the result of the intense green of the
painter’s sunlit garden, which stimulated him to ’see’ his grey studio
walls as red. Much later, at Vence (168), he expierienced the red after¬
image as an effect of light pouring in through the blue and green
design of his stained-glass windows. In each work, Matisse’s colour is
167 Henui Matissi;, The Red Studio, lyii wondertully harmonious, tor the eye, as Goethe had observed,
168 Hf.nki Matisse, Chapel of the Rosary of the Dominicans, Vence, compensates tor a strong stimulus of one colour by creating the
1948/si complementary colour as an after-image — making the circle whole.

198
199
200

I Ic lias studied with great delicacy the edects of light un marbles,
gilding and fabrics, but he has forgotten one thing: reriections . . .
1 le has not the slightest inkling that eserything in nature is
reriection and that colour is essentially an interplay of reriections.
le has scattered little bits of sunlight over all the objects placed in
1 scientific concept ot mixing lights r.itlu-r than pigments, w.is to
front of'hini as if they had been recorded in a daguerrotype; there is
no sun, no light, no air in any of that . . . I le puts a bit of red on a
cloak, some lilac on a cushion, some green here, some blue there, a
vivid red, a spring green, a sky-blue. 1 le has a taste tor dress and a
knowledge of costume. 1 le has interspersed in his coiriures, in his
fabrics, in his fillets, a lilac td’exquisite freshness, coloured borders
and the attraction of a thousand pretty ornaments, but they do
nothing at all to create coltmr. The livid and leaden tones of an old
wall by Rembrandt are far richer than this abundance of clashing
tones applied to objects which he will never get to relate to one
another by reriections, and which remain crude, isolated, cold and
gaudy.’-’
This is an exact analysis but it rests on a very partial
interpretation of ‘colour’. Ingres and Delacroix came to
represent the opposing poles of the nineteenth-century version
of the debate ot drawing versus colour but both were supreme
colourists: it in them two antithetical principles ot colour were
at work, there can be no doubt that they were both principles
and that each of them had the sanction of an experience of
colour valid well beyond the bounds of art.
A more tamiliar instance of the prevailing empiricism of
colour-practice in the nineteenth century is the notion ot optical
mixture. This, as we saw, had been understood since Antiquity
but was given the cachet of a ‘scientific’ method only by Neo-
Impressionism. Broken tones ot contrasting dotted or hatched
colours had long been used in several contexts to ensure greater
visibility at a distance, in large decorative schemes executed in
fresco, or the distemper-painting of theatrical scenery, as well
as, paradoxically, in the smallest ot miniature paintings.’’’ It was
the traditions of fresco which kept the idea of optical mixture
most alive in the nineteenth century, when Ingres’s pupil Victor
Mottez, for example, discussed it in his icS^S edition of Cennini,
arguing that the brilliance and softness of Pintuncchio’s frescoes
An allegory of light, furner’s painting of the scene on the morning
after the Deluge was exhibited with the caption:
The ark stood firiti on Ararat; th'returning sun
Exhaled earth’s humid hubbies, and emulous oj lit^ht,
Reflected her lost forms, each in prismatic ^^uise
Hope's harbini^er, ephemeral as the summer fly
IThich rises, flits, expatids, and dies.
Turner’s eccentric treatment of the Noah story, perhaps influenced
by Baroque ceiling painting (see pi. 121), replaced the rainbow of the
Covenant with an irridescent bubble which (as his caption says) was
even more ephemeral. Indeed, the overall theme of this luminous
painting is one of pessimism.
169 |. M. W. Tl'hni;h. Lifit and (Soloiir (Cioetbe’s Theory) - the .Mortiinci after
the Deluf’e Moses writing the Hook ofOenesis, 1X43
( i ii ()i ks I ii I m MiM 1
in the Ihccolomini Libr.irs in Sicn.i \\ .0 due to Iiin um’ .'t
hatclnng aiul ■pointilhsin'.-’ But thew us.igcs. besides being
purely empirical, were .iKo \ery loe.il. W'h.it the .Neti-
Inipressionists dul to this tradition. b\ basing thenisebes on a
construct the whole surf.ice ot their p,untings iw hk h w ere to be
seen close to as well as .it a distance: from .1 more or less
homogeneous structure ot' coloured dots or p.itches, which
drew attention to their tunction b\ being so unusual .iiul so \ er\
easy to see.
77/d impact of( 'lOcthc
Rurkinje’s studies tif the subjectu e etfects of \ ision h.id been
stimulated during his medical training by a reading of (ioethe's
substantial three-part study of iNio, larbenlehre { Theory of
CColottrs)-^ which more than any other publication directed the
attentum tit scientists as w ell as the w uler public tti a range of
physical and psychological ccilour-phentmiena throughout the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This was p.irtl\- due to
(Ioethe’s international reputation as a poet and thinker and
partly to his strident polemic against Newton, tti the unpicking
ot whose (Jpticks he devoted the wlnde ot his sectuid part, but
most tit all perhaps to his reliance on the eye as a sufheient tool
tor the study ot colour and his directing his readers to many
examples ot colour-phenomena in the world around them,
which they could experience for themselves. Unlike Newton,
who haci retreated to his dark chamber at Trinity Uollege,
Cambridge, where the sunlight was permitted tti enter tmly
through the smallest of apertures to form a spectrum on a screen
which only his ‘assistant’ could divide, (loethe based his
inferences on e.xperiments in which he inspected thejunctions ot
light and dark areas through a prism and observed the coloured
fringes which appeared where the image of the edges was
displaced. Coethe’s ‘screen’ was his own retina, lie concluded
that light w'as homogeneous, that it created colour only when
disturbed by darkness and that the two extreme tonal hues of
yellow and blue interacted by a mysterious process he called
‘augmentation’ {Steiy^ertiiij,’), to form the third principal coUiur,
red, which, since it wxis the most noble, he named Pttrpttr.
Coethe’s experimental methods were, of course, quite
traditional. The prism experiments had been worked out by
Thomas Harriott by isyo, published in the mid-seventeenth
century by Sir Kenelm Digby in Paris and C. B. 1 lodierna in
Sicily,’’' and were familiar to Newton in the 1660s. Character¬
istically, Coethe also used a homely and unspecialized expe¬
rience to e.xemplify coloured fringes:
If, when the sky is grey, we approach a window, so that the dark
cross of the window-bars be relieved on the sky; if after fixing the
eyes on the horizontal bar we bend the head a little forward; on half
closing the eyes as we look up. we shall pre'sently perceive a bright,
yellow-red border under the bar. and a bright light-blue one above
it. The duller and more monotonous the grey of the sky, the more
dusky the room, and. consequently, the more previously unexcited
the eye, the livelier the appearance will be; but it may be seen by an
attentive observer even in bright daylight.-'*
Similarly, the striking efl'ects of complementary atter-images
201
COI OURS Ol- I HF. MINI)
were illustrated by (loethe in his report ol a very concrete
experience:
I had entered an inn towards ex'ening. and. ,is a well-t.ivonred ^irl
w ith a bnlliantlv fair complexion, black hair, and a scarlet bodice,
came into the room. I looked attentively at her as she stood before
me .It some distance in h.ilt sh.idow. As she presently afterwards
turned .iwav, I saw on the \\ hite wall, which was now before me, a
bkick f.ice surrounded with a bright light, while the dress of the
perfectly distinct figure appeared of a beautiful sea-green.
f lore the secret was, of course, the prolonged scrutiny which the
poet ga\-e to the figure of a pretty girl.-‘^
This is not the place to exaniine the differences between the
Newtonian and the Cfoethean accounts of colour in any detail;-^'^'
suffice it that at the end of his life Goethe came to regret his
intemperate polemic against the English scientist and, although
he continued to regard his work on colour as his most important
achievement, he was prepared to leave the second part out of
any new edition of the Theory.Nevertheless, he added very
little in principle to his colour work after iKoo and showed a
surprising indifference to the more recent developments of
chromatics even where, as with Thomas Young’s work on
colour-vision and the wave theory of light, they might have
helped him consolidate his anti-Newtonian position.-^- Physi¬
cists found little to stimulate them in Cioethe’s theory, since they
argued correctly that his account of the production of colours
could be explained along Newtonian lines; but it did focus on a
number of physical phenomena which w'ere to be more
thoroughly investigated later in the century, one of which was
the role of the turbid medium in the scattering of light. Goethe,
as usual, illustrated what he called this ‘basic phenomenon’
{IJrphaiioiiien) of the production of colours by the modification
of light with a number of homely instances, including one of the
simplest, smoke, ‘which appears to us as yellow or reddish
before a light ground, but blue before a dark one.’ But he
nowhere discussed the crucial question of the size of particles in
the medium which, again, had been considered by Young.
It is more uncierstandable that the Theory of Colour should
have made an important contribution to the developing science
of the physiology of perception, from Purkinje and Helmholtz’s
teacher Johannes Muller in the 1820s to Ewald Hering in the
1870s: certainly Purkinje and Muller were unstinting in their
acknowledgment of the poet.-^*^ Goethe’s emphasis on the polar
structure of both the formation of colours from light and dark
and their reception by the eye made his system the ancestor of
Hering’s opponent-colour theory. It was this, too, which made
his scheme, rather than Newton’s, so attractive to Romantic
philosophers such as Schelling, Schopenhauer and Hegel.
Schelling had been in touch with Goethe even before the
publication of the full version of the Theory and he adopted
many of the poet’s ideas, notably that of polarity, in his
Philosophie der Kiuist (1802/3).-^^ Schopenhauer’s treatise Uher
das Sehu iind die Farhen {On Vision and Colours, 1816) sought to
turn Goethe’s theory into a much more rigorously subjective
system by arguing, in a way which was ultimately fruitful for
Hering, that the retina itself was stimulated by the complemen¬
tary poles ot red and green, orange and blue and yellow and
violet.Hegel in his turn supported Goethe’s view's against
202
Newton in his Euzyklopadie (1817) and later lectures; his pupil
L. 1). von Henning gave w'hat w'cre probably the first academic
lectures on Goethe’s book in Berlin in 1822, w'ith apparatus lent
by the poet himself-’’^ All these thinkers, however, were
attracted primarily to the logical structure ot Goethe’s ideas and
w'crc hardly concerned wnth experiment or even experience, for
wdiich they depended on the example of painters.
Even Goethe’s scientific opponents sometimes argued that,
however unlikely his theory might be in the context ot physical
optics. It was of great use to painters - another early indication
of the growing division between colour-theory tor artists and
colour-theory for the w'orld at large. It is true that Goethe’s
early interest in colour seems to have been stimulated by his
experiences of art on his Grand Tour in the 1780s and that
conversations with painters on that trip provided him with
much material for the Theory. In ‘Gonfessions of the Author’,
for example, wdiich the poet appended to the final, historical
part of his book, he described how he asked the Swiss painter
Angelika Kautfmann to paint a picture ‘in the old Florentine
w'ay’, by beginning with a grisaille underpainting which she
then glazed in colours. It was an experiment wdiich lay behind
the traditional view expressed 111 the Theory that ‘The separation
of light and dark from all appearance of colour is possible and
necessary. The artist will solve the mystery ot imitation sooner
by first considering light and dark inciependently ot colour, and
making himself acquainted with it in its whole extent.’-^*
KaufFinann may also have helped Goethe to formulate some of
his more novel and fundamental attitudes tow'ards colour, such
as the primacy of the tonal opposites yellow and blue, tor this
had been an idea published by an earlier admirer of hers, the
anti-Newtonian journalist and later revolutionary, Jean-Paul
Marat, to w'hom she had been close in England in the lyhos.-^'^
Another Swiss artist, Heinrich Meyer, became Goethe’s advisor
on artistic matters over many years and was also set to testing
colour ideas by him from the earliest perioci of his researches.
Meyer provided Goethe with a channel lor studying colour in
landscape, an important support tor his principles in the Theory,
for although the poet was an enthusiastic amateur artist, he w’as
always plagued by technical difficulties, never developing a
techniejue adeejuate to the representation ot the effects he was
most anxious to study.In an unpublished essay on the eye
Goethe made painting the arbiter of truth itself: ‘Painting is
truer for the eye than reality itself It presents what man w'otild
like to see and should see, not what he habitually sees.’"^^
There are many questions surrounding the role of painting in
Goethe’s conception of colour. He seems, for one thing, to have
been surprisingly reluctant to introduce the theory of colour
into the several programmes for training artists with which he
became involved. In his periodical Propylacn, of the late 1790s,
he appears to have proposed a discussion of how painters might
be instructed in these matters but nothing w'as ever published,
except some hints on warm and cool colours m the account of a
French system of drawhiig."^-^ In an article on art-training by
Meyer, revised by Goethe, nothing more theoretical w'as
proposed than the making of coloured rather than simply
drawn academy studies from the life; at the Weimar Drawing
School in Goethe’s day only a ‘simple method of colouring' was
taught.When the Weimar Prize Competitions for painting

and drawing, sponsored by (bicthc in the hope of raising the
standard of (iernian art, were finally abandoned in 1.S06, he
thought that he might introduce colour into some future series,
but nothing ever came of the scheme.'*'’
Nor did artists at first show much interest in (ioethe's colour
ideas. The Theory was much in demand in Rome in i N 1 1 when a
new generation ot (lerman artists, the Nazarenes, deeply
interested in colour-symbolism, was establishing itself there; but
only one late associate of the group, J. 1). Rassavant, better
known as an art historian, seems to have studied it and we know
nothing of whether he put it to use in his work."*'’ One of the
first CJerman artists to publish his own theory of colours after
the appearance of (loethe’s book, the Munich painter Matthias
Klotz, showed himself an.xious to be distanced from the poet's
ideas, some ot which he claimed had been borrowed unacknow¬
ledged from himself.'*^ Not until after (ioethe's death do we
encounter a colour theory for artists based substantially on the
I'hcory, in a work by the Weimar theatre-artist Friedrich
Heuther, and even here Croethe was barely mentioned.'*'^ In
C'lermany in the 1S40S Cioethe's book had a low reputation
among artists, and although by the middle of the century this
had ceased to be so, it still seems to have been neglected in
painterly handbooks until long after then.'*'*
Only two artists in the early nineteenth century engaged
with Cioethe's theory in any thoroughgoing way. One was
Turner {see below) and the other Runge, who had known of the
poet’s ideas on colour from around iSoo, when he took part in
the Weimar Prize C'ompetition. In nSoj he met Ooethe and
from that date until his early death in 1810 they were in more or
less continuous communication. Like Ooethe, Runge hoped to
see the functions of colour e.xemphfied in painting; his most
important project, uncompleted at his death, was a series of four
Times ot Day, which would articulate the universe ot colour 111
ib2 a set of allegorical compositions. Only the first two, Montiit'^
and Day, were even begun in colour, and since their imagery was
subject to continual revisions their detailed meaning is still far
from clear. In tandem with these allegories was Runge’s book,
Tarheii-Kny’el {The TIolour Sphere), begun around 1807 and
/s8 finallv published in 1810. The paintings and the book show the
opposite extremes of Runge’s engagement with colour; on the
one hand the quasi-mystical sense of colour as a power in nature,
manifesting Divine truths by its division into the basic blue (the
Father), red (the .Son) and yellow (the Holy Cihost);-'’*’ on the
other a dry and summary ‘mathematical figure’, as Runge called
it, designed to show the relationship of colours to each other and
to aid the understanding of colour harmony.'’* The reference to
mathematics at once distances Runge’s approach from (Ioethe’s;
although the poet published an extract from an early draft of
Runge’s work in Ins 'Theory, with a note that they were
essentially in agreement, this was only because Runge had
touched none of the most contentious aspects ofhis ideas.Nor
did he do so in his Kuyiel of 1810 and he continued to keep a
certain distance from (Ioethe’s concepts, clanning that they
could be of little use to him.-'’ ’
Runge was an energetic experimenter; he made many disc-
mixtures in which he found that palette and disc produced quite
different results, and that the closest analogy to disc-mixing in
painting was through the use of semi-transparent glazes. '’'* I lis
< I 111 )l HS ( >1 III) MIND
most original contribution ti' the theors nt colour \s .n indeed in
the matter ot tr.insparencs': it figured largeK in the letter
published by (>octhe .iiui it bei.mie crucial to Runge’s pr.uticc.
lie explaineil to a friend that the latest, l.irge \ersion ot'the
.\/('riinnj was to be painted like K.iuthnann’s studs for (loethe
- in grisaille and then glazed in coK)urs."" 1 Im trieiid. the
Austri.in painter f-. .'\. s'on 1\hnkovs stroni. h.ul ni.ule .i (.'ops ot
(lorreggio’s Safirily (The Xi'^ht) as a demoiistr.ition ot'hoss the
Old Masters used glazing to aclnes e the finest colour h.irmons .
It became one ot Runge’s most treasured possessions; he had it
brightly lit and set by Ins bedside to contempl.ite in his d\ ing
hours.Runge also experimented in the 7'i//ic.' ot Doy with .1
technique tif glazing transparent colours oser .1 gold ground,
which at this time was thought to be a method ch.iracteristie of
Oorreggio.-'’'^ Yet. although he w.is able to ni.ike a blue b\
scumbling white over black, he did not use this interest 111
transparency to explore the turbid medium so de.ir to (loethe. It
was precisely because it was uncontrtwersial that his sphere, the
first colour-solid to co-ordinate the coinplement.ir\' circle with
the poles ot light and dark, became so inHuenti.il in the
development of colour-order systems later in the centurv.'’''
Runge’s brief career is another instance of the dwision betw een
scientific aspirations and artistic expression that gathereil mo¬
mentum during the Romantic period, despite the efforts cif
Romantic scientists such as Henrich SteHens, w ho contributed
an essay, ‘The Meaning of dolours in Nature’ to Runge’s
Tarhen-Kiii^el, to bring the two together. Runge was perfectlv
aw'are of this dix'ision; he wrote to his brother (lust.w that he
had to forget the ‘mathematical figure’ ofhis treatise when he
was painting, ‘since those are two different worlds which
intersect in ine’.^'*
Turner, tor his part, had always been concerned with the
interrelation of light and colour and around 1820 had been, like
Runge, attempting to fit the scheme of three primary colours,
red, yellow and blue, into the times of day, although he found,
as had Runge, that it was necessary to play with a number of
alternative solutions, one of which was the red of dawn and
sunset, and the ‘vellow morning’.*’*’ Aristotelian and anti-
Newtonian attitudes towards colour were as common in
England at this time as they were in (lermany or France;
Turner’s instincts were, no less than Runge’s or (Ioethe’s. to
emphasize the polarities of light and dark and to arrange the
scale of colours in a tonal order. 1 lis treatment of Moses I larris’s
complementary circle in the lecture diagrams he prepared to ;sq
show at the Academy in the 1820s shows a perverse insistence
that light and dark were the primary poles of colour experience;
‘.Sink the yellow until it light into the red and blue, and hence
two only; light and shadow, day and night, or gradation light
and dark.’*’’ So when Ftirner came in the early 1840s to read
Eastlake’s translation of (Ioethe’s Theory, he gave it some
attention. One passage that struck him was the table ot polarities
in which the poet had sought to show how colour, unlike light,
was ‘at all times specific, characteristic, significant’:
Plus Minus
Yellow Hliie
■Action Neg.it ion
light Sli.idow
203
 C'OI OUUS OI TUB MIND
BnL!:htiicss I ),irkiicss
I'orcc Weakness
Warnith Childness
Proximity 1 )istaiK'e
Repulsion Attraction
Artinir\' with Acids Ati'initx' with Alkalis
Against this table Turner noted in his copy, 'Light and Shade'/’’-
Turner had been exhibiting pairs ot paintings with an
essentially warm—ctrol or light-dark contrast since the mid-
1S30S; now in 1.S43 he used Cioethe's scheme predictably in two
episodes from the story of Noah’s Flood, the hrst ot which.
Shade and Darkness - the Hi’eniiii^ of the Dehn^e showed the last
disobedient tannhes. tarnished by 'negation' and 'weakness',
who were about to be swept away by the Flood, in a landscape
which was brooding, dark and blue. Its companion, L/yR;r and
i(u) Colour (Goethe's Theory) — the Mornine) after the Dehn^e — Moses
writiii'^ the Book of Genesis, provided the plus side of the polarity:
its dominant yellow space is full of action, brightness and torce
in the vortex of figures whirling around Moses, suspendeci like
one of the angels adoring the Name ot jesiis m Baciccio’s Gesh,
which Turner may well have studied on one ot his visits to
Rome. And the title of this painting drew the spectator’s
attention specifically to Cioethe’s book.
As so often in Turner, the relationship ot the painting to
Cioethe's ideas is far from being straightforward; certainly
Turner did not endorse them as a whole. The use of his name
only 111 relation to the second painting may be taken to suggest
Turner’s view that Goethe had not given enough attention to
shade: against a passage of the Theory (§744), where the poet had
defined darkness in the traditional way simply as an absence of
light, he noted ‘nothing about Shadow or Shade as Shade and
shadow Rictorially or optically’. He also tound Goethe’s
account of the production of red through the ‘augmentation’ of
yellow and blue ‘absurd’, so that no more than Runge was he a
follower of the poet.*’-^ What Turner’s use of Goethe’s polarities
does suggest is that he had a sense of the moral force of colour,
an aspect to wdaich Goethe devoted a substantial section at the
end of his book, and wdiich w'as to prove perhaps the most
durable of his approaches.
Tlic morality of colour
There can be little doubt that Romanticism gave colour-
symbolism a new life. 1 showed in Chapter 5 how the late-
medieval scheme of colours for the days of the week was echoed
in the 1820s by the German touring and gardening prince
1 lermann Piickler-Muskau.^'^ The equally arbitrary set of
colours representing moral values, published by Lairesse at the
end of the Baroque period - yellow for glory, red for power and
love, blue for divinity, purple for authority, violet for humility
and green tor servitude — were re-introduced into Romantic
England by Lairesse’s last editor.^® Yet there was a new and
more psychological inflection to the search for a morality of
colour among painters. The young Nazarenes Franz Pforr and
Friedrich Overbeck described how in Vienna shortly before
their move to Rome in 1810 they discovered that they could use
in their work the observation that people naturally chose the
204
colours of their dress according to their characters;^^ Turner,
whom we have already seen looking for the ‘natural’ sequence
of primary colours in the times ot day, dismissed Lairesse’s
equivalents on the grounds that ‘They must be lett with those
who framed them as emblematical conceits and typical allu¬
sions’.'’^ An associate of Turner’s, the landscape painter Augus¬
tus Wall Gallcott, was even more emphatic m his rejection ot
conventional symbols. In an unpublished essay on colour he
wrote:
A kind of association was formerly made between colours and
Expression and particular colours were made use ot as [illegible
u>ord\ of the passions and feelings. This is now done away with as
trifling and absurd, things which have no real connection and
which cannot assist the suppositions of the imagination, by their
own natural relation cannot long meet with estimation unless their
origin is connection with some classical Event or favourite
circumstance. The powers of colours upon the teelings arc very
feeble and it is canly in asstaciation with peculiar circumstances ot the
countenance 1?| and particular effects of nature that I at present feel
they have any influence whatever.'’*^
Even Humbert de Superville, searching for a ‘natural’ system ot
colours among ancient religions, and attributing the late
medieval heraldic scheme of the colours ot the planets to
Aristotle, argued in the 1820s that the meaning of colours was
by universal consent and that women were particularly able to
respond to their moral connotations.^'^ Humbert was familiar
with Goethe’s Theory of Colours, w'here in the concluding
section of the ‘Didactic Part’ the moral theory of colours
received its most influential formulation.^^
Already in the late lyyos Goethe had been cievising with his
friend the poet and dramatist Friedrich Schiller - another
member ot the Weimar Fnenefs ot Art — a scheme of
correspondences based partly on the ancient and medieval
quadripartite system of the tour elements, the tour humours, the
four points of the compass, the four seasons, the four times of
day, the tour ages ot man, the tour phases ot the mcDon and so on.
In this elaborate parlour-game, which issued in the Teinperanient- 160
rose, red came surprisingly to stand for air, midnight, north,
winter and old age, as w'ell as for melancholy, reason, humour
anci judgment, the ideal and unity.Goethe emphasized that
Schiller was here the organizing genius — perhaps he was one ot
the ‘pedants’ who shared Piirpiir with rulers and tyrants and
were melancholics by temperament — and this rather ossified
approach to colour values may be in line with Schiller’s
conventional and now Neo-Classical view of the superiority caf
hue to colour as a conveyer of‘truth’.But it is clear that to the
traciitional polarities had been acided the newly discovered
complementarity: green, the capposite otPiirpur, now stood for
the sanguine temperament, for example, anci for sensuality and
memory. In the Theory Goethe was able to draw a distinction
between ‘symbtalic’ colour, ‘Coinciding entirely with nature’,
and ‘allegorical colour’, where, ‘the meaning of the sign must be
first communicated to us before we know what it is to signify’
(§§916—7) — a distinction which rested on the belief that colours
had a direct, not simply a mediated, effect on the mind and
feelings.It was a powerful idea which was to be crucial in the
early development of German abstraction but in the nineteenth

century it seems to have found a more receptive audience in
France.
C'loethe’s theory had little support in France in the early years;
but both anti-Newtonianism and a belief in the affective power
ot colour had been very much alive there during the Enlighten¬
ment period and they continued into Romanticism.By the
middle of the nineteenth century (loethe's colour-ideas had
become absorbed into the French literature of art; in Blanc’s
(h'lJmiHiiirc dcs arts du dcssiii the poet’s name was linked with
Delacroi.x because of their common interest in complementary
after-images.^-"’ Blanc also sought in another book to show that
Delacroix had been very much concerned with colour’s
dtannonics morales'.'^''’
IRanc’s books were perhaps the most fertile texts on colour in
France during the second half of the nineteenth century, for
they were read with attention by a younger generation of artists
whose approach to these ‘moral harmonies’ ot colour was
central to their work. Two of them were Vincent van C'lOgh and
Raul Ckuiguin, whose stormy friendship in 1SS7 and oSSS
produced not only an important debate on the nature of colour-
relationships but also an impressis'e body ot paintings which
bear directly on this debate. Van Clogh like Runge was a largely
self-taught artist with an insatiable curiosity about the proce¬
dures of painting and an acute feeling of unease about the
existing practices. Just as Runge had been gripped by Forestier’s
article on new methods of art-teaching in Paris, published in
(loethe’s Propyidcii in iSoo,”^^ so van (logh was much impressed
in 1XH4 by his reading of Blanc’s account of Delacroix in Les
Artistes dc itiou tetiips, lent to him by his painter frienef Anton van
Rappard. As he wrote to his brother Theo shortly afterwards,
his experience of colour, again like Rtinge’s, was interwoven
with his experience of the world at large;
The laws of the colours arc unutterably beautiful, just because they
are not accidental. In the same way that people nowadays no longer
believe in fantastic miracles, no longer believe in a Clod who
capriciously and despotically Hies from one thing to another, but
begin to feel more respect and admiration for. and faith in nature —
in the same way, and for the same reasons, I think that in art, the old
fashioned idea of innate genius, inspiration etc., I do not say must be
put aside, but thoroughly reconsidered, verifietl — and greatly
modified.
Van Rappard was essential to van Clogh’s programme for
teaching himself through reading as well as through looking. It
was probably he who as early as iScSi had introduced van Clogh
to a handbook which was to affect his understanding of colour
throughout his brief career as a painter. A.-T. Classagne’s Traite
d'aqiiarelle of 11X75 was far from being a simple technical manual;
it introduced a wide range of theoretical issues in painting and a
number ofextended quotations from earlier nineteenth-century
artists, which were clearly very impressive to the beginner.
Black, said (lassagne, was the most fundamental colour in
nature, entering into all three primaries to form an infinite
variety of greys, those greys which were an important feature of
van Clogh’s palette in Holland and with which he was still
seeking to come to terms in Arles.It may well have been a hint
by Classagne which set him thinking in 1SH4 about how to paint
a series of the four seasons in terms of contrasted complemen¬
( n| ()ri<s ( )| 1 Ml \1IM>
tary pairs: spring .is green and pink, .mtunm .is \ello\\ .iiui
\iolet. winter .is bl.ick .ind white .iiui summer .is blue .md
orange.*’*’
C.omplement.irits w ,is pcrh.ips the colour-pniu iple i loscst to
\an (logh throughout his c.ireer. reinforced b\ his re.iding of
Blanc’s (irainniaire, which be bought .ifter ha\ing eiiioxed /.< ' 1 pf
.drtistes. Blanc had \'isu.ih/ed the complement.ir\ lolours .is
\ ictorious allies w hen juxtaposed in .1 pure state but .is de.ulK
enemies when nnxei.i; it w.is this dsnaniii' ot the colour-p.iirs
which especially intrigued win Ciogh.”' .'\t .Arles in iS.ss he
introduced it into his \iplit (iafe. of'which he wrote to 1 heo in Km
September (CIL sjj):
1 liave tnci.i to express tlie terrible p.issions of hum.mit \ b\ nie.uis i)t
red and green. I he room is bl(H>d ri-d ,md d.irk \ellow w ith .1 green
billiard t.ible in the middle; there ,ire tour i itron-\ ellow l.mips w ith
a glow lit orange .md green. Iwervwhere there is a clash and
contrast ot the most disp,irate reds .ind greens in the figures ot'the
sleeping hooligans, in the empty, dre.iry room, in x iolet .md blue.
The blood-red and yelUns -green of the billiard t.ible, tor instance,
contrast with the soft teiuler Louise |.'i( | XV green ot'the eouitter.
on which there is a pink nosegay. 1 he white coat ot'the l.mdlord,
awake in a corner of that furnace, turns eitron-\’ellow. or p.ile
luminous green ,. .
But in another letter (CIL 534) he laid more emphasis on the
clashes of the various greens and sulpher-vellow in the picture;
with him it was always a vexed iiuestion what preciselv it was
that made cohnir expressive. 'Fins was an uncertaimv made
more acute by his close association with (lauguin towards the
end of his visit to Paris in i SS6 7.
C'lauguin was also a self-taught painter and like win (logh and
Seurat he read Blanc’s (Iraniinaire some time earlv in the
iiSHos.”- Like van Clogh ttm, he had experimented with Seurat’s
dotted technique in Paris in iSSCi**-' so he was alreadv something
of a connoisseur of the most advanced attitudes towards colour.
His Still-Life with a Horse's Head, which includes a lapanese dtdl
and fans, shows that he was alsti an admirer of the lapanese
artefacts — much lauded by Blanc - which were to engage so
much of van (logh’s attentitm during his Paris period. I'hey
certainly became close friends during the visit,’*'* and one
comnuin concern which is likely to have been eagerly discussed
between them was the oriental principles of colour harmony.
During the winter of icSXj-b (lauguin had circulated a
translation ofa fragment of what he claimed was an eighteenth-
century 'Furkish treatise, which included a number of precepts
about colour;
Who tells you that you ought tti seek contrast in colours?
What is sweeter in an artist than to make perceptible in .1 bunch ot
roses tlie tint of e.ich one?
Altliougli two flowers resemble each otlier. can they ever be petal
by petal the same?
Seek for harmony and not contrast, for what accords, not what
clashes. It is the eye of ignorance th.it assigns ,1 fixed ami
unchangeable colour to es ery object; .is I bas e s.ud to you. beware
of this stumbling-block.'**'
Van (logh in 1SS6 was working on a long series of dower
compositions, including roses, which w ere intended preciselv to
20 s
(,()l ()l'l<S ()l I llh MIND
rc\ I'.il 'oppositions ot blue with oranpc, red and green, yellow
and \ iolet, seeking Ics tons lonipiis ct nciirrcs to harmonize brutal
extremes. I rx'iiig to render intense eolour and not a grey
harmoin ' (Cd, 4Sya). It was this insistence on complementaries.
e\en while attempting to modity them, that (iauguin was later
to criticize most bitterly in his work.^'^ I le probably witnessed
in Fans one of the most startling examples ot its operation in the
sersioii w hich van Clogh made of Hiroshige’s colour-print,
Pliiinlrco Ti’ithoiisc ot Kivicido (PUnn I'lccs in Flou’ci ), where the
soft greens and salmon-pinks were heightened into bright
complementaiw greens and reds, the whites turned to yellows
•iiid the few blues extended and set off by a wholly invented
bright orange frame.That this was an especially impressive
transtormation to Clauiruin is sutrirested bv his use ot the design a
\ ear later in Ins I 'ision after the Sermon (jacoh ]\'restlinp with the
.■\npel). whose highly contrasting palette he described in a letter
to win Ciogh.”'^ For a moment, and for an unusally dramatic
sub)ect, Ckuiguin adopted the more strident tonalities he had
described, like Blanc, in military terms in his Notes synthetiqncs
about I(S84.”‘^
Vincent tor his part was well able to learn trom Gauguin’s
subtler tonalities, which he used in the several ‘greys’ of the selt-
portait presented to his friend in September as well as in
his ‘portrait’ ot (.kiuguin’s chair, in contrast to the painting ot his
own more robust yellow chair in its red and blue room. In a
number of paintings done at Arles, notably Les Alyscamps, he
adopted a resonant but muted palette and the strongly marked
outlines which were being developed by Gauguin and his circle
at Pont Aven.*^^ He had long been aw'are of the range of options
open to a painter an.xious to work according to the ‘laws’ ot
colour. In one of his many didactic letters to Theo in i88 _s (CL
428) he had listed contrasts of complementary hues, contrasts of
kindred hues and contrasts of values, rather as Adolf Hoelzel and
Johannes Itten w'ere to do forty years later; but he came down in
tavour of the primacy of complementaries. Yet only a few days
later he was arguing, 'Much, ei’erythinq, depends on my
perception of the infinite variety of tones of one same family' (CL
429) . All these principles of colour organization had been
explored in his painting since the Dutch years; what Gauguin
did was to open his eyes to new colours and new combinations.
Cue passage from his reading about Delacroix’s methods
which stayed in van Gogh’s mind reterred to ‘an tinnameable
nuance ot violet’ on that master’s palette. The etcher Felix
Bracquemond, his source in this instance,'^- was particularly
worried by colour-names which, with the development of
synthetic dyestutls and pigments and the growth ot connnerical
tashion, seemed to be running out of control. Some of these new
names, such as Magenta, the aniline crimson named after a
French battle of 1859, are still with us; but two mentioned as
ephemeral by Bracquemond, ciiisse de nymphe emne (‘thigh of an
excited nymph’), which might be anything from pink to lilac or
even yellow, and Bisttiark, a leather-brown, have left no trace.
It, as Bracquemond hoped, colour and values were to become a
language with its own grammar,how could it do without
names? It was precisely the gap between perception and
language which intrigued van Gogh and was to become an
important aspect ot Gauguin’s Symbolist aesthetic of colour - a
gap which gave the edge to painters over the Symbolist poets.
206
The lines ut the gr.iph plot the contraction of the muscles of the hand and
torearni under the influence of various coloured lights, which (according to
Charles Fere, ScnsiUion ct Movcitictit, iSSy) could bo felt even with the eyes
closed. Violet has the least effect, red the most. (170)
In the early 1880s Gauguin had used a very commonplace
and limited vocabtilary of colour terms - red, yellow, blue,
green — when, tear example, he annotated his sketches.In his
correspondence with van Gogh in 1888 he had used studio
language: I’erniillion, nert enierande, ocrc, nltramarine, chrome 2 and
so on. Van Gogh used a mixture of more general words and
technical terms, the first more commonly when writing to
Theo and the latter when talking to other artists or to himselt on
drawings.One of the colour diagrams which had attracted
Gauguin in his studies was the colour-star adapted by Blanc
from the version in Etudes ceramiqnes by Ingres’s pupil J.-C.
Ziegler. In this star the primary and secondary colours were isq-
given their usual names, but the tertiaries had been much less
susceptible to standardization, so that Ziegler had devised for
them the quite personal terms of‘sulphur’, ‘turquoise’, ‘garnet’
and ‘nasturtium’, as well as the technical terms indigo and
cadmium (yellow-orange), which Blanc changed to ‘bell¬
flower’ and saffron.'^® This instability in the names ot tertiaries,
not to mention those of their ‘tinnameable’ derivatives, must
have appealed especially to Gauguin, for he used these nuances
extensively in his paintings of the 1890s, such as The Loss of
I ’irginity and Alanao Tnpapan (1892), where colour became the 164
chief vehicle ot mystery;
Since colour is in itself enigmatic in the sensations w'hich it gives us
{note: medical experiments made to cure madness by means of
colours) we cannot logically employ it except enigmatically, every
time we use it not to define form [dcssiner\, hut to give musical
sensations which spring from it, from its peculiar nature, from its
inner power, its mystery, its enigma . .
The nameless colours were not only mysterious but could speak
directly, without associations, to the feelings. In these remarks
Gauguin seems to be referring to the work of the French
physiologist Charles Fere, who in the 1880s was testing and
treating hysterics under various sorts of coloured light in a
programme of what came to be called Chromotherapy, which
gathered momentum citinng the 1890s, especiallv m Ger¬
many. It was generally discovered that red light had a lyo
somewhat exciting and blue light a somewhat calming effect.
 ( < )l (II ks ()i I 111 \ii\ii

ci)iK'lusii)ns m)t untainiliar to readers ot (uiethe's I hcory. w hich m the c.tse ot .mnn.ds. .uui e\ en pi.mis. du n ,tn\ espl.m.iiion in
was frequently invoked in the Clennan literature of this branch terms ot .osoci.ition (.innpleteK t.ills down I lust-t.uis ui .m\ v.o,
of healing.’"' prose th.it colour cont.nns wuhin iiselt .1 little studied but
The revival of interest in Ronnuitieisin, together with this enormous pow er, w hich c.in mriuence the entire luiin.m bods .0 .1
new concern with the immediate psychological ertects of plnsical org.inisin.'""
colours, brought (loethe's llicory into prominence again
1 he reterciice to red and blue depends upon .1 book on colour-
around the time of the First World War, chiefly on account of
therapy by Arthur Osborne Eas es. Die Krafte der I arhen 1 t9oo .
its psycho-physiological ideas. It was lunv the turn ot artists to
in his ctipy ot ss hich Kandiiisks noted the contr.isting eflects ot
claim (loethe tor themselves; one critic in the iSyos had already
blue and red ss ith the symbols tor cetitnpet.il .ind centritug.il
argued that ‘Naturalism, IMeinainsm, Symbolism; Impressio¬
forces later used in I .ible 1 ot ()n the Spiritual in . 1;7 to
nists, Fointilhsts, and whatever these isms and ists may be called,
cb.ir.icterize blue .md yelhiw.’"” But he h.ul become t'.mnh.ir
can all appeal to (loethe’.‘Fhe most far-reaching revival of
with some tfl the research ot colour-ther.ipists m .i nutnber ot
interest in Cloethe’s principles appeared after 1900, in the circles
(lertnan and French publications as e.irls as incn.'"'' I lis ossn
of (lerman artists who came to be known as Expressionists. One
colour-system, ssitb its polar arr.ingement ot black and ssliite.
of the first, the Dresden painter Ernst Eudwig Kirchner, a
blue and yellow, red and green and orange ,ind s lolet. although
tounder ot the Brticke (Bridge) group, had tried to work in a
it did not depend on any earlier system, relates to the circul.ir
Neo-Impressiomst style around 1906, had studied Helmholtz,
‘opponent-colour’ scheme proposed b\ the X’lennese phssiolo-
Rood and, surprisingly perhaps, Newton, but had finally
gist Ewald I lering’ ’" and the polar progression troni s elloss to
discovered Cioethe’s Theory and thought it the most appropriate
blue, the ‘primary’ contrast, to the ssairk of the psychologist
to his interests. Ooethe’s after-image ehects showed that onl)
W'ilhelm Wtindt. Wundt described how the psychologic.il
strongly coloured stimuli needed to be painted into the picture,
transition from yellow to blue, or trom lis eliness tti rest, could
not the results of these stimuli in the nineteenth-century
be by one cif two routes: a stable route through green and a
representational manner.’"-’ Oernian Expressionist painting,
highly unstable one through red, purple and \ iolet.' ‘ ' 1 his was
like ('lernian Expressionist poetry, released colour from its
a way ot thinking about the dynamics ot colour close to Kandinsky:
traditional role ot identitying objects; in this sense it was
It may have been because he was well aware ot this tradition in
intormed by the same concerns as experimental psychology,
('icrman experimental psychology that he included a note to
which sought, with some difficulty, to isolate the effects of
the ert'ect that his conclusions depended uptm ‘empirical-spiritual
colours entirely troiii associations.’"'^ It is something ot an irony
experience’, and not on any ‘pcisitive science’. ’
that one of the few scientists to support the physical aspects of
The conception of colour as a labile polar phenomenon was
(loethe’s Theory in these years, Arnold Brass, should have
not confined to Kandinsky in the circle of the Iflatie Reiter (Ifliie
attacked the ‘green skies’ and ‘violet meadows’ or ‘yellow
Rider) of which he was a co-founder 111 1911. Already some
streams’ of this type of modern art.’"-'’ Brass in Munich may
years earlier Franz Marc, the painter of animals and co-editor
have been thinking ot the Munich-based painter Wassily
with Kandinsky ot Der Blaiie Reiter almanac, had been discuss¬
Kandinsky who came, it seems, to Cloethe’s Theory rather late,
ing the subject of the colour circle with a third artist who joined
after he had published the first edition of his manifesto On the
the group, August Macke; Marc wrote:
171 Spiritual in Art (1912), in which the most thoroughgoing
172 Expressionist theory of colour wxis given a classic formulation. Blue is the male principle, sharp and spiritual, yelloir the Jemale
Kandinsky’s access to (Joethe at this date was chiefly through principle, soft, cheerful and sensual, red the material, brutal and
the Theosophist Rudolph Steiner’"" and it has been the occult heavy and ewer the colour which must be resisted and os’ercome by
and spiritualist elements in Kandinsky’s theory, mediated the other two. If, for example, you mix the serious, spiritual blue
largely by Steiner, which have been emphasized in recent with red, then you augment the blue tti an unbearable mourning,
studies. His aims w'ere certainly spiritual but the ta.xononiy of and the reconciling yelkiw, the complementary colour to s'lolet,
this spirituality in its visible manifestations owed a great deal to will be indispensable (the woman as consoler, not as liwerl). It you
the contemporary psychological debate. mix red and yellow, you give the passis-e and female yellow .1
In his book Kandinsky introduced precisely the topic of the Megaera-like, sensual power, for which the cool, spiritu.il blue
non-associative psychological eflects of colours which was the man - will again be indispensable, and certainly blue sets itself
occupying psychologists: after an account ot the various types ot immediately and automatically next tti orange; the colours love
synaesthesia (the simultaneous triggering of several senses by the each other, blue and orange, a thoroughly festive chords |K/i/i/y|.
same stimulus), Kandinsky continued: But if you nov\- mix blue and yellow to green, you bring red, the
material, the 'earth' to life, but here 1. as a painter, always teel a
Tliis explanation |in terms of association! is, however, insuflicient dirterence; with green you ne\ er put the eternally iiiaten.il, brutal
in many instances that are for us of particular importance. Anyone red to rest, as vou do with the other colour-chord (just imagine
who lias heard of colour therapy knows that coloured light can objects dectir.ued in green and redl). Blue (the he.u en) and yellow
have a particular erfect upon the entire body. Various attempts to (the sun) must alwavs come to the aid ot green .ig.iin, to riihdiie the
exploit this power tif colour and apply it to ditlerent ners'ous material. And then, another thing . . . blue and yellow .ire not
disorders have again noted that red light has an enlivening and equidistant trom red. In spite ot all spectr.il .malysis I c.m t get over
stimulating ehect upon the heart, while blue, on the other hand, can my painter s beliet that yellow (the woman) is closer to the e.irthly
lead to temporary paralysis. Ifthis sort oferfect can also be observed red than blue, the male principle
COl OURS OF- THF, MIND

Wc can easily imagine how Marc came to conceive the idea ot

TABLE I.
the Blue Rider, the spiritual controller ot one ot his red or
first pair (of an inner character, as
yellow horses. *
of opposites: I and 11 emotional effect)
This gendering of colour had had its parallel in an essay by
Warm Cold Rnnge, although Marc's interpretation ot the colours was isO
! = I contrast
Yellow Blue almost the opposite of his, which saw the cool colours ot the
circle related to the feminine and the warm to the masculine
2 movements: ‘passions' and red to love.' ‘ It is possible that Marc was directly
1. horizontal affected by Rnnge's scheme, since the Romantic artist had risen
to prominence in Wilhelmine Germany because ot the ‘Jahr-
toward spec¬ _^away from spec¬
tator (spinmal)
hundertsausstellung' (Centenary Exhibition) of German art
tator (physical)
from 177s to 1875, held in Berlin in 1906. This great exhibition
Yellow Blue
had been arranged by Hugo von Tschudi who, because ot his
positive attitude to modern, particularly French, movements,
2. eccentnc L. ''SJ concentnc was soon after dismissed from the Berlin Museum and moved to
Munich, where be became close to the circle ot Marc and
Kandinsky (who dedicated the Aliiiaiiac to his memory). In the
Light Dark
n = n contrast catalogue to the ‘Jahrhundertsausstellung’ Tschudi had written
White Black of Rnnge in terms very likely to commend him to his new
2 movements; friends: ‘He is a mystic, and writes a scientitic theory ot colour;
1. The movement of resistance every flower, every colour has a symbolic meaning for him and
Eternal resistance complete lack of he sees the task of painting in the representation of air and light
and yetpossibili- White Black resistance and no
and the movement of life; he speaks of the new art, and [yet]
ty (birth) possibility (death)
paints with the means and the attitudes ot the Old Masters.’^
2. Eccentnc and concentnc, as in the case of yellow and blue, But whatever the source of Marc’s idea, it was one which was
but in petrified form. entirely up-to-date and had also been recorded in the literature
of experimental psychology.'
Few, if any, of the many approaches to colour among
Wassily Kandinsky, first and third colour diagrams from On the Spiritual in
members of the Blaue Reiter cannot be paralleled in the
.-Irf, 1912. Kandinsky's conception of colour was essentially dynamic, and in
technical publications of experimental psychology in this
the third diagram he sought a polar arrangement of black versus white, green
period; many were presented in a single series of interviews,
versus red, orange versus violet, each arising 'from a modification of red by
chiefly with professional people, including some art-historians
yellow or blue', and so on. {171,172)
and painters, conducted by G. J. von Allesch before the First
"World "War but not published until 1925.^^® Allesch’s object
was to identify patterns ot colour-preference, which he was
conspicuously unable to do; but in the process he assembled
Table III some ot the most detailed accounts of spiritual and sensual
responses to colour in subjects from a wide range ot ages,
nationalities and professions: they should give pause to those
modern commentators who consider the views of the Blaue
Reiter to be eccentric or entirely personal.' One of the
assumptions developed within this school of psychology was
precisely that at the level of sensual apprehension, pleasure in
bright, saturated colour was common to all periods and peoples
and that only the higher levels of aesthetic appreciation were the
result of acculturation: this was very much how form was
promoted by the large collection of artefacts gathered from
many civilizations, presented in the illustrations to the Blaue
Reiter almanac.Had cheap colour-reproduction been avail¬
able in 1912, the editors might well have offered similar
observations for colour; as it was, they included only some of
their own coloured woodcuts in the de luxe edition.
To judge from his short autobiogaphical essay Reiiiitiisceuces
(1914), Kandinsky was a natural synaesthete: speaking of the
The pairs of opposites represented as a ring between two poles = first paintbox of his adolescence, he wote, ‘It sometimes seemed
the life of the simple colors between birth and death, to me as if the brush, as it tore pieces with inexorable will from
this living being that is colour, conjured up in the process a
(The Roman numerals indicate the pairs of opposites.)
musical sound. Sometimes I could hear the hiss of the colours as

208

they mingled.'*-' Synaesthesia was also one ol'the most active
areas ot experimental psychology in these years and one in
which the 'empincal-spinttiar was especialK’ hard to disen¬
tangle troni ‘positive science'. When we look at colour and
music (Cdiapter 13) we shall see that in the linkage ok colours
with musical sounds, Kandinsky's responses were very much m
line with a long tradition now being renewed in a systematic
way. It was this commonest variety of synaesthesia. called
audition colorcc (‘colour-hearing'), that particularly interested
the psychologists and in 1 S90 the Clongres Internationale de la
Psychologic' Physiologic|ue set up a committee to investigate it:
some five hundred cases were reported by i(S92.'-- Kandinsky
will have read ot the phenomenon in articles by Scheffler and
(lerome-Maesse and he made notes tin an inconclusis e essay by
Freudenberg on its most widespread manifestation, the identif¬
ication ot colours and vowel-sounds. I his had been proposed as
early as A. W. Schlegel in the Romantic peritid but it had been
given a new stimulus m the oSyos by Rimbaud's poem
‘Vtiyelles’, which begins ‘A noir, E blanc, I rouge, U vert, O
bleu: voyelles".*“•’ Even though it was thought by some that
Russian - Kandinsky’s native tongue — was particularh' rich m
synaesthetic sounds*-'^ and although audition colorcc had a
particularly vigorous life in Russian art and literature.
Kandinsky seems to have kept this aspect of the phenomenon at
a distance until his period as a teacher at the Bauhaus in the
1920s.*-*’ But once again he was caught up m the mainstream of
experimental colour-psychology.
is rccordiiit^ coloured sensations’
Cioethe’s engagement with the problems of the psychology of
perception involved a number of levels, including the funda¬
mental ejuestion for the painter ot what it is precisely that we see.
In a remarkable passage of the introduction to the Theory of
Colours he e.xpressed this problem in a way which was to
resonate as long as representation was a central preoccupation of
painting:
We now assert, extraordinary as it may in some degree appear, that
the eye sees no form, inasmuch as light, shade and colour together
constitute that which to our vision distinguishes object from object,
and the parts of an object from one another. From these three, light,
shade and colour, we construct the visible world, and thus, at the
same time, make painting possible, an art which has the power of
producing on a Hat surface a much more perfect sdsible world than
the actual one can be.*-^
In some ways this was simply a return to the neo-medieval
idealism of a Bishop Berkeley in the early eighteenth century*-**
but the application specifically to painting was new. Cloethe was
not a painter: his extensive visual oeuvre is confined almost
entirely to wash drawings and he never addressed the problems
of painting from nature; but as nineteenth-century painting,
especially in France, took a more empirical and ptisitivist turn in
the 1S60S and 70s, Cloethe's idea became an urgent issue. It was
of course the Impressionists who first seemed to paint simply
what they saw and appeared to see tmly what (loethe had
suggested. But what exactly did he suggest? .Monet, the most
radical Impressionist, even towards the end of his career took a
( I >1 ( U ks ( )| 1 HI MIND
surprisingly simple view ot’the visu.il experience I't the p.iintei
'W hen you go ouc to p.mu. tr\ to lorgct w h.it obici-t' \ou h.i\ c
betore \'ou. .1 tree. .1 house, .1 held, or wli.itex er Meiels think, liere
IS .1 little ssju.ire ot blue, here .m oblong of jnuk, heie .1 stre.ik ol
s ellow . ■ind p.niit It just .is It Ku'ks u' \ou. the s'x.iet lolour .md
sh.ipe, until It gives \our own n.n\e impressuin of the sieiie befors-
you.'
1 le s.ud he w ished he h.ul been born blind .md then h.id suddenK
g.nned Ins sight so th.it he could h.ue begtin to p.unt m this w.u
w ithotit know mg wh.it the objeas were th.it he s.iw before him,
Fhis belie! in the \ irtues of nai\ et\ w ,is a return to Rtiskin's
teaching ot the iSsos. speciticalls to the lilcnicnt.^ ot Ihaunny.
which enjtiyed a high reputation in France .it the end ot' the
century.* In a remarkable p.issage tif his shgluK e.irlier ess.is
Prc-Rajdiaclitisni, Ruskiii h.id contr.isted the .inttthetic.il ,ip-
proaches to landscape tit John Everett .Mill.ns aiul 1 timer, the
tornier keen-sighted and concerned to recortl e\er\ detail ot'
what he saw while he saw it and hence occupied w ith the most
permanent features of the seene: the latter Itnig-siglued and
anxious to render the nuist fleeting ert'ects of light aiul w e.ither
and hence dependent \ery imieh on his memorx .iiul inven¬
tion. *■*' But Impressitinist landsc.ipe was btith coneerned w ith
transient eflects ot light like 1 iirner's and was to be executed in
trout ot the motit like Millais's; its extraordinariK' luwel
qualities of brushwork and colour can be attributed t'or the most
part to these two barely reconcilable demands. \X'e learn from
his extensive correspondence th.it Monet was remarkabl\-
iinreflective about these problems: tor him landscape painting
was largely a matter of overcoming the relative feebleness of his
painting materials and the vagaries of the weather. Around 1X90
he developed a method ot working on a series ot canvases in
succession, tor as tew as seven minutes each in the case ot the
Pofdars and on as many as fourteen at a session in the case of ibb
Rouen CathcdralP^- There is no reason to think that he did not
believe in the rhetoric of ‘naturalness' and ‘objectivity' with
which these works were launched, e\ en when they came to be
recognized as too decorative to be ‘natural', and when he
completed them more and more in the studio.* *' Monet was
entirely unconcerned about the problematic nature of his ow n
subjectivity, the erfect of prolonged scrutiiu’ of the motit on his
eyes and his perceptions. This was very much the concern ot
contemporary physiological psychology in the tradition ot
I lelmholtz, no stranger to (loethe's science .md whose ideas
were dominant in the French positixist aesthetics ot the i.Syos
and Sos {sec Cdiapter 9).
Not so Clezanne and it is to Clezanne that we must look tor the
supreme and surprisingly complete exemplification in painting
of the attitudes towards colour and perception current in
contemporary French physiology and philosophy. In a lecture
in iSss 1 lelmholtz had stated, ‘we ne\ er perceive the objects ot
the external world directly. On the contrary, we only perceive
the eflects ot these objects on our ow n nerx'ous apparatuses, and
it has always been like that from the first moment ot our hte.' * *■*
In the i<S6os he devekiped wh.it he called the Empinc.il Fheory
of Vision, by which he meant that visual perception w.is not the
result of immediate apprehension based on intuition or innate
capacities, but rather of a process ot learning through expe-
209
 COLOURS OF TFiK MIND
ncncc.'-'^ This was surely the debate which lay behind a casual
remark of Cezanne's in a letter of 1905 to Emile Bernard:
'Optics, which are developed in us by study, teach us to see.’^-^'"
Cezanne was not, it seems, a great reader ot theory, although the
idea of theory became more and more attractive to him towards
the end of his life.*-^^ It we can credit the recollections of his
friend joachini Gasquet that they once discussed Kant on
subjectivity, it may be that this related to Helmholtz’s debate
with the Kantians about the nature of perception and the
organization ot the niindd'^'^.
The most popular exponent of Hehnholtzian physiology in
France was undoubtedly the polymath Hippolyte Taine, whose
survey ot modern theories ot the mind, De I’lntclUge)]ce (1870),
ran into a dozen editions during Cezanne’s lifetime. The painter
IS at least likely to have heard ot Tame’s ideas, since his close
friend the novelist Emile Zola claimed to have read him as early
as the 1X60S and to have adopted his positivist attitude towards
the world.Tame, like Helmholtz, drew widely on his
experience of painting, especially in his discussion of the role of
memory, where he cited the well-known school of memory-
training run by Henri Lecoq de Boisbaudran - frequented by
Fantin-Latour — where the perception of colour was developed
by means ot progressively more complex charts of coloured
nuances. Taine took a rather more radical view than
Helmholtz of the role of the mind in shaping the objective array
of colours: ‘All our sensations of colour are . . . projected out of
our body, and clothe more or less distant objects, furniture,
walls, houses, trees, the sky anti the rest. This is why, when we
reflect on them atterwards, we cease to attribute them to
ourselves; they are alienated and detached from us, so far as to
appear different from us’.^"^^ He later cited an instance well-
known to us by now from Ruskm and Monet, the case of a
woman whose sight had been restored and had at first seen only
‘patches’ (taclies):
Colourist painters know this state well, . . . their gift consists in
seeing their model as if it were a tache of which the only clement is
colour more or less diversified, toned down, enlivened and mixed.
So tar no idea of distance and the position of objects [in space]
except when an inference [indnction\ derived from touch sites them
all opposite the eye . .
From the 1880s onwards Cezanne developed a painterly
vocabulary of mostly regular taclies, with which he more or less
covered his canvas. As he told Bernard: ‘To read nature is to see
her, underneath the veil of interpretation, as coloured taclies
tollowing one another according to a law of harmony. These
large coloured areas [teiiites] can thus be analysed into modul¬
ations. Painting is recording coloured sensations.If we
examine a spacious and luminous late landscape such as Winding
i6fi Road {c. 1900), we shall surely find it ditficult to identify the
kinction of these subtly modulated taclies ‘following each other
according to a law of harmony’, which, with the exception of a
tew gables, roofs and tree-trunks, do not reveal themselves in
any obvious way. In particular, they seem to offer no points of
focus in the way 111 which we might expect them to constitute a
scene around a number of salient points. And yet they convey a
marked sense of depth. In a letter to Bernard about the time of
this painting, Cezanne associated reds and yellows with light
210
and blues with air, but here they all seem to function more as
local colours. *We have the assurance ot a number ot painters
and critics that it is possible, with patience and persistence, to
replicate a Cezanne-like way of looking at the world, although
those piainter-cntics such as Roger Fry, Ernst Strauss or
Lawrence Gowing who have interpreted his work both
verbally and visually stopped short of attempting the sort ot
modulation by colour which gave many of his late paintings
such luminosity. What this highly specialized manner ot
looking seems to have involved was the fixation on a small area
of the scene — what Cezanne called the ‘culminating point’ - in
order to identify its tone and colour characteristics in isolation
from its context. After recording its precise quality the painter
would move to another point, which might be at a consicierable
distance from the first, so that in time his canvas or paper might
show a number ot discrete areas of working; the progress of the
painting would depend upon his capacity to knit these areas
together into a coherent whole. ^ This was the antithesis of the
common Impressionist procedure of covering as much of the
surface as possible from the first.
We know from many barely started canvases or watercolour
sheets and from the account by Bernard of Cezanne at work on
a watercolour in 1904^'^^’^ how a subject might begin with the
darkest points or junctions of surfaces; we know far less about
how it was brought to a conclusion. Indeed the whole notion of
finish, as his critics soon recognized, became irrelevant to
Cezanne’s method. He was, after all, a man of independent
means and little concerned until the last years with the sale of his
work. The pictures came increasingly to represent less a
statement about a motif- although his imperious attitude to the
motif is clear from the way he organized it even before he
started painting^®® — than notes of his reactions to it over a
period of time. His dealer Ambroise Vollard, who claimed to
having submitted to 115 sittings for his portrait, clearly had
every occasion to observe Cezanne’s meticulous working
procedures, his many soft brushes, each carefully cleaned after
each stroke, laid on in very liquid glazes like watercolour, layer
alter layer. In this instance the painter left two or three small
patches ot bare canvas on the hands, hoping at some time to
identity the precise tone which would be necessary to complete
them: if he were to finish the painting casually with any ill-
considered nuance, he would have had to repaint the whole
thing ‘starting from that place’.
It Cezanne began by establishing his darks and working up
the scale, he must soon have run into that familiar obstacle to
representational painting, the inadequacy of the scale of light in
the picture to match the scale of nature, an inadequacy which
had even been quantified by Helmholtz.Cezanne’s deter¬
mination to render values by colours — to ‘modulate’ rather than
to model - must have complicated his task even further. Like
'Whistler and the painters of the Ecole des Beaux Arts, he set out
his scale of mixtures on the palette before he started working
and did not mix as he went along; this must of itself have
imposed some conceptual coherence on his rendering of his
perceptions from the outset. But Bernard, who recorded
most of these details, did not say precisely what Cezanne’s scale
was - how much he used mixed colours at all. for example - and
It is only from other parts of his memoirs that we learn how

C'czaniic resisted the suggestions of an Impressionist such as
Pissarro, or a Symbolist like himself, to restrict the palette. In
1904, according to Bernard. Clezanne was using nineteen
pigments arranged in a strictly tonal sequence.' The paintings
themselves suggest that now, in contrast to the 1S70S, mi.xture
was something which he tried to avoid, so it is not surprising
that, even with white and five yellows, Clezanne found no
possibilities left to him at the top of the scale and had to leave his
canvas or paper blank. That it was the lightest lights which were
thus left unpainted has made it possible for us to read many of
these late images as whole.
What is clear is that this need to abandon paintings at various
stages ot their making became a source of great an.xiety to
Clezanne. In a letter to Bernard of C')ctober 190s he wrote;
'Now, being old, nearly 70 years, the sensations ot colour,
which give the light, are for me the reason for the abstractions
which do not allow me to cover my canvas entirely nor to
pursue the delimitation of the objects where their points of
contact are fine and delicate; trom which it results that my
image or picture is incomplete.’ A year later to his own son: ‘1
must tell you that as a painter 1 am becoming more clear-sighted
before nature, but that with me the realization of my sensations
is always painful. 1 cannot attain the intensity that is unfolded
before my senses. I have not the magnificent richness of
colouring that animates nature.The frustrations coming
from a lifetime of testing the psycho-physiological question,
‘what do our perceptions look like?’ produced not only anxiety
but also the visual tensions which give such vitality to Cezanne’s
last works.
troDi Matisse to abstraction
Cezanne came to be the single most important presence in
French painting before the First World War. Of his younger
admirers Fdenri Matisse was perhaps the most able to explore the
implications of his late style and to account for that exploration
in an articulate verbal commentary. Matisse had studied with
the .Symbolist Custave Moreau who, although a professor at the
Ecole, took an imaginative view of colour which was closer to
van Cogh and Cauguin than ttr the French academic tra¬
dition.' But as he admitted himself, Matisse was 'a good half a
scientist’ and we remember that even in later life he took to
working in a white coat.''’"'’ He read Signac’s D’Hiii^cnc
Delacroix an nco-ii)ipressioiitiisi)ic as soon as it came out in 1S98 t;)r
IS99 but at that time he used the dotted technique so vaguely as
to suggest the experiment was based entirely on reading and
that he had not yet examined any works by the Neo-
Impressionists themselves."’" Five years later Matisse was in
direct contact with Signac and another exponent of the method,
I l.-E. Cross, in the south of France. Although he later played
down his interest in the ‘scientific’ colour of this group, arguing
against the constraints inherent in Signac’s preoccupation with
complementaries and that the only way to establish them was to
study the paintings of the great colourists, there are signs that
Matisse himself was now inclined to be doctrinaire. His most
important Neo-Impressionist work. Luxe, callin' ct volnptc
(1904-s) incorporates a set of complementary contrasts, ver¬
milion and green, yellow and violet, which are far harsher than
I ()1 i>l Rs !)l MU SUM!
those in the contemporary work of C Toss and Sign.ic. who was
more inclined to juxtapose related tones w hu h would fuse to .m
optical shimmer, .Maurice Hems called .Matisse’s picture 'the
diagram of.i theor\’; .M.itisse hmiselt'.idtmtted th.it he felt he
had to heighten the contrasts more th.in Cross h.id reemnmen-
ded he certainly had a reputatum among the other F.uwe
painters in 1905 tor a more rigul obserwince ot' theor\ th.m
they. When he opened his private art-school in Fans m 1908.
the theories ot Chevreul, 1 lelmholtz and Rood w ere. according
to one ot his pupils, .imoiig the subjects discussed. Matisse's
beliet that red, green and blue suthced 'to create the equu alent
ot the spectrum’ suggests an umisu.illy c.ireful re.iding ot'Rood's
Modern (ihronialns. but not thorough eiunigh t’or him to have
been aware of the Rurkinje .Shift."’' But this vear also marked .1
change in direction trom a more or less coticeptu.il to an entirelv
perceptual theory ot colour and, as a consequence, towanls
painting in Hatter and Hatter tones.
Matisse’s .Votes d'un peintre (1908) includes perhaps the most
sophisticated theory of colour to ha\ e been w ritten bv an artist
in this century;
I study my method very closely: if I put .1 black dot 011 a sheet of
white paper, the dot will be visible no matter how far aw av I hold
it: it is a clear notation. But beside this dot I will place another one.
and then a third, and already there is contusion. In order for the first
dot to maintain its value I must enlarge it as I put other marks on the
paper.
It upon a white canvas I set down the sensations of blue, of green,
ot red, each new stroke diminishes the importance of the preceiiing
ones. Suppose I have to paint an interior: I have before me a
cupboarti; it gives me a sensation of \'i\’id red and I put down a red
which satisfies me. A relation is established between this red and the
white ot the canvas Let me put a green near the red and make the
floor yellow; and again there will be relationships between the
green or yellow and the white of the canvas which will satisfy me.
But these difFerent tones mutually weaken one another. It is
necessary that the various marks I use be balanced so that they do
not destroy each other. To do this I must organize my ideas; the
relationship between the tones must be such that it will sustain and
not destroy them. A new combination of colours will succeed the
first and render the totality of my representation. I am obliged to
transpose (e/i/iy’c dc iraiispocer). until finally my picture may seem
completely changed when, after successive modifications, the red
has succeeded the green as the dominant colour. I cannot copy
nature in a servile way; I am forced [force) to interpret nature and
submit it to the spirit of the picture .
Fear Cezanne’s despairing bondage to colour in nature Matisse
was substituting the bondage to colour in the picture. In this he
was following the imperatives of van Cogh in 1888 who
although he had thought t)fhis colours as ‘arbitrary’ also felt that
they ‘follow of their own accord’.''’’ Matisse’s formulation of a
similar idea in an essay on colour towards the end of his life
reinforced his own feeling that he was not in control: ‘1 use the
simplest colours, 1 don’t transform them myself, it is the
relationships which take charge of them [qiii s'eii chari^eiit).'
Matisse’s newly formulated attitude to ctdour in 1908 was
not an entirely coherent one: just after the passage qimted above
he stated that he must have ‘a clear vision of the \\ hole trom the
21 I
 COI OURS OI nil jMINI)
beginning' and a little later that the ehiet tunetu'in ot colour was
to ser\e expression. But it seems clear from the course ot his
maior works up tii the War that his radically perceptualist.
empiricist approach was the dominant one. Many paintings,
notahh' Still Life in Wiictiau Red (190S), At flic Pdiiitcr's Studio
(?I909- 10) and Zoiali on the Tcrriuc (191-). show signs ot the
most extensu'e repainting; perhaps the most startling early
instance ot this is lldyniony in Red which, as we now know trom
an earlv colour-photograph, began lite as a Harmony in
(jicc/i. *Or the great pair ot canvases Dance and Music ot 1910,
the first was the climax of a number of versions and was painted
with assurance ,md directness but the second bears the marks ot
substantial changes of mind. Matisse began at precisely this time
to keep photographic records ot the metamorphoses ot his
works.''’'’ From 1911 a thinner, watercolour-like treatment,
with no opportunities tor pentinienti, became more and merre
evident and shows how much more developed Matisse’s
capacity to v'isualize had become; but even now, and indeed
until the end of his life when the use of paper cut-out jigsaws’
made commitment to a first iciea irrelevant, the evidences ot
radical changes in composition and colour were a recurrent
teature ot his work. So important were these changes to his
method that by the mid-ipios he had developed a special
scraper to remove the earlier paint, in order to work faster and
avoid overloading the surface with tired impasto.'*’^
One of the most compelling results of this radical perceptual-
16/ ism and the transformations it induced was the Red Studio
(1911). This painting still has an e.xceptionally luminous, tresh
surface and yet it, too, was originally a blue-grey interior,
corresponding more closely to the white of Matisse’s studio as it
actually was. This quite powerful blue-grey can still be seen
even with the naked eye around the top of the clock and under
the thinner paint on the left-hand side. What forced Matisse to
translorm his studio with this dazzling red has been debated; it
has even been suggested that it was stimulated in the most
perceptual ol ways by the after-image of the greens from the
garden on a hot day.''’* Certainly he suggested to a questioning
visitor in 1912 they they should go for a walk in his garden.
Matisse’s extraordinary sensitivity to this type of psychological
effect is again suggested by a story he related about an
experience in the chapel he decorated with drawings and
stained-glass at Vence in the years around 1950. Recalling the
i6ts sun filtering through the design of leafage in the windows,
Matisse told an interviewer:
That effect ot colour has real power ... So much power that, in
certain lights, it seems to become a substance. Once when I found
myselt in the chapel. I saw on the ground a red of such materiality
that I had the tceling that the colour was not the effect of light
tailing through the window, but that it belonged to some
substance. This impression was reinforced by a particular
circumstance: on the floor in front of me there was some sand in a
little pile that the red colour was resting on. That gave the efl'ect of a
red powder so magnificent that 1 have never seen the like in my life.
1 bent down, put my hand in the sand and picked up a good fistful,
raised it to my eyes and let it trickle through my fingers: a grey
substance. But 1 haven't forgotten that red and one day 1 should like
to be able to put it on canvas. .
212
What is most astonishing about this story is that the windows at
Vcnce arc glazed entirely with yellow, green and blue; there is
no red, so Matisse’s c.xperience must have been ot a negative
after-image.
Matisse was used to taking the starting-point tor paintings
from the flowers in his garden and at Issy-les-Moulineaux,
where his studita was 111 1911, there were many reds among these
flowers.'^' He told the Italian Futurist painter Gino Severini
how the intense experience ot, say, a single blue patch, might
take over the whole ot a picttire, which may well be what
happened here in the Red Studio, the most brilliant fruit of
Matisse’s perceptual stance.
In his Notes Matisse had argued that ‘an artist must recognize,
when he is reasoning, that his picttire is an artifice; but when he
IS painting, he should feel that he has copied nature’.He
always required the stimulus ot a living piresence, whether
human, animal or vegetable, but his approach to painting
nevertheless came as an inspiration to the non-representational
painters who around 1910 were casting about tor a modus
operandi and a rationale. Kandinsky may have been in touch
with Matisse in Pans; certainly he reaci the Notes when they
appeared in German in 1909'^** and they may be felt in one of
the very tew places where he wrote not in general terms about
art and life but ot his own work. In an account ot the large and
turbulent Composition 17, based on an idea of the Deluge, the 792
painter told how it reached its final form, after the main design
had been laid in:
Then came the subtle, enjoyable and yet exhausting task of
balancing the individual elements one against the other. How 1 used
to torture myself previously when some detail seemed to be wrong
and 1 tried to impirovc it! Years of experience now taught me that
the mistake is rarely to be found where one looks for it. It is often
the case that to improve the bottom-left-hand corner, one needs to
change something in the upper right. If the left-hand scale goes
down too far, then you have to puit a heavier weight on the right -
and the left will come up of its own accord. The exhausting search
tor the right scale, tor the exact missing weight, the way in which
the lett scale trembles at the merest touch on the right, the tiniest
alterations of drawing and colour in such a place that the whole
picture is made to vibrate - this permanently living, immeasurably
sensitive quality of a successful picture - this is the third, beautiful
and tormenting moment in painting . .
Kandinsky was describing a psychological drama acted out on
his canvas, one still lull of the residual symbols of his early phase
ot abstraction; but his means for conveying this drama were far
trom pre-ordained. He had begun with a large number of
drawn and painted sketches, as befitted a subject of such
narrative complexity, but even when he had finally fixed on a
design, the act ot painting moved through a scries of psycholog¬
ical adjustments which characterized the new art of process. We
shall see in the final chapter how many abstract painters in our
century have developed this sense of process; it has been perhaps
the most lasting contribution of the psychological theory of
colour to the practice of art.
 12 • The Substance of Colour
I 'ciictiiUi secrets ■ rechnolo^iy and ideology ■ The inipact of synthetic colours ■ inne the painter
dolour as constmetine material
Beyond the conditioning which lie recei\ es from the world .ironnd
him and the place in which he finds himself, the artist nnist yield, tip
to a certain ptiint, to the possibilities and limitations ot the medium
he uses. Pencil, charcoal, pastel, oil paint, the blacks of the print,
marble, bronze, clay or wood: these are all his companions and
collaborators, and they too have something to say in the fiction he
is about to produce. Materials have secrets to reveal; they have
their own genius; it is through them that the oracle speaks . . .
(Odilon Redon, 1913)'
Towards the end of the 1790.S the Royal Academy in Londtm
was shaken by a scandal which reflected very serituisly on the
technical knowledge and competence of its leading members. A
young woman, Ann lemima Provis, claimed to have discovereci
an old manuscript recording the e.xact methods of the si.xteenth-
century Venetian painters, among the papers of an ancestor ot
hers who had travelled in Italy. Provis had e.xhibited miniatures
at the Academy in the 17S0S and it was on the recommendation
of a miniaturist among the academicians, Richard Cosway, that
she was introduced to the President, Benjamin West, who was
induced to try out what came to be known as the ‘process’ or the
‘Venetian Secret'. T he process had three salient features, the first
of which was a highly absorbent ground that took most of the
oil from the colours and was usually dark, sometimes, as James
4 Cillray showed in his brilliant satire on the ‘Secret’, even black.
The second feature was the use of pure linseed oil, so highly
refined as to have the consistency of water; and the third was the
use of the so-called ‘Titian Shade’, a mixture of crimson lake,
indigo or Hungarian (Prussian) blue or Antwerp blue, with
ivory black: a mixture used to lay out the composition in
chiaroscuro — the procedure seen to be characteristic ot Titian in
France —and over which the brightest colours were to be glazed.
Then the painting was to be allowed to dry completely and
finally varnished.’ This ‘Secret’ which Provis’s father once
thought might be worth one thousand pounds was sold to
various academicians for ten guineas each and much ot it was
conimunicated by demonstrations and supplementary intorni-
ation over a period of months: the whole enterprise has a very ad
hoc feel about it. Its products, notably paintings by West, were
shown at the Royal Academy exhibition in 1797, to general
disappointment.-’ Edmond Malone, who in the first edition ot
Reynolds’s It’erks (1797) had welcomed the ‘Secret’ as some¬
thing the first President should have lived to use, dismissed it as
useless in the second edition (1798).'’ Clillray immortalized the
whole sorry affair in his print, where Reynolds, with ear-
trumpet and spectacles, is seen rising from the grave: it had been
his attempts to fathom the Venetian technique, and the decay ot
his works partlv as a result ot these reckless experiments, that
had fuelled the wish of the academici.ms to discoser the
Venetian secret; but it turned out that the Pros is 'Process' was
equally unstable.'’
Fins did not prevent the continued se.irch for \'eneti.in
secrets in England. Since the dark absorbent ground w as a ni.i|or
feature ot the process, two other experimenters. I iniothx'
Sheldrake and Sebastian Cir.indi, drew .itteiuioii to their work
on this aspect ot the method, with the signitlcaiu ditference that
they chose the iiuire public forum ot the Societv of Arts, which
had been testing artists' materials tor ses eral decades." .•\nother
aspect of the secret was the medium used b\- the X'enetian
masters, which the Irish painter Solomon Williams claimed to
have discovered: it too a brief vogue among academicians,
notably Farington, until its hniitations were re\-ealed.^ As late as
1815 another young woman, a Miss Cde.uer, arrived on the
scene with a new ‘Venetian Process', this time using wax
crayons. Richard Westall, who had been one ot the Priwis
supporters, now tried the new recipe and exhibited a (atpid and
Psyche painted according to its principles at the Royal Academy
in 1822; the patron and amateur Sir Cleorge Beaumont, who
had actually been a pupil of Provis, asked his friend C Constable to
test it. Clonstable did not like it, and Cdeaver and her ‘secret’
quickly sank from view.'’
In the course of the 1797 affair the landscape-painter Paul
Sandby, tine tif Provis's leading critics, recalled that C'osway
had found an Italian book ‘published at V'enice in I itian’s time’,
where ‘the whole process is fully displayed’.*' I his btiok was
probably one of the very few technical treatises tif the sixteenth
century, Ck B. Arnienini’s Dc’ I'cri Precetti della Ihtttira. first
published at Ravenna in i 587 but whtise second edition tif 1678
had indeed appeared in Venice. Arnienini’s btitik was an
example of the sort tif early treatise increasingly attracting
attention among artists in the Romantic peritid: when it was
printed for a third time in 1820, its editor, Stefano Tictizzi. did
not fail to ntite that in an age tibsessed by the idea o{ diseyno (he
was talking tifctiurse of Neti-Cllassica! Italy) the precepts and
methods of colouring described by these Old Masters the
‘secrets’ which Arnienini had brought out into the light were
especially important.'” The first halfof the nineteenth century
was remarkable for the attempt to provide authentic texts
describing Old Master techniques, e\ en pre-lfenaissance mas¬
ters whose work was only just beginiiing to be taken seriously.
The Of Divers Arts of Theophilus had already been publislied
simultaneously in Clermany and England in 1781 but rather .is a
literary curiosity than as a practical handbook; yet Oenmni’s
Book of Art, first published in Italy in 1821, was soon stiuhed by
Blake and I laydon in England and in due course by Ingres in
France.'' It heralded a spate of early technical texts, a spate
THE SUBSTANCE OH COLOUR
George Field in his laboratory, around 1843. The ‘Metrochronie’ (shown to
his right, on the table) contains glass wedges filled with red, yellow and blue
liquids, designed to measure the strength of colours. (173)
which gathered momentum in England in the 1840s, where the
controversies over the medium to be used tor decorating the
new Houses of Parliament stimulated two ot the most import¬
ant studies to publish or be based on original sources, Charles
Eastlake’s Materials for a History of Oil Painting (1847-69) and the
Original Treatises on the Arts of Painting (1849), gathered and
translated by Mary Mernfield, who had already translated
Cennini into English in 1844. The techniques of the sometimes
distant past were to be studied now on the basis ot authentic
documents but the problem exposed by the vogue for spurious
‘secrets’ remained: how could modern artists procure the
materials which had seemed to guarantee the lasting reputation
of the Old Masters?
The profession of colour-manufacturer and dealer had been
gaming ground in the sixteenth century; in seventeenth-century
Holland we find the first records of shops selling raw and
prepared pigments together with other painters’ apparatus and,
in some cases, pictures themselves.^- These dealers grew in
numbers and importance all over Europe during the eighteenth
century and until surprisingly late some painters themselves
prepared the raw pigments for use: Botivier’s handbook ot the
1820s assumed that its readers (Pin Switzerland) would be
grinding their own colours and a stray remark by van Gogh in a
letter of 1885 shows that even he was still buying raw pigments
and having them ground at Neunen or grinding them him-
seltH^ But these were exceptional circumstances, outside the
major art centres. For most artists during the nineteenth
214
century, materials were to be bought ready-prepared, although
they might well be prepared especially to order, as they were lor
example by Mine Haro for Delacroix, who liked his colours
more liquiti than most.^'^ With the developing mass-production
of paints in the course of the century, a painter such as van Gogh
was obliged to shop around in Pans to get the quality he wanted
at the price his brother could afford: the colotirman Julien (Pere)
Tanguy, whom he immortalized in a number ot portraits, was
not in fact his favourite supplier and he was increasingly inclined
to buy from Tanguy’s rival, Tasset and L’Elote.^^ It would be a
delicious irony if the portraits were painted with Tasset’s
colours but it is not clear when van Gogh started dealing with
the cheaper colotirman, who is first mentioned in letters from
Arles, after he had left Pans. In any case he was using both
suppliers’ colours until the end ot his hte.
Technical handbooks devoted more and more space to
assessing the merits and defects of pigments, since it was
considered unlikely that artists themselves would be able to test
their materials. In London, a Professor of Chemistry was
appointed at the Royal Academy in 1871, and in Paris, where
the great chemist Louis Pasteur had occasionally lectured at the
Ecole in the 1860s, a colotirman was regularly in attendance in
the 1880s and 1890s, but it was not until early in the 1900s that a
laboratory was set up to test commercial colours at the school.
With the mass-production of colours went the development ot
synthetic pigments, which of course involved the directed
research anci development programmes which could only grow
out of the mass demand created by the professional and amateur
art-boom of the nineteenth century. How this expansion first
came about is well illustrated by the careers ot two prominent
theorists and colour-manufacturers, J.-F.-L. Merimee m France
and George Field in England.
Teclifiology and ideology
Merimee, born in 1757, had trained as a painter, first with the
late-Baroque Doyen and then with the precocious Neo-
Classicist Vincent. In the 1790s he had made a sufficient
impression to be installed with a scholarship among the
privileged students at the Louvre but as a result of his marriage
in 1802 he was obliged to take to teaching and he abandoned
painting completely after 1815.^® Like Reynolds and the
supporters of the Venetian Secret, Merimee felt that the
decadence of modern technique could be remedied by a study of
the methods of the Old Masters; but unlike them he saw
salvation not so much in the Venetian painting of the sixteenth
century as in Early Netherlandish art. As he wrote at the
beginning ot his most important publication, De la Peinture a
I’huile (1830):
The paintings of Hubert and Jan Van Eyck, and those of several
painters ot the same period, are far better preserved than most
paintings of the last century. The methods by which they were
executed, passed down entirely by tradition, have not reached us in
their original form, and we may be allowed to believe that these
paintings, whose colours, after three centuries, amaze us by their
brilliance, were not painted in the same way as those which we see
perceptibly altered after only a few years.

l)uring the lyyos, first privately and then at the Ecole
Polytechnique, Meriinee set tint to discover by experiment the
medium used by the Early Netherlandish masters - this even
betore a taste tor their art had been more generally rekindled by
the arrival of their works in the booty which Napoleon's
Netherlands campaigns had brought to the Louvre. He con¬
cluded that their secret had been the mixture of varnish - a
dissolved resin — with the oil medium.-'^ What was most
unusual about Merimee’s handbook of 1X30 was the introduc¬
tion, side-by-side, ot personal experiments, the recipes attri¬
buted to Old Master (now going back to Theophilus in the
Middle Ages), the testimony of contemporary painters such as
the Correggesque Pierre-Paul Prud’hon, who was said to have
used the copal varnish of Theophilus at the end of his life
(doubtless on the advice ot Meriinee)^^ and, most important of
all, the contributions of research chemists who in Napoleonic
France had been directed specifically to meet the needs of
painters. Merimee recorded how the chemist Louis-Jacques
Thenard was set by the Minister ot the Interior, Count Chaptal
(himself a chemist), to discover a substitute for the costly
ultramarine and did so by synthesizing cobalt blue in iXozT-
Merimee was also commissioned by Chaptal to make experi¬
ments wuth colours at this time, which suggests that his
capacities as a chemist were already recognized; but the only
colour for which he gained a reputation was a brilliant madder-
lake, known as cannin de garance, w'ell known in France in the
1820s.
Another original characteristic of Meriniee’s handbook w'as
its introduction of a theory of harmony based on complemen-
ij6 tarity and using a colour-circle of six hues that, he said, should
be copied and used by every student of art. His ideas were less
radical than ChevreuFs: he resisted the notion that the comple-
mentaries could be used harmoniously in full saturation and
argued that it was chiaroscuro which should regulate the
contrast of hues.Yet Merimee’s reputation as a theorist must
have been as great as his reputation as a chemist, since about 1812
he collaborated wuth the textile technologist Gaspard Gregoire
on the commentary to a colour-chart of 1351 painted samples,
tor which he provided Gregoire with a diagram of complemen-
taries essentially the same as his owm circle of 1830.^^ For his
primary red Gregoire chose a carmine which he describeci as the
most beautiful colour since it w'as the median betwxen yellow
and blue; this may well have been the madder carmine
developed by Merimee.A few years later Merimee was also
called upon to supply the colour-scale for a botanical work by
G. F. Bnsseau de Mirbel, which he did with a circle of twelve
divisions that, he said, had been devised with the help of
Gregoire’s tables.The close collaboration between artists,
technologists and natural scientists could hardly be better
demonstrated than in Merimee’s career.
Yet the handbook on oil painting does not seem to have been
particularly well received by painters. Merimee’s friend the
Neo-Gdassicist Franyoi.s-Xavier Fabre said that it might be
useful to beginners but would have no effect on his own
practice.^” 1 have found it cited only by Delacroix (see p. 173), a
painter whose work m the 1820s Merimee seems to have
thought would ‘direct our school towards colouring’ but whose
poor drawing made him a dangerous model.The book was
nil SI HM AN(,1 ()1 ( ()I ()l K
translated into English in 1S31; but it seems to have been almost
entirely forgotten in France .ifter .Mernnee’s death 111 1 s io.
After the deteat ot N.ipoleoti. .Merimee h.id been sent to
Londtin to study the English colour-industrv. which m.i\
account tor the many English examples in his book. One ot'the
triends he imule was Reynohis’s pupil .iiul biographer |ames
Northcote. Reynolds appears, perhaps r.ither surpnsmglv, in /)(■
la I’ciiilurc a I’hnilc as 'the greatest colourist ot his time’, who li.ui
discovered the methods ot Fitiati. Rubens and Rembrandt. Yet
Merimee did not approve ot the Angloinatiic 111 French .irt ot the
1820s, in particular the effect of Gonst.ible on French Rcnnanti-
cism.-’'’ .Since he is known tti have had a special interest 111
English landscape painting and seems to have known ot'
Constable’s wcirk as early as 1817 when he arm ed in I oiulon, it
would be pleasant to find that he was the iTench paysagistc w ho
called on Constable stime time in the 1820s to learn his method
ot painting. Another visitor on that tu'casion was George Field i
(born in I'JTl), a colour-maker who in many ways shared
Merimee’s interests and who became a particular friend to
Constable.
The voluminous publications by Field dealt with many
subjects besides colour, and his much prized pigments, as well as
his close contacts w'ith a wide range of English artists in the early
years of the century, make him perhaps the ideal English
counterpart to Merimee — with these important distinctions,
that his work was carried out without the benefit of state
support and that although he claimed to have studied with the
chemists Sir Humphrey Davy and Michael fxiraday, his contact
with the leading scientists ot the period seems to have been very
slight.
Field had not been trained in art, although he became an
amateur painter and picture-restorer. He had intended from the
start to become a technologist and he began in the 1790s with
what W'as then a very traditional English project, the attempt to
grow and process the madder plant to manutacture the red
dyestuff which was the most permanent version of that colour
then known for cloth. By about 1800, however. Field had
shifted his attention to the question of painters’ materials and
was producing madder as a lake pigment- in London. His
understanding ofthe needs ofartists w'as certainly heightened by
his close involvement in an e.xhibiting society. The British
School, which ran from 1802 to 1804 and showed at least one ot
Solomon Williams’s paintings using the ‘Venetian process’, as
well as w'orks by many artists who were w'orried by the
weaknesses in English technique. Pigment-technology took
Field to colour-theory and theory hack to technology, since he
was anxious to develop precisely those pigments which ex¬
emplified the harmony he saw operating in nature. Like many
colour-technologists in his day. Field was an anti-Newtonian,
believing that colours had their origin in black and white:
If the authority of Newton herein is wanting, we have Nature and
Reason in its favor, and these are the authority of God. For it
Colours were really analyzable from light or white, then by a
synthesis of Inherent or Transient Colours White or Fight might be
recomposed: but tho’ Black may be composed of a due admixture
of pure, deep, primitive colours ... it is not possible to compose
white by any mixture of colours whatever . . .■*■*
215
 mr Sl'ltS I ANCF. ()1- COLOUR
The reference to (iod is crucial because, like Runge, Field was at
work oil a uun ersal theory of triads in nature, ot which the
Floly Trinity was the supreme exemplar and the triad ot
pnmars’ colours the most visible ot earthly manitestations. He
had opened a eolour-taetory near Bristol in iSoS and had met
the founder of the Bath Harmome Society, Hr Henry Haring-
ton, who had ]ust published a remarkable pamphlet,
S)'MB()L(J\ TRISACjIOX, or the Gee/iiefriVd/ aiialoj^y of the
Ciirholic doctrine of triunity, consonoiit to Iniinoii reason and
coni prehension: typically demonstrated and e.xeniplifted hy the natural
and ini'isihle trinnity of certain sininitaneons sounds (i(So6). The
publication included a contribution trom the Rev. William
[ones, who had asked Harington in a letter:
Is it the ctTcct of chance, can we think, that there is the like
wonderful Trinitarian coincidence in optics, as in sounds, and it
possible more adequate? When we refract the pure light by a prism,
it is manifested to the eye under the three primary simple colours ot
red. yellow and blue; each of them so distinct, that we can lay our
finger on them separately, and say, this is not that, and that is not the
third; yet we say truly ot each by itselt, that is liyht: but when they
arc joined, the same that were three are now one without
distinction, the glory equal, the majesty co-eternal.
This belief informed the whole of Field’s career as an experim¬
enter; in a much later note to his iSo8 Chromatics he was able to
persuade himself that the primary colours were related closely
to the principal minerals, or earths; ‘Thus Ahiniine appears to be
the natural basis ot Reds, Sile.x ot Blues and Lime ot Yellows’.
Such linkage ot specitic colours to specitic minerals was not
Field’s invention: it had appeared at the end of the eighteenth
century in a tar more humdrum painters’ handbook by
Constant de Massoul; but there the minerals iron, copper, gold
and so on were shown to be capable each ot producing a range
ot hues and there was no sense of system, least of all the tight
triadic scheme to which Field devoted his career as a thinker.
Although he was able to develop a wide range of pigments,
including the tertiaries citrine, russet and olive, so that all the
j/y colours in his Definitive Scale had been dcvelopeci and manufac¬
tured by himself; although he sometimes made specific pig¬
ments tor particular customers, such as the Extract of Vermilion
specially developed for Sir Thomas Lawrence,Field gave
particular attention to his three primary hues, his madders, his
lemon yellow and his ultramarine (which he persisted in
refining from lapis lazuli in the face of competition from the
new French synthetic product of the 1820s). But this concen¬
tration was tor ideological not commercial reasons.
The problem ot the primaries in the nineteenth century had
many dimensions. If a system of harmony was to be based on the
relationship of primary colours to their complcmentaries, it was
important to know which were the ‘primary’ pigments and to
be able to manutacture them for the use of artists. The first
attempt to base a theory ofharmony on the primary colours had
probably been that of Louis-Bertrand Castel in the 1720s; he had
chosen the recently developed synthetic Prussian blue or indigo,
a good but Linspecihcd red lake and for yellow the earth colour
umber {terre d'omhre) which is usually rather brown.It was a
tar trom straightforward question and Field was heir to a
number ot other solutions, none of them satisfactory. The
216
economics of early colour-printing had also required the purest
primaries to mix a full range of colours from only three plates.
The pioneer colour-printer Le Blon had used Prussian blue, the
darkest ot the yellow lakes and a mixture ot lake, carmine and
vermilion to approximate the red of the spectrum [see p. 169).^'^
The technologist Robert Hossie, describing Le Blon’s methods
in the middle of the eighteenth century, pointed to the
continuing inadequacy ot the available inks, which needed to be
pure, bright and transparent, arguing that the best blue might be
Prussian blue but that the best lakes, even it they could be
procured, did not match it in purity and the only acceptable
yellow was the vegetable colour Brown Pink, which was
neither sufficiently bright nor sufficiently powerful to balance
the others.*^" Towards the end of the eighteenth century this
practical problem was addressed by a German technologist,
A. L. Pfannenschmidt, who produced not only a handbook on
the mixture of the three primary colours but also a set ot
pigments which was baseci on long experiment to establish
standard hues; for he argued, even the same manutacturer might
market different nuances under the same name at different times,
citing vermilion, which often veered markedly towards yel¬
low."'-^ His standard red seems to have been a carmine, ‘the most
beautiful red colour’, his yellow gamboge and his blue natural
ultramarine.
Pfannenschmidt had at first attempted to produce sets of hues
in light and dark values but he had soon abandoned this
ambition and in 1792 was supplying sets of twelve standard
colours: blue, yellow, red, green, fire-colour (Porange), violet,
mixed black, yellow-brown, yellow-red, brown, unmixeci
black and white; all were keyed to a triangular diagram, which
included their intermixtures, to a total of sixty-tour nuances. He
also supplied a set of ten watercolour pigments which had been
developed to give each of them equal power.In the tradition
of eighteenth-century empiricism, Pfannenschmidt’s technique
of assessment was entirely visual: the purity of the primaries was
to bejudged by binary mixtures which should show no trace ot
brown or black and the proportion of the ingredients in these
mixtures was established when they showeci no preponderance
ot either component. The results of these optical judgments led
to the weighing of the components and these weights gave
Pfannenschmidt the numerical values recorded in his triangle.
The whole mystique of‘Old Master’ colouring was exposed to
ridicule when a young miniature-painter called Ann Jemima Provis
claimed to have discovered a manuscript ‘going back to Titian’,
revealing the secrets of his art. She is shown putting them into
practice in the upper part of this satirical print by Gillray. She sold
the ‘Venetian Secret’ to the President of the Royal Academy, West —
seen slinking oft to the right - and to many other distinguished
academicians, some of them depicted here. But it was soon expsosed
as a hoax. An earlier ‘expert’ on Venetian technique. Sir Joshua
Reynolds, is shown with his ear-trumpiet, rising from the grave.
174 James C'jIilkay, Titianus Rcdieivtis, 1797
 Figments and theory
17s George Field, Frontispiece to ChroinatOi’riiphY: or a 7 reotisc 011 Colours
/’w / and Piginenis, and of their Powers in Painting, 1X35
176 ].F.L. Merimee, Chromatic scale, troin

De la Peinture a I'lniile. 1830

177 Wii LIAM Holman FIunt, I 'alentine rescuing

Sylvia from Proteus, 1850/1

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I't.i :• h-tf .wnn.

_ //////> /'> . '///m/ffuiffi//// . //v//r ^ ///»//'/(>.)

I'rinuirti Ti'rltiiri/

/inrk

Srcoml itnt
175

Colour theory proliferated in the nineteenth

century. Merimee (176) showed with his circle
that complementary colours mix to
harmonious greys, an idea that attracted the
interest of Delacroix. Field’s diagram (175)
illustrated the harmonic proportions ot
colours in light, as well as the dynamics of
warm and cool, although his linear scale shows
that he also had a traditional notion of the
values between black and white. Field
developed a set of‘pure’ primaries to give
practical expression to his ideas. It was the
brilliant and stable properties of his pigments,
rather than the theories, that appealed to
painters such as Holman Hunt (177), and
contributed to the astonishingly bright colours
of the Pre-Raphaelites.
176 177
218
 Seurat was the first painter to invoke optical principles in support
of his technique, and indeed, to evolve a technique based on his
theory. The dotted brushwork creates a visual shimmer through
partial optical mixture, and the border of this large canvas provides
carefully calculated 'complementary' contrasts to the scene. Seurat
tried to keep his colours pure and little-mixed, but, like Holman
1luiit (pi. 177), he sometimes used pigments that faded or darkened.
and, unlike Hunt, he took no technical steps to ensure that they
remained stable. The peppering of brownish spots on the light grass
was not intended by the artist, but is due to the irreversible darkening
of the then recently introciuced synthetic pigment, zinc yellow.

178 C iEOKGES Seurai', Siitidciy Aftcniooti on the Island of La Grand Jattc. 1884/6
(detail)
220

I lis fumhcrsonic systoni and his coliuirs sccni tii ha\ i.’ made
little iiiipaet 1)11 thinking about colours in the nineteenth
century: 1 have found little reference to them in the later
literature, except by the brench taxonomist |.-H. Lamarck, who
in the 1790s sought to accompany his eccentric ideas about the
torniation ot colours by the action ot the 'fixed tire' within all
matter, with a numerical scale of colours and their mixtures.
Like btannenschmidt, Lamarck based his mixtures on weight
but their working out led him into many practical didiculties,
which he was not inclined to address: he confessed that he did
not have the practical skills necessary to make the experiments
but 'any artist who is prepared to take the trouble would easily
be able to bring them to a successful conclusion'. For primaries
he suggested ultramarine (although its cost might make Prussian
blue a better proposition), carmine, which was closest to
'natural’ red, and gamboge, which, although not as close to
spectral yellow as orpiment, could at least be mixed with lead
white with impunity.The problem of standardization which
Pfannenschmidt had attempted to solve frustrated the efforts of
many technologists until Wilhelm Ostwald in the 1920s
collaborated with the Cierman paint-industry to produce sets of
carefully calibrated hues and their nuances which, it was
asserted, could be used to establish a rational system of harmony
on a mathematical basis.
Many colour-theorists specified their primaries rather pre-
isj cisely. Where the entomologist Moses Harris had used ver¬
milion, King’s yellow (artificial orpiment) and ultramarine, the
painter and conchologist James Sowerby proposed gamboge,
carmine and Prussian blue and Field himself used ultramarine,
madder and the vegetable colour Indian yellow in his earliest
diagrams.In France, CIregoire’s tables of 1S12 used gamboge,
carmine and indigo, but still in the late 1820s Paillot de
Moiitabert was arguing that colourmen, who were ignorant of
the principle of the three primaries, were flooding the market
with many superfluous pigments, while chemists had not yet
developed the pure standard hues. Indigo, said Paillot, was the
only ‘primary’ which was so fir capable of remaining pure in its
lightest and darkest values, fir the available yellows and reds
were unable to render good darks. It no single primary could
tulf 1 its tunction along the whole scale of values, then each hue
should be manufactured 111 four grades with different ingre¬
dients.'^^ By the i8_sos Cilerk Maxwell’s work on the nature of
the colours of light had made the notion of a specific set of
‘primaries’ irrelevant, since all that was needed to reconstitute
white light was three co-ordinates sufficiently widely spaced
along the spectrum. Nevertheless, during the first halt ot the
century a good deal ot thought and much experiment had gone
into the attempt to match spectrally pure primaries with
commercially available colours.
Field’s efforts bore only limited fruit. In order to establish his
primaries and their harmonic relationship he had had to devise
an instrument for colour-measurement, the Cihromometer
1(later Metrochrome), based on the principle of the absorption of
light through coloured filters. This instrument allowed Field to
establish what he called Cfliromatic Equivalents: the proportions
of each primary needed to constitute a harmonious balance of
the three in white light, as set out in the colour-circle for
17s C'lnoiUiUO{^raphY in 1835. The ratio of three for yellow to five for
I III si HS 1 \ \( I ( )1 ! ( II ( >1 H
red to eight tor blue was not re.uhed without -ouMdei.ibk
experiment; the prnnarv tinctures used in the hquid-tilkd filtei>
ot the List \ ersion ot the .Metroi. hrome w ere kopfser sulidi.iti .
liquid madder and s.iflron or turmeric. Field's t'hromatK
F.quu alents .iroiised some interest .tmong interior decor.itors in
the 1 X40S and sos. notably C)wen |ones. w ho useil them in his
experimental p.iinting ot part ot' the interior ot the (fxst.il
Palace tor the (ireat Exhibition of i.Ssi .iiul .ig.iin 111 his
sumptuous pattern-book 7'/ic (ol ( ff n.ii/ieiif .1 tew \ e.irs
later. But the work ot M.ixwell .ind 1 lehnholt/. and de\elop-
ments in colour-measurement on the b.isis ot precise speetr.il
analysis, showed th.it FieLl's r.itios were (.jinte ,irbitr.ir\. .ind
they were hardly cpioted again .ifter this time.'*''
It is something ot an irony that the bright primars hues
manutactured by Field tor largels theoretic.il reasons were not
those he himself preferred. Ills taste had been t'ormed .irouiul
the turn of the century on the rather mellow tones ot e.irK
English Komantic landscape-artists, particul.irh Richard Wil¬
son, whose works tormed the nucleus of his own collection ot'
art. Field had developed a set ot unmi.xed terti.irv hues because
these were tor him in some ways the most important colours.
‘The chaste eye’, he had written in his first publication on
colour-theory, 'receives greater satisfaction from the harmon\-
of the tertiaries in which the three priimtwes are more
intimately combined, and for the same reason the correct eye
demands a concurrence of the three primitives in every
harmony’. Yet he had stated in an earlier unpublished note that
‘it is ... a rule, in which Cdiemistry and Cihromatics equally
coincide, that the Artist should use his colours us pure uud uinuixt us
possible'; so that it was essential to ofl'er unmixed pigments all the
way round the colour-circle of twelve hues.'*'*
Field’s pure hues were much in demand and they receive the
sanction of Merrifield when she argued in the notes to her 1S44
version of Cennini that the technologist’s experiments had, for
the most part, substantiated Ciennini’s view ot the twelve ‘best'
pigments from the point of view of permanence, and directed
her readers to the study of dhrouiutOiiruphyA^^ It was these
unusually pure and transparent colours which around 1830
allowed the Pre-Raphaelites to cover their white-lead grounds 177
with the thinnest of glazes and achieve an unprecedented
brilliance of hue.
The iDipact of synthetic colours
Merimee and Field gave a guarded welcome to the several new-
synthetic pigments - notably yellows, blues and greens --
developed in the early years of the nineteenth century but
neither of them lived to see the revolution in synthetic dyestufls
of the 1830s and 60s. The synthesis of the coal-tar colour mauve
by Sir William Perkin in 1856 and of artificial alizarin red by
(Iraebe and Lieberman in 1868 were just two ot the chemical
discoveries which resulted in the release of a host ot new
dyestufls and pigments on to the market in the third quarter ot
the century. Artists’ manuals now devoted more and more
attention to the stability of these new substances. Arouiul 1890
the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Pans employed the genre painter
[.-(I. Vibert to give a course ot instruction in technique, w hich, in
its published form at least, was much concerned w ith problems
22 1
IHF SI BSTANCI- 01 COLOUR
of permanence. For X’lbert the nn ention ot synthetic aniline
was a catastrophe tor painting: he proposed that a conimission
cm c|uahtv-eontrol should be set up by the Societe des Artistes
Franyais and a laboratory at the Eeole itself.-'’- A eonteinporary
French theoretical w riter. Adrien Reeouvreur, also regarded the
situation as critical: ‘Clolotirs have never altered so much as they
do todav. Drawing is more and more the probity ot art |a
quotation trom Ingres] since it we do not react against the
current free-wheeling attitude, it will be art’s only lasting
characteristic.Reeouvreur argued that one ot the tew
remedies tor the instabilits' ot meadern colours was to butler
pigments against each other and against the atmosphere by
locking them in a good varnish. Indeed 'V’lbert did develop a
range of fine, fast-drying and transparent wirmshes which were
manufactured and marketed by Letranc and Co.^"^ Instability
was the other side of the com of the new treedom oftered by a
range ot brilliant pigments representing areas ot the spectrum
such as vellow, green and \ iolet, wdiich had been poorly served
by more traditional materials. It might even be imagined that
these new colours were the condition ot the more or less
universally admitted aspiration of the Inipressiomsts to paint
light Itself.
For between the Middle Ages and the late nineteenth centurv
It had been widely felt that art was hopelessly handicapped by
the limitations of its materials in the face of nature. The twelfth-
century Spanish-Arab philosopher Averroes had argued that
since the colours of art {colon’s et tincture . . . ratio extri)iseca) are
finite and the colours of nature {in rationc intrinseca) infinite,
there were many colours which art (in this case notably dyeing)
could not make: he was arguing against the very possibility of
the imitation of nature which so animated the researches of
Leonardo da Vinci, Runge and Monet.But with the rise in the
seventeenth century of the idea of matching appearances on the
canvas, it became clearer and clearer where the limitations of
pigments lay. In his lecture to the French Academy in 1669, J. Fd.
Bourdon argued that the painter should never attempt to paint a
landscape under the midday sun, since pigments are quite
incapable of doing justice to this eft'ect of light and the sun itself
should always be hidden.®^ A similar admonition w-as also beared
in the Academy among the supporters of both Poussin and
Rubens 111 the following decade.”^ The expansion of painterly
tasks in the eighteenth century and the increasing use of optical
devices such as the camera obscura, by means of which more
precise comparisons between the real and the painted image
could be made, together wdth the more sophisticated psych¬
ology of perception gaining ground among artists, led some to
argue that, as 111 the musical scale, it was not absolute values but
proportional relationships which counted 111 painting and that
the deficiencies ot materials could be counteracted by ‘skill anci
management’.^® This attitude began to prevail in the nineteenth
century, especially in France before the advent of
Impressionism.
In his Geometric descriptive (cited by Charles Blanc 111 the
1860S, see Chapter 11) Gaspard Monge had argued that only an
exaggeration ot luminous ef'ects in painting could compensate
tor the feebleness of the artists' means and give the truth of
subjective impressions rather than the objective conditions of
light.jLiles jamin’s 1857 article on optics and painting
222
expanded on the need of painters to make many compromises,
both because of the limits of their perception ot precise
ditberence and, again, because of the weakness ot their materials.
|annn had been busy with his photometer which, like the
camera obscura of the eighteenth century, ottered painters an
‘objective’ reading of a scene, against which to measure their
own rendering; the results of his experiments had shown that it
was essential for the artist to paint down from the tone of nature,
‘and to weaken proportionally all nature’s brightness’.
Although he admired the fidelity to the motif of modern artists
such as Descamps, lamin argued that ‘realist’ painters should
stop attempting to reproduce nature and concern themselves
with more spiritual things.^' Undoubtedly the most influential
formulation of this problem was in Helmholtz’s contemporary
lecture. ‘On the relation of optics to painting’, in which he
discussed at some length the discrepancy between the light ot
nature and the light of art, concluding:
The representation which the painter has to give ot the lights and
colours of his object I have described as a translation, and I have
urged that, as a general rule, it cannot give a copy true in all its
details. The altered scale of brightness which the artists must apply
in many cases is opposed to this. It is not the colours ot the objects,
but the impression which they have given, or would give, which is
to be imitated, so as to produce as distinct and vivid a conception as
possible of those objects.*-
As the discussion of Cezanne suggested, painting the impression
of objects was every bit as problematic as painting ‘objects’
themselves; but it might well have been thought that the
heightened contrasts of painting which these writers, and many
others in the period, expected of painters might now be
achieved very effectively with the help ot the new intense
colours on their palettes. One critic ot the 1880s asserted that
that was precisely what they were doing and he did not like
wdiat he saw:
The artist will give objects not the colours which they reflect in
reality, but those which they would have for a dazzled eye. He must
heighten the reds, yellows and greens, and tone down the blues and
the violets . . . These considerations are perhaps of some interest
from the point of view of the new school of plein air. Its promoters
do not seem to have taken enough account of the fact that as the
intensity of light increases all pure colours approximate to white or
whitish yellow. They think they can enrich the range of their hues
[teintes] with new tones; daylight and especially full sunlight docs
nothing but impoverish them. The true colourists have proceeded
in quite a different way; it is on the contrary in chiaroscuro that the
Titians and the Rembrandts sought and found their most beautiful
eftects.^-^
It was at the top enci of the scale that the open-air painters were
encountering the greatest difl'iculties, as Cezanne had dis¬
covered. Already in the 1840s Field had pointed to the
revolutionary effects of the brighter pigments even he was
producing; the inferior materials of the Old Masters, he said,
had meant that ‘their key of colouring was necessarily lower,
and compelled them to harmonize much below nature’.How
did the Impressionists and the Post-Impressionists use their new
media to respond to the challenge?
 Advances in conservation technology have made it possible
to be more or less certain tif the composition of man\'
mneteenth-centiiry paintings/’"’ We now know that the Im¬
pressionists were particularly concerned about the permanence
ot their pigments: Monet stated at the end of his life that he had
abandoned the tise ot the rather unstable chrome yellows in
favour of the newer cadmiums, which do indeed appear more
i(<6 and more in his work after the i Syos/’*’ The cadmiums had been
developed in the ICS40S and the only more recent pigments on
Monet's palette were cobalt violet and viridian {vert cnicrdiidc).
which had first been marketed a decade later; he contiiuied tti
use mixed violets for many years to come. Renoir was perhaps
the greatest traditionalist among the Impressionists and one of
the few to use the ancient — and slow — technique of glazing. Yet
he used chrome yellow and viridian in the 1 (Syos and one of the
reds in Boatin'^ on the Seine {c. 1 Xyy) probably includes a synthetic
dyestuff.^^ In the 1890s Renoir’s palette included more and
more earth colours, traditional lakes and particularly the lead-
antimony yellow called Naples yellow, one of the oldest known
synthetic pigments then undergoing a revival in the improved
version manufactured by Lefranc. It could well have commen¬
ded Itself to Renoir because it had been identified with the
manufactured yellow described by Cennini as r^iallorino.^*^
Renoir may have discovered Cennini in 1884 while working on
a technical handbook of his own, the Ahrei’e tie la i^raniniaire des
arts, a book which has not survived although something of its
tone may be guessed from the letter to Henri Mottez published
in the 1911 reprint of his father’s French version of Cennini.
While he recognized that circumstances had changed for the
artists of the nineteenth century, Renoir believed that the true
methods of the Ancients lived on: ‘If the Greeks had left a
treatise on painting, you may well believe that it would be
identical to Cenmni’s. All painting, from that of Pompeii, done
by Greeks, to that of Corot, passing through Poussin, seems to J.-C'i. Vibert’s illustr.ition tor his s.itirie.il short story ‘ The 1 'telights ot .■Xrt' 1 I he
have come from the same palette.The increasing classicism Ce}}liiry Miiiriiziiic. 1896), in which .1 sunbe.uii discusses with the curt.iin the
of Renoir’s style is well known and at the end of his life he merits of the cMrclinal's ciiatiste p.iintiiig. (179)
ventured to experiment, rather unsuccessfully, with fresco.^®
When about 1904 Matisse tried to persuade him to exchange his
very traditional vermilion for a cadmium red, which wotiki
have been more permanent in the spirit medium Renoir was it receives. It is the same for all the colours |/ciii5|. to such an extent
using, he refused to try even the sample of cadmium Matisse that in the studies of some masters you will see the well-lit greens ot
gave him, saying that he did not want to change his \vays.^‘ the foreground rendered in pure blues or tender pinks made ot
All the new pigments used by the Impressionists have been white and cobalt or white and lake.’^-^
identified in some paintings belonging to one of the largest
Similarly Vibert attacked the Impressionists the eclatistes iji)
collectitins of nineteenth-century (ferman art, the Schack-
(‘dazzlers’) — for painting ‘tmly with intense ctilours and
Galerie in Munich, but no artist represented there had any
without shading any of the tones’.^"* Yet in his Science de la
interest in Impressionist plein-air methods so there is no intrinsic
peinture he presented a vivid picture ot one tit his cardinals
link between these materials and a particular style of painting."^’
moving through his garden:
What can be seen is that the Impressionists made conspicuous
use of the bright yellows, greens and violets to match their Let us follow a cardinal, dressed in red, whilst he walks in Ins
sensations in the open air. On the other hand, the painters and gardens. At every instant the colour seems diflerent, according to
theorists in France who were most cautious about the new whether he receives the blinding rays ot the sun, or the white
materials were themselves no strangers to the strong effects of reflections from a cloud, or shelters under the verdant shade ot a
outdoor colour. Georges Meusnier (‘Karl Robert’) explained to leafy grove. Whether we see him on the intense green ot the sunny
his readers: lawns, under the dark green ot the cypress, on the sih ery surtace >>t
a lake, or under the azure of the sky, he still changes. I le changes
A white wall in full sunlight is never white: it is pinkish white, always, becoming pale before a bank of geraniums, and red betore
yellowish white, greenish white, according to the reflections which the marble of the statues; he gets dark in proportmn as the daylight
 IHI. SLHSI ANCI- Ol- C;()I.()rR
tadcs. until he becomes a dark purple, and is eircssed in black like a
simple priest, as he returns to his palace by the elusky shades ot
t\\ iliij;ht.^’'
It was less their \ision itself than their highly individual
interpretation cd'that \ ision which set the Impressionists apart
from manv painters ot the Establishment.
Time the painter
Among the later French outdoor painters it was probably
Clezanne who remained truest to the Impressionist caution
lOO about materials - he had, ot course, been a close associate ot
Pissarro in the iSyos. At no point in his career does Cezanne
seem to have used any of the new synthetic pigments except
viridian.^*’ When he saw Bernard's limited palette in 1904 he
was astesnished: ‘You paint with just these? Where is your
Naples yellow? Where is your peach-black, where is your siena
earth, your cobalt blue, your burnt lake? ... It is impossible to
paint without these colours.Like Renoir, Cezanne's use ot
transparent glazes —his technical traditionalism — his many earth
colours, did not simply arise from a wish to render the brilliant
yet earthy landscape of Provence but also, again like Renoir,
from an urge to keep in touch with the art ot the museums.
The contrast with van Cogh’s attitude to his materials could
hardly be more marked. Half Cezanne’s pigments were well
known for their stability; of the other halt, only the chrome
yellow had a poor reputation for it at the enci ot the nineteenth
century and had often been replaced by cadmiums. But a large
order for new paints which van Gogh sent his brother Theo
from Arles in i88(S listed a dozen ot the brightest available
pigments, four of them — malachite green (probably copper
aceto-arsenate), cinnabar green (a mixture ot chrome yellow
and Prussian blue), geranium lake (an aniline colour) and orange
lead (?chronie orange) — among the most fugitive then on the
market.He was well aware ot the dangers ot these materials;
111 his next letter to Theo he admitted: ‘All the colours that the
Impressionists have brought into hishion are unstable, so there is
all the more reason not to be afraid to lay them on too crudely -
time will tone them down only too much.' And time has indeed
been at work on some ot his later paintings, although not
perhaps in quite the way he anticipated.^^
By ‘Impressionists’, van Gogh may have understood the
Neo-Impressionists (with whom he had been 111 close contact in
Pans in i 886—8), tor Seurat had used some unstable pigments in
17S paintings such as the large Grande Jatte and had noticed some
deterioration in them as early as 1887.*^° In the case of this
painting the main culprit seems to have been zinc yellow (zinc
chromate), which has darkened both on its own and 111 several
mixtures with blue and orange. This pigment is rarely ment¬
ioned in the contemporary literature and had perhaps been very
little used in France since its introduction about 1847.*^^ Seurat’s
choice ot it may have been an early stage in his search tor a good
mixing yellow, a search implied in a remark by Ganiille Pissarro
to his son in 1887 that Seurat and Signac should know' about the
(quite unsatisfactory) results of mixtures of cadmium yellow
with emerald green, ‘even blacker than the chrome yellow'
mixture’.”- Clearly the Neo-Impressionists w'cre concerned to
224
match the spectral colours with the brightest pigments available
and were finding this diflicult to achieve. The ‘spectral’ palette
which Signac claimed to have adopted in the early 1880s {see p.
I 87) included the stable cadmium yellows but also viridian and a
cerulean blue, a new' variety of cobalt stannate produced alter
i860, which is now regarded as a stable pigment but which in
late nineteenth-century France, where it w'as marketed as bleu
(c/esfe, had the reputation of tending to lade.”-' The greying
effect produced by the Neo-Impressionist dotted technique had
been noticed by critics as early as 1886, but it came to be even
more significant after lyoo in a climate of increasing dissatisfac¬
tion with Seurat’s original version of the style and the use ot
much larger coloured units. This w'as partly a lunction ot an
imperfectly digested theory, w’hich overlooked the mixture ot
complementaries to an optical grey;”''- but it may also have been
a result of these experiments with pigments whose properties
were little known and whose lasting qualities had simply not
been tested.
Van Gogh’s perplexing belief that time w'ould inevitably
mellow' his pictures took up a very old notion 111 the history ot
art but gave it a quite contemporary twist. The degree to which
some artists had been ready to collaborate with time is one ot the
most vexed questions in modern picture-conservation; tor
restorers’ estimates of it will inevitably determine how tar they
wish to bring the work in question back to its ‘original’
condition. In the early nineteenth century some painters pre¬
empted the action of time by toning their pictures themselves,
but the evidence tor this practice in earlier periods is extremely
inconclusive.”-'’ "What seems clear is that a century or so after the
development of oil-painting in Italy the yellowing and darken¬
ing of pictures, w'hich w'as largely a function ot their having
been varnished, w-as beginning to be prized as part ot their
aesthetic effect. Van Dyck, for example, w'as thought to have
tried with his paints to mutate the yellowed flesh in Titian’s
mellowed paintings.”^ Collectors expected Old Master paint¬
ings to be mellowed: in 1657 a Veronese was returned to a dealer
by Leopoldo de’ Medici because of its ‘troppa treschezza’.”^ On
the other hand it became the task of the painter to anticipate and
compensate for the efl'ects of ageing. Some seventeenth-century
painters deliberately painted lighter than they intended because
of their perception of the eff ects of time; this became something
of a critical commonplace in the more perceptually oriented
climate of the eighteenth century.”” But it was by no means a
universal aspiration: a w'ish to make old pictures look like new
must have been felt as early as the Romantic period, w'hen it was
rebutted in Dresden by the painter Ferdinanti Hartmann,
supported by Goethe and his adviscar Heinrich Meyer.There
W'as inevitably a confused diversity of opinions but it was at least
clear that the great w'eakness of time as a painter w'as its lack of
discrimination: painters had know'ii for many centuries that
pigments do not age uniformly — as Hogarth put it in the
Analysis of Beauty, ‘much time disunites, untunes, blackens, and
by degrees destroys even the best preserved pictures’.The
deterioration in van Gogh’s paintings, as in Seurat’s, has been
c]uite local and it is almost impossible tor us now to reconstruct
the balance of some of their colour-compositions. Nevertheless,
as ill the case of Cezanne’s ‘unfinished’ canvases, several
generations of the public have learned to see them ‘whole’.

(Colour as constructive material
I luc and value are of course not the only properties of tlie
painter's pigments; Impressionism, as well as the painterly
movements which preceded and followed it have made us
sensitive to the qualities of surface texture, in which rough
canvas, stiff paints and vigorous brushwork all play their part.
Texture, which may include matt or glossy variations, is almost
as susceptible to ageing as hue; re-lining the canvas or even
prolonged hanging can smooth heavy impasto in the most
disturbing way and such smoothing can remove the evidence of
the artist’s intense involvement with material. Although, as we
saw, Delacroix as a young painter liked his colours unusually
liquid, he grew to enjoy the pleasure of managing a stiff paste
and felt towards the end of his life that the physical manipul¬
ation c)t pigment was not unlike the sculptor’s handling ot
clay."^' Delacroix’s physical attitude towards his materials was
passed on to Impressionism, which added a belief in the relief-
like character of the perceived subject, most palpably felt
perhaps in Cezanne’s paintings of the iiSyos but characterized
most sharply by Alfred .Sisley, who kept alive the immediacy of
early Impressionism until the end of his life. Sisley wrote that he
favoured a great variation of surface in the same picture,
‘Because when the sun lets certain parts of the landscape appear
soft. It lifts others into sharp relief. These effects of light, which
have an almost material e.xpre.ssion in nature, must be rendered
in material fashion on the canvas.’*^-
^> i
.. 3
I'hc ‘wliitc on white’ paintings of Kasninr Malevich (n;i7/iS) e.splored both
tlie capacity of white to convey infinity, ami /iictitra (texture), a prominent
concern of Ifnssian painters at the time. (iSo)
It was abo\e .ill in Rusm.i e.irK in this centurs that texture-
[Itiktiiiii). depending on the medium .iiul its h.indhng, acejuin-el iSi'
the status ot an independent aesthetic categors. In .in ess.u.
‘ I owards a 1 heor\ ot B.iinting'. w ritten just .ifter the I irst
World War. the art critic Nikol.ii I .ir.ibukin .irgueel: ’[M.iteri.il|
colours themseK es h.t\ e .in .lutonomous .lesthetu \ ,ilue w hu h is
not exhausted by hue. 'I'he\- h.i\e a specific aesthetic potenti.il
which is an element in the sum ol'colouring ... it is cle.ir th.it the
same art-object affects us differently according to whether it is
painted in oil, watercolour or distemper.' l ar.ibukin comp.ired
the medium to the timbre ot ,i niusic.il instrument, which is
determined by the material from which it is ni.ide. .Modern
artists, he said he must ha\-e ine.int the Impressionists .iiid Rost- iCO
Impressionists, as well as Ifussian painters such as .Mikh.iil
Larionov whose handling of' paint owed so much to them
draw attention to the substances of their paintings, ■w hich ,ire
no longer the inferitir element that they were for the masters of
the past'.'^-’ In the modern movements related to CConstructiv¬
ism colour came to be regarded as a ‘material’ on the same
constructive level as any other.CChapter 14 will show how this
attitude helped to fill the vacuum left by the demise of colour-
theory in painting after the Second W'orld War. Lor the
moment I want to investigate I'arabukin's interesting compa¬
rison of the effects of colour to those of musical timbre, which
will take us into perhaps the most abstract area of the
relationship between our conception of colour and our expe¬
rience of the visual world.
Z2S
 Wr
Wgmj^ ^ ■

Paolo Veronese. The Miirriiii’c Feast at Cana (detail), i Sfi.V In Venice, the home
ofi'ii/erc, the virtuoso performances of painters were often compared to the
skills ot performing musicians. Veronese's musicians are his painter-friends
Titian on the viola de gamba, Tintoretto and Veronese himself on the violas.
Veronese's brother on the lira ila braecio. and perhaps Jacopo Bassano on the
Bute. (i 8 i)
 13 • The Sound of Colour
The Cjrceh chromatic scale ■ Medieval and Renaissance colour harmonies ■ Arciniholdo's colour-music
Music and colour in the seventeenth century ■ CJastel’s ocular harpsichord ■ The Romantics
Sonority and rhythm ■ Movin'^ colour
of colour iii the West has always been cUisely
Thf i-,xi>f,rif.n(;h
interwov'eu with the experience of music. In ancient (Ireece,
one kind of musical scale {ycnos), introduced by Plato’s friend
Archytas of Tarentum nt the fourth century lu;, was named
‘chromatic’. It was divided into semi-tcanes and was regarded as
simply ‘colouring’ its two neighbouring scales, the diatonic
(divided into full tones) and the enharmonic (divided into
quarter-tones).^ Some (Ireek theorists considered ‘colour’
{chrdia) to be a quality of sound itself, together with pitch and
duration; it may have been thought akin to what we now
describe as timbre.’ What most impressed the Greeks, it seems,
was the capacity of colour, like sound, to be articulated in a
series of regularly changing stages whose differences were
perceptible in an equally regular way — for Aristotle and his
school light and dark appear to have been cognate with clear
and muffled sound or even high anci low pitch.-* As early as
Plato’s time the description of melody as ‘coloured’ had become
part of a professional jargon of which he did not approve.
Conversely, the musical terms ‘tone’ and ‘harmony’ soon
became integrated into the critical vocabulary of colour in
visual art."*
In a society in which music was widely regarded as having a
powerful moral effect, the chromatic scale was credited with a
distinct character quite different from those of the diatonic and
the enharmonic: its closer tones (not, of course, as close as in the
enharmonic scale) seemed to give it a particular quality of
movement, of changeability, which was set against the firmer
and more decisive diatonic; it carried the moral connotations of
sweetness and mourntulness; it was, according to Ptolemy,
more ‘mathematicar and more ‘domestic’ than the ‘theological’
or ‘political’ diatonic; it could even turn men into cowards.-'’ In
the Christian Middle Ages one of the three types of the Greek
chromatic scale was held to be soft and licentious so that,
according to the Early Ghristian writer Glenient of Alexandria,
writing in the late second century,
temperate scales are to be admitted, hut the pliant scales are to be
driven as far as possible from our robust minds. These through their
sinuous strains instruct one in weakness and lead to ribaldry, but the
grave and temperate melodies bid farewell to the arrogance of
drunkenness. Ghromatic scales, then, are to be left to ‘colourless’
carousals and to the florid and meretricious music.*’
d'hus in its earliest associations with music, just as in its scientific
connotations, colour seems to have shown its capacity for
manifesting the changing and unstable world of the everyday.
According to most accounts, the chromatic scale was
developed rather later than the diatonic and perhaps even than
the enharniomc; certainly the more nuanced character tif its
tuning appears to ha\ e made it far more diflicuh to pla\. In the
history of Greek stnng-playing the late si.\th-centur\ lu
kitharist Lysander of Sicyoii was said to ha\ e introduced a more
colourful {chroiiiata cnchroa) style even before the des elopment
of the scale itself by Archytas of rarentuni. In the most
comprehensive of all the ancient treatises on music, .•\nstides
Quintihanus, writing probably in the second or third cemur\
.•\n, argued that the technical sophistication of the chromatic
scale made it accessible only to well-trained musicians.'’ W’e
have a situation in which a more archaic, direct, ‘masculine’
style is amplified by a newer, more complicated and softer one:
a sequence parallel to the development of the figuratis'e arts
from the Archaic to the Hellenistic, except that in music these
styles co-existed and seem to have had a functional rather than a
purely chronological significance.
For some of the Peripatetics, colour was to be distinguished
from music, even purely instrumental music, in that it had no
moral power (Aristotle Prohleiiis XIX, 27. 29). The afl’ective
power of music depended on its status as action and its
importance in that it provided the most comprehensive imit¬
ation of action in human afl’airs. In a passage which indicates that
there was already a lively debate on the status of the various arts
in late Antiquity, Aristides argued that painting and the other
visual arts, working through signs alone, could convey only a
‘tiny fragment’ of life as a whole, whereas music had a direct
effect on both the body and the soul, through the rhythms
which imitated bodily rhythms, through the accompaniment to
poetry which imitated human thought and action, and through
dance, which gave this action visual form.'* Most important of
all, the numerical intervals and ratios of music could indicate the
structure of the soul and even of the universe at large; here
Aristides was generous to the painter, whom he saw equally as
working through proportional systems:
If wc consider painting ... we shall find that it does nothing
without the help of numbers and proportions: it is through
nuinbers that is hunts for the proportionate measures of
bodies and mixtures of colours [chroinaloii and from these it
gives the pictures their beauty. We may also observe that this same
art uses numbers to imitate a thing’s fundamental nature: tor it is tlie
kind of proportion which brings beauty to natural bodies that
painters are pursuing in the dimensions |/»('fr.i, measures| of their
shapes and the mixtures of their colours \chroioti .<i/»ikt.J.<«’.<ij .. A
The analogy between musical sound and colour seems to
have been most compelling to the Greeks because both could be
organized in more or less regularly stepped scales: even the
technical terms tonos and /lurnuiy’c reported by Ehny (XXXV, xi,
29) probably referred to diflerent types ot scalar arrangement.
227
I Ht SOl'M) ()1 COI Ol'R
But the sinkinu; as\'Uinictr\' between the potential ot sound tor
matheniatieal treatment and that potential in colour is well
illustrated bv the fact that there are more th.in a dozen Clreek
inuMcal treatises still extant (although only a handful ot short
compositions with which to compare them) but only one on
colour, the Peripatetic On ("oloitrs. which includes no account ot
the 'proportions' ot colours among themselves. Plato had
derided an\- attempt to discover the proportions ot colours in
mixtures {see Cihapter i), a question only Chad could tathom
tiyd-tiSd). Aristotle, wdio did entertain the possibility
that colours might be quantified, w-as not able to take his
suppositions very tar: in his discussion ot the production ot
colours by the mingling ot particles ot white and black {On
Sense and Sensible Ohjeets 439b) he had argued:
It is thus possible to believe tlrat there are more colours than just
w hue and black, and that their number is due to the proportion ot
their components; for these may be grouped in the ratio ot three to
two. or three to four, or in other musical ratios (or they may be in
no expressible ratio, but in an incommensurable relation of excess
or defect) so that these colours are determined like musical
intervals. For in this view the colours that depend on simple ratios,
like the concords in music, are regarded as the most attractive, tor
example purple [/iii/ourynuil and red [jdioinihonn]. and a few others
like them - few for the same reason that the concords are few —,
while the other colours are those w'hich have no numerical ratios;
or it may be that all are expressible in numbers, but while some are
regular in ratio, others are not; and the latter, when they are not
pure, have this character becatise they are not in a pure numerical
ratio [trails. I lett],
Aristotle’s hesitation is clear and even if we identify his purple
with the consonance of the fifth and his red with the fourth, so
that white forms the octave — the three main consonances
recognized by the early Greek theorists^' — we do not know the
order ot the colours he placed in between.
In wdiat must be one of the earliest accounts of a synaesthetic
colour-musical experience — Plato’s myth ot Er in Book X ot the
Republic — the moving image ot the solar system, 111 which each
ot the eight circling orbits was coloured and accompanied by
the eight pitches {ronoi) sung together by sirens to produce a
single liannonia, none of the colours mentioned was pure.*-
Constructing visual consonances w’as a good deal harder than
establishing aural ones: perhaps the only other Greek attempt to
describe such a synaesthetic experience in detail, Plutarch’s
vision ot Timarchtis in Moralia (syoa), avoided direct compa¬
risons altogether. It became the task of succeeding centuries to
find a way ot exemphtying a relationship that ancient theory
had proposed but ancient practice had been unable to make
concrete: it may tairly be said that the task has never been
brought to a satistactory conclusion.
Medieval and Renaissance colour harmonies
The double disability of‘colour’ in music - that it produced a
sound which was morally enervating and that its capacity for
proportionality wxis not clearly understood — was handed down
to the Middle Ages and the Renaissance and indeed to all periods
in which the music ot the ancients, however obscure, was still a
228
living ideal. Gne theorist of the late eleventh century. Rudolph
of St Trond, sought to introduce a notational system which
represented the modes {ti'opoi) of plainsong - which he
mistakenly identified with the ancient Greek modes — by
colours; thus the Dorian was to be written in red, the Phrygian
in green, the Lydian in yellow and the Mixolydian in pur pie,*-’
This system, which was designed simply for clarity, found little
echo even in the manuscripts ot Rudolph’s own work. When in
the late fifteenth century the Milanese theorist Franchino
Gaffurio re-introduced the idea ot the colours of the Greek
modes, he associated them with the temperaments or humours
attributed to each of those modes since ancient times. The
Dorian, he argued, was a phlegmatic mode, which painters
would represent with a ‘crystalline’ colour, the Phrygian a
bilious mode, represented by orange {ipneo colore), the Lydian a
joyful mode rendered in sanguine red and the Mi.xolydian
conveyed by painters in an undefined mixed colour.*"*
Although Gaffurio was close to painters, including Leonardo da
Vinci, and although his ideas were felt in sixteenth-century
Italian musical theory, these moral colour-correspondences
were his own and appear to have had no effect on later thought
or practice.
Far more promising was the Aristotelian notion of the
proportionality of colours in a scale between black and white,
which was repeated throughout the Middle Ages and w^ell into
the Renaissance — although the identification of the two
‘harmonic’ colours could not remain the same, since the most
precious red of Antiquity, Aristotle’s purple, had now given
way to the most precious modern red, scarlet {coccinciis)0^ One
of the few' medieval attempts to develop Aristotle’s thought was
in the (drear Mirror of Vincent ot Beauvais, where it was argued
that although there were numerous colours only seven of them
could embody propcartions and thus appear pleasant. He did not
name these seven but mentioned that a pink mixed from a good
deal of white and a little red and a green modified with a little
yellow pleased the eye just as a musical fifth or fourth pleased the
ear. Thus pink formed a consonance of a fifth to the octave of
w'hite and light green a fourth.*^ This sort of exploration of
harmonic colour-scales implied the more complex construction
of those scales characteristic of the thirteenth century {see
pp. 165-6) but the manifest confusion about the order of the
colours made it virtually impossible to translate them precisely
into musical terms.
The prestige of musical theory w'as assured during the Middle
Ages by its inclusion 111 the Quadrn ium of the mathematical
arts taught in the universities.*^ Colour had no such advantage,
since it did not form a distinct branch even of mathematical
optics and we have seen how it continued to resist quantification
dow'ii to the time of Newton. Around 1300, the Byzantine
musical theorist Manuel Bryennius had claimed that only
hearing, of all the senses, was able to quantify its sensations.***
When, during the Renaissance, the debate among the rival arts
for the distinction of being recognized as liberal was revived,
painters could find little support in the colotiristic element of
their practice and appealed for the most part to the newly
developed systems of linear perspective. This is the more
surprising in that the para^iione developed first of all in Milan in
the circle of Leonardo and Gaffurio, had almost certainly
 I in s< )i \i! ()i ( ()i I )i K

originated from the revived interest in the On A/ioiV ot Aristides

which, as we saw, had pointed to proportionaht\- in the
painter’s mixing of colours as well as in the drawing of the
tigure.'^ We might well have expected Leonardo to draw on
this argument in his defence of painting against the claims of
music and poetry but, like his triend the mathematician Luca
Pacioli, he relied entirely on the geometrical arguments
associated with anatomy and perspective.-" Leonardo's reading
of Boethius will also have reminded him that it was not enough
either for the musician to create consonances or for the colourist
to have a merely intuitive understanding ot colour and torm;
they must also, said that philosopher, be able to give a rational
account of these phenomena.-' In the case of the colouristic
painter, this was far easier said than done.
Perhaps the chief obstacle to Leonardo’s own treatment of
colour-harmony in an Aristotelian way was this very devotion
to the idea of the geometric basis of painting. Following CiioscHti /..irlimi. tabic otliarmoiiK proportion'. {Ifiiinnotii / /.iinii'iiii In . 1 S'l:
Aristotle’s definition in Catci^orics (VI, 4b-5a), or perhaps the (iSa)
version which Boethius {On Music 11, hi) attributed to Pyth¬
agoras, Leonardo understood geometry as the science of
continuous quantity, which was where painting began: the
point becomes the line, which becomes the plane, which in turn
becomes the three-dimensional solid.-- But as Ptolemy had
argued in the passage on the rainbow in his Hannonics, which
had come via Boethius to Leonardo {see p. lOcS), musical
harmony depended on ratios, that is, on discontinuous, arith¬
metical quantity. Thus the continuous transitions of the colours
in the rainbow could be no model for it. If Leonardo was able to
think of colour-harmony at all, it could only be in the ancient
(Ireek sense of a ‘fitting-together’, rather than in the more
modern one of a pleasing concord of‘sounds’.--^ Discrete objects
might be set proportionately, hence harmoniously, in con¬
tinuous space.In the case of colour only Leonardo’s grad¬
ations of sfununo modelling could express the continuous
quantities of geometry and this could hardly be brought to bear
Frani,'ois d'Agiiilon. colour scale {Opiiioniw Lihn Sex. 1611). IV.Agiiiloi)
on the harmonious assortment of colours as understood in
introduces into the realm of colour the diagram of Pythagorean imiMcal
Quattrocento Italy. It is perhaps no surprise that Leonardo’s
consonances as it had been shown in theoretical texts e\ er since AntiL)iiity. 1 lis
virtuosity as a practising musician was chiefly exercised on the
intetitioti here was to show the relationships between colours, rather than
Urn da braccio, a bowed string instrument with two continuously
suggest harmonies. (1S3)
sounding open (drone) strings, or that his contribution to the
repertory of wind playing was a precocious c’lissando flute,
whose sound he compared to the continuous modulation of the ancient tetrachord of ftnir tones (i+2-f 3-t-4= 10) whose
human voice. There was, for Leonardo, a sjuniato of aural pitch ratios gave the octave, the fourth and the fifth with concords
as well as of visual tone.--^ His dilemma was a further indication deriving from the first six numbers, which added the major and
of the confusion which persisted until the scale of hues and the minor thirds (5:4, 6:5) and the major sixth (5:3).-" 1 his at once
scale of values could be co-ordinated into a three-dimensional brought musical consonance into a potential relatitinship with
colour-space. the new scale of primary and secondary colours. It is surely no
Renaissance developments in the theory of musical harmony coincidence that the first modern colour-diagram, showing the i
brought it closer to the realm of colour-mixing, as a function of relationship of the three primaries and the three secondaries and
the expansion of oil-painting in the sixteenth century. The late- their derivations from black and white, should have been based
medieval elision of‘consonance’ and ‘harmony’, expressed by on the sort of (admittedly very ancient) diagram ot musical
(lafl'urio in the frontispiece to his De Harnionia as ‘1 larmonia est consonances published in Zarlino’s Istitntioni Ilannoiiiche. 1
discordia concors’, developed around 1500 into a concentration Similarly, at the close of the sixteenth century it seemed to be
on the three-note chord, Boethius’s harmonic mean, 3:4:6, in possible for the first time to demonstrate the visual concord ot
which the ratio of the three parts to each other was equal to the colours on a musical instrument the first experiment in colour-
ratio of the extremes. In the third quarter of the sixteenth music as a form of syuaesthetic art which was to tax the
century the Venetian theorist (lioseflo Zarlino argued that it ingenuity of many technologists, and the patience ot their
was a triumph of modern counterpoint to have amplified the audiences, well into the twentieth century.

2.2i)
I HI, S(H'NI) ()l COLOUK
Arciiiiholdo's coloiii'-iiiiisic
The grcnving enipiricisni in sixtccnth-ccntury Italian musical
rliccii'N'. especialK’ marked in the greater attention to problems
of tuning, was matched by a shift in the perceived relationship
of music to painting, where colour was associated more and
more with the quality of sound and painters compared to
musicians in their capacity as performers to create this quality.
In his I)iiilo{;o di Pirnii-n of i sqS Paolo Pino based his claim that
painting was a liberal art on its links with the Qtiadrivium but
went on to argue that invention ((/dcy’/Ki) was its chief claim to
liberalitv, and that this invention, like musical composition,
must be manifested in performance: ‘Notwithstanding that
some say making [operay] is a mechanical act because of the
diversity of colours and the outlines [drawn by] the brush,just as
the musician raises his voice and deploys his hands with various
instruments, nonetheless we are all liberal because of the same
perfection [of performance].'-^
Federico Barocci at the end of the century felt that in
working out the colour-compositions of his paintings in small
sketches he was searching for a coiicordia ed uiiioiie of colour,
united to a harmony of shape, the wdaole analogous to that by
which singers delighted the ear. He told his patron, Duke
Cfuidobaldo di Montefeltro, who encountered him in the act of
painting, that he was ‘harmonizing this music'.-® These
attitudes had been very much part of the Venetian aiulneiitc\
Veronese had pointed to them when he included portraits of
some of his painter-friends as performing musicians in the vast
Marriage Feast at Cana, where Titian, otherwise known as
something of a keyboard player, was given the viol da gamlnv,
Tintoretto, who made his own instruments, and Veronese
himself, violas; and Veronese’s brother Benedetto Cahari a
small lira da braccio. The flautist seems to bejacopo Bassano.^'^
Performance and the pre-occupation with scales came
together, perhaps for the first time, in the experiments of the
Milanese painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo, working at the court of
the Emperor Rudolph II in Prague towards the end of the
sixteenth century. According to the writer Gregorio Comanim,
who W'-as apparently active m Milanese musical life when
Arcimboldo returned there in the late is8os,^° he had devel¬
oped at Prague a scale of values between white and black
stepped according to the double octave of musical tones m the
Pythagorean system. He had also extended his investigations to
the scale of hues and persuaded a musician at Rudolph’s court,
Mauro Cremonese dalla Vmola, to locate on his gravicenibalo (a
keyboard instrument used for accompaniment) the consonances
established by the painter ‘with colours on a sheet of paper’.
That Arcimboldo should have started with a grey-scale of
fifteen values reminds us that he was brought up m Milan not
long after the death of Leonardo (his father, also a painter, had
been a friend of Leonardo’s follower Luini)-®- and wdiere, later
m the century, Girolamo Cardano had published his series of
colour-scales, including the quantified scale of brightness (see
Chapter y).-®® Like Zarhno, and unlike some of the ancient
theorists, Arcimboldo equated darkness with high pitch and he
probably constructed his scale from white to black by mixing
weighed quantities of black with white paint according to the
ratios 4:3 for the fourth, 3:2 for the fifth, 2:1 for the octave, y:8
230
for the whole tone, 3:1 for the twelfth and 4:1 for the double
octave. Comanim argued that the painter was even able to
surpass Pythagoras in his ability to divide the whole tone into
tw'o nearly equal semi-tones.But when w'e move from the
value scale to the hue scales, Comanini’s account becomes
exceptionally diflicult to interpret, for he says that the gradual
darkening of the white in the grey scale ‘reducing it to
sharpness’ (ridiiceiuiolo ad aentezza) w'as also followed in the other
colours:
using white for the lowest part which is found in the cantus firnius
[cii/Ud], and green and blue for the higher parts, since of these
colours the one follows and darkens the other, for white is darkened
by yellow, and yellow by green, anti green by blue, and blue by
iiiorcllo, and niorcUo by M/zc; just as the bass is followed by the tenor
and the tenor by the alto, and the alto by the superius [canto].
He seems to be envisaging a motet for five male voices m w'hich
each vocal line is characterized by a hue, starting with white for
the hasso profondo, or cantus firmus, and ending wdth a dark
brown (tane), for the falsetto superius, each of which voices is
capable of spanning a double octave as in the Pythagorean grey¬
scale. Arcimboldo was apparently groping tow'ards a three-
dimensional conception of colour-space but either he or his
commentator Comanmi had little idea of its implications. 'What
is most surprising is the absence of red in this scheme, since, as
we saw, red had been a very impiortant point on the Aristotelian
colour-scale which lies behind Arcimboldo’s wmek.®®
Mauro Cremonese was apparently seeking to exemplify the
harmonic order of the scale on his gravicenibalo', this has led at
least one modern commentator to suggest that Arcimboldo was
supplying a sort of colour-coded notation in the tradition of
Rudolph of St Trond.-®^ Others have seen in these experiments
the seeds of the synaesthetic experience of the ‘colour-piano’,
although there is nothing m Comanini’s account to suggest that
Arcimboldo wrote any ‘compositions’, or that the plotting of
his colour-consonances on the keyboard gave any pleasure to
the eye. It is clear that the painter at this time had no means of
gauging the proportions of black and wdiite m the intermediate
hues and that his Aristotehanism w'as still an obstacle to linking
the notion of musical ccansonances practically to the idea of
colour-harmonies.
It is perhaps more fruitful to think of Arcimboldo’s work as
part of that dominant strand in the intellectual life of Rudolph’s
court which sought to trace and articulate the correspondences
of universal harmony. His best-known paintings presented
analogies between the human temperaments and the elements,
or seasons, in bizarre heacis constructed from the visual
manifestations of fire or water, spring flow'ers and so on.-®^
Several other members of this court show'ed an interest in
musical colour-scales after Arcimboldo left m 1587: the Italian
Professor of Medicine at Vienna, V. A. Scarnnhonius of
Fohgno, argued on the analogy of the five simple consonances
of early Pythagorean theory (octave, twelfth, double octave,
fifth, fourth) that the simple colours must also he five; black,
white, yellow (fiainis), blue (hyacinthinus) and red. Rudolph’s
court-physician, the alchemist and gemmologist Anselm de
Boodt, also assumed this five-step scale of principal colours.-^®
Just before he Joined the Imperial court in Prague in 1600, the
 i i^jr'rri^^rnr .Irj' C
A4vW I.WmW \'mrt fi Pf mt f
i.j nr iC> /i ■) y ‘

J.es C,cuUu*'s ct cLj i iarmonurs l.Xum R.'.•44^4* IVrf Rlr,. r.-ur:-.’

I h tifure tz ^16 tX 0 Z C) 2-!

Mann Ciurcau ilc la (lliambrc, tabic ot'inusical •i| ay aa. ai ao i$> ty (7 46 4/ 14 tz 1% u ^ 1.:*
bartiuniy of colours {Soiii'cllcs Ohscrratioiis cf -. 4i a
Iomjv R- I t n/4-. .Wi. n.'....
(lonjecturcs sitr I'Iris. if>50). Clurcaii shows an
. 4a 5
— Lxy. lO" ix s> tr ^
—
Aristotelian scale of five hues between black V7rl
s./j**'
hlu *■ - - L$.
ami white, with each colour numbered st) that
-Ui. Ver [ nU u ere A>.. Btj-i. _
harmonic proportions could be established Z az lU 6 J.f IT
Zay. 9 IA
along musical lines. Thus white was given the
value 24 and black 6; yellow at 1 X formed an ■rf. r
interval of a fourth with white, red at iC) a B/^u •V... ft.-,.-, IV. I
9 0 ^-l IT n5 ' a
fifth, green at 12 an octave, and so on. Hlack at
6 forms a fifteenth, or double octave. (1X4) a rt^ure r eT.w

i -> ■ 1 '2 ,4 , R., r?"' .v;„ BU.e M6-

BLutc Iau/v Vert Bleu ufr.
Peurjrre .Vote
T* o’ J..J tT I <5^* O
. -4*
•8411- A47i/* r.’u/t IV./ BLuu'
9 u /O' tz -i-J
■>. ^ItdUV ,

inathcniaticiaii Johannes Kepler, working at another Hapsburg power of white and yellow to that of the most forceful musical
court in (Iraz, conceived of a tonal scale of hues between light chords."*- Among Domenichino's teachers, Agostino Carracci
and dark. It could be observed in the sequence of colours in the had been particularly devoted to string-playing: u would be
sky at dawn and dusk and in the rainbow, and might be pleasant to imagine that the lute-playing landscapist with his
calibrated just as musical notes were identified by their elaborately set palette in a painting attributed to Haul Hril is iSS
geometrical proportions from among the infinite ‘voices’ in the demonstrating an attitude to the association ot musical and
continuum of sound. Kepler even argued, anticipating Newton, colour-scales with which Domenichino must have been
that the colours of the rainbow might depend upon their angles brought up."*-^ The painterly search for ever more nuanced tonal
of refraction and might thus be quantified in a musical way.-’*'^ scales in the early seventeenth century (discussed in Chapter 9)
Hut he was no more able than his predecessors to shake off the thus had a significant musical dimension.
Aristotelian view that the hues lay on a linear scale between light
and dark, so he could not integrate the idea of the spectrum into
a sequence of values.
Music aud colour in the scveutceuth century
Arcimboldo’s bold attempt to e.xemplify his colour-music Although it was based on an ancient diagram ot consonances in
analogy by having it ‘played’ on a keyboard was very much in the musical scale, Franyois d’Aguilon’s scheme ot simple and iSi
line with the efforts of musicians in his day to devise instruments mixed colours did not of itself indicate any harmonious
which would play ever more subtly differentiated scales. relationships between hues. The Aristotelian harmonic system
Among these musicians were painters such as Domenichino, could not, in any case, be illustrated in this way. since it reterred
who is known to have made keyboard instruments capable of not to the assortment of colours but to the intrinsic pleasingness
playing enharmonic quarter-tones.Characteristically, he ofindividual hues, deriving from the proportionate mixtures ot
claimed that these experiments were part of his revival of black and white from which they were constituted. Develop¬
ancient music and his wish to combine the Dorian, Lydian and ments in seventeenth-century optics, which suggested that light
Hhrygian modes in a single scale."*’ Hut if the Hesh-palette of was a movement of particles of matter and colours a tunction ot
two rows of fifteen nuances between white and black used by the various speeds of that movement, just as musical pitches
his pupil Canini depended upon his own practice, it seems more were a function ot various degrees ot vibration, seemed to
than likely that a preoccupation with musical and colour-scales change and strengthen the basis ot the colour-music analogv;
went hand in hand. Certainly as an associate of Matteo but the lingering Aristotelian scale still made it thriicuh to
Zaccolini, Domenichino might have been expected to ponder separate the notion of mixtures of light and dark trom the
these connections, for Zaccolini numbered the colours on his mixtures ot hues among themselves. In d’Aguilon’s scale purple,
nine-hue scale according to their spatial effect and compared the for example, as a mixture of red and blue, came before blue in

I
 Tlir SOUND ()[ COl OUR

the progression from light to dark; but in other scales ot the

period, notably that of Mann Cnireati de la Cdranibre, purple
was considered to be a darker tone than blue and was placed
next to black.The French mathematician Marin Mersenne
made one of the most elaborate attempts to relate musical
consonances to colours by identifying the ‘simple’ colours
with the Clreek musical scales: green with the diatonic,
yellow with the chromatic and red with the enharmonic.
Within each ot these scales or iiiumccs, the scale ot tones or semi¬
tones corresponded to the scale ot coulciirs, or values, ot these
simple colours. But Mersenne alst) regarded the mixture of Rene Descartes, circle of major and minor tones {Coiiipeiidiiitn Musicac, 1650).
colours across these various iniiinccs as productive ot harmony, d’his musical diagram suggested the form ot Newton's colour wheel (see pi.
so that, for example, the mixttire of blue and yellow, ‘the
i.u)- (ix.s)
painter's two primary colours’, produced green, the most
agreeable middle tone, the Cireek iiiesc.'^^ Aristotle’s pertectly
consonant reds had now been joined by that favourite colour ot
the later Middle Ages, green, whose especially harmonic one another’ — and the blue e.xtremity changed from ‘purple’ to
relationship with red was soon to be interpreteci in terms of ‘violet’.The introduction of indigo, a species of blue, was
complementary contrast. especially problematic and can only have been justified by the
The extended and more coherent colour-scales of the need to make up the seven tones in the musical octave, although
Baroque made it possible to devise more complete correspon¬ Newton was anxious to claim that his ‘friend’, who marked the
dences with musical scales: Cureau de la Chambre in 1650 was divisions for him, had not been privy to his ideas before he did
1S4 able not only to plot the consonances in a double octave trom so.® ^ Just as he appealed to a ‘friend’ to perform this function, so
white to black but also to number the hues along this scale, so m thinking about the details of colour-harmony, Newton
that combinations of colours were seen to have harmonic appealed to the authority of painters. In a draft tor an
relationships with each other. Thus red at 16 was dissonant with unpublished section of Opticks, written probably in the 1690s,
blue at y anci yellow at 18 but formed an octave with purple at 8 he stated:
and a fourth with green at 12. It was Ctireau’s example that was
green agrees with neither blew nor yellow for it is distant from
invoked in the lectures on painting at the French Academy
them but a note or tone above & below. Nor doth orange for the
given be Fehbien in the ibkos;"^^ even earlier than this, in the De
same reason agree with yellow or red: but orange agrees better w”’
Arte Graphica (1667) of Du Fresnoy, chromatics was at last
an Indigo blew than w‘® any other colour for they are lifts. And
returned from musical discourse to the context of colour in
therefore painters to set off Gold do use to lay it upon such a blew.
art.*^^
So Red agrees well w'**’ a sky coloured blew for they are fifts &
It WMS left to Newton at the end of the century to free the
yellow w"’ Violet for they are also fifts. But this harmony and
colour-scale from the Aristotelian tonal scheme and to develop
discord of colours is not so notable as that of sounds because in two
Kepler’s and Descartes’s quantification of colours in the spectral
concord sounds there is no mixture of discord ones, in two concord
sequence, so that this sequence could be related more plausibly
colours there is a great mixture, each colour being composed of
to the quantified musical scale. Newton had been much
many others.
concerned with musical theory since the 1660s. (Around 1700 he
collaborated wdth Brook Taylor and the composer J. C. Newton had, however, taken some time to formulate these
Bepusch on a treatise on the subject which is still unpublished.'^®) detailed examples of colour harmony: in his letter to the Royal
Already in his Cambridge lectures of 1669 Newton had argued Society of 1675 he had proposed that ‘golden’ (i.e. orange, the
for a ‘musical’ division of the spectrum of white light, Latin aureus) was concordant with blue, rather than the ‘inciigo
blew’ of this later draft, or the ‘Indigo’ of the published version
not only because it agrees with the phenomena very well, but also
of Opticks in 1704 (Bk III, Pt I, Qu. 14). Nor was his conception
perhaps because it involves something about the harmonics of
of the musical scale constant: in the 1669 lectures he used a
colours (such as painters arc not altogether unacquainted with, but
Dorian scale of five tones and two semi-tones from G to G and
which I myself have not yet sufficiently studied) perhaps analogous
in the Opticks a scale from D to D, both of them based on the
to the concordances of sounds. It will even appear more probable
medieval system of modes unaffected by modern develop¬
by noting the affinity existing between the outermost purple and
ments.®® Newton’s influential colour-circle in Opticks was 134
red, the extremities of the colours, such as is found between the ends
adapted, indeed, from the diagram of the tempered diatonic
ot the octave (which can in a way be considered as unisons).
octave published by Descartes m his Competuiium Miisicae, 1S3
Yet, as we saw m Chapter 6 the division of the spectrum into written in 1618 and cald-fashioned even then.®"^ But in spite of
discrete areas presented New'ton with as many problems as the these w'eaknesses, Newton’s proposals gave a more compre¬
articulation of the Aristotelian scale: his first, eleven-fold hensive and a more detailed account of the analogy between
division {see p. 168), was soon reduced to five ‘more prominent’ aural and visual sensations. The great authority of the Opticks
colours, w'hich was then amplified in 1672 with orange (citrius) has made this appear to be a legitimate and potentially fruitful
and indigo - to make the parts ‘more elegantly proportioned to area ofincjuiry until our own day.®®
 JOLC SIOXS DK O Or'l'/Ql K PLmcAc -yS

(Pastel's ocular harpsichord

Newton had stated quite clearly his belief in the analogv
between the diatonic scale and the spectrum but it was onlv in
the more speculative ‘Cilleries' in Book Ill of Oprichs that he
ventured to suggest that the perceived harmonies of sound and
colour might be related to their both being \ ibratorv pheno¬
mena."’'’ Yet this gave a new lease of life to the ancient belief in
universal harmony,and it was not long before eighteenth-
century empiricists tried to e.xemplify the idea in the practical
torm adumbrated by Arcimboldo and Mauro Clremonese. The
first and most famous of these was the French lesuit Louis-
Bertrand Clastel, who in the 1720s began work on the
construction of an ‘ocular harpsichord’, which would play
colour-sequences in the manner of a traditional keyboard.
Clasted had reviewed Closte’s translation of Newton’s Opticks
somewhat coolly in 1723 and although he claimed that Newton
had personally helped him in the late 1720s, it is clear that
whatever stimulus Opticks may have given to his researches, his
earliest debt was to his fellow-Jesuit Kircher’s Musurt’ia I ’tiii'crs-
dlis (1650).''’'' The problem was, of course, that Kircher’s
thirteen-part scale of two octaves running from white to black
was scarcely compatible with Newton’s seven-tone spectral
scheme. A further complication was added by Castel’s friend¬
ship with the composer and theorist Jean-Bhilippe Rameau.
Rameau, 111 his Traite de I’hannonie rcdtiitc a scs prittcipcs natunds
(1722) also reviewed by Castel, amplified the se.xpartite theory
of Zarlino by reference to the overtones recently investigated by
the pioneer of acoustics, Joseph Sauveur: each pitch embodied
three ‘natural’ tones fundamental to harmony — the fifth and the
major and minor thirds. These three consonances were primary
and gave rise to three ‘secondary’ consonances, the fourth and
the major and minor sixths.
It was Rameau who had encouraged Castel to embark on his
experiments with the ocular harpsichord. When the instrument
reached something like a developed form in the 1730s, Castel
was using a scale of thirteen notes running from C (blue) to B
(violet), which was closely related to Rameau’s six primary and
secondary consonances.'’® In the 1720s Castel had argued in a Design for 'Musiqiie Ocul.iire'. lyfx;. (i.C'i. (iuyot's simple t.ible-top
Newtonian fashion that just as white contains all colours, so a app<ir,Uus rotated a drum carrying transparent coloured paper inside a l.mtern.
sound (/(’ soil) embraces all sounds; but now he held that black, Apertures allowed the illuminated slips to be seen on a scale equivalent to a
or the closely related blue, was the ‘fundamental’ of all colours, musical octave. If it was ever built, the device represented the only practical
as for Rameau the bass was the fundamental of all pitched eighteenth-century equivalent of tiastel's abortive ‘ocular harpsichord'. (list))
sounds. He reinforced this view by pointing out that dyers used
blue woad as the basis for their blacks and that the colour-
124-7 printer Le Blon began his three-colour process by printing the Rondet; their prototype, using coloured slips of paper which
blue plate.'’* Castel’s 12 hues were each capable of modification rose above the cover of the harpsichord, seems to have been in
by light or dark in 12 steps, giving 144 nuances, which he use by 1730. In the following decade a carpenter and joiner,
compared to an organ spanning 12 octaves in the chromatic Touronde, was also employed to help, but the account gi\ en by
scale.'’“ If his contemporary Rameau provided the basis of his a friend of the Cerman composer C. B. Felemann (published by
notions of musical harmony, Castel derived his ideas of colour- Telemann in 1739) is so vague as to suggest that nothing h.id vet
harmony and discord from the late seventeenth-century French been performed. Telemann’s informant said that strings, wires
writers Felibien and especially de Biles, whose feeling for the or wooden keys were used to expose a colour box. or
dissonance of ultramarine blue with vermilion, exemplified in compartment, or picture, or a brightly painted lantern, and that
paintings by Titian and Veronese, he found particularly the instrument was only ‘nearly’ finished.'’'^ A model using a
compelling.'’-^ hundred candles, reported as having been exhibited in 1734 and
All this remained very much at the level of theory. In the 1735, was also apparently far from perfect. Fhe performance
1720s Castel had enlisted the help of an instrument builder. with a much larger instrument using some 300 lamps behind 60

-.Rf
 II MO'I'llKll MllAl'N I'v/nXKl'KPOMI IIA.VI’XIN I’AZINKIAKNAI.

fxxir

I
7'h<‘ Chuiflatv f^/n/vso/Jt^/s prt>/'f/srf/ tJif sttmr am/
The V/teory f‘/ Whesfea/ .souen/s f/u' ftt/fusfet/ urn/

I
A-//V//A/ t/taf f/tr w/tfi/r Worh/ a/iottfa/ji wif/i
diversttied hv the art o/ Wfun, i.e to he nttmhrrre/
r/na//r.f t>t /n///i. I/fr rn/rr nr rmpt/rr ^
u/ticnt/ fhe wondeitif/ Wt'rf.-i o/'Oof/.U'/to.u
f/ir mvt'T wr .rha// hr c^>n\'mrcf/,fJi/t/
w i.etiotn orrotnu/ly esfa/dfshrd /he
the pnnt'tfi/e.^ n/ ffartnon y r\r/y whrrr ^
//n'usu/rs o/ //urmony. a
t'hfitiii. 7/iisrrn/>rrtrtt f/v/i'/i
the laws to uhn/i /he
is rnea/if to t/hi/.ftfntr t/us
(he //eavr/x/y/icf/ie.e
prrat ftnnnftle /hvm
a/r .y/th/ro/. /\’t/n//n'rtrX
\ t/ir/'/wietary s vsfetn, ,
atnf other - u/iteeri/.r
\ tt'ShninlJ rnienor
14.ted to (//.n-fty/xu/
imnmils.tts wy// \
didix/fu/rnony
asthivuohi'nt
and number
the woficsv/'
'XoiX
Cov Xnturr

afc lUtl/cl'
aore>><ic \ .\rt

\'ir fsano A\ti'ton ufscK by tfte same profound aujacity. ifiseo\WYJ another truth eauid{v ivenderfuf
Aiwtilintf to Sir Isaav Xexfton* \vomi4Tt\it t/ucovery, a ray o/' Uuht fxtfitmtf Oivvutfh
d curious with the tenner, which is, that if we suppose musuytl Chords e.eiended /font the .Sun
(t ftrUm (SNp/u'4r tf'om M tv (» ) the fine M G wUf he lUyidetf in the same pn^fwftivns or that 'these Chords mipht ftexxm'te unison . it iviff be /'ti/idstte tv increase, or to
u mueirui ('hof\i hy the spaces >1 a, a </. e/ e. e h, h i. if, and- 1 G, Uie rrspevtive c<>fx>titMr of'
the 7/ (» M be supposed contitiuei/ as a dwect Utie., atui e.vtentled A* X.il* I X/'<' etfiuif ffai^m!!^ '"'xfLTthus Z'''JlZf\Z teiZ!anl
to (» M tend the whtde line auisidetrd as a musical Owed, G M wUI he minor Octave to the
tlmdemtental y, X. Then GX (considered as a tontinued fins) I X, iX. A’X, e </ X, a X. will TiTai^al ande^^^^^^ denumsOYited what (he celebrated Kepier d^vemi.
ftfpnportum to one anoUisr as, ^ \ /J '*io'atui Yi^atxxi/so rept'esent the Ciwtxis of' s oC (he ntruydic Tunes, and (he cubes of the mean distuftees of the I laneis.tur to
that the sauares of the ptriodic
t/xe ray Jt a tone,a ^^tninor a 4'f'a 0 . a fi^tna/vryt x/tt that St^y.Ktf/te itl/rt^vfs^ia. up, eneit other m a ndh\ nanpviuuied ot the liinect raUo tiuir efiuuKtity of nuiUer. and (he inverse
^ the spaces whuh the tespeliive colotu* cccupyjvii. Viofs.t. [nilitjo, lUue, (hven-, ratio o/' dtsir nuu/niludes. __
}rao\r, Ctunpe, Red. *■

coloured glass filters, each 2^, inches (6.4 cm) in diameter,
advertised tor 1757 (the year of (lastefs death) at the (ireat
Cloncert Room in Soho Square in London did not, it seems, take
place/’’’ The technical hitches which dogged Clastel's colour-
harpsichord over a period ofnearly twenty-five years were verv
much the shape ot things to come. Although it was widelv
discussed - and as widely rejected in eighteenth-century
philosophical literature throughout Europe, on a practical level
(lastel’s e.xpermients issued only in an engaging tov for
demonstrating ‘Musique oculaire’, published by (L (L (luyot in
1S6 lyby. (luyot started from Ciastel's book L'Optiqiu' dcs coulcurs
but he rejected its scale ot analogies and did not risk prescribing
his own scale to fill the five spaces for colours which were to be
exposed and illuminated in the lantern-like table-top instru¬
ment.^'’ When Chistel’s idea was invoked again in the nineteenth
century by the Ikdgian physiologist J. A. E. Plateau, it was to
signal an instrument for the display of moving colours based not
on the principle of musical correspondence but on the psych¬
ological tacts of the persistence of vision.'’^
77/P Rojihiiitics
The search for universal principles of harmony gathered
momentum in the Romantic period but as the options in the
study of both colour and musical theory increased, it became
less and less likely that any consensus would be reached on the
basis ot a close analogy between musical and colour scales. One
ot the more comprehensive systems was evolved in the late
eighteenth century by the little-known English historical
painter Cliles Hussey. He moved from a perception of the
geometry of the human figure to a Newtonian scale of colour-
music correspondences in three octaves, running trom A (red)
to Ab (violet), a system which formed the basis of the great
iSj diagram of universal harmony, the Panharnionicoii, of his
biographer Francis Webb.'’*^ Hussey’s view of the privileged
status of music compared to painting, even at this late date, is
suggested by his design of Prosperity of Music with the Dejection of
Painting, recorded in 1773 in the collection of his most
important patron, Matthew Duane.A rather later systeiy,
based on the triad red (E), yellow (Cl) and blue ((1), was
elaborated by Field and first published in 1820 - but, as usual
with Field, amplified and reworked in numerous later public¬
ations.'^'^ Field was much affected by the Romantic attempts to
detach music from imitation and to relate it directly to feeling.
I le argued; ‘it is evident colors have a science as distinct trom
any association with figure or forms... as that ot musical sounds
is from the figurative language ot poetry.’^' Ikit when in a later
book Field sought to link the expressive power of musical torni
to the various types ot colour scale, he could do so only by
referring to the Clreek tradition ot the chromatic and enhar¬
monic scales.
1 lussey and Field were still looking tor objective criteria in
rr.incis Webb’s (i S 14) includes Newton’s spectrum bene.uh the
h.irmunie circle .is the key to h.irmome proportions, visu.il .uui aural,
throui;bout the universe. (1H7)
I III sol \1) o| ( ol ol K
their comparison ot colours to sounds but what (.liietK
distinguished the colour iiiusk .in.ilog\ in the Itoni.mtu perioii
was not only its greater subjectu its but .ilso the .ippreu.ition
that styles ot h.uidhng colour 111 p.iinting i oiild be par.illeled b\
styles ot musical pertorni.uice. 1 he sub)ecti\ it\ ot li.irnionK
colour-groupings now had ,111 objectis e st.itiis: the 111 vestig.ition
ot ‘accidentar colours in the second h.ilt ot the eighteenth
century meant that there was now some optic.d equiwilent to
Ratneau's overtones, or (luiseppe 1 artiiifs 'resultant tones' i.i
third, lower, tone heard iinoluntariR when two tones .ire
sounded loudly), which might otter .1 plusiologic.il b.isis tor
harmonic juxtapositions ot' colours."' I he de\elopnient ot'
these ‘accidentar sequences g.i\ e a new impetus to the idea th.it
colour, like music, could embody nio\enient."‘‘ One ot the
most engaging s isual evocations of this colour-nuwenient w as
in a pamphlet of 1S44 by the otherwise unknown D. D.
Jameson. 1 here the eleg.mt woodcut designs reproduced
compositions ot coloured paper w Inch w ere to ser\ e as a sort ot
notation tor the popular tunes that formed the repertorx' of
Jameson's 'colour-music', to be performed bv a coloured piano-
keyboard which actis ated shutters in front of a dozen tl.isks of
coloured liquids arranged in prismatic order. Faiiips were to
shine through the bottles into a darkened, tin-lined room: 'With
each note, a strong colour is evolved in the dark room and
reflected by its sides; and the duration and extension ot this
colour are greater or less according to the tune and position ot
the note which it represents and accompanies.).inieson's tar
trom transparent theory drew freely on several sources: he
combined (loethe's table ot plus and minus colours {.sec
pp. 203-4), ^vhich he related to mood, for example, with Field's
Chromatic Equivalents of Red s. Yellow 3 and Blue 8, which
represented the proportions of these colours in white light and
also the three major consonances in the musical octave. 1 le
argued that recent research had shown silence to be the product
of the simultaneous sounding of the 'three primary notes', as
‘darkness is eliminated by the interference of undulations of
light’.It is very unlikely that Jameson's instrument was ever
built but he argued that the 'octilarised tune' of the pasted paper
arrangements and hence of his woodcut reproductions might, if
only ‘in a very low degree', ‘unless indeed to a perfect eye',
produce the same sensations as those attending the performance
of colour-music. We may imagine them on a larger scale having
something of the presence of a late painting by Nicholas de
Stael.
The notion of the painter's palette as a keyboard became a
commonplace in the nineteenth century {see Chapter 10):'^'^
Delacroix had as a young man copied the very group ot painter-
musicians in Veronese's MorriWi’e P'east ot (fouoP^ It was perhaps id'i
in his theory of art that the modern concept of the painter as
performer received its earliest formulation. Echoing the
eighteenth-century ('Termaii painter A. R. Mengs, who went
about his last painting, I'fie Aiiiiiiiiciotioii, whistling a sonata ot
Corelli so that it might be in that composer's style, Delacroix,
according to a friend, was always whistling or singing a
favourite aria of Rossini's while at the easel."'' He reg.irded the
daily scale-practice he attributed (implausibly) to the virtuoso
violinist I'aganini the subject of an anini.ited portrait as
especially incumbent upon painters.'"’ In convers.ition with
nil SOUND <)l' COI OUR
another s irtiuiso performer, Clhopin, he elaborated his idea that
the liaison between musical notes, ‘the logic of their succession’,
ami w hat he called their ‘aural rcHection' was a precise parallel to
the reriections of colours in nature and in painting. This aural
liaison was, of course, very much a function of a string or
kcN'board st\ le.'^‘ We are entering a period when painters were
not only the friends of composers and performers but might,
like Ingres or Matisse or Klee, use their own very ample
experience as performers to illuminate their practice as visual
artists.
It was 1 )elacroix’s most devoted follower, Vincent van
(iogh, \s ho brought this practical obsession with the sonority of
colour most vividly into the era of Symbolism. In Holland in
i(S,Ss he took piano lessons in order to learn about the nuances of
colour-tones. But his elderly teacher soon dismissed him, ‘tor
seeing that dtiring the lessons Van Gogh was continually
comparing the notes of the piano with Prussian blue and dark
green, and dark ochre, and so on, all the way to bright cadmium
yellow, the good man thought that he had to do with a
niadmfm’.”- The deep frustration of both teacher and pupil may
be better appreciated if we remember that van Gogh’s chief
musical inspiration was Wagner,Although his obsession with
nature made him reluctant to he thought of as ‘a musician in
colours’, his active conception of his role as a painter touched the
idea of musical performance at several points. He wrote to his
sister in 1888 that he wanted painting to be witnessed by an
audience like a violin or piano concert and the following year he
argued to Theo that his coloured versions of the designs of
Millet and Delacroix, worked from monochrome reproduc¬
tions in the asylum at St Remy, were to be understooci as
interpretations: ‘1 improvise colour on it . . . and then my brush
goes between my fingers as a bow would on a violin, and
abscalutely for my own pleasure’ (CL w. 4, 607).
Sonority and rhytlnn
Ever since Castel’s experiments in the eighteenth century, critics
had argued that the attempt to create colour-music rested on a
false analogy. In that period the most vocal and influential had
been Jean-Jacc|ues Rousseau who in the Essay on the Origin of
Languages (1764) had pointed out that sounds could not be
identified individually, as colours could.With the increas¬
ingly precise measurement of the various forms of electromag¬
netic radiation during the nineteenth century, it became clear
that the characteristics of visible and audible vibrations were
quite distinct; in particular the band of the visible spectrum was
much narrower than that of the frequencies of audible sotinci.
One of the first aesthetic texts to make these distinctions clear,
G. T. Fechner’s \hirschitle der Aestlietik (1876), also introduced
the discussion of a type of psychological association between
colour and sound which was to become a central issue among
colour-musicians by the end of the century: the synaesthetic
phenomenon of colour-hearing.®^ Auditioti coloree was usually
experienced in speech {see Chapter ii) but from the earliest
times It had also been felt by synaesthetes as a function of music,
and musical examples were often discussed in the growing
literature on the subject around 1900. In the Theory of Colours
Goethe had drawn attention to a pamphlet on colour-harmony
236
by J. L. Llofl'mann, in which setting the palette had been
compared to tuning the instruments of the orchestra and these
instruments to the individual colours. Thus yellow suggested
the clarinets, bright red the trumpets, crimson the flutes,
ultramarine the violas and violins and so on.®^ Hoflmann was
familiar to students of audition coloree*^'' although the spate of
new research did not always support his scheme of equivalents.
The association which did prove remarkably durable was the
scarlet of the trumpet, wdiich had been brought into the
literature of psychology much earlier by Locke’s e.xample of a
blind man who was driven to use this analogy. It recurred
regularly, at least until Schoenberg alluded to it in the brass
section of his total art-wxirk Die Gliickliche Hand (1910—13),
where the red lighting during fanfares of brass changes to
yellow' with the rising notes of the trumpet.®® Similarly the
evocation of blue by the sound of the flute (not HofTmann’s
equivalent) began to be noticed in the Romantic period and
gathered momentum from the 1870s, when it acquired some
experimental support.®'^ Thus Kandinsky was drawing on a
sizable body of received opinion when he claimed in 1912:
‘Represented in musical terms, light blue resembles the flute,
dark blue the ’cello, darker still the wonderful sounds of the
double bass; while in a deep, solemn form the sound of blue can
be compared to that of the deep notes of the organ.
Uncier the influence of late-mneteenth-century psychology
the analogy between colour and musical sound had ceased to be
based on quantifiable pitch and had shifted to the more
mysterious qualities of instrumental timbre, a shift made easier
in the German-speaking countries where the term for timbre is
precisely ‘sound-colour’ {Klaug-farhe)A^ It may be paralleled by
the emphasis on rich orchestral ‘colour’ which haci been
growing since Berlioz and Wagner and may be seen neatly
encapsulated in the Klaugfarheiinielodie of Schoenberg’s pupil
Webern — a contributor to the Blaue Reiter almanac — among his
Six Pieces for Orchestra (1909). The association might well come
most readily to performing musicians, so it is perhaps no
accident that Kandinsky was a cellist and that for him the dark
blue of the cello was the most inward and spiritual of colours.
The violinist Matisse similarly objected to Neo-Impressionism
not only because of its mechanical character but also because of
its ‘jumpy’ surface, ‘only a tactile vitality comparable to the
“vibrato” of the violin or voice’.String-players were especi¬
ally conscious that the tactility of colour could be matched by a
tactility of sound.
Developments in orchestration went hand in hand with new
attitudes towards musical harmony, which were chiefly focused
on what came to be known as the ‘emancipation of dissonance’
and eventually atonality. In the Munich circle of the Blaue
Reiter the notion of dissonance in Schoenberg was much
discussed in relation to colour in painting. Franz Marc, co-editor
of the almanac to which Schoenberg also contributed, argued
that the composer’s atonality could be related to Kandinsky’s, in
that the independence of each note was like the discrete patches
of Kandinsky’s paint surrounded by white canvas. Schoenberg’s
refusal fo recognize the categories of consonance and dissonance
also occupied Marc incessantly in his painting, allowing him
to overcome the prismatic order of the complementary colours
and to set complementaries at any distance from each other.
The linked themes ot colcnir. nuisic and landscape arc cnnipcllingly
evoked in this portrait, which may be otTlril liiniself'. Around ifioo
the idea tliat scales of coUnir. represented by the freshly-set palette,
and scales of sound shared some atiinity became commonplace (see
pi. 18 i). The vigorously brushed landscape tm the easel suggests a
similar order of virtuoso fingering to that ot the lutenist.

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189

In the twentieth century the musical affinities of colour have been blue. Klee, on the other hand, paid homage in this large and stately
felt by artists in widely ditTering ways. Around 1913 Kandinsky (192) composition (189) to the structural principles ot Baroque
painted a number of complex canvases of almost symphonic counterpoint, w'hich he also explored as a teacher at the Bauhaus
proportions, in which, he telt, shapes and colours evoked vibrations (190) . Mondrian, in his last major work, left unfinished in New York
in the spectator akin to the various timbres of instruments in the (191) , was stimulated to a new vitality by the staccato piano style ot
orcliestra - his own instrument was the ’cello, -which he ‘saw'’ as dark the latest phase of American jazz.
189 1’aui Ki.ee, Aci l\inutssuin. 1932
190 1’aui Ki.ef., Eixcrciscs in niirror-rcvcrsai in
coloured ^rids, probably c. 1922
191 I’lirr Mondrian, ririory/Icicuic-H'cici’ic, 1943/4
192 Wassii y Kandinsky, Chwiposition 17. 1913

192

-V)
193

Marc reported that Kandinsky was more cautions hut hoped to
be able to supplement the old-fashioned harmonies of pure
colours with ‘dirty’ dissonances like Schoenberg's/'^ Already in
the first letter to Schoenberg in January 1911 Kandinsky liad
argued that today's dissonances would be tomorrow’s conson¬
ances. In On the Spiritual in Art, published at the end of the year,
he came down firmly on the side of a non-hierarchical yiew of
musical or colour-tones:
from the fact that we live in a time full of questions and
premonitions and omens hence full of contradictions., . we can
easily conclude that harmonization on the basis of simple colours is
precisely the least suitable for our own time. It is perhaps with envy,
or with a sad feeling of sympathy, that we listen to the works of
Mozart. I hey create a welcome pause amidst the storms t)f our
inner life, a vision ot consolation and hope, but we hear them like
the sounds of another, vanished, and essentially unfamiliar age.
Clashing discords, loss ot equilibrium, ‘principles’ os'erthrown,
unexpected drumbeats, great questionings, apparently purposeless
strivings, stress and longing (apparently torn apart), chains and
tetters broken (which had united many), opposites and
contradictions - this is our harmony.'"’
It was from about this time that the idea of ‘laws’ of colour-
harmony like the imperatives of musical consonance, although
they continued to be promoted by the devisers of colour-order
systems such as the German chemist Wilhelm Ostwald or the
American painter Albert H. Munsell, ceased to be of much vital
aesthetic interest.
Kandinsky’s judgment of Mozart in 1911 makes it at first
sight rather surprising that he should use an eighteenth-century
analogy when discussing the need of the modern colourist for
some sort ofgrammar. 1 le repeated throughout the publications
ot the Blaue Reiter period a remark of Goethe’s that a ‘well-
established and approv’ed theory’, like the thorough-bass
{Cieneralbass) in music, was also reejuired in painting and this
became an aesthetic slogan of the group.Kandinsky’s em¬
phasis is the more curious that .Schoenberg had argued in his
Hannofiiclclirc ot 1911, a text very familiar to him, that the
thorough-bass was now entirely outmoded.^'' It does, however,
point to a very general admiration for eighteenth-century
principles among early twentieth-century artists searching for a
basis in painterly structure and also to the failure of visual artists
to understand the character of the latest developments in other
arts. From Kandinsky the idea of the importance of a Octi-
cralbass spread to other avant-garde artists anxious for new
structures. The .Swedish pioneer of abstract film. Viking
Eggeling, in i9i<S designed Material for a Tlioroui^li-Bass of
Paintinpi, and the Dutch leader of I)e Stijl, Theo van Doesburg,
in 1923 also described his elementary rectangular forms as a
rhorou(^h-Bass of Paintiiu^ — again rather surprisingly since in the
liaroque principles of musical structure lie beneath Morgan
Russell’s colour composition, and Michelangesque sculpture beneath
Its form.
193 Mokci.sn Russi 11, Of.Ji'if Dctis Homiitcn (SYiuhroniY .Vo. }.• C,'o/or
Counter peint). 1914
I H I S( il \ I M )| ( ()| ( H M
accompanying text he expressed his hostilits to the li.iroqiu-
Perhaps the most striking indic.ition ot the uiu ert.unties tli.it the
newest musical aesthetic presented to \isu.il .irtists w.is the
almost ums ersal respect ot'the awint-garde for |oh.uin Seb.isti.m
Bach.
Bach’s high repiit.ition was not quite the ins ention ot'the kite
nineteenth century, since .Meiuielssohn h.ul pertormei.1 his St
.Matthew Passion in 1S29 aiul the L eipzig B.ieh Soeiets , respon¬
sible tor the publication ot' the complete works, had been
founded in oSyo. But there c.in be little doubt that interest 111
Ifach incre.ised enormousK .imong composers .ind iritics
towards the end ot the centurv. Gt the e.irlv twentieth-eentur\
composers who claimed a special atfimty with him. Schoenberg
and Ifusom were p.irticul.irly close to the most iniuw.itne
painters. ■"' What t ascinated composers .iiui p.imters .dike w.is
the tight yet Hexilsle structure ot the B.ich tugue; ct)m[\irison
with the tugue became a fashionable way of characterizing
painting with little ostensible siilsject-matter but .1 marked
preoccupation with structure. Robert Delaunas’s wamk [see
Ghapter 14) was described in these terms by btuh .Mare (‘pure
sounding fugues’) and Klee, who noted in a review of 1912 that
one tit his window-paintings was ‘as far awav from a carpet as .1
13ach fugue’.''’- Delaunay’s American followers in P.iris, the
Synchromists. underlined the musicality of stune of their
compositions and tine of them, Mtirgan Russell, an amateur u) t
composer, sometimes worked with a Ifeethoven sctire in frtiiit
of him. Russell’s ftirmal interests derived chiefly frtini a study
ot Michelangelo’s sculpture but he and his friend Stanttni
Macdonald-Wright apprtiached ctiltiur with a similar high¬
mindedness, and argued in 1913:
Mankind has until now always tried tti satisfy its need for the
highest spiritual exaltatitin only in music. Duly ttines have been
able to grip us and transptirt us to the highest realms. Whenever
man had a desire for heavenly intoxication he turned tti music. Yet
color is just as capable as music of providing us with the highest
ecstasies and delights.
Russell used the terminology tif tonic, dominant and counter¬
point to describe his principles of colour-construction. I lis I'our-
Part SynchroiuY A’e. 7 clearly reflects a fugal form and (.'rearit
Dens Hoinineni - a thoroughly Bach-like title - also proclaims its
contrapuntal structure.
Russell and Macdonald-Wright had been taught in Paris by a
Ganadian artist, Pereyval Tudor-1 lart, who had developed a
psychological colour-theory ot some complexity. I le claimed
that pitch was equivalent to luminosity and timbre or ‘tone’ to
hue but at the same time that the twelve notes ot the chromatic
scale were equivalent to these ‘chromatic colours’, in which G
represented red and A blue-violet.""’ The confusion which
must have arisen from such incompatible ideas may he behind
Russell’s later rejection of ‘all |Tudor-l lart’s] complicated
systems and academic humbug’."’^ But the attempt to marry
the traditional interpretation ot the colour-music analogy as
based upon mathematical principles with the newer psycholog¬
ical emphasis on the quality of sound also affected the tar more
considerable theory and practice of ikuil Klee.
Klee was a gifted x iolinist with .111 interest in music which
helped to shape both his painting and his teaching. 1 le was not in
 nil- sni 'NU ni coi ouu
Theo van l^oesburg, Ri\^tiiiie {Composition in Greys), 1918. (194)
principle hostile to modern music but he felt that if painting
were to catch up with contemporary developments m musical
theory it must start with the Baroque, since ‘Music already saw
and solved the question ot abstraction in the eighteenth century,
but this was muddled again by the programme-music of the
nineteenth. Painting is only now taking it on board.’But
Klee had a thoroughly modern sense ot colour as quality which,
unlike line and chiaroscuro, could not be quantified. In an early
attempt to construct a value-scale of hues, he noticed that the
vahie structtire (Schattctihild) was rational and the colour
structure irrational, so that they could only be reconciled with
difficulty {Diary, 1910, no. S79). Thus the group of paintings of
1 stepped tonal sequences executed in 1921, including liany’iiiy’
Fruit and fdi'^iic in Red, which may have arisen from contact at
242
the Batihaus with Lyonel Feininger (who was composing
thoroughly eighteenth-century fugues on his harmonium at this
time), are generally confined to sequences ot a single hue. hi his
Batihaus lectures he devoted tar more time to the quantitiable
clement of vahie than to hue.''^'' Yet Klee did attempt to analyse
hue 111 terms of‘weight’, giving greater psychological promin¬
ence to the primaries red, yellow and blue than to the
secondaries and tertiaries, and to the complementaries among
contrasts. 1 le applied fugal reversal and reflection to hues as well igo
as to tones 111 his ‘magic-square’ compositions. Colour was less
susceptible than line and tonal gradation to the quasi-
diagrammatic treatment ot so much ot Klee’s earlier work: it
was only when he came to work on a large scale in the 1930s,
with paintings such as Ad I\trnassiiiii (based on an idea ot the Dg
treatise on counterpoint Gradiis ad Pariiassiiiii ot 1725 by J. J.
Ftix) or the twelve-tone New Hannony that colour-sonorities
could be felt as a dominant principle of pictorial organization as
well as a creator ot mood.^
Among the admirers of Bach in these years perhaps only the
Swiss artist lohannes Itten was able to use his musical experience
in the construction ot a coherent theory ot colour: this became
possible because of a fortunate meeting in 1919 with the twelve-
tone composer )osef Matthias Hauer m Vienna. Itten had
already been contrasting what he saw as the linear melodic
structure of Bach and the late Gothic painter Meister Francke,
with the harmonic content of Schoenberg and van Gogh: ‘In the
linear the temporal movement of breathing-rhythms can be
clearly represented as a horizontal order. With the coloured or
harmonic (musical) the order of breathing-rhythms is represen¬
ted as simultaneous or vertical (music) ... A linear [order] can be
determined far more precisely than a coloured, even in
music.^ The meeting wdth Hauer, who had just published his
Uber die Klatiy[farbe {On Timbre, 1918), gave Itten the opportun¬
ity of pursuing these studies with far greater precision and they
entereci into an intensive exchange of ideas over a number of
years. Hauer gave the painter a sound-colour circle ot twelve
equally spaced notes, divided into warm colours for the fifths
and cool for the fourths.The colour-system which Itten
published m 1921 was also a twelve-tone one, but it was
arranged in spectral order and also sought to co-ordinate twelve
equally spaced hues with a value scale of seven steps, which (like
Klee, who was now his colleague at the Batihaus) he related to
the intellectual, whereas the ‘sound-colour’ expressed the
emotions.^Also like Klee, Itten developed the coloured grid
as a flexible format for establishing colour harmonies which, as
he told his students from the 1920s onwards, must reflect the
personality types of those who composed them.'
One of the styles of modern music which had a more than
usual resonance for the colour-style of some avant-garde
painters was jazz, which arrived in Europe from America about
the time of the First World War. It was quickly taken up by the
De Stijl group, particularly Mondrian who published an
important essay, ‘Jazz and Neo-Plastic’ in 1927. Mondrian’s
Theosophical background and his continuing spiritual cravings
did not allow him to see modern jazz as more than a rather
superficial and transitional stage on the way towards the new
society but he none the less felt that ‘the passage from art to life is
seen most clearly in jazz and in Neo-Plasticism’^ and he had

long hccMi ail enthusiastic modern d.meer. As earlv as 1915 in
1 lolland he had been ohsersed ‘ramrod straight, liis head tilted
upwards, making "stylized" steps' and we might imagine that
he was the model lor van Doesburg's syncopated grid-like
ig^ Ragtime ((\iinposirioti in (in-y) of a few years later.'"’ In the
1920s Mondrian painted a number ot l-'ox-'I'rot compositions
and developed the view that rhythm was the umfving feature of
lite and art, whether visual or musical, and its most eharaeteristie
manilestation the jazz-bar, where the repetitive rhythms of the
machine or of nature were modified aectirding to a more
human need.''' The Fo.x-Trot was ot course based on a square
lormation and its solo-instruments were the sa.xophone and the
trumpet, which helped to give it an essentially linear character.
When Mondrian moved to New York in 1940 the prevailing
version of jazz was Ibiogie-Woogie, a piano-based style often
using two instruments, whose staccato ‘riffs’ and runs up and
down the keybtiard gave it a sparkling and fragmented
character which Mondrian, abandoning his black lines, picked
igi up in the colouristic grid of his last paintings. Mere again, a
musically inspired style ol painting was developed not on the
basis of a system but in response to an aural experience.
colour
Mondrian’s preoccupation with rhythm was timely tor it was
among his ctintemporaries that Castel’s aspiration tor moving,
rhythmic colour tormations seemed within sight. This was very
largely a question of technology and, not surprisingly, it began
with theatrical lighting. As early as the 1780s the improved oil-
lamp of Argand made it possible for scenic artists such as P. J. de
Loutherbourg in London to control the level ot stage-lighting
to an unprecedented degree and to introduce subtle effects of
movement.' The development of gas lighting and its deriva¬
tive the lime-light about 1820 put even more power at the
designer's disposal. In the 1840s the English scientist Charles
Babbage devised a ballet including a largely abstract scene in
which four coloured lime-lights would project a red, yellow,
blue and purple light which would move and overlap to
produce a rainbow effect playing over the white-clad dan¬
cers.' The risk of fire prevented its production but this was a
risk which became markedly less with the development of
electric lighting in the 1870s, which also gave the promise of
compositions on a far larger scale than ever before. An early
colour-organist, the American painter Bainbridge Bishop,
wrote in i 893:
The invention of the electric light renders it possible to use colour-
harmony as an accoinpaninient to a church organ and sacred music.
This can be done on a grand scale. The whole end of a cathedral,
behind and over its organ, could be arranged as a tablet or ground
on whicli to display the colour-harmonies. Beautiful effects could
be produced by a combination of statuary and gauze curtains,
which, as the music pealed forth, would Hash and fade witli the
softly melting hues of coloured lights with the chant of adoration
120
By the turn of the century the technical capacities of electrical
stage-lighting had made it possible to write moving colours into
the plot, as Kandinsky did with his three stage pieces eff 1909.
I Ml S( H M) ( i| i ( >1 I '1 K
/ //(■ \ cllow Sound. I'lu (,>(•('») Sound aiul RLu k ond 11 Hiti. .md .t--
the Sw iss designer .•\dol{''h .Xppi.i pro)ected tiT .1 prodiKtum
VYagner’s Rarsilol three \e.irs l.iter.'-' Nvuie ut'these pro|evt^
NS'.is re.ihzed but in New York in 191s there w ,is .1 perlorm.iiu
in music and colour which w.is to t.ike on scunethiiig ot the
allure ot C .’astel’s ocular harpsichord a centurs .iiid .1 halt e.irher
.Alexander Scriabin’s I’roniolhous: .1 Rooni ot liif.
Scriabin’s ()/)!(.< b(’( 191 o ti i was his first .iiul l.ist .ittempt to ig
introduce a colour .iccompanunent to his music, although .it the
tune ot his i.ie.ith 111 1913 he w.is planning .111 e\en l.irger work.
My.<rfrinni. which would include odours .is well as (.oloured
lights. 1 ie had been in touch w ith the I heosophic.il nuw ement
in Brussels in 1906. particul.irU w ith the S\ inbohst p.iinter |e.in
I )el\ ille. but the moral and spiritual connot.itions he g.is e tt) his
colour-scale ot twel\e tones h.id little in common with that
published by the international I heosophic.il Societs in Bes.int
and Leadbeater’s 7'/ii'//y>//t lonn.< (1901). Scn.ibiii’s blues, t'or
example - E, C.'7 and Cl? which connoted dreams, contem¬
plation and creatisity. are not far from the I heosophists’
‘dewotion to a noble ideal’ or ‘pure religious feeling’; but his
jtiyous yellow (D) cannot easily be compared with their ‘highest
intellect’, nor can his violet or purple (I)?), ‘will ot creatwe
form', be seen as very close tti their ‘love Uir humanits ’.'But
at the end ot their book Besant and Leadbeater introduced three
examples ot musical thought-torms, perceived bv a clairs ovant
at recitals on a church organ ot Mendelssohn’s Sony.< without
Il'en/.s .\(). g. the soldiers’ chorus from ('iOuiukI’s luui<t and the
overture to Wagner’s Mi'i.cti’r.diup'rs. I he iMendelssohn pro¬
duced a very linear comptisition in the three primary colours,
the Gounod a much larger and more ctunplex tormation with a
whole spectrum radiating outwards in a sort of expanding
globe, but the Wagner was perceived as ‘a vast bell-shaped
erection, fully nine-hundred teet in height’:
The resemblance to the successively retreating r.imparts of a
mountain is almost perfect, and it is heightened by the billowy
masses of cloud which roll between the crags and give the effect of
perspective . . . the broad result is that each mountain-peak has its
own brilliant hue - a splendid splash of vivid colour, gkwving with
the glory of its own living light, spreading its resplendent radiance
over .ill the country round. Yet in each ot these masses tit colour
other colours are constantly ffickering, as they do over the surface
of molten metal, so that the ctiruscations and scintillations ot these
wondrous astral edifices are far beyond the power of any physical
words to describe.
This florid description might well have been an important
stimulus to .Scriabin, whose Et> (humanity) and B? (lust or
passitni) included a 'glint ot steel' on their flesh-pinks.'-'*
Scriabin was something ot a synaesthete .md had discovered
this gift at a concert in the company of Rnnsky-Korsakov,
when they had agreed that a piece in I) m.ijor appeared
yellow.'-'’ Mis early conception of the colour acctunpamment
to the Rroincthcns Symphony h.id been extremely ambitious: he
had w ished to Hood the whole auditorium with coloured lights
and at one stage he anticipated Kandinsky 111 proposing that a
dancer should mimic the light-changes with appropriate ges¬
tures.'-^ But w hen the Symphony came to be pertornied, the
colour element was tar more modest. Ihe colour-kevboard
mh SOUND ()!• COLOUR

8
used in the first Muscow performance ot lyi i tailed to tnnetion
Promethee. and we know nothing of it. Subsequent concerts in lUissia,
A Scriabinp. Op 60
Ciermany and England did not include a colour instrument,
although Menry Wood in London had hoped that this part
would be arranged by the leading English colour-organist. A,
W. Rnmngton. So the first complete performance was at the
Chirnegie Hall in New York in lyis, where the colour- ig6
keyboard was provided by an unknown designer working tor
the Electrical Testing Laboratories ofNew York, using vacuum
or gas-filled tungsten lamps made especially by the (General
Electric Company, The lights were projected on to a series ot
meshes or gauzes of varying translucency in an eight by ten-toot
(two and a half by three metre) box-hke structure above the
orchestra. Scriabin’s score demanded two simultaneous hght-
projections, one to follow the orchestra tone by tone and the
other to underline the general tonality ot the parts ot the
symphony. They might last for many bars, so that the many¬
layered screen was required, where, as a critic reported.

The effect . . . was that the observer saw the light ot one hue
displayed upon the rear gauzes, and the light of a different hue
displayed upon the front gauzes, the one being visible through the
other. The final result of this was a beautiful combination ot hues
not precisely identical in any two portions ot the screen, and
varying in appearance as docs changeable silk in dress materials
when shown under strong light.

Another New York critic found it difficult to relate the shape ot

Colour organ (luce) appears at the top of Scriabin’s score for the Prometheus
Symphotiy. The organ’s colours were projected on to a multi-layered screen
above the orchestra, seen in this impression of the opening performance in
New York in 1915. (195,196)
the colour-score to that of the music; ‘In the midst of w'hat
seemed to be one phase the lights would change halt a dozen
times. There was no variation in intensity as the music grew
more emphatic; at the height of its proclamation there was the
same pleasing variety of yellows, oranges, violets, purples and
emeralcis as there was at the beginning.’'-'^
Scriabin’s conception, if not its execution, tound an echo in
Kandinsky’s publisheci stage-piece The Yellou’ Sound, which like
Proiiietlieiis began and ended with blue.^^*^ This piece was not
performeci until the 1960s but already before its publication in
Der Blanc Reiter it was influential on the staging of Scene III ot
Schoenberg’s Die Gliickliclie Hand, which includes a crescendo
of lights changing from a dull red to yellow, through dirty-
green, violet, blue-grey and blood red.^^^ Schoenberg’s piece
also had to wait some years for a production: one ot the earliest
was at the Kroll Opera in Berlin, with sets by Oskar
Schlemmer, who had long been working on ballets with
elaborate light-scores under the influence of Scriabin and of
Kandinsky’s scenario for The Yellow SoiindY^^ Kandinsky
himself was finally able to see one of his abstract stage-
compositions, to a version of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an
Exhibition, performed at Dessau in 1928.Technology, in this
case high-wattage filament lamps, was at last catching up with
aesthetics.
Schoenberg, indeed, had hoped as early as about 1913 that his
drama might be presented in the newest art medium of all, the
motion picture, and that Kandinsky might be one of the
painters invited to design the sets and hand-colour the film stock
under Schoenberg’s direction. But he also felt that the relative
weakness ot this colouring might need the support of supple¬
mentary lights flooding the auditorium. Abstract film was

^44

very imich in its infancy in these years but. like the cuU)ur-score
of Scriabin, it too developed in the shadow (.)f'rheost)ph v and of
Wagner. The Italian brothers Arnaldo (hnna and Bruno Ciorra,
whose e.xperiments with hand-painted abstract film go back to
1911 or 1912, had attended I heosophical lectures in Ikdogna
and Florence and read widely in the literature, including
lUulolph Steiner, Besant, Leadbeater and Edouard Schure, who
had described Wagner as the last of his ‘(Ireat Initiates’.*-^''' Like
Scriabin and Schoenberg, (hnna and Chirra imagined Hooding
their audiences with lights during their wordless ‘chromatic
dramas’, but after disappointing experiments with a colour-
keyboard of twenty-eight keys they turned to film.'-*'’ One of
Oorra’s early pieces was a colour version of Mendelssohn’s
Spriiiii and others were intended to be accompanied by-
extracts from Chopin, although Corra also composed some
scores of his own. The brothers saw that film would allow them
to use far stronger lighting than hitherto and also to mix colours
optically through the effect of the persistence of vision. It is not
clear which, if any, ot their films were shown in public, but one
ot their short demonstration pieces suggests a style close to the
film-maker Oskar Fischinger’s work in the 1930s:
|it was) composed of seven colours, the seven colours of the solar
spectrum in the form of small cubes arranged initially on a
horizontal line at the bottom of the screen against a black
background. These move in small jerks, grouping together,
crashing against each other, shattering and re-forming, diminishing
and enlarging, forming columns and lines, interpenetrating,
deforming etc.'-’^
Technical difficulties hampered the work of the early film¬
makers no less than ot the stage-designers and colour-organists.
Hand-painted film stock was exceptionally unstable: Fischinger
had to work in black and white during the 1920s until a reliable
colour-film, Clasparcolor, was developed early in the following
decade, when he also had the possibilities of a co-ordinated
sound-track. For his early colour work he could only collabo¬
rate with the Hungarian colour-keyboard performer Alexander
Laszlo, who was perhaps the best-known artist in this medium
throughout the 1920.S.*'’” Laszlo came to colour-music from the
musical end, using the services of visual artists such as Fischinger
or the painter Matthias Holl to design his compositions. He
adopted the recently published colour-theory of Ostwald and
seems to have known of the work of Feininger and Klee: like
them, he had no fixed idea of the relationship of specific sounds
to specific colours, regarding it rather as a t]uestion of feeling. *'^‘^
Typically for the period, his work aroused a good deal of
interest among experimental psychologists investigating syn-
aesthesia but its life in the concert repertory was very short.
As in the case of (hnna and (lorra and Fischinger (another
admirer of Bach), there was something of a disjunction between
the modern repertory of Laszlo’s visual forms and the Barot|ue
or Romantic style of the music, which made it at best a rather
hybrid medium ofentertainment.’-^'
File 1920s and 30s were the high period of colour-music,
which appeared in a bewildering variety of forms, most of
which have now disappeared without trace.In the majority
the analogy between the physical characteristics of light and
sound had ceased to play any shaping role.*-^-’ In some
mi SOI \i) oi ( oi ()i i<
M.iry ILilku-k (Irccncw .ih\ dcMgn tor '.A Liglu-Color l’l.i\ C on-.olc'.
witli keys to siippls 'st.irliglit' .ind 'mooidiglu'. (19^1
manilestations, such as the ('olour-Li^;hl /^/ciy.s des’cloped b\-
Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack and Kurt Schwertfeger at the Bau-
haus in 1922, the stimulus seems to have been purelv formal.
However, in most cases the enormous technical and financial
problems and the et|ually vast public indifference to this form of
art meant that it could only be sustained by the strong spiritual
conviction that it gave in some sense a prn ileged access to the
divine.'
Two ol the most spiritual but also the nuist successful
exponents of the medium worked in the United States. Mary
Hallock (Ireenewalt began as a concert pianist but. stimulated
by theatrical lighting, she became interested in colour-music
about 1906 and gave her first concert, in Bhiladelphia, in 1911.
She toured extensively the following year and seems to have
performed regularly until the late 1930s on a series ot increas¬
ingly sophisticated instruments, one ot which was awarded a
gold medal at the Bhiladelphia Exhibition of 1926. Sometimes
she played in chapels: as she told a convention of the
Illuminating Engineers’ Society in 191 cS, colour-music was ‘an
art that can play at will on the spinal marrow ot the human
being, remind him ot the Floly (Ihost and the utter sheerness ot
beauty’.(Ireenewalt did not believe in a close analogy
between colour and music but like Bainbridge Bishop and
Rimington she was much stimulated by her experience ot
nature. She often composed colour-accompaniments to pieces
with strong programmatic associations, such as the first move¬
ment of Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight’ Sonata or Hebussy’s ‘And the
moon descends on the Temple which was’ (from the second
series of/hiii^c.s-, 1907). The console which she patented in 1927 iq
included a ‘moonlight’ key among several pre-established
varieties of natural light.*'*'*'
Thomas Wilfred, a Damsh-American folk-singer, had begun
to experiment with light and cohnir as a teenager in (Copenha¬
gen but it was not until his arrival in New York in the 1910s that
he came to work seriously on a large-scale instrument. Fins was
under the iiiHuence of the visionary architect and theorist ot the
fourth dimension, (Claude Bragdon, who designed Wilfred’s
first studio on Long Island and with whom he tormed a society.
The Brotnetheans, to develop the new art.*'*'* Bragdon had
-4.S
 I HI SOHNl) ()l COLOUR
alrcad\’ built his own cohuir-organ and had gixcn concerts in
191 s ,ind iHiCi. but Wiltrcd dc\eKipcd his 'Cdavilux' on a
diricrcnt principle, and had the tirst model ready by 192
Brapdon was probabh' the intellectual force behind Wilfred’s
piMCtice: he dismissed the physical analogy between light and
sound, emphasizing the imaginative autonomy of the medium,
and he directed attention to the representation of four-
dimensional space;
Cioloiir without form is a soul without a body; yet the body of light
must be without any thought of materiality. Four dimensional
forms are as immaterial as anything that could be imagined and
thc\' could be made to ser\e the useful purpose of separating
colours one from another, as lead lines do in old cathedral
windows, than which nothing more beautiful has ever been
devised.‘
When, about 1930, Wilfred designed his Art Institute of Light,
it naturally took the form of a church, and he w'rote in an essay
igS of 1947 chat his screen was like ‘a large window opening on
infinity, and the spectator imagines he is witnessing a radiant
drama in deep space'.'"’'
Wilfred's first ‘Clavilux’ did not apparently give an im¬
pression of deep space but rather a two-eiimcnsional surface;'
but the rapici cievelopment of new models in the early 1920s
meant that by the time his work was shown at the Fans
‘Exposition des Arts Decoratifs’ and in London in 1925 his style
cotild convey the fourth dimension of space—time that Bragdon
had so eagerly sought. His London concerts in May of that year
included the very Bragdonian contrast of two compositions.
The Factovy and T/;c Ocean, ‘four-dimeiisional stage settings for
a fantastic play'. Some of his work on this occasion reminded
one spectator of late Turner, ‘by some magic caused to fade and
glow, to recede and to advance’.''"’^ One of Wilfred’s most
appreciative critics, Sheldon Cheney, said of a performance on a
model-C ‘Clavilux’ in the Long Island Studio, ‘One had that
feeling of detachment, of extasy, which is a response only to the
most solemn religious or aesthetic experience’, and he suggested
Thomas Wiltrcd rehearsing a composition. (ipX)
246
that ‘perhaps . . . this is the beginning of the greatest, the most
spiritual and radiant art of all’.'
The element of rittial attending this remote, silent display —
for Wilfred used no musical accompaniment — must have been
paramount, but ttnvards the end of his life Wilfred admitted
rather petulantly that to the majority of ‘worldly’ people, his
work would appear ‘monotonous and uninteresting’.'"’'^ Those
who have sat through what he regarded as his masterpiece,
Liiiiiia Suite, Op. 13S (1963-4), playing to an all-but empty
basement in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, will
hardly disagree; but they will also perhaps feel that Wilfred was
tempting fortune with his massive works of the 1940s and 50s,
the I 'ertical Sequence No. II of 1941. which ran for 2 days, 12
hours and 39 minutes, or the oddly titled Nocturne (Op. 14S) of
193(S, which filled 3 years, 3 39 days, 19 hours, 20 minutes and 48
seconds. This was surely hubris rather than spirituality.
Colour-music was an art form which w'as always about to be
the most important twentieth-century art but never quite
became it. It was, wrote Willard Lluntington Wright (brother
of Macdonald-Wright) in 1923, ‘the logical development of all
the modern researches in the art of colour’.Yet it was not
until the late 1920s that much attention was given to the crucial
question of how a spectator might perceive, and respond to,
rhythmically moving abstract forms.If the physics of sound
is not precisely similar to the physics of light, their respective
psychological effects have perhaps even less in common.
Experiments in colour-music on all levels, from disco-light-
shows to therapeutic abstract film, have of course continued
into our own times'^'' but after nearly a century of develop¬
ment, it is sobering to hear a prophecy of as late as 1938;
the time will come when ... in an atmosphere of semi-darkness,
colours of every variety will be projected on to a screen, expressive
of and corresponding to the content of the music. Thus will that
dream of Scriabin’s be realized, the unity of colour and sound; and
through its realization the audiences of the future will experience
the healing and stimulating effects of that very potent
conjunction.
 14 • Colour without Theory: The Role of Abstraction
'rhi\i^rai)unar of colour ■ /)(’ StijI ■ (Colour at the Hauliauc ■ Ihiipiriciciu in Italy ami I raticc
Ihiipiricisiii as theory ■ The uiaterials of ahstractiou
Hy T1IF-: late ninetcentli century enlour had become a central, and
in some places the central preoccupation of European painters
and their public. The outdoor painting of the Impressionists as
well as the indoor painting ot Symbolists such as the Swiss artist
Arnold ITicklin seemed to guarantee that modern art would be
characterized by an urge towards more and more powerful
colouristic ert’ects. ‘Whichever endeavour we look at.' wrote the
critic Waldemar von Seidlitz in 1900. ‘a decisive striving for
colouristic tulness is emerging everywhere at the end ot the
nineteenth century.'' In an article on the psychology of colour
which attracted the notice ot Kandinsky, another (lerman critic,
Karl Schetfler, saw as early as 1901 that: ‘Our time, which, more
than any other, depends on the past for its forms, has produced a
kind of painting in which colour is independent.'- Thus it was
colour that was to supply the spearhead of non-representational
art; it seemed to open up a new era ot unprecedented visual
freedom, and although we have seen in the work of Matisse that
this freedom was rather submission to another sort of creative
bondage, a beliefin the autonomy of colour animated artists and
designers in many areas ot visual art. How did this beliet come
to be so widely shared?
.Seurat had already announced that the traditionally con¬
ceived relationship of drawing to colour could no longer be
sustained: ‘If, scientifically, with the experience of art, I have
been able to find the laws of pictorial colour, can I not discover a
system, equally logical, scientific and pictorial, that will permit
me to harmonize the lines of my painting as well as the
colours?’-’ Seurat was clearly under the inhuence of Blanc,
whose (Tamiuairc had argued that the ‘fixed laws’ of colour
could he taught like music and whose ‘grammar’ ot drawing
already co-existed with a ‘grammar’ of colour, a more and more
popular notion as the nineteenth century ended.’’ So colour
became the paradigm of visual law, and could also be seen as a
language with its own grammatical structures: Chevreul had
provided one of the earliest formulations of the idea of colour as
a universal language;'’ by the time of the First World War, it had
bectmie something of a commonplace, to be set unproblemati-
cally beside form in Kandinsky’s On the Spiritual in Art/'’ To the
rather rudimentary colour-systems of the nineteenth century
were now added the more nuanced and extensive schemes ot
zos Ostwald in (Germany and Munsell in the United States, both
based on the new techniques of psychological testing tor colour-
discriminatiim and thus having some claim to represent ‘univer¬
sal’ colour-relationships. Yet the very complexity ot these
colour-order systems put them beyond the reach ot most artists
in the early twentieth century and helped in the end to take
them away from theory at all.
C’tstwald came to colour late in life, at the end ot
distinguished career as a physic.il chemist ihasing won the
Nobel Prize in 1909). I ie was ,ilso an enthusiastic .mi.ueur .irtist
who around 1900 bec.ime im tihed w ith a group of Munich
painters, including the society-portr.iitist [ ran/ \'on I enb.ich,
who were anxious about the inst.ibilit\’ ot artists’ pigments ,md
might well have w elcomed a chemist w ho h.id long ni.ide his
own painting materials into their circle." Ostw.ild’s experience
resulted in a small handbook, the Malerhnete {Letters to a Painter)
of 1904, which advticated an experimental approach to the
technique of painting. It seems to have been recewed rather
coolly by artists, .ipart from the young Klee, who reported to
his tuture wife that it was ‘an excellent scieiuitic handling ot all
technical matters’.^ (Yet Klee became one of t')stw aid’s bitterest
opponents in later years.) It was an encounter at I larx ard in 1905
with Albert Munsell, who had begun his career as a p.iinter 111
Paris, that turned Ostwald decisix’ely in the direction ot the
theory t)f colour, the work which he was to claim, like (loethe.
as the highest achievement ot his lite.*'
Munsell had recently published his first handbook. H dolour
\otation (1905), based on a circle often colours and a spherical
arrangement borrowed from Runge; but, according to C')st- isc)
wald, he was unable to give an adequate scientific account ot its
principles, tailing back on the notion ot ‘artistic feeling’.
C^stwald spent the next decades attempting to remedy these
defects in the essentially empirical earlier systems by applying
new techniques of colour-measurement and a mathematical
approach to colour-psychology. In 19 iz he joined the colour-
committee of the Deutsche Werkbund, the architecture and
design association which was seeking to introduce a measure ot
standardization into ('lerinan industrial design. From this period
date his concentration on colour-problems and the spate ot
publications which was soon to dominate the literature ot
colour throughout Europe. At the C?ologne ‘Werkbund
exhibition of 1914 Ostwald arranged a l-arhscliau (‘colour-
show’) of industrial paints and dyes, which he Imped would
demonstrate the need for a fundamental, systematic, study ot
colour principles; from his first handbook. Die L'arhenfihel ( / he
Color Primer, 19Di), this is what he set out to do.'" As well as
being a patriot who at the height ot the (treat War substituted
the (’lerinan botanical terms hress and reil tor the French loan¬
words oranye and eiolet, (Dstwald was an outspoken Socialist
who believed that art was essentially a social priidiict and that
the age of individualism must now give way to the age ot
organization.'' When works ot art seemed to him to ortend
against the ‘laws’ of colour harmony he had uncovered, he had
no hesitation in ‘correcting’ them. Although he beliexed that
the lapanese had long had an instinctive sense ot ‘.lesthetic
a norms’, which they applied in architecture and furnishing, he
^47
(()i ()i K wnnouT rm-oRY
found that certain oftheir colour prints, based only on empirical
studies, did not match his standards of harmonious colouring,
fie prepared improved versions ot them which, he assured his
readers, were recognized by connoisseurs to be ‘more Japanese’
than the originals.*- This high-handed treatment ot mneh-
admired artefacts in the name ot science gave Cdstwald a certain
notorietx' in the art world of his day, particularly in the contused
aesthetic atmosphere ot the Banhans in the 1920s. As it happens,
his first impiirtant effect was felt not in Germany but in fdolland,
where his ideas were taken up almost immediately by the De
Stijl group and where they had a particular impact on one ot the
first non-representational painters ot that movement, Ihet
Mondrian.
De Slijl
By 1917. when the De Stijl magazine started publication,
Mondrian had already proved himselt to be a painter ot great
strength and versatility, having moved over the previous
twenty years from tonal landscape painting in the tradition ot
the flagne School, through Impressionism, Fanvisin and a late
version of Divisiomsm to Cubism, always showing a teeling tor
great simplicity of colour and construction and a preterence tor
symmetrical compositions. Along the way he had encountered
a number ot theories ot colour. His version ot Pointillism had
little to do with Seurat, since the dune landscapes ot 1909 which
were its chief vehicle used very large and separated units in a
decorative way, with no attempt at optical fusion or the
reconstitution of light through contrast. They are like enlarged
details of the beach scenes ot the Symbolist Jan Toorop, with
whom Mondrian was in close touch at this tune. As he wrote to
a critic, ‘1 believe it definitely necessary in our period that paint
be applied as far as possible in pure colours set next to each other
in a pointillist or dihuse manner’.*^ In a speech opening the first
exhibition of the Moderne Kunstkring in Amsterdam in 1911 (a
modernist art society of which Mondrian was an officer),
Toorop called for a spiritually pure style using straight or
‘quietly undulating’ vertical and horizontal lines, together with
‘contrasting complementary colours’.*'^ Moncirian’s notion ot
complementarity was a very fluid one; in a sketchbook of about
1914 he mentioned the opposites red (external) and green
(internal) in the context of thoughts on the antagonism between
the material female and the spiritual male*^ but later he saw
yellow and blue as equally opposed to red, as ‘inward’ to
‘outward’**’ and later still he seems to have regarded blue
as the most fundamental opposition to red, an opposition
already felt in Ins early Red Cloud, Red Tree and Red Mill
(1907-11).*^
More important were Toorop’s interest in Theosophy and
Mondrian’s joining of the Dutch Theosophical Society in 1909.
The idea of the spiritual content of colours had its origins in
Theosophy, for example in the colour charts of Besant and
Leadbeater’s Thou^^ht Forms (1901) and Alan I dsilde and Invisible
(1902), which were translated into Dutch in 1905 and 1903,
respectively. Here red was presented as pride, avarice, anger or
sensuality, according to its degree of purity; blue as high
spirituality, devotion to a noble ideal, or pure religious feeling;
yellow as highest intellect and green as sympathy, adaptability
248
or, in its muddiest manifestation, selfishness. These values were
represented most directly by Mondrian in Ei'ohifion (1910—i i), a
triptych showing the awakening of a woman to spiritual
enlightenment in three stages. On the left the woman, whose
abundant hair suggests that she is still close to nature, is painted
in a bluish green which according to the Theosophical chart
signifies ‘religious feeling tinged with fear’. The ffowers which
ffank her head are the turbid ochery red of anger or sensuality
and their centres the black of malice. In the second stage, on the
far right, her body has become a bluish violet, perhaps the
purple of ‘devotion mixed with affection’; her hair is more
restrained and the flowers have become six-point stars, white in
their triangular centres, then pale yellow, then darker yellow
(‘strong intellect’), then a palish blue-green. The yellow stars are
evidence of ‘an attempt to attain an intellectual conception of
cosmic order’.*** In the final stage, the elevated centrepiece of
the triptych, the initiate has opened her eyes which, like her
bociy, are a bright blue; her hair is a set of luminous triangles and
the ffowers are now white triangles on white circles against a
bright yellow ground: she is like Theoclea, priestess of Delphi in
one of Mondrian’s favourite Theosophical texts, Edouard
Schure’s Les Grands InitiL<: {The Great Initiates, 1889), who, in the
presence of Pythagoras, was
visibly becoming transformed beneath the thought and will of the
master as by a slow incantation. Standing in the midst of the
astonished elders, she untied her raven-black locks and thrust them
back from her head as though she felt flames of fire playing in and
about them. Her eyes, transfigured and wide open, seemed to
behold the solar and planetary gods in their radiant glowing orbs.*^
This was Mondrian’s most explicitly theosophical painting. It
was also the last occasion when he seems to have believed that
women were capable of spirituality: in his later thought -
probably under the influence of Italian Futurism — the female
was essentially the tragic, sensual, natural element in the world
order which must be brought into balance by the intellectual
and spiritual activity of the male. Nevertheless, her character¬
istic red played a major role in a group of his paintings around
1921 and again around 1930.
Mondrian soon became disenchanted with the ‘astral colours’
of Theosophy because they were not ‘real’-** but Schure had
offered him a far more manageable set than Besant and
Leadbeater. Just as the alchemists of the later Middle Ages had
drawn on the Christian myths to lend plausibility to their ideas,
so the Theosophists of the nineteenth century looked to the
natural sciences for confirmation of their own conceptions of
matter and often found just what they were seeking. The early
nineteenth-century industrial chemist K. L. Reichenbach, for
example, had conducted experiments with sensitive subjects —
mainly women — which showed him that they were able to see
magnetic forces in perfect darkness and that these forces
were manifested as red, yellow and blue lights, sometimes
undulating with a vibratory movement.-* Red, yellow and
blue were, of course, still the most widely accepted set of
primary colours; Mondrian made them, in a very desaturated
form, the basis of a number of his Cubist compositions of
1914, planned and sometimes executed in Paris, notably Oval
Goniposition.
 -urn

Primary colour

f ''i yjsi

200

Colour theory began to assume the

imperative tone ot'an idealogy among some
early modernists. Yet even within the Dutch
De Stijl group, whose members were
especially concerned with 'primary’ colour
around 1920, there was no firm consensus on
what it might be. Rietveld (199) opted for red,
yellow, blue, thinking that this triad was the
basis of colour-vision; Mondrian (201), under
the inritience of Ostwald (pi. 20s), felt the
need tor green, which he sometimes elided
with yellow, while Vantongerloo in this
triptych (200) chose to use a quasi-Newtonian
spectral series.

199 Ci HKi i RiiTVia n. Kc(/-h/nc C/i.nr, f. 1923

(painted version)
200 ('iioiun s V.^NiONCi HI 00. I'ripiicih ('I riptych). 1921

201 I’ll ! Mo.N'nKi.\N. (Jonipositioii f.’, 1920

201

^49
 Colour as system

202 Illustration of‘him color’, from josef Albers,

Iiiteracliou of Color. 1963 (XVII—i)
203 Advancing and Retiring Colors, from Emily C.
Noyes Vanderpoel, Color Problems. A Practical
Manual . . . , 1902
204 Goethe-triangle, Barry Schactman and
Rackstravv Downes after Carry van Biema, trom
Josef Albers, Interaction of Color. 1963 (XXIV-i)
205 Wilhelm Ostwald, Section through the colour-

solid, fromjosef Albers, Interaction of Color, German

cd. 1973 (XXIV-2)
206 Josef Albers, Homage to the Square. 1950

202 203

Ostwald’s colour-solid (205) was one of the One of these (202) deals with ‘film-color’ (a
first diagrams to emphasize the material, term for transparency adopted by D. Katz in
repeatable quality of the coloured units, The World of Colour, 1930) while the other
thereby suggesting they might be copied and (204),a triangle, embodies the expressive
used directly by painters and designers. He colour chords which Albers attributed to
cut out the units trom coloured paper, a Goethe. Albers’s long series of paintings
method of colour-experimentation taken up Homage to (he Square (206) was basecJ on these
by Josef Albers, who published silkscrecn school-exercises, but goes far beyond mere
reproductions of cut-paper arrangements textbook illustration (203) in creating colour
made mainly by his students. dynamics through spatial articulation.

204

Farbton 1 Farbton 13

c c

e e

205
207
 2o8

Decoration and
expression

Early abstract painters were particularly 207 (u.woMo Iriikscciit

coiieerned to increase the expressive, as against Iiitcrpcnciriiiioiis \’o. i j. lyia

the merely decorative qualities ofcolour. 208 Rohf ki I )i I .m'n.w.

Moon, Siinulitiiic I. lyi t
Balia's experiments with the dynamics of
209 SoNi.\ l)i 1 ,^L■N.■\Y. Potiliworh
etilour contrast were, however, themselves coi’crlci, 1911
conducted in the context ol a commission tor
interior decoration (207). Sonia ndaunay's
applied arts, such as this bedspread for her son
(209), had a decisive impact on her own
painting as well as that of her husband Robert
1 )elaunay — characterized as Sitnultaiic because
of the central importance of simultaneous
contrasts ot ctilour. Robert nelaunay’s Disc
series of 1913, however (208), uses descriptive
forms tor sun and moon, showing that at this
stage he was still interested in the expressive
power of the subject, rather than depending
solely on colour. 209

2S3
The materiality of colour

210 Helen Frankenthaler,

Mountains and Sea, 1952

211 Morris Louis, Golden Age, 1959

212 Mark Rothko, Orange Yellow

Orange, 1969

210

American painters in the 1950s were

particularly anxious to explore new technical
possibilities. Helen Frankenthaler used thin oil
paints on unprimed duck (210), and stimulated
Morris Louis (211) and Kenneth Noland (213)
to find synthetic (acrylic) staining colours
which would work better with this
transparent technique on a large scale, Rothko
(212) also experimented with degrees of
transparency, using unpredictable mixtures of
oil, thinners and egg tempera, which have
sometimes led to a rapid deterioration in his
paintings.

211
^54
The shape of colour

Noland and Davis both followed Albers (pi. 206) in searching for a
■neutral' form which would allow their colour free rein. They telt
they had found it in stripe painting, a type ot abstraction widely-
practised in the 1960s. Yet the regular repeats anci hard edges ot this
motif inevitably affect our perception ot the colours by simultaneous
and successive contrast; and this ultimate colouristic style ot painting
shows us that, as in the past, colour and form are inseparable.

His iiitcrost in this set was strengthened when, having
returned to Flolland during the Cireat War, he wtirked at the
village ot Laren near Amsterdam and met a former I'heoso-
phist, M. H. 1. Schoemmaekers, and the painter Bart van der Leek.
.Schoenmaekers, an ex-priest, was promoting a movement he
called Clhristosophie; he had already published Mciisili cii
Xatiiur: ecu inystiichc Lcvctishcschoiiu’iny {.Man and Xatnic: a
.Mystical (Hantcniplation. 1913), which included a table of cosmic
movements presenting man as the vertical and architectural and
woman as the horizontal and musical.-’ He was now engaged
on a book, [let Xicnii’c Wcrcldhccid {The .Wne World I))iayc,
1915), which sought to reconcile positivism and mysticism in a
way particularly congenial to Mondrian. In it he argtied that
red, yellow and blue were the only colours, since all the others
derived from them. Yellow was the vertical movement of the
light-ray itself: it was expansive and moved towards the
spectator, aspiring to be the middle point of spatial movement.
Blue was the opposite colour to yellow, soft, supple and
retiring, horizontal like the firmament. Red was the uniting of
yellow and blue in an ‘inner’ way, unlike their common
mixture, which produced green. Bure red had the radial
movement of life, visual art and volume: it did not jump
forward but hovered —like Mondrian’s 1907 Red C/eud—before
the horizontal blue expanse. The joy of colour was the joy of
mankind striving towards higher things, the light in which all
colour is contained.’-^ Although Schoenmaekers mentioned
that he found Goethe’s ideas ‘rather vague’, his debt to them is
clear. Mondrian, who quoted Schoenmaekers’s Xew World
Inuji^e in his own pamphlet of 1920, ‘Die Nietiwe Bedding 111 de
Schilderkunst’ (Neo-Blasticism in Fainting), also noted
Goethe’s view that ‘colour is troubled light’.
He wrote:
Reduction to primary colour leads to the visual internalization of
the material, to a purer manifestation of light. The material, the
corporeal (through its surfaces) causes us to see colourless sunlight as
natural colour. Colour then arises from //y’/if as well as from the
surface, the material. Thus natural colour is iinvardness (light) in its
most outward manifestation. Reducing natural colour to primary
colour changes the most outward manifestation of colour back to
the most inward. If, of the three primary colours, yellow and blue
are the most inward, if red (the union of blue and yellow — see Dr
11. fs’/rl Schoenmaekers, The Neie World Imayie) is more outward,
then a painting in yellow and blue alone would be more inward
than a composition in the three primary colours.
He was here modifying Schoenmaekers’s Goethean view of red
as the supreme colour in the light of his earlier Theosophical
experience; in due course they fell out and he was soon to claim
that the Dutch Christosophist was far less important to him than
the founder of the Theosophical Society, Madame Blavatsky.^'’
In 1916 Mondrian’s belief in the primacy of red, yellow and
blue was strengthened by his meeting with Bart van der Leek,
who had a background in the applied arts and also believed that
these were the colours expressive of light.Early that year van
der Leek had begun to reduce his palette to the three saturated
primaries plus black and white; under the influence of
Mondrian’s ‘plus and minus’ paintings of 1915, he decomposed
his flat figures into groups of coloured lines, calling them simply
( ()1 < il H U n H( )l I III! t >K^
‘compositions'.-’^ .Mondrian and van der Leek were \ er\ > lose at
this time but that the older painter did not .it once .idopt the
younger’s ‘pure' primaries was .ihnost cert.unK due to the
arrival in Holland, .md in this circle, of .mother impressne
approach to the question of primar\' colour, th.it of Gstw ald.
I he I-arhentihel of Gstw .ild seems to h.i\ e been introduced to
the I )e Stijl circle by the 1 lungarian p.unter .md designer X'lhnos
Husz.ir. 1 le gat e it an appreciative review in tlie )ournal De .'stnl
in August 191S, arguing that at last an objectwe w.iv of
checking subjecti\-e colour-nnpressions had been found and that
the geometry of formal design could now be m.itched bv a
geometry of colour.-'* In his article Husz.ir published a Dutch
version of Gstwald's ctilotir circle of a hundred hues but it is not
clear whether this came from a Dutch edition: his ciwn cops w as
the second German edition of 1917. It is unhkelv that Husz.ir
had encountered Gstwald's work before the eiul of that s ear: a
letter of September outlining a simple theors' of three primaries
and three secondaries, plus black and sshite, sliosss no sign of its
impact.-*^ But a number of works of 191S, noss knosvn onls' in
photographs, suggest that the painter had by then discovered
the Cierman theorist and was anxious tti put his ideas into
practice. Tsvo compositions svith colour-planes, ^
Klank+ — n\et '/Avart {Colonr-chord nnth } 'I'ones+ = ^ I'oties
until Black) and 4 Klank {Colour-chord with 4 I'ones). have titles
including terms derived from Ostsvald, and the colour-circle in
Htiszar’s copy of Die Tarhenfihel has a nuweable equilateral
triangle improvised by him svhich allosved him to plot the
triads of ‘harmonious’ hues.-’” The Colour-chord with 4 Tones
would presumably have gis'en him the opportunity to include
four primaries, for Ostwald was a follcnver of Hering and gave
an unusually large place to green in his system, although this was
hardly appreciable in his very simplified circle of 1916. '' More
significant was Htiszar’s experimentation with grey, since
Gstwald’s single most important contribution to the theory of
colour was his notion of grey as a colour and of the grey content
of all colours, which guaranteed their harmonious juxtapo¬
sition. In 191S Hiiszar painted a composition entirely in grey
planes.-^- To judge from the photograph, one of the lost
paintings of 1918 seems to be made up of more than a hundred
small rectangles of colour applied to the picture-surface rather as
Ostw'ald applied rectangles of tinted paper to his diagrams.
Even if it w-as not made in this way, it seems to give clear
evidence that a new, systematic type of colour-plane painting
was being made possible by the publication of a colour-theory
for artists of a wholly new order of subtlety.
Ostwxild became something of a cult-figure in De Stijl: the
journal announced his new publications and promised (but
failed) to review them,'’'^ although in 1920 it did reprint an
article on colour-harmony in which he announced that he had
constructed a colour-organ.'^^ But what eflect did his ideas have
on the most considerable of the De Stijl painters, Fiet Mon¬
drian? As usual, it is not easy to say.
On the face of it, Mondrian’s handling of colour in 1917 and
1918 shows some striking parallels with Gstwald’s doctrines. 1 le
was mixing a good deal of white with his three ‘primary’
colours in the earliest of his colour-plane paintings, in order to
unite them tonally and, it seems, to keep them as closely tied as
possible to the plane of the picture. These paintings were
^S7
C I )| ( )L R V\ iTHOr [ miORY
The grid {harrowed tVoin expcniiicnt.il psychology) became widely interest¬
ing to non-representational artists around 1920, and Vilmos
Coinpositioii, 191R, IS one of the earliest to be based on it. The painting is
known only from this black and white photograph, but it appears to be made
of cut-out rectangles glued to a backing, the same technique Ostwald used to
prepare his colour scales (see pi. 205). (215)
themselves, in their use ot large rectangles and, most important,
in their, for Mondrian, quite novel asymmetry, very close to
Huszar's experiments in these years.Yet the two artists do not
seem to have had any direct contact until June 1918, when
1 luszar visited Mondrian, who was surprised to find how close
their approaches were.-^^ In 1918 Mondrian had also begun a
series ot grey paintings, notably Lozenge with Grey Lines, and he
continued to use grey as a prominent ‘colour’ until the mid-
1920S, including many different values of it in his early Neo-
Flastic compositions. In his discussion of colour in De Stijl in
1918, he somewhat eccentrically regarded grey as part of his
basic set of six colours since, ‘just as yellow, blue and red can be
mixed with white and remain basic colour, so can black’ — a view
which simply reviveci but did not solve the ancient problem of
what to do with the non-chromatic colours.His argument in
favour of very desaturated primaries owed nothing to Ostwald:
defending these pale colours against van Doesburg’s criticisms
early in 1919, Mondrian argued that they were close to nature
because the time was not yet ripe for full primary statements: ‘I
use those mute colours for the time being, adjusting to present-day
surroundings and the world; this does not mean that I would not
prefer a pure colour.
Mondrian's detailed knowledge of Ostwald must remain
doubtful; he had not read Huszar’s review by September 1918,
although the Hungarian had assured him that Ins (Mondrian’s)
258
painting accorded with Ostwald’s principles. Mondrian told
van Doesburg that ‘one day’ he would read it hut, although we
know he discussed Ostwald’s ideas of harmony with the
sculptor-painter Georges Vantongerloo in Fans in 1920, it is by
no means certain how much he really knew.'*'* Two paintings of
1919, Composition: Cheqiierhoard, Light Colours and Composition:
Cheejnerboard, Dark Colours, do however suggest a strong
influence from the colour theorist. Each painting has a rectan¬
gular grid of 256 squares filled with an irregular arrangement of
colours: in the first, pale primaries plus several greys and m the
second blue, a rather bluish red and a hot orange which
Mondrian described m the 1920.S as ‘old gold’."'’ The regular
grid was a figure which had been introduced into the repertory
of ‘Gestalt’ studies in 1900 by the Berlin psychologist F.
Schumann;*^- it betrays a clear interest in system and we might
almost imagine that Mondrian chose his values in these cases
from the upper and lower cones of Ostwald’s colour-solid. 20p
Ferhaps the best evidence that Mondrian felt obliged to come
to terms with the Ostwaldian ideas circulating among the
members of De Stijl around 1920 was his attitude to green.
Green, with its indissoluble association with nature, came to be
anathema to him, as it was already to Kandinsky; there are many
anecdotes of the Dutch painter’s manoeuverings to avoid
having to look out of the window at fields or trees.Yet in a
number of paintings of this date he used a distinctly greenish
yellow or even an apple-green as his third primary, as if he 201
wanted somehow to accommodate Ostwald’s primary yellow
Iduszar’s
and green. We have seen that since Antiquity yellow and green
had rarely been clearly distinguished; the psychological techni¬
ques of Mondrian’s own day had also uncovered marked
confusions of interpretation in this area of the spectrum.
Mondrian’s notion of primariness was as fluid as his notion of
opposites: as late as 1919 he was still able to describe a lozenge
painting (now lost) as ‘ochre and grey’."^^ Not until the 1920s
did he seek a categorically ‘pure’ red, and found, as had so many
painters before him, that he could only achieve his aim by
glazing a bluish transparent pigment such as crimson over an
opaque orange-red, such as vermilion.
Although the idea of the primaries was so prominent in De
Stijl, in this as in so much else there was little agreement among
the individuals as to the meaning of the term. We have seen that
both Mondrian and van der Leek thought of the primaries as
three and that they were, in some sense, the constituents of light;
we have also seen that Huszar moved, after reading Ostwald,
from a three-colour to an infinite number theory. When van
Doesburg reaci his copy of the Farbenfibel he noted in the margin
that Ostwald’s four colours were ‘Rubbish’, since m fact there
were only three primary, three secondary and three non¬
colours. In spite of the more economical scheme, without
secondaries, which he presented in his Bauhaus Book, Gritndbeg-
riffe der neiien gestaltenden Kiinst {Principles of Neo-Plastic Art,
1925), he continued to use all nine, both in his painting and
decorative work, until his death in 193 The member of the
group who perhaps more than any other defined its ethos was
the furniture-designer and architect Gerrit Rictveld, who
provided its icon, the Red-Blue Chair. Coming as he did from a 199
craft tradition of furniture making, he was equally undoctrin¬
aire about colour. His painted furniture started with nursery

pieces and the priinary-ccdoured version of his chair (still
sometimes attributed to the early years of De Sti)l) does not
seem to have been conceived until the time he was working; on
the Schroder House at Utrecht in 1923 or 1924H” More
importantly perhaps. Rietveld's developing view of the funda¬
mental character of the three primaries red, yellow and blue,
was based on the quite mistaken idea that three receptors 111 the
retina are severally sensitive to each of these coloursH'^ Thev
thus represented for him the structure of colour-vision.
The most e.xtravagant of all the 1 )e Stijl theories of colour
was that promoted by the Belgian Vantongerloo, about whom
Mondrian wrote to van Doesburg from Paris in September
i<;20:
he has invented an entire system based on the eternity, or rather the
unity ot the seven colours and the seven tonesl ! ! As you know, he
uses all seven eit them, tor goodness sake, just like the rainbow.
With his Belgian intellect he has created an operative system which,
as I see it, is based on nature. He hasn't the faintest idea of the
dirterence between the tnanner oj iialtirc and the manner of an . .
1 )uring the period of his early contact with De Stijl, about k; i S,
Vantongerloo had adopted the canonical three-coknir primary
palette-’’* but during 1920 he had developed a neo-Newtonian
theory of harmony (of which a symptom is the description of
the purple in Triptiek as ‘indigo-violet’), which demanded the
lull gamut of prismatic hues. He seems to have believed that
harmony could be achieved by mixing the precise tones and
proportions of the prismatic colours to a neutral grey on a
spinning disc; it was this which led him to reject Ostwald’s non-
empirical system of establishing the grey content of his hues. -’’-
In an article ot 1920 Vantongerloo set out his theory of the
‘absolute spectrum’ {le spectre de I'ahsolu) of light as one stage in
the tinified spectrum of vibratory phenomena, through sound,
heat, light and ‘chemical rays’. Red was the first stage of the
spectrum ot colour, coming immediately after heat, whose
vibrations were of a lower frequency; then came blue, then
yellow, then indigo-violet, orange, green-blue, blue-indigo,
violet, green and indigo, ‘the seven (i-ir] colours ot the rainbow’.
‘The scientific knowledge ot colour’, said Vantongerloo,
‘allows the artist to manitest the ideas ot art by means ot a pure
plasticism quite ditferent from the preceding plasticisin’ and it
allowed him to remain within the domain of colour without
introducing anything of‘nature’.-’’-* Vantongerloo certainly had
a non-Newtonian conception of three-dimensional colour-
space, for he argued that the artist could work with the scale of a
single colour, such as that from red to s iolet,-’’'* and in a later
essay he gave an account of his painting C^ompositioii in Indippi-
I'iolet (1921) in which the coloured planes were balanced
mathematically to form a unity.*’-’’ In concluding his manifesto
of 1920, he admitted disarmingly, ‘1 know no philosophy and
am totally ignorant of science but I do know that art is a product
of two processes, of which the one is philosophical: speculation,
and the other scientific: empiricism.’’’^ Yet he was mathematical
enough to supply seven pages ot equations suficiently abstruse, I
suspect, to have exhausted the capacities of most of his painter-
readers.*’^ They remind us that at exactly the same time the very
numerate lecttires on light and colour by Seurat’s former triend
Cdiarles Henry, now I )irector of the Laboratory ot the
( ( I| < II K \\ I UK H I I Ml 1 in'!
Physiology ot Sensations at the Sorbonne. w ere being presented
to a painterly .ind architectural re.uierslnp b\ Le Uorbusiet's
group. L'L.spnt Noiueau.’*’' Cde.irK artists m the new .ige ot
technology were exjsecteil to .ibsorb .iiul use ,111 uiqire-
cedentedly large bod\ ot colour-intorm.ition in m.ithe-
niatical terms, .md \ ery few w ere .ible to do so.
Mondrian, in his utoi-ii.in w.iy. when he first eneountered
Vantongerloo s ideas e.irly in ii;20 w ,is less perturbed th.m. ,is
we have seen, he subsequently became. .‘\s he wrote to win
Doesburg: 'I find his use ot' purple ,ind the ^ colours .1 bit
premature: perhaps later th.it c.in be done. In theors. it e.m be
detended, it e\en seems to be better.''"' But he w .is pu//led b\
the inconsistencies in V.uitongerloo's attitude: it h.irmoiu
depended upc-in a balance ot all the se\ en spectr.il colours, how
could Vantongerloo refrain from using all of them in all his
paintings, tor example in I'ripiiek, where according to an JiU'
annotated drawing the now s ellow ish colour w .is origin.illy
‘orange’.*’" In the circle of these early constructwists. .is .imoiig
the members ot the Blaue Reiter, w-e are made acuteR- aware
that a belief in universality based upon standardization and its
technology w-as still no more than an aspiration. .'\s 1 liisz.ir had
w ritten in his article on Ostwald, 'Nothing is more sub)eeti\-e
than the reaction to colour, vs hich depends on the nature of the
individual.’*’'
Colour at the Baiiliaus
As we might have expected, Ostwald’s wcirk plaved an e\en
more central role in the colour-culture ot modernist (lernianv.
His key position in the Werkbund and his several wartime
publications gave him a high public profile; he organized the
first ot the still-running (iernian Day-Oonferences on Uolour
within the framework of the Werkbund conference at Stuttgart
in September 1919. The occasion was remarkable for the bitter
debate which developed between Ostwald and his supporters
and a group of artists led by the Stuttgart painter and teacher
Adolf Hoelzel, who had been one of the earliest non-
representational painters in ('lermany. In a lecture to this
conference. Hoelzel stated that he used some fifteen theories of
colour in his teaching, including those of Cdievretil. 1 lelmholtz,
von Bezold, Rood, Briicke and Ostw ald himself, all of them
rew-orked theoretically and practically for the benefit of artists.
Ostw ald’s recommendation that hues should be tempered with
white, for example, might well suit gotiache and pastel but
could hardly be used, as Rubens had shown, in oil or tempera.
Ooethe, said Hoelzel, was the most comprehensive guide, since
his system w as based c-in polarity, as was Hoelzel’s ow n. w hich
posited seven types of contrast, of which complementarity was
the most important for establishing harmony. Although hi^
scheme of complementaries drew on both von Bezold and
Ostw ald, I loelzel argued that the eye must be final arbiter and
art and science could never be equal partners in the study ot
colour. Even Ostwald’s own lecture at the conterence had
show n, he said, that context and lighting played .1 decisis e role
which his system did not take into account.*’- fairther, in an
essay reviewing the controversy 1 loelzel argued that the
instability ot colour-values in sarious concrete situations,
modified by the activity of the eye, was one reason w hv the art
 coi ()i;r wi iHOUi rmoRV
tif children and primitive peoples otten seemed so much more
onp;inal and harmonious than the calculated harmonies ot the
scientists/’-^ A group of artists and art-historians around Httelzel
on this occasion petitioned all the (lerman ministries of
education to prohibit the use ot C^stwald s system and it was
indeed banned in Prussia.'’’^
1 loelzel’s subjectivist views might well have had little
influence on the larger course of colour-study outside his
immediate circle had not a number of his pupils become
students and teachers at the new Cierman institute tor the
teaching of architecture and design, the Bauhaus, which had
been set up in Weimar in spring 19ly. The Bauhaus was formed
bv amaltramatimr the Weimar Hochschule tiir bildende Kunst
(Academy of Art) and the Kunstgewcrbcschule (School ot
Applied Arts), the latter of which had long been directed by the
distinguished Belgian painter and designer Henry van de Velde.
Van de Velde, who in the iSSos and 90s had been a Neo-
Impressionist painter ot some note, had cieveloped at Weimar
what he called ‘the iron discipline of rational design’, arising
from ‘artistic laws’ including those of colour as expounded by
Chevreul, Rood. Maxwell and Charles Henry.He organized
the programme of the Kunsgewerbeschule in ‘workshops and
laboratories’, entrusting the teaching of colour-theory and
ornament, characteristicallv, to a female assistant. We do not
know whether any colour-theory was taught at the Weimar
Academy under the painter Fritz Mackesen but Hoelzel at least,
in the tradition of Blanc, made no distinction between the
theory as applied to the fine and the decorative arts.^*’ His pupil
Itten carried this attitude into the Bauhaus, where he became
one of the first appointees in the summer of lyiy.
The founding-director of the Bauhaus, the architect Walter
Gropius, had met Itten in Vienna, where after leaving the
Hoelzel school in Stuttgart he had opened his own school
during the war. Itten now has the reputation of being a mystic —
as indeed he seems to have been - and the chief representative of
that ‘Expressionist’ phase ot the early Bauhaus which gave way
to a more ‘Constructivist’ orientation after his departure in
1923. But this IS to underestimate his efforts to discover - in the
wake of Hoelzel - the basic formal vocabulary of art, parti¬
cularly the grammar ot colour, which must have suggested to
Gropius that he was just the sort of‘radical artist’ he needed for
his new institution.^^ Itten’s fundamental belief in the harmony
ot contrasts derived directly from the seven-told contrasts ot
Hoelzel’s theory, but he added to it an interest in the colour-
sphere ot Rtinge, whose scheme was the basis of his own twelve-
isg point colour-star.^^ Runge was also revived at the Bauhaus by
another teacher who had been a pupil of Hcielzel, the painter,
sculptor and theatre-designer Oskar Schlemmer, and by Klee,
both of whom joined the staff in 1920.^^ Both Itten and Klee
were hostile to the new colour-system of Ostwald.’^°
As well as trying to attract strong artistic personalities of the
avant-garde, Gropius was clearly concerned to find artists who
hati already shown their capacities as teachers; in adciition to
Itten, two ot his early appointees, the painter Georg Mtiche and
Klee himselt, had worked briefly during the War at the Berlin
school run by Herwarth Walden, the proprietor of the Sturm
gallery and its journal, at this time the chief platform for
German Expressionism.'^^ But in spite of, perhaps because of.
260
the importance of the individual Bauhaus artists, it remains very
difficult to discover what precisely was taught at the new
institution and to whom. It seems that Itten’s chief function was
to devise and teach the Breliminary Course {Vorichre), the most
original and most influential of the Bauhaus’s innovations,
which was to become obligatory for all students, no matter
what their workshop specialization came to be. Although it
bore the stamp of Itteu’s course at Vienna and, of course, of
Hoelzel’s teaching, the I ’orlchrc seems to have been evolved
during 1920: it was first mentioned at a meeting ot masters and
students in October that year^“ and it first appeared as
obligatory in the Brospecttis ot January 1921. Here, however, it
was described as a course in form and materials only; the
physical and chemical theory of colour, ‘in connection with
rationalized methods of painting’, was mentioned only under
‘supplementary subjects ot instruction’.^-^ Itten appears to have
occupied himself mainly with the study of materials and with
drawing, while colour was handled by his assistant Fiirschfeld-
Mack, the first graduate of the Bauhaus, who had also been a
Hoelzel pupil {see Chapter 13). Hirschfeld-Mack was chiefly
concerned with colour-scales and contrast, using among other
things the e.xercises with cut paper which were to have such an
important effect on the teaching methods ot Joset Albers.But
it is very diflicult to distinguish material trom the I 'orlehre from
later work: one of Mack’s collage demonstrations ot colour-
form co-ordinates, dated 1922, for example, was apparently
made in Kandinsky’s Farbseminar for more advanced students.
Having completed the I 'orlehre, Bauhaus students proceeded to
the various workshops, where Itten, for example, was ‘torm-
master’ for sculpture, metal, wall-painting, joinery, glass and
weaving (but it is still uncertain precisely what sort ot
theoretical teaching he undertook in these contexts).
A similar uncertainty surrounds Klee’s teaching on colour.
His first lecture-senes, ‘Beitrage zur bildnerische Formlehre’
(Contributions to the Theory of Plastic Form), was given in the
winter of 1921/2 and did not include any discussion ot colour.
An expanded series m 1922/3 included two lectures dealing
chiefly with colour-dynamics, briefly mentioning the theories
of Goethe, Runge, Delacroix anci Kandinsky. Klee was at this
time form-master in the glass workshop (perhaps occasionally
in the book-bindery as well) but the only reference in these
lectures to the main work of the Bauhaus is to interior
decoration. Here he argued for rooms painted successively in
various tones of the complementary pairs, in order to achieve a
‘totality’ throughout the whole suite —an idea remarkably close
to Goethe’s decoration of his house at Weimar with a series ot
successively colotireci interiors arranged according to comple¬
mentary contrast.At Dessau, where the Bauhaus moved in
1925, Klee taught these colour topics as part of a Basic Course
{Gniiuilehrc) which seems to have been distinct trom the
Wirlehre and which by 1928 at least was being given in the
weaving-workshop where Klee was form-master.'^* Klee and
Kandinsky were at last able to introduce a programme of
imaginative painting classes at Dessau, a move very much
against the gram of the original Bauhaus idea; it may well have
been in the context of these classes that their ideas about colour
were given their fullest rein.
Kandinsky was probably the Bauhaus master most consist-
 ( ■ M ( U K \\ II H( )l I I IIH iK'i

ciitly involved in tliv tcMching ot\olour. 1 le ..line to tin- n Inn-.l

in 19--. Inning .ilrc.idy vl.ibor.uotl .1 detailvil progr.nnnn oi
instriKtion tor the reformed .Moscow Institute .-Xitistn
Cdiltnre (Inkluik! .ifter the Resolution of loi'. I his pr.i-
gr.nnine g.n e .1 \ ery pronnnent pl.u e ti' ^ oloin whu h.
.leeording tei Kandinsky, must be iinestig.itesl in the ^oiite.xt ot
physics, physiology, medicine ■ iiphth.ihnologv, Jiroiinnhe-
rapy, psychiatry 1, ,is w ell .is ‘the sciences ot the occult, w here w e
can find many \ ahnible gtiulehnes in the context ot'siipersensors
experiences 1 he reterence to the occult w ,is drtipped .it the
Bauhaus and Kaiuhiisks's r.ither sh.iks gr.np ot the plnsu's ot
ctdoiir siiggesteii by his contusion ot .ulditn e .iiul siibtr.ictne
Speaa/Jtdt (Beruf). mixture in the Moscow prtigr.imme w.is nuich improved. 1 le
Gesch/echf: des eloped his Banlniiis 'C ioloiir-C ioiirse .md .Seiminir in the
context tit the wall-painting workshop, which he took t>\er
/liationalifat:
trom Schlemmer on his arrn al in 1922. I lere, as he put it in .1
DieUi'erksfaft fur Hbndma/eret im Sfuaf/ichen Bauhavs protocol ot 1924, colour, as physical .ind cheinic.il snbst.mce and
U^mar birr at zu arpenmeniei/en Zurecken der Hr'erkit-otf as psychological eflect, was the sole ‘materiar of practice.'"' In
um Seanttuorrung der folgenden frvgen.
an essay tor the catalogue tif the B.inhaits nxhibition ot' 1923
/ Died aufgezeichneren firmenmir3Zart>enauszufu/ken- Kandinsky stressed again that colour iiuist be examined trom
ffe/b, rod a, blau undzwar su. daft eJreform eon eJner
farbe iroilsrdndig auigefuHi >vird:
the points ot view of physics, cheniistr\-, phvsiologv and
psychology;'^' it was the last of these aspects, which, as we s.iw,
2 Wenn mog/ic/i erne Begrundung d/eser derteikrng zu geben
had intormed Kandinsky’s study tit ctiloiir trtiin his Munich
years before the War, that prtivided his most original ctintri-
Begriindung: 'iSv--^^n.fi
bution tti the subject at the Bauhaus.
nr r It I A-Jr^ y t n yV-, /dr*
Already in Moscow Kandinsky had taken over the idea of the
' ' 'vV-t t « < 'M(r rrr t /t , ■• *//«
< t»• < t
r( e Ctt.,. -fr-Au ,\ Jfnucitc*. .'
questionnaire trtiin the experimental psycholtigists; he had
issued tor Inkhuk in 1920 a lengthy list of twenty-eight
/ I'i ^ ^-nri, Ar n ; /«. /y -A questions aiming to discover ‘the root tif a general law’, whith
included much on responses to colour: ‘which colour is most
similar to the singing of a canary, the mooing of a ctiw, the
whistle ot the wind, a whip, a man, talent; to a storm, to
repulsion, etc.? Can you express through ctilour your feelings
Completed questionnaire for the wall-painting workshop at the Bauhaus, about science and of life etc.?’"- The list also included a question
1923. Alfred Arndt, a student, explains that he has chosen a yellow triangle for about ‘basic’ colours and ‘basic’ shapes, which is what survived
Its Hanie-hke nature, a red square for its solid yet attacking defensiveness, and a in the far shorter but nuire widely distributed questionnaire for
blue circle for its intensely closed, inward-looking quality. (216) the wall-painting workshop at the Bauhaus in 1923. Kandinsky 2/6
had sensed in Munich that yellow was an acute, angular figure,
that blue was deep and centripetal and that red, which could be
either warm or cool, lay somewhere in between.'*-’ These hints
w ere codified in an illustration to the Russian version ot i)\\ the
Spiritual in Art (1914), into an equation betw-een red and the
square, blue as the circle and yellow- as the triangle, w hich had a
profound effect on the Russian investigation t-it colour-torm co¬
ordinates after the Re\-olution.'*'’ But it w-as alsti influential in
Cermany and it may well have been trom his reading ot
Kandinsky’s bot-ik in 1914 that Itten developed his ow n set ot 217
equivalents.'*^ This clearly became part of his Bauhaus teaching:
in 1922 one of his pupils, I'eter Keler, made a painted cradle for
Itten’s son using these correspondences, (iiven that Itten left
under a cloud, as a dangerously irrational personality in the
institution, it is not surprising that Kandinsky should have
attempted to re-establish his scheme on the basis tit a scientitic
Johannes Itten, a former Bauhaus teacher, correlates the primaries as, the experiment. Hirschfeld-Mack recalled that an enormous s.imple
square, red, matter; the triangle, yellow, thought; the circle, transparent blue, of one thousand cards w as sent tnit ‘tti a cross sectuni of the
spirit in eternal motion. The secondaries are shown as, the trapezoid, orange; community’ and that ‘an overw helming majtirity’ opted ttir the
the spherical triangle, green; the ellipse, violet. Itten’s secoiulary forms seem as by now- standard equivalents.'**’ Clarelessly, the results were
eccentric as those of most theorists. (217) never published, and just as in Mosctiw- the painter Liub<iv

261
 COKUiR WriHOUT IHIORY
STUnDEn PLAN FUR VORLEHRE
V O B. n ITTAG
OIEMSTAG MITWOOH 0Onr1EP».STAG
o r-iTA G
8-'?
')-/o \}r\/ E R KARBEIT
GESTALTUMGS
10-1 STUDlEn A U B E R S
II- II nOHOLY
OESrAUuriOSLEHRE
p. E n H AUS
12.-1 REITHAUS form KLEE AKTJAAl
Popova had allocated red to her circle and bine to her square,
so within the Bauhaus there were several divergences ot view.
At a discussion between masters and students Klee remarked
mischievously that at least the yellow egg-yolk was circular.®^
Schlemmcr (who, curiously, had not been sent a questionnaire)
also voiced his dissent to a friend and former kioelzel-pupil Otto
Mayer-Amden:
The consensus, by I do not know how many votes, was: the circle
blue, the square red, the triangle yellow. All the expaerts agree on
the yellow triangle, but not on the others. Instinctively I always
make the circle red and the square blue. I am not quite sure ot
Kandinsky’s explanation, but it goes something like this: the circle
is cosmic, absorbent, teminine, soft; the square is active, masculine.
My contrary contention: a red circular surtacc (a ball) occurs in a
positive sense (actively) in nature: the red sun, the red apple
(orange), the surface of red wine in a glass. I’he square docs not
occur in nature; it is abstract ... or metaphysical, for which blue is
the paroper colour , .. And when ‘neutrals’ tree ot pareconceptions
also decide that red = circle and blue = square, I can only ask: why
do I paaint my circles red? Should I sacritice my instinct to a rational
explanation?*'^
But Kandinsky’s scheme was incorporated not only into the
decoration and catalogue of the Bauhaus Exhibition of 1923 but
also into his Bauhaus Book Piinkt iiiid Linie zit Flachc {Point and
Line to Plane, 1926),^° so that it was a particularly impudent
gesture ot Schlemmer’s to include in his going-away paresent to
Gropaius in 1928, a collage entitled Punkt-linie-ftdche (Kandin¬
sky), the caption ‘the circle is eternally red’.'^'^ When the Swiss
Marxist architect Hannes Meyer came to take over the
directorship of the Bauhaus from CJropius, he singled out these
ideas about colour and form as symptomatic of the unserious¬
ness of even the Dessau period; for Meyer they were no more
than a game, another example of art stifling life.'^^
We cannot be sure which Bauhaus students received the
benefit of Kandinsky’s views on colour. After Itten’s departure
he seems to have taken over the colour element of the I'orlehre: a
18 timetable of 1923 or 1924 shows that he taught it for only one
hour a week, in a class open to all students, including those
already in the workshops.At Dessau, under the direction of
Moholy-Nagy and Albers, colour is said to have disappeared
trom the I 'orlelire altogether‘^'^ but Kandinsky certainly taught a
very extended compulsory course, including colour-theory and
colour-form-theory to students in their first semester there.
And it was at Dessau that he began to introduce the serious
discussion ot (hstwald.
262
FREITAO The timetable ot'the Preliminary Cioiirse at the
SAM STAG
Bauhaus (r. 1924) shows that Kandinsky’s
colour course occupied one liour per week, on
Fridays from 12 noon to i pm. (21S)
GESTALTUMG5-
STUDlEh
MOHOLY
SEjrALTUnOSLEMRE
FARBE' RAnoinvKr REITHAUS
At Weimar, although Gropius — a leading figure in the
Werkbiind since before the War - made a briet reterence to
Ostwald’s (and Runge’s) colour-order system in the catalogue
of the 1923 Exhibition (which apparently showed them side-by-
side in the Bauhaus foyer),his work had hardly been taken on
board. Kandinsky, for example, still used the six-colour
complementary circle favoured by most ot his colleagues.
However, at Dessau Ostw'ald’s presence came to be increasingly
felt, he was invited to lecture in 1927 and his lectures provided a
framework for nest uncritical discussion in Kandinsky’s colour-
course.'^* Ostwalci’s system was advertised in 1928 as torming
the basis of colour-teaching in the course on lettering run by
Joost Schmidt; a version of his twenty-four-part circle hung in
the wall-painting workshop wdaen it was directeef by Hinnerk
Scheper.'^'^ Even Klee was investigating the Ostwaldian ar¬
rangement around 1930^^“ and in 193 i the chemist became one
of the directors of the Gircle of Friends of the Bauhaus.After
the closure ot the Dessau Bauhaus in 1932, its successor, which
opened briefly in Berlin under Mies van der Rohe, also gave a
good deal of attention to colour, including its chemistry and
psychology and even perhaps its ‘psycho-technology’, since
Kandinsky was still professor for ‘artistic design’ as well as ‘free
painting’. But we know nothing of the details.
This outline ot the colour-interests in the Bauhaus is tar trom
comprehensive. In particular I have omitted some of the more
marginal manifestations of Bauhaus colour-ideas, such as the
several theatrical events mounted by Schlemmer, Kurt
Schmidt, Moholy-Nagy and Kanciinsky, and the activities at
Weimar of Gertrud Grunow, wflao arrived in 1921 at the behest
ot Itten to teach a type of eurhythmies which depended on the
unified laws of colour and sound. One of her pupils recalled:
The student had to stand with outstretehed arms, close his eyes, and
concentrate on a colour of the spectrum ‘Don't think about it, feel
it, be permeated by it, eradicate everything else. When yon have it,
then go on to the next colour,’ Miss Grunow claimed to know
intuitively w'hether or not the student had really experienced the
colour. ‘That's not it’, she would cry, ‘do it over again.’ There were
actually some who believed her, just as she probably believed in
herself, but most of ns were sceptical.
I have tried to show that scepticism was not confined to these
more eccentric activities but afl'ected the central teachings of the
institution as well.
At no time, therefore, during the short but tortuous history
ot the Bauhaus, except perhaps at its close, was there a coherent
view ot the nature and tunctioning of colour among its teachers

and most students must have eome a\va\’ \\ ith a verv eonhised
idea ot Us sigmfieanee. Only Kandinskv seems to ha\e been
prepared to take on hoard the most reeent deselopments
eolour-order systems in his research into the psychology of
perception, and even he remained thoroughly eclectic in his
sources, lair his colleagues the systematic study of colour seemed
to have stopped essentially in the mid-nineteenth centurv.
before the complications introduced by 1 lehnholtzian and
Maxwellian science. 1 his lack ot coherence and eclecticism was
to have a protound etlect after the Bauhaus. In the United States,
It atiected the resistance to theory as manifested in the work of
Joset Albers, who had been one ot the longest surviving students
and teachers at the Bauhaus and wlm now sought to replace
theory with a thoroughgoing empiricism.
liiiipiricisiii in Italy and France
In his autobiography, Ustwald described lunv his understand¬
ing of the harmony of colours had come to him while he was
preparing the plates for the I-arhenallas {Ctolour Atlas) of 191S;
the complementary colours ot ec]ual value he now tound
beautiful in themselves, although until that moment he had
considered harmony to reside in the balance of tonal values
alone.Thus even the mathematician showed himself to be an
empiricist and indeed, ever since Uhevreul’s ‘methode a
posteriori', empiricism had been a prominent component ot
scientific colour-theory throughout Europe. It was to become
even more prominent among artists in the twentieth century, as
the scientific approach to colour, with its increasing emphasis on
standardization and quantification, became less and less attrac¬
tive to them. U)ne of the most comprehensive of the early
twentieth-century handbooks for artists was Claetano Previati’s
Principi scientifici del dii’isionisitio {Scientific Principles oj Dinision-
isni, 1906), which, despite its title, was the attempt of a painter to
win back the initiatix'e from the natural scientists.’”® In his
theory of ‘Divisionism’, the Italian version of French Neo-
Impressionism, Previati none the less drew heavily on Rood
and Briicke, who were, indeed, practically the most recent
authorities cited by him, more than thirty years after they
had first been published. The painter felt, predictably, that the
scientists had given tiir too little emphasis to shadow as a
positive element 111 painting. He also made an interesting
distinction between the effects ot successive contrast, created
by the eye’s restless scanning of a scene, which because of the
relative feebleness of means the artist must paint into the
picture, and the effects of siniultaneons contrast, which are
equally powerful in nature and in art.’””
riiis second conclusion was a radical advance on nineteenth-
century attitudes; perhaps the first artist to take it seriously was
the Italian Futurist (uacoino Balia, who had been involved with
Divisionism about 1910-12 and whose Street Lamp, which may
be as late as 1912, was the starting point for a series of colour-
studies for a scheme of decoration painted in Diisseldorf
207 between 1912 and 1914.’”'’' Some thirty studies ot these
‘Iridescent Interpenetrations’ 111 watercolour and in oil have
survived. Fliey show, as Balia himself wrote to his tamily from
C'lermany, the results of ‘an infinity ot tests and re-tests’: an
empirical method which produced an astonishing series ot hard-
( () 1 () I k w 11 n (11 I n n () k '1
edged geometric designs ot .111 unprecedented optu.d .uti\-
ity. But although some of them \\ ere p.uiued in oil on cans .0
and exhibited in 1911. Balia does not seem to h.i\ e s onceu ed 14
them as independent pictures; the\ had \ er\ little etlect on his
later style as ,111 easel p.unter or even on his designs tor
Diaghilec ’s abstr.ict accompaniment to Stra\insk\ s I ireworL:^.
staged in Rome in 191~. fheir optical force, due ti' the
juxtaposition ot repeated hard-edged tornis m contrasting hues,
notably the ■modern' complement.iries blue .uul \ ello\\, w ,is
to be developed onl\' bv the Up artists ot the m/kis.
Previati’s Principi was published in french in 1910' .md \\ ,is
probably noticed soon .itter this by Robert I )el,iun,i\, \\ ho in an
essay on light two years later used the Itali.in term 'du isionniste'
rather than the more usual french ■.Neo-lmpressionniste', or
‘pointilliste . ‘ ' hike B.illa, Delaun.is m,i\ ha\ e dern ed his
interest in using the motit ot the window as a \ehicle tor
e.xploring the eflects ot light and transparenev trom Pres iati. In
a series ot some twenty-two 11'i/k/c'H’.s p.nnted between 191 i and
1913, he moved trom a style using a mosaic ot bright 1\' coloured
touches in a tidied-up I )ivisionist manner (11 indoir on the V’eirii
.Ve. q) to the more broadly modulated. Uubist-like colour
planes, sometimes with sharply juxtaposed edges and much pl.u
with semi-transparent scumbles over .1 light ground or over
other colours.’’ - The dominant colouration of this series is in
contrasts of orange-yellow, purple and blue-green, unusual 139
combinations which suggest a knowledge of Rood’s circle.’’ ’
But as late as the end of 1912 or early 1913 Delaunay was
disinclined to accept the suggestion of Franz Marc that he
workeei in a scientific manner:
I am mad about the forms of colours but I do not look for a
scholastic explanation of them . . . None of the finite sciences have
anything to do with my technique Imet/Vrl of moving towards
light. My only science is choosing among the impressions which
light in the universe offers to my crattsm.mly awareness IcikisTicMCc],
and which I try to group together by giving them an order, and an
adequate life in representation
Delaunay’s rtattening ot the coloured patches in these
paintings, and their heightened contrasts, may well have been
stimulated by the work ot his Russian wife, Stmia I )elaunay-
Terk, w'hose painterly origins in Faindsm had given her a vivid
sense of the behaviour of bright colours even more extensive
than his, schooled as it was in the later traditions ot Neo- 209
Impressionism.’ ’® In 1911 Sonia Delaunay had made a ctillage-
hke patchwork coverlet for their baby, the first ot a series ot
works in paper collage and other media using sharp juxtapo¬
sitions of flat areas of colour. I'he violets, yellows and dull
greens of this textile may be related to the palette ot Robert’s
later Windows but its most imptirtaiu feature is its patchwork ot
forms, which recurs in the later collages ot 1912 and 1913.’’”
Sonia claimed that this coverlet was the start ot a series ot
experiments with a ‘cubist conception’ in t)ther objects ot
applied art and in paintings;’ but she always maintained that
she worked intuitively, and that it was her husband wlm was the
‘scientist’: ‘My life was more physical’, she recalled in 197-''. ‘he
would think a lot, while I would always be painting. We agreed
in many ways, but there was a ttindamental diflerence. 1 lis
attitude was more scientific than mine when it came to pure
263
COLOUR WILHOU F TFFEORY
KEY
I warm u hitc
a Icmoii-ycllow
3 flr'sh pink
4 light pink
> pink
6 cool white
7 light blue
5 sea-blue
9 green-wliite
10 light green
1 he Czech painter Frantisek Kupka made this version ot Newton’s colour
wheel about 1910. He arranges orange, red, purple, violet, indigo, blue, green-
blue, green, yellow-green and yellow, clockwise From the top around the
perimeter, and their modifications circling white at the centre. It was an
interest 111 colour-theory which led him to pioneer the emancipation ot colour
from any descriptive role, possibly inspiring the similar develonient in the
work of Robert Delaunay (pi. 208). Kupka went on to paint a senes ot canvases
with the title 'Discs of Newton’ (now in Pans and Philadelphia). (219)
painting, because he would search for justihcation of
theories.’^*® But it was clearly only a difference of degree and
the concept of simultaneity {sinmltane) which both Robert and
Sonia used to characterize their style of 1912—13 - a concept of
going back, of course, to the ‘simultaneous contrast’ of
Chevreul but now given a more practical inflection in the
context of easel-painting by Previati - was based essentially on
experimentation. In Robert’s work the most conspicuous
example of this is clearly Disc, a painting traditionally given to
1912 and set at the beginning of the series Circular Forms, but
almost certainly to be placed at the end of this series, late in
1913.^^^ Disc IS, 111 fact, the most radical embodiment of a
conception ot colour-movement that Robert was developing in
the summer of 1913; he argued at the time that complementary
contrasts produced slow movements and ‘dissonances’ (colours
close to each other on the diagrammatic circle) fast ones.^^° We
might then imagine that in Disc the radial movement outwards
from the red-blue centre is slow towards the top right, for
example, and faster towards the top left, and that the concentric
movements are also sometimes slow (blue-orange) and some¬
times fast (blue-green). But in the fullest account of this work,
written more than twenty years later, Delaunay described red
and blue together as ‘extra-rapid’, so that it is not at all certain
what scheme of complementarity he had in mind: neither
Chevreul’s nor Rood’s can be 111 question. Indeed, as the
repeated changes in parts of the canvas show. Disc was far from
being a systematic, a priori conception.
Although its radical abstraction has made Disc the most
important ancestor of‘optical’ painting, it does not seem to have
been thought of as an autonomous work of art until Robert
Delaunay exhibited it in 1922. A version was shown at the
Berlin ‘Herbstsalon’ in the autumn of 1913, as a backdrop to a
264
piece of painted sculpture, now destroyed; a very similar
composition was placed among the discs in a large painting,
Hoiiiapii' to Blcriot. exhibited the following year.^^^ In 1912 and
1913 Delaunay was resisting the interpretation ot his paintings
as abstractions by German artists such as Klee: he saw his work
grounded in nature, which is clearly manifested in the ‘repres- 20S
entational’ distinctions made between sun and moon in the Disc
series of 1913.*-'^ The evocation of the intense energy ot the sun
by jagged and fragmented shapes and the introduction of the
dynamic helical form, which was to be developed by Delaunay
in the more truly non-rcpresentational works of the 1920s,
suggest that he had not yet been able to represent, or even
conceive of, movement in terms of ‘pure’ colour. That he had
indeed done so was a myth which, impelled by his own later
commentaries, has continued to shape the understanding of
non-representational colounstic painting until our own times.
EiiipiricisDi as theory
The empirical attitudes and the vagueness or confusion of
theory in Balia and Delaunay was developed 111 the most far-
reaching way by Josef Albers, 111 whose hands empiricism
became itself a theory. Albers had joined the Bauhaus as a
student 111 1920; by 1922 he was working as a journeyman in the
new glass-painting workshop, with Klee as form-master; soon
afterwards he began to teach the practical study of materials on
the I 'orlehre, which, as Professor, he co-ciirected with Moholy-
Nagy on the move to Dessau in 1923. He stayed at the Bauhaus
until It was finally closed in 1933. We saw that colour played
very little part in Albers’s Bauhaus teaching, although he made a
liberal use of it in his glass assemblages at Weimar and at Dessau
111 his flashed and sand-blasted glass panels.It was not, it
seems, until he emigrated to the United States in 1933, to teach
at Black Mountain College m North Carolina, that Albers
began to investigate the properties of colour 111 any systematic
way. His work at Black Mountain was the background to the 206
longest series ot colour-experiments, Floitia^e to the Square,
which began in 1950, the year Albers transferred to Yale
University, and continued until his death 111 1976. This series, 111
Its turn, was to stimulate and shape the most important of his
publications and the most influential as well as the most 202 204
beautiful of modern books on colour. Interaction of Color
(published 111 1963 and in a short paperback version in 1971).
Albers’s approach to colour drew on ideas which had been
presented to him over many years. His preference for working
with cut paper, which ‘being a homogeneous material, permits
us to return to precisely the same tint or shade again and again’,
recalls the collage exercises practised at his earliest art-school in
Bottrup in Germany before the First World War, as well as
Hirschfeld-Mack’s methods at the Bauhaus.The notion of
expressive colour-chords — based on the various groupings of
hues in a nine-part colour-triangle, the first of his systems and 204 20J
theories, which Albers called the ‘Goethe-Triangle’ — derives
through Hirschfeld-Mack from the teaching of Hoelzel.^^^
Most important of all, the sort of psychological texts introduced
by Kandinsky into his courses at the Dessau Bauhaus included,
for example, the problem of the extreme relativity of colour
sensations and the failure of the mind to make correct
 ( <)1 ; )l H \\ 11 H( )l I 1111 ()H'i

judgments about colour, as well as the phenomenologv of

transparency, which increasingly informed Albers's colour-
work in the 1930s and came to play a large part in his book.'
Yet, although Albers claimed that it was his feelinu that
Ostwald's thetiry was inadequate for the artist which led him to
an intensive engagement with colour at Black Mountain
Clollege, so that we might e.xpect that he was determined to
replace it,'’'' in the event he kept theory \erv much at a
distance, writing at the beginning ot' Iiitcraciioii. ‘This book . . .
does not follow an academic conception of "theorv and
practice”. It reverses this order and places practice before
theory, which, after all, is the conclusion of practice.This
conception was very congenial to a tradition of ‘learning bv
doing’ deeply rooted in American educational theory since the
wtirk of Liberty Tadd around lyoo.' "' But the anti-theoretical
stance had also been naturalized in the context of the American
avant-garde by Alfred Stieglitz, who had launched his New
York gallery An American Place in 1929 with something like an
anti-manifesto:

No formal press views

No cocktail parties
No special invitations
No advertising
No institution
No isms
•Vo theories
No games being played
S'othiiii^ asked of anyone who comes
No aiiytliinj^ on the walls except what you see there ...'■"

Such a way of negation became something of a litany for

American modernists after the Second World War and Albers
was prominent among them. In an interview about his Hoiiiai^e
to (he Square in 1950 he protested that he used ‘No smock, no
skylight, no studio, no palette, no easel, no brushes, no medium,
no canvas, no variation 111 texture or uiatiere, no personal
handwriting, no stylization, no tricks, no twinkling of the eyes.
I want to make my work as neutral as possible.’In this
yearning tor neutrality, influential as it became, Albers showed
most clearly how' maciequate his conceptual framework was to
account for the power of his paintings.
It was not simply that his account of Cioethe’s theory, or of
the Weber-Fechner law - that an arithmetical progression in
220 perceptions requires a geometrical progression in the stimuli -
which he illustrated with one of Klee’s most brilliant water¬
colours of 1921, betrayed a rather slight acquaintance with the
literature. After all, he told an interviewer, ‘I don’t care to be
scientific, and explore all the piossibilities’.More important
than this, Albers seems to have believed that the demonstrations
of colour dynamics, both in his paintings and in Interaction of
dolor, functioned independently of form. This is the more sur¬
prising in that his own painting of the 1930s and 40s frequently
used soft contours, quite unlike the hard edges of his later work,
and he must have been aware of the powerful colouristic
211 eflectsin the large-scale and soft-edged pain tings of Mark Rothko
212 and Morris Louis, for example, in the 1950s and early 1960s.
By around 1950 colour had become for Albers what he called
‘autonomic’;he articulated this idea especially in the context
Albers reproduced l^aul Klee's w atercolour l-ruit of 1921 iii liiicriutioii
of Color (1963) to illustrate the Weber-Fechtier law that e<.]ual perceptual steps
must be the result of a getimetrical progression (i .2,4,S...), rather than an
arithmetical progression (1.2,3.4...). (220)
ot Honunre to the Square: ‘For me, cokm is the means ot mv idiom.
It’s automatic. I’m not paying “homage to a square". It's only
the dish I serve my craziness about color in.''-'^ Fhe square was
neutral and in particular static; it had no movement of its own
until it was brought to life by colour.' ’’^ But if we compare
Albers's Iloinaqe format cif nesting squares with a squ.ire 20O
diagram of‘Advancing and Retiring dolours', we can see that 201
the painter has already set up a very pronounced asymmetrical
movement by setting the squares close to each other at the
bottom of his frame; in some cases he even created a much more
traditional sense of perspectival recession by ‘mitering' the
corners.’"' The architect Buckminster Fuller watched Albers’s
class at Black Mountain making exercises w ith ‘squares within
squares’ in 194S and recognized that ‘the \ arying b.iiid widths
were proportional to the magnitude ot any one given color's

265
( 01 ()l R WirH(;UT im ORY
liixtaposituinal properties, as those brought otit certain scientiti-
callv predictable and inttiiti\ ely sensed harinonions ehects.’ But
Albers seems to ha\'e w anted to exclude any sense ot predicta¬
bility, ot'hvpothesis. from his account of the functioning ot this
powerful (h'sr<i/t. ‘ Everything was lett to empirical test.
In this he was followed by one of his most snccesstnl pupils at
Black Mountain. Kenneth Noland, who came in the lyhos to be
an early mi'niber of the group loosely known as the Washington
COMPLEMENTARIES WITH THEIR MIXTURES WHICH ARE DOMINATED BY THEIR PRIMARIES
Jo.set Albers's ‘c.xpressivc colour combinations’ {Interaction of Color, 1963)
divided the 'Goethe Triangle’ (pi. 207) into eight smaller triangles which
could be grouped in various regular ways to demonstrate 'expressive’ colour
chords. (221)
266
Ciolor-Field Painters. Noland sought to distance himself from 21J
Albers, whom he characterized as 'too much a scientist’,'
but he was nevertheless profoundly affected by the Cierman ma,ster's
colour ideas. Like Albers, who as early as 1940 had claimed that
the content of art was 'the performance - how it is done’,
Noland laici his emphasis on process: he and his tnend Morris
Louis in the early lysos 'wanted the appearance to be the result 211
of the process of making it’.'"''* He also hoped to drain his
canvases of anything but colour: 'No graphs, 110 systems, no
modules’, he asserted in 1968, wdaeii the Neo-Constructivist
'systems’ painting and Minimalism were in the asceiiciant, 'No
shaped canvasses. Above all, no no objectii’ciiess. The
thing is to get that color down on the thinnest conceivable
stirhice, a surface sliced into the air as if by a razor. It’s all color
and surface. That’s all.’*'^- Like Albers too, Noland believed
that colour could be released from shape. In 1966 he explained,
'With structural considerations eliminated I could concentrate
on color. I wanted the freedom to exercise the arbitrariness ot
color’ and, a little later, 'Structure is an element protoundly to
be respected, but, too, an engagement with it leaves one in the
backwaters of w'hat are basically cubist concerns. In the best
color painting, structure is nowhere evident, or nowdiere selt-
declaring.’But Noland’s highly determined lozenges, chev¬
rons and, most of all, stripes, of the 1950s and 60s give the lie to
this astonishing version of Albersian renunciation. Stripes, 222
which in the 1960s played a similar role to the cheqtierboard
among abstract painters around 1920, were used in a score of
dift'erent ways by Op artists and Color-Field painters but none
of them can have been unaware of the profound optical effects
to be derived from the bunching of these colourcci strips.
Albers, after all, had demonstrated it in a number of exercises in
Interaction of Color, although he argued for the 'shapelessness’ of
the motif and Noland made the same point when explaining
why he preferred a horizontal format to the vertical of Louis
and others.
Another Washington painter. Gene Davis, who made stripes 214
his own in the late 50s and 60s, felt that they provided 'a simple
matrix to hold the color anci do not distract the eye too much
with formal adventures’.Like Nolanci he distrusted wTat he
saw as Albers’s system-building, arguing that the painting must
grow empirically under the painter’s eye and hand:
I seldom think about color. You might say I take it for granted.
Color theories are boring to me. I’m afraid. In fact, sometimes I
simply use the color I have the most of and then trust to niy instincts
to get out of trouble. I never plan my color more than five stripes
ahead and often I change my mind before I reach the third stripe. 1
like to think that I am somewhat like a jazz musician who does not
read music and plays by ear. I paint by eye ..
We have leapfrogged over the Gestalt investigations into form
and colour in the 1910s and 20s and are back with Matisse in
1908.
 (dll !i i< u 11H!)( I I Ilf > in

The materiiils ofahstractioii

Empiricism was not the only dc\ icc which the coloiir-painters
of the mid-centnry sought to outlEinls the complexities and
contradictions of modern theories ot' colour. One of' the
hallmarks ot Albers's art was its meticulous attention to
technique: towards the end of the 1940s in the 1 '.irni/it senes, and
111 //d/ihujc to the Si]uarc in the follow iiig decades, he 111.ide a
practice of recording the precise identity of the pigments
employed, as well as the principles offorni.il construction, on
the hack ot each support. ‘■*1 le came to regard any mixtures as
destructive ot colour and light, using pigments direi t from the
tube, and sometimes, as in his last //ciiiiuycot 1971'). waiting until
he could find the right colour not just from the same
manutacturer but even from the same batch of paint.
180 We saw in Clhapter 12 that it was chietly 111 Russi.i just after
the First World War that surface texture {faktiird) was under¬
stood to be a primary aesthetic element in painting.' l-dhturo
was seen to be the result ot a distinctly moeiern approach; as
'Farabukin wrote in his treatise of 1916-23: ‘We have seen in
respect ot colour that the modern painter is distinguished by the
very special reverence he has for his materials, to the point that
even when he is working with colours he gives through them
the feeling of material as such, parallel to the effect produced by
coloured sensations.’'The reform of the Moscow art-
institutions in 1918 included a plan to establish not only an
experimental colour-workshop but also an associated factory
tor manutacturing paints.This attention to painterly
materials was also very much alive at the Bauhatis. which taught Fr.ink Stclhi ,u work. 4 he use ot house-p.iiiuing ni.iten.ils .iiui inediodN

the chemistry as well as the physics and physiology of colour, eniph.isizes the iinperstin.il. mdustri.il u.iture ot'Stell.i’s .ippro.ieh. (222)

and Bauhatis artists, notably Klee, made an imaginative use of

many types of coloured pigment in their paintings. After the
closure ot the school, during the Nazi period, when he was
forbidden to exhibit and sell his work, Schlemmer could make a
living only by testing materials for a paint manufacturer.
In the United States during and after the Second World War,
the vast scale and dense working of Abstract Expressionist
canvases stimulated experimentation with cheaper industrial
materials; here tot) the use tif such materials came to take on a
212 positive aesthetic value.Mark Rothko had once worked as a
theatrical scene-painter and it may well have been that
experience which fostered his taste for the brilliant but highly
fugitive pigments which have proved disastrous in large
canvases such as the series painted tor Harvard University in
1961. ‘ But it was the staining plastic and acrylic paints used by
a grtitip of Washington painters in the 1950s which helped to
give materials as such a crucial place in the understanding of
210 painting itself Helen Erankenthaler was perhaps the first to use
raw unprmied duck as a support for very diluted students’ oil-
ctilours or commercial enamels applied as a stain, and it'was from
their contact with her that Noland and Eouis adopted and
expanded the technique from the early 1950s.During that
decade Louis met the New York paint manufacturer Leonard
Bocour, who had been des’eloping cheaper, mass-produced
paints for artists in response to the new demands for quantity.
Bocour had marketed an acrylic polymer emulsion since 1956
which was quickly taken up by the Washington painters; it is
211 tempting to belies'e that Louis’s use ot the thinnest veils ot dilute
colour owed something to his making the most of the free ‘end
ot batch’ portions with which the manufacturer supplied him.
Certainly he told Bocour that ‘part of my thesis is that materials
influence torni’.'^^ Eventually liocour. who was prouel of
having introduced ‘big tubes tor big paintings’ in the 1940s, was
producing acrylics tor Louis and Noland in gallon cans. ‘
1 )uring the post-war period in Eurtipe too the virtues of paint
as such were being revalued even more radically in the work of
the French painter and performance artist Yves Klein, who had
a synthetic blue developed especially for himself under the name
IKB (International Klein Blue), which he used as a dry powder
with a special resin medium or binder, Rhodop.is M 60 A, to
‘protect each grain of pigment from any alteration’. I'he
extraordinarily yielding and caressing velvety surfices of
Klein’s blue monochromes, very small and icon-like by
American standards, give us a sense of the ‘spiritual absolute' to
which he was aspiring;it is clear that his emphasis on
materials was not related to any belief in their absolute
autonomy. His friend, Arman (.^rmand Fernandez) went
further in the direction of pure materialism, in 1965 producing a
work with squirting paint-tubes s.indwiched between plexiglass
sheets, entitled Life in the l on'ii for the Lye. ‘
In the Minimalist context ot New York 111 the 1960s it was
Frank .Stella who more than anyone set the materials ot’painting
on an aesthetic pedestal. During his stiulent years Stella h.id

267
(.Ol OUK Wimoil'l TUF.ORY
Worked as a house-painter; he was urged not simply Ua use
industrial colours, as the Abstract Expressionists had done, but
to use them in an indtistrial way. In several series ol canvases in
this decade Stella made a virtue of the even application of
commercial paint, and in some he used aluminium and other
metallic enamels. As he said in a radio interview in 1964:
The artist's tools or the traditional artist's brush and maybe even oil
p.iint .ire .ill dis.ippearing very epiickly. "We use mostly commercial
paint, and we gener.illy tend toward larger brushes. In a way,
Abstr.ict Expressionism started all this ... I didn't want to make
variations; I didn't w.int to record a path. I wanted to get the paint
out of the c.m and on to the canvas. I knew a wise guy who used to
make fun of my painting, but he didn't like the Abstract
Expressionists either. He said they would be good painters if they
could only keep the paint as good as it is in the can. And that’s what
I tried to do. 1 tried to keep the paint as good as it was in the can.*^"
Stella had studied both painting and the history of art at
Princeton University, where his courses included something on
colour-systems,'*'’* yet he remained very much within the
American empiricist tradition, one little troubled by discursive
thought. ‘Thinking about colour abstractly’, Stella remarked,
‘hasn’t done me any real good’. In a series of lectures given at
Harvard University in 1983, however, he rejected his earlier
emphasis on ‘materiality’ (which he identified appropriately
enough with the legacy of Kandinsky) in favour of the more
spatially sophisticated ‘Baroc]ue’ legacy of Picasso, which was
more in tune with Stella’s flamboyant three-dimensional
painted constructions of these years;
Picasso saw the danger . . . of materiality - the danger that the new,
open, atmospheric space of abstraction would be clogged up and
weighed down by the mass of its only real ingredient: pigment.
268
Picasso’s concern articulated the fear that abstraction, instead of
giving us pure painting, would merely give us pure paint -
something we could find on store shelves as well as on museum
walls.
Yet it is not dirticult to see how Minimalist art, with its abolition
of hierarchy and compositional rclationshipis in general, could
have little use for modern colour systems, which have been
intrinsically concerned with relationships. It is less easy to
understanci how’ even the more technologically and experi¬
mentally oriented branches of modern colour-painting should
have been so little interested in recent colour research, or should
so readily have aciopted the half-truths of nineteenth-century
and modern popular science."’'^ Even one of the more abund¬
antly coloLiristic artists of the systems movement in the 1960s,
the Swiss painter Richard Paul Lohse, showed no particular
interest in exploring the dimensions of colour in anything but a
mathematical, topographical sense. Like other Minimalists, and
in the tradition of Russian Constructivism, Lohse sought a place
for art in utopian social engineering; unlike the Constructivists,
he derived his aesthetic concepts exclusively from his reading of
the history of modernist art. Colour and form were perceived as
even more autonomous than they had been in the inter-war
years.Yet this is perhaps no more than we should expect
from the fragmentation of late twentieth-century academic and
cultural practices. It is no more surprising that a distinguished
colour scientist, W. D. 'Wright, after a long career investigating
colour-discrimination and measurement, should recognize only
towards the end of it that black has a positive psychological
value and is not perceived simply as an absence of light.The
struggle to understand the nature of colour, whether physical or
psychological, and to use that understanding in the shaping of
our coloured environment has been the central subject of this
book; it is a struggle that is still going on.
 acknc:)Wlei)c;ments

NOTES TO THE TEXT

BIBEIOGRAEHY AND CONCORDANCE

EIST OE lEEUSTRATIONS

INDEX
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A CA I .\i.()(;ui <)i iNnMUHDNKSs IS always ditiicult to write,
doubls so when, as here, the theme has occupied me tor most
ot'm\- workiiiLi; life. Very tew friends and acquaintances liave
not been sounded tor their opinions or ad\'ice on the question
of colour and altliough I have disregarded much (.L it, much
more has worked itself, veast-hke, into the te.xture ot my
argument, so that 1 am really at a loss to identity the origin ot
manv ideas. These are thus acknowledgments ot a sort ot
collectix-e responsibility and 1 am very happy that they should
be so. I'he early stages of this work in London were speeded by
exchanges with Bob Ratchfl and Stephen Rees-Jones at the
Courtauld Institute and particularly with Anne Rees-Mogg at
the Chelsea School of Art. Paolo Vivante first directed me to
the philological dimension ot colour and Robin Corniack has
sent me further along that road. }. B. Trapp, Richard Cordon,
David Cast, |ohn Onians and |ean-Michel Massing have
helped me considerably with the Classical sources; Nigel
Morgan, Sandy 1 leslop, Michael Camille and John Mitchell
with the medieval. David Chadd has, almost inadvertently,
given my musical discussion in Chapter 13 whatever
plausibility it may have; Alex Potts has, as usual, encouraged
me to think of more interesting questions. John Mollon and
Philippe Lanthony have put me in touch with the literature ot
physiology and Ann Massing with several key technical
sources. 1 have been given generous access to important
manuscript material by Jon Whiteley, Ian McClure and Peter
Staples and receiveti many important publications trom Maria
Rzepihska, Thomas Lersch, Lorenz Dittmann, Heinz Matile,
Alan Lee, Georges Roque and Janis Bell. Crucial hints have
been dropped trom time to time by Bob Herbert, Robin
Middleton. Stetan and Anna Muthesius, Paul Hills, Tim
1 lunter, Philip Conisbee, David Charlton, Charlotte Klonk,
Oliver Logan, Anna Rowland and Carol McKay. Douglas
270
1 )ruick gave much assistance with material on Seurat's (iraiidc
fattc. Paul Joanmdes has satisfied many bookish queries.
But if my debt to these many personal contacts is great, it is
even greater to the several institutional libraries which have
maintained their services to scholarship against all the odds. It
might have gone without saying that this book would never
have been possible without access not simply to specialist
collections such as the Faber Birren collection at Yale, the
Colour Reference Library at the Royal College ot Art in
London, the Wellcome Medical Library and the library ot the
Hamilton Kerr Institute but also, and especially, to the great
general libraries such as the British Library and the Library ot
Congress, the Cambridge University Library and the library
of the Warburg Institute, as well as smaller ones such as that at
the University of East Anglia, the National Gallery library in
Washington, and the library ot my own Faculty ot
Architecture and History of Art at Cambridge. This should
have gone without saying but nowadays it must be said.
Chapter 2 originally appeared in a slightly diflerent version
in The Joiinidl of the IWirbtirg ami Courtauld Institutes, vol. 44,
1981; most of Chapter 4 in Art History, vol. 5, 1982, and Akten
des XA'I ’ Inteniationaleii Kongresses fiir Kunstgeschichte, vol. 6, 6,
1986. They are here reprinted with the permission ot the
respective editors. Chapter 12 was partly prepared while I was
a Visiting Fellow at the Yale Center for British Art; Chapter 14
could not have been completed without a briet spell as Paul
Mellon Senior Visiting Fellow at the Center tor Advanced
Study in the Visual Arts in Washington, where 1 had the good
fortune to secure the help of Milton Brown. I am gratetul for
the generosity ot both these institutions.
As always, my family has shown great patience in
supporting and nc')urishing my obsessions.
J.G.

Numbers m sspiare brackets after the author and d.ite are cross-references to the Bibhogr.ipln
Introduction
1 liercnsdii i<;49 |i|, 147t'. Htir liiv iiwst
sust.iincd Jttack on colour .is .1 v.iluc in .irt.
Hcrcnson 11450 |2|. 74 v He w.is never¬
theless one ot the e.irliest .irt-histori.ins to
•ipprove ot the use ot coloureil reproduc¬
tions. c. lyio: see lierenson 1965 |3|, yo.
2 Sccespec. Berenson's pref.ice to Thom¬
pson 1936 |24|, .ind Hcrcnson lyso |2|,
49 58. For .1 critKiuc ot this position,
Cl.iines.isc.i 1966 |7|, 38911, .nul ch. 12
below.
3 For Ruskin’s e.irly preference for v.ilue
(chiaroscuro) rather than hue, Rtiskin
1843 118|, Ft 11, sect, i, ch. v; sect. 11, ch. ii,
4}20. For his opening to the spiritual value
of colour. Ruskin 1853 |i9|. ch. v, vj3a 6.
The developincnt has been discussed by
Hewison 1976 |i2|, iy7fi, who has
pointed to the early iiiHuence of Locke.
4 For Ruskin on the ultimate primacy of
form, Ruskin 1856 |2o|, I’t IV, ch. iii, §24.
For the Working Men's Clollege. Burne-
Jones ly 12 |6|, ly 1 2.
5 Wittgenstein 1977 |26|. Ill, 52. Witt¬
genstein mentions a colour circle in II, 80
and often alludes to Cioethc. Even an
exceptionally well-read Wittgensteinian
such as Jonathan Westphal (lyyi |25|)
makes several dubious interences about
the ‘facts’ of colour because of his philo¬
sophical preoccupation with the present.
6 See espec. Reynolds 1852 [17I. II. 335.
A psychological testing of 25 American
undergraduates in 1926 seemed to show
that green and blue were perceived as tar
'warmer' than red or purple (Morgensen
and English 1926 (15I, 427-8). A more
recent study has also argued that the
association of colours with temperature is
a question of acculturation (Marks 1978
[I4|. 2i8tf).
7 Stokes 1937 I231- i+y-
8 For a brief characterization of this
school, (iage 1990 [y]. 520-3.
9 Ibid 518 41.
10 Birren 1965 (4]; Brusatin 1983 |5|;
Dittmann 1987 |8|; Rzepihska 1989 |22|.
11 Halbcrtsma 1949 |ii|; I'astore 1971
116|; l.indberg 197^ [l3l-
12 Berenson 1950 l2|. 75.
I The Classical Inheritance
1 For the problems of interpreting the
polychromy of the I’arthenon frieze. Jen¬
kins and Middleton 1988 [951, espec. 204!.
Also Richter 1944 |l28|. Suppl. 321 3.
2 For the Italian Renaissance belief in the
essential whiteness of Classical architec¬
ture and sculpture. Cagiano di .Vzevedo
>y.''4 |54|. espec. I53fl'. The most import¬
ant development came, however, in the
18th century with Winckelmann (1882
1148I. xxvii). For the continued resistance
to the idea of polychrome sculpture 111 the
Romantic period. Flaxman 1838 |70|,
NOTES TO THE TEXT
185 9; H.uid d’Aiigers 1958 |6||, I,
182 3. 347; 11, 32. Ruskin. II, 18411 1132I,
Ft 111. sect. 11. ch. IV, ify.
3 Cell 1817 19 |78|. 160. File polych¬
romy on the Ionic Temple ot Ihssus at
.Vthens had been noted as earlv as the
middle of the 18th century by Stu.irt and
Revert, 1, lytia |i42|, 10 and pi. VIII, tig.
3. Also Barry 1809 |34|. 537 8. The
development of this discovery of Creek
polychromy, especially after Wmckel-
mann, has been studied by Reutersw.ird
i960 |l27|, ch. 1 and espec. van Zanten
1976 11521.
4 See espec. Eastl.ike 1848 |67|, 63 4,
79-80. I 14.
5 Newton 1862 |lll|. II. 1. 185, 238. He
found the sculpture here less 'ethical' than
that of Fheidi.is (237),
6 /iiijrei 1967-8 |94|. no. 25. For 1 littorfL
van Zanten 1976 |i52|, ayfF; Billot 1982
|4i|; Middleton 1985 |lo8|, ssfT.
7 Semper 1834 |i38| and van Zanten
1976 |i52|. 52fl'. i62fF; Cnsebach 1924
|85|. 164 and tig. 98. For a reconstruction
of the Farthenon in full poK'chromy, see
Leo von Klenze's painting The Airopciis
with the Prt'iichifJi; of St Paul (1846).
Hederer 1964 |89|, 175 and van Zanten.
ibid., i7off.
8 The I '('im.s' with its canopy in .<itn are
reproduced in Matthews lyii |lo6], fac¬
ing 230. For (iibson and Hittorff, Cooper
I97> |57|. y ■. ”!'■ >4. 17; Darby 1981 |6o|.
37-53-
9 Cladstone 1858 |8i|. Ill, 488 (expanded
in Cladstone 1877 |82|, 366ff). He did
admit (495) that the surviving samples of
ancient pigments told a different story:
‘The explanation. I suppose, is. that those,
who had to make practical use of colour,
did not wait for the construction of a
philosophy, but added to their apparatus
from time tti time all substances which,
having come within their knowledge,
were found to produce results satisfactory
and improving to the eye,'
10 See espec. Schultz 1904 |i36|, 187-8.
For a modern survey of the question
Crossman 1988 |86|.
11 Hochegger 1884 |9i|, espec. 38rf'. His
interdisciplinary approach has remained
the exception m this branch of colour-
study; for a recent application of it to
ancient Egyptian art, Baines 1985 I32I.
282 97. See also Schultz 1904 |i36|. 8ot.
108; Flatn.uier 1921 |l20|. issff'. 162;
Andre 1949 |27|, 12: Osborne 1968 |ll4|.
274.
12 Kranz 1912 |99|, 126.
13 Freeman 1966 |7i|. frs 22-3; Beare
iyo6 |35l. I4rt'.
14 Empedocles's most recent editor has
argued that the philosopher's idea ot
mixture here means the setting of colours
side by side (M. R. Wright 1981 liso).
180). See also p. 30 above.
15 Freeman 1966 I711. frs 22 3.
16 Aetius /'/iiiitii I, 15. 3 ('St ‘’r 4nd
century .Mil in 1 )ieK i-S-v I63I, 31;.
Stob.ieus (5th ceimirv ad) i~92 |i4o|.
362rt. On Cilmni. Schultz 1904 |i36|. -3.
17 Stratton I9i~|i4i|. 1321! (include'the
whole text ot I heophr.istu'. ()it .S'cn.'ci.
18 Ibid,, n. 183 supposes a lacuna in the
.MS at this point and suggests that the
reference to sulphur comes trom another
recipe. Siegel 1959 |>3y|. 153, howeser.
had no dirticultv in testing Hemocritus's
mixtures and found them to be quite
possible. Also van Hoorn 1972 |92|. 5s
and n. 4 1.
19 Stratton I9i7|l4l|.n. 187. I his seems
unlikely, since even Aristotle's 4th-
ceiitury account ot after-images does not
identify their colours correctly {On
Drctinis 45yb).
20 Stratton 1917 |i4l|. 82. Aristotle
(Ciif(‘i,ic)ru’s VllI, lOb) had argued that,
unlike black and white, red ijniireii) and
yellow (di/iroii) have no contraries.
21 1 have followed Bruno 1977 |50|. 8913
in the interpretation of this difficult
passage.
22 See Charlton 1970 |55l. 45 on
Aristotle’s indefinite use of the terms
Icnkos and iiic/j.i'; also Flatnauer 1921
(l2o|, 153!'; Bruno I977|50|,9if
23 Fhilo 173 in Annas and Barnes 1985
|28|, 38f; also 3 if and 42. Diogenes Laert¬
ius {Lines of the Philosophers VII. 52)
reported that the Stoics believed that only
white and black could be the proper
objects of perception,
24 Freeman 1966I71I.92 8.
25 The evidence is assembled by Schuhl
195-4 1135I Keuls 1978 |97|, 69 argues for
the improbability of this tradition.
Aristotle’s familiarity with painters has
been emphasized by Bertrand 1893 |38|.
145IT.
26 See .-liiiiiiyinoK.i 1962 |29|, XIll. 13 15.
pp.6 7-
27 The Byzantine Suda lexicon attributes
a hook on tiraphikes and skcmototi to the
late 4th-century painter Frotogenes;
Reinach's supposition (1985 (l-ZSl- no.
497) that skemolon refers to colour seems
improbable, although the use of skematon.
'figure of the dance', 111 Flato’s definition
of colour (f/iroii) in Meiio 7(16 suggests that
the two terms were linked (cf. F. A.
Wright 1919 1149]. 31). Also Caiser 1965
|75|. i8of For skeitui. Folhtt 1974 |i22|.
64.
28 For the more formal connotation ot
‘symmetry’. Folhtt 1974 |l22|. 141!.
29 Cicero /X.'/iKiii/K’iis IV. 3 I 2
(oiiii coloris qiioJam siiiii'ihilr): also Floti-
nus, n. 30 below.
30 Flotinus p.nneads 1. 6.1. trails
MacKenna; also V, 8.4 and VI. 7-33 on
'Intellectual Beauty'.
31 Valerius Maximus in Folhtt m/iS
|l2i|, 173; the l.atiii IS in Reinach 1985
ji25l, no, 355. C)n splendor. Folhtt I9~4
[l22|. 227tf. 1 he other literary references
to Euphranor have been collecti'd bv
Reiii.u h I ';8 s ! I i.S |. IK'S 1 s I -
32 Str.ilioii IVI “ 114 11, I 121!
33 Heaioii ivK |88|, jc-ii. Duell .iiid
(lettens djjv 66|. v4 In general see
Borelh dzsd l4Sl. sstl
34 Sssiiidler 192V |i44|. a2!iri, .-Sugusti
lyt'" |,5o|. 361 (hi green underp.iinting
tor flesh at Fompeii, Seibt i88s |I37|. It'
35 I he ilassie studs is Willamossitz-
.Mollendort 1900 1147I, i n2
36 Seiiec.i (.I'litn'i'i rve- l\ , 111.3, eit
Baldss in 1924 |33|. 98tf
37 For the 'colours’ ot rhetoric and
talsehood. Lrimpi ivi |l4,S|, astf
38 Follilt 19~4 1122|, s2ri.
39 Fhilostratus Lite oi .■ipollonno ot
I yoiiii. trails. |ones. 19^0. Sv
Fhilostratus’s \ less has been tr.ued to
,^rlstotle bv Bernielin tvti |37|, espec.
i6otl. 179, For the taste tor monoehrotnes
in Hellenistic painting, Bruno 1985 I51I.
42ri. For other late antique discussions ot
colour as aiding imitation. I ucian I’uinres
7 (Reinach 1985 |l2.s|. no. 54). Dio
Chrysostom Discourse 12 (trails. Cahoon,
1939.11,60 85).
40 Reuterssvard i960 1127|, (Kiri.
41 Kuels 1978 |97|. loaff
42 Folht 1974 (full edii i |i22|. 15 iff.
citing Lucian Zen.xis y
43 Freusser. von (Iraeve aiul Vl'olters
1981 I123I, 23ri'.
44 .Augusti 1967 |3o|, tairf; von Blanc-
kenhagen and .Mexander 1962 |42|. 63.
File mixtures are a blue-grey trom terre
verte, lime svhite and black, and .1 brosvn
from iron oxide, lime svhite and blatk.
both ready-mixed before application. For
the problems of mixture, pp. 30- 2 above.
45 Burford 1972 |53|. 136 7. Se-e also
F.uisanius's account of the interior ot the
Temple of Zeus at CFlympia (V'. xi. 1 10).
46 Ssvift 1951 |l43l. 127 8 and reviess by
K Lehmann, .drf linlletin. X.XXVI, 1954-
71-
47 Ssvift 1951 |l43|. 72 4; Friedlaniler
1964 |72|. 330 9; Cnoh 1971 I83I. 5tf
Cnoli gives many beautiful plates ot the
coloured marbles used in Antiquity.
48 L 'Orange and Nordhagen 1965 1113).
35. Fhillips 19(10 |ll9l. 444; Salzmann
1982 |I33|. 4.F
49 Andre 1949 |27|. 12, 251!. 399 I here is
no direct correlation betsveen the varieties
of colour terms and the varieties ot
pigments (sec .Vugusti 1967 |3o|. laitf).
.ilthough the proportions are roughls the
same IFeds form by far the largest group
III both svords and pigments; it is notable
that Homer's short list includes tsso reds,
eruihros and phoinikons 1 purple-red 1
50 Rist 1972 |l29l, 63; Hahm 1978 187I,
75ff.
51 W Khnkert. Bemerkuiigen zur
Teehink der Fonipejainsihen U aiid-
Dekorationen’ (I9<'') m (. iirtius I9(k.
|59|, 439(1; von Blaiu kenhageii and ,Mex-
■inder (962 |44|. 63
52 Fulirmann 193 1 |73|. ' >"
-7 I
N () n s I () 111 [ 11 \ 1

5.? V.Kiii,;//)■ X WV. xw'.'i V" Si'i-' iiiteri h.iiige.ibihty of red ,ind gold and now in Rhny 1978 |296|. which includes 1982 |2i6|, n/ifl.
Andre 1949 |27|. 13.S on the Roman important material from other ancient 15 Rrofi. Weier and Filippakis 1974
I'olhtt IV'’4 |l24|. -:.)S fi Inr tlu' text iif
tills ililtu lilt ]xiss.ige. I'lir tin-1 iinteiit, p. 40 pri'fereiice tor .1 reddish c.ist in yellow. writers. |300|, 103- 12; Filippakis, Rerdikatsis and
■ ilnu e 76 Hultmann 1948 |52|. 4. See ,ilso 2 For the liter.iry sources, Reinach 1983 Assimenos 1979 [2io|, 34fr. For Kizilbel
54 I or Apellfs ,is L'Xihisi\cl\ .1 p.inel- Bremer 1973 |47|. 1974- |i25|, nos 400-86. The fullest discussion and Karaburun, Mellink 1971 |27o|,
p.lintel .iiul liir the |>.iiiitiiip I'l iii.iiiy 77 Bierwciltes 1937 |39l, 13. of Apelles’s career is Lepik-Kopaczyiiska 247 -8; for Tomh of the Diner, Napoli 1970
(neek iiiiir.iK 011 panel, Unl'eitMiii |c;7S 78 Ibid., 14 19. For ( d.issical and Renais- 1963 12571. I278I, I03fr and espee. pis 3, 30, 37; for
I I 4o|. I, 14. I'M ,nul II, tisn. n. 1 se. s.ince gems, Kris 1929 |I00|, I, 20t. t)n 3 For the various later interpretations ot LetTadia and Kazanlak, Bruno 1977 |50|,
55 Ini /inek- oil . \i i hilft liiro VI, ~ I'ur light concentrated in stones. Rliny these 2 stones, Gombrich 1962 |226|, ch. 9 and pis 3b, 6, 10, 11, 13a.
other relereiu es. liei..itti npsl |36|, en. XXXVll, XI, 37. 51 33; Mahon 1962 I263I, 463!’; Rlesters 16 E.g. the pelike of c. 330 BC (National
56 Alex.iiulei ol ,Apliroihsi,is, writing in 79 Brendel 1 9.(4 |49|. espee. iXt. 1962 |294|, 433fti Gombrich 1963 |227|, Museum, Athens, no. 1718), which has a
the tnl eeiuiirv Aii. wills white 'the 80 I ewy 1936 1103I, espee. I92f, 399fl’. 90fli Kurz 1963 I253I. espee. 94; van der palette of red, black white, blue and gold
solour, p.ir exielleiue, ,iiul the finest of 81 1 )odds 1971 I64I, 29Sf Waal 1967 |345|; Gombrich 1976 |228|, leaf For the link with Apelles, Rollitt 1972
eolonrs' ((;,it|e ini'!' |77|, 3~l 4) Init I 82 Bierw.iltes 1961 |4o|. 334 62; Dodds espee. 13- 16. 12981,159.
h,i\'e huiiid no otiu'r support tor this ibid., 28341. 4 Both these solutions had been sugges¬ 17 Mingazzini 1961 (272), espee. 13. For
\ less - 83 Rtolemv Optics II, 107; Clalen On the ted by earlier scholars: for the relation ot the Alexander mosaic, which has been
57 Ahnniii, Miiidni Soiii; (tV, il), figO, 1 ’so fulness of the Parts ot the I Inman Body X, the 4 colours to the elements, .Seibt 1883 regarded as reflecting the 4-colour palette
tr.ins, liow'iM |46|, 44!. hor My- 3; Kleoniedes in Schultz 1904 li36|, 117. |I37|, 31; Berger 1973 |i67|, 34. The and the style of Apelles since its discovery
een,ie,in (Ireek, CkilLivotti 1947 \ let See also I’roclus in the sth century: 'We function of black as a blue had been in 1832, Fuhrmann 1931 (731, 203f!’;
,11 ul in geneixil Rein hold 1970 | I 261, 9!, must not look tor the good in the manner noticed in the 17th century by Felibien Rumpf 1962 I311I, 24of, Fuhrmann noted
3S Reinhold ibid., S, of knowledge . . . but by abandoning (1981 I209I, 14) and in the i8th by a green stone in Alexander’s costume and
39 As'ery 19.(0 |3i|. espee. 76II; Lopez ourselves to the divine light and by Lambert 1772 |255|. 16; Requeno 1787 there are many others in the plant and
194s I 104I. 10; Reinhold ibid., tyt. closing our eyes' Platonic I'heoloiiy 1. 3). I303I, 1, 23; 11. Meyer, 'Hyptithetische rocks and in the draperies to the bottom
60 Stratton 1917 | T411, t Ri 7. 84 Mathew 1963 1103], 20 has denied that Geschichte des Kolorits’ in Goethe 1937 left. Bruno (1977 I50], 73) denied the
61 See 'tiolore' in Hiiihiopnlto ilrll’aiic . . . IMotinus was well known in the Middle |225|, 39; also Berger loc. cit. For the presence of green but the dispute may be
onniltilf I9S9 |69|, 770!'; Kbtiig 1927 |9H|, Ages. Rroclus has sometimes been regar¬ equivalence of black and blue in Greek, no more than semantic, since he allows

141, ded as his transmitter, hut no earlier than Schultz 1904 I136I, 36; Schefold 1963 (76-7) that the painted original must have
62 Meininder. tV. i'i67 K-, eit. Colkird the iith century (Rroclus FJements of |320|, 3. used mixtures including blue.
1970 |36|, 34. edn the history of 'shot' Theoloiiy, ed. E. R. Dodds, 2nd edn 1963, 5 Pointed out by Keuls 1973 [252], 13. 18 Cook 1977 |l86|, 197-8. Here Cook
ni,iteri,ils. pp. 60 1 above. xxx). An extreme case tor Rlotinus’s 6 The evidence is reviewed by Bruno briefly refers to the Chiton as 'pale blue’
63 leiisen oztit |96|, 109 estimates that influence is in (irabar 1946 |84|, i34r. See iy77l50|, 37- but in his fuller report (of which he kindly
12,000 .iniin.ils produced only i..sg of also Rollitt 1974 I122I, 37f C3n the key 7 Stratton 1917 |i4i|, i32fF. Chloron is allowed me to see a typescript) he modi¬
d\'e. Byzantine concept ot the relation ot the the crucial term in this context: the earliest fied this to 'bluish-grey', which indeed it
64 Reinhokl 1970 1126|, 30 troin I’lutareh image to its archetype Rlotinus offers usages do not seem to have given it a appears to be.
.{Icxaiidrr }(i and Ihodorus Siculus, 17, conflicting views (IV, 3.1 1; VI, 4.10) and specifically chromatic content but rather 19 Cicero Brutus 70; Vitruvius Ten Books
70. he perhaps thought the status ot art more the connotations ot 'pale', 'bright', 'tresh', on Architecture VII, v, 7-8; Seneca Epistles
63 Avery 1940 |3> |. 79- elevated (V, (S.i) than would have been 'moist' (Handschur 1970 I237I, i sotf; LXXXVI, 6f; CXIV, 9; CXV, 9; Varro
66 Bliimiicr 1912 |43|, I, 242;Jensen 1963 acceptable later. Nor do we find his Irwin 1974 [247], 3 if). Diirbeck has trans¬ On Country Matters III, 2;3f; Retronius
|96|, 1 lOt'; Roosen-Runge 1967 |i3l|, II, preference for images rather than propo¬ lated It in this passage as 'yellow', Satyricon II, 88, 119. The fullest discussion
234}; espee. 'Farbung' in Rauly-Wissowa sitions (V. 8.3) much followed in although the terms for yellow attributed is in Jiicker 1950 (250], 143, i55fF; also
1.S94 197H 1117], suppl. Ill, lyiiS, cols medieval practice, which is characterized to Empedocles by ancient authors were Bruno 1977 [50], 68ff.
463 6. The preparation ot indigo trom in all periods, but espee. the earliest, by a dchron (Aiitius) and pyrrochrous (Galen). 20 For the fullest discussion of colores
woad was scarcely less unpleasant and was marked use of the written word together The first unambiguous use ot chloron to floridi et austeri, Rollitt 1974 |l22], s.v.
devastating to the medieval economy, yet with the image. See ch. 3 below. connote 'yellow' is in Apelles’s older austerus. Although he discusses the 4-
It never acc|uired the status of purple 85 Gage 1978 |74|, 11. 2,8. contemporary, the medical writer Hippo¬ colour theory in this context, Rollitt does
(Thompson 1936 |24|, 1361!). For colour- 86 Ibid., n. 29. crates (Diirbeck 1977 |20o|, 37, 3ofF, io8fF, not seem to see the inconsistency.
changes in indigo dyeing, Leggett 1944 87 Ibid., n. 30. The attempt by Edge- I U), 21 Tobias Mayer, cit. by Bertand 1893
I lOl |, I9f. worth 1979 |f>8|, 281 91 to detach purple 8 Gottschalk 1964 |229|, 83. I38I, 139. For an extended discussion ot
67 Book of the Bpoidi 1970 |44|, 243. from connotations of brightness seems to 9 The fullest discussion is in Lepik- the 4-colour theory in the light of the
6H Lehmann 1943 |i02|, 11. rest on too narrow a selection of source- Kopaezynska 1963 I257I, tbff. The dist¬ account of the primaries discussed by
69 Neuburger 1969I110I, iShtf. materials, although he is right to suggest inction ot skin colour is especially striking Rood 1879 [306], Veckenstedt 1888 [342],
70 For the edicts, Reinhold 1970 1126|, 63 that a red would tit his contexts perfectly in the Herculaneum Theseus I Ictorious, 29fF. The possibility of substantial mixing
.iiid espee. Hunger 1965 |93|, 414-3. fhs' well. Etyiiiolo(;ies XVlIl, xix;
Isidore discussed as a close copy ot a qth-century is also implicit in the theses of Lepik-
late 9th-century Book oj the Uporch |44|, Rabaniis Maiirus De Universo XXI, xxi in Greek original by Scheibler 1978 I323]. Kopaezyhska 1963 (257) and Bruno 1977
243 prohibited silk dyers from manufac¬ Patroloi;ia Latina | Ii6|, CXI, col. 379); for 299fF. The convention survived at least as |50|.
turing purple dyes referred to simply as later examples, Meier 1977 |l07|, 201. late as early Cezanne: see his The Rape (c. 22 M. R. Wright 198 1 [150], I79ffargued
I’loltio (dyes) and by the names ot gar¬ 88 Gage 1978 [74], n. 31; IDodwell 1982 1867) in the Keynes Collection. that ‘mixing’ here means setting colours
ments, i.e. itiiraiiui)n;io (tunics). f4,3^y- Dodwell's identification ot 10 Hippocrates The Nature of Man ivff; side by side. Bollack 1969 |l73|, II, i, I22ff
71 Schmidt 1S42 I134I, 102; lotif also purpura with shot-silk taffeta, endorsed by for the whiteness of phlegm, vii. For a points out that the context of this passage
gives the fullest list of the bewildering Gwen-Crocker 1986 [115I, 133, is fraught general account of the humours in Anti¬ shows that mixture is prior to the act of
variety ot ancient purple stufts. Obermil- with difficulties (see pp. 60-1 above). quity, Evans 1969 |2o8|, 17ft’. painting and that the phrase ‘hartnonei
ler 1931 11121, 422 has suggested that price Cfwen-Crocker shows that the Anglo- 11 Galen 1362 |2i8|, 8fF. meixante' simply has the connotation of
would have been the only guide because Saxon translation of purpura was godweh 12 Foerster 1893 |2I2|, 1. 74-3. A 14th- 'mixed closely together'. For the lack of
of the multitude of beautiful imitations. (good or godly cloth). For red, grey century Fr. physiognomical ms (Jordan mixtures in archaic painting, Walter-
72 See espee. Andre 1949 |27|. 8H 104; {siihnifira) purpura in 13th-
and white 1911 |249|, 683), which adopts the Hip¬ Karydi 1986 [346], 26fF.
(.Jiiintilian Iiislitiih's of the Orator XI, 1.31. century Hildesheim, Mittelalterliche Schat- pocratic scheme of the 4 humours and 4 23 Plutarch Quaestiones Conviviales.
Many modern observers still class purple zuerzeichnisse 1967 1109|, 40-1. colours, equates melancholy not with 725c; cf also From E to Delphos, 393c and
as a red: see Kiiiiig 1927 |98|, 126; Clipper 89 According to the Protoeuauireliuin of black but with yellow (luteus). The 9th- Plato Philebus 51-3. The notion of mixing
1964 |So|, 63. fames, Mary received both a purple and a century Galenic Isa^^oge of Hunain Ibn as death or passing away goes back at least
73 Wunderlich 1923 |l3l| and review by scarlet skein to spin for the temple veil (10. Ishaq lists 4 ccalours of hair and 3 of to Empedocles and Anaxagoras (Solmsen
S. Eitrem, (Siiotiioii. 11, 1926, 93- 102; 1 2): |. Lafontamc-Dosogne, 'Ico¬ unhealthy skin, including a grey iglancus) i960 I329I, 372).
Clumont 1949 I3HI, 33 43; Delcourt 1963 nography of the cycle of the Life of the deriving from melancholy (Grant 1974 24 Here, too (see n. 22 above), the ana¬
|<)2|, 13 30; (lerschel 1966 I79I. 60H 10, Virgin' in Underwood 1967-73 I146I, IV, I231I- 707). logy is with letters side-by-side in a word,
62411’. 183 4. For a contemporary contusion 13 Stout 1932 [332], 86 (4 pigments); so that the idea of a more intimate
74 Reuterswlird i960 I127I, 36IT, nzHlT, between a purple (ozus) and scarlet (coc- Ramer 1979 |302|, 3 (6 pigments); Hart blending may not be in Plato’s mind.
I’ausaiiuis |ii8|, II, 2.3 (with Levi’s note, cinus) in a more ofticial context, Pseudo- 19S0 I238I, 22 (3 pigments). Forbes 1964-72 [213], III, 222 notes some
1. 136), Vll. 26.4, VIII, 39.6 all refer to Kodinus 1966 I124I, 146. 14 For the history of this pigment, Forbes pinks made from red and white. For the
st.itues of llionysiiis and may, of course, 1964-72 |2I3|. Ill, 224ff; Filippakis, term for flesh-painting, Keuls 1978 |97|,
allude to wine. Rerdikatsis and Raradellis 1976 [211], 68.
75 Tertulhan On Idolatry XVllI referred i43fF; Rrofi, Weier and Filippakis 1976 25 Theophrastus E)e Lapidibus 51; see also
2 The Fortunes of Apelles
to the high reputation of gold and purple |30l|, 34fF; Cameron, Jones and Philip- Rhny Natural History XXXV, xiii, 31.
among the Egyptians and Babylonians. I |ex-Blake and Sellers 1968 |248|, 97. 1
pakis 1977 182], 137-60; Rrofi, Rerdikat¬ 26 'Wolfson 1970 |352|, I, 374fF; Todd
See Wunderlich 1923 |l5l|, 41 on the The most int'ormative commentary is sis and Filippakis 1977 |299|, i07fF; Fuchs 1976 1338], espee, 59fr. For the late

272
 N( M I s II ) I HI I 1 \ I

mcdicv.il discussion in the \X(’cst. Maii'r Antupiity regarded as the product of a the most sustained medieval uvount >1 I Itl.lll ; - ,1 nil: rr r .;:l o : . ! ' jl
1952 I264I, 4tf. duel between an elephant and .1 dragon the relationship ot colours to elements. mg tor ris-h Kill,- : , :23.T- .1 c ■! u
27 I'^M Mixiurf 214 in Todd 1976 |338|, (Pliny XX.XIIL 111. 7). On these pigments, Theoiloric ot Freiberg 1304 i"/ has tire has b' cii iiis-ntiti. ■! in tl. .h.isl.-w-
110 II. The term for 'mixture' here is I)e Arti llluininandi 1973 |l93|, s.v San- red. air yellow, water green ind earth •\ii.isiii.'s flesh in fi.i,, .1'.; |f;.i,;-
krasis. Todd (1X4) ar{;ues that the attri- l.’uLS draconis. blue (1914 |334l-82 ti I lisas aiisl Plssiirs i.e s ’60i t I I;,
hution ot the idea to I )emocritus is 41 Ghrysocolla was in fact a basic carbo¬ 54 .Mberti 19-2 |l53|. at' .Mthoiigh he mi'sl atientis- '.iris m.'sliin .ir.;c s;
Alexaiuler’s own invention. nate ot copper (GuG() reters elsess here to the a-iolour painters \ eneti.m riesli-p.iintiiig loiinii in- au .■
28 Hatchinj’s in the shadows at Her¬ 42 For the Greek text, lias duck 1X99 (X6) he sloes not relate their 1 olours to the I III.in’s us.igi i iruiis’w .il,l ; 235]
culaneum were already noticed by Clo- |24o|. 161; tor \X'illi.im ot .Moerbeke’s elements In his own Italian sersion. illtV Grunew .ilsl stri ss,-,l Hti.iii iKiiie
chin and IJellicard in their Ohsi’rvations siir Latin translation (lafio). Stnet 196K I328]. Alberti stresses that ash-colour is a torin sit tiT selliws 111 flesh aiiil there .u, -■ '.'T.L
tes jnliqiiilh Jc la rillc de Hi'rciihiticiim 252 4. Heinrich B.ite of .Mechein, w ho grey ihu;io). the attempt ot (iavel vellow s on the b.i, k ot tlu man oth ring
(1754) and at I’ompeii by the Nazarene extracted this version of Alexander’s I219I.49 31 to interpret this as .1 \ ellow is tribute 111 the I oiulon I nt-uti .H.'iitq. aiisI
painter Peter von Clornehus, who de¬ commentary m Ins early I4th-centurv not convincing: he had a goosl earths on the w rist ot I h.iii.i in the I .nidon / >1 ath
scribed them as like ‘worn carpets’ (Ber¬ encyclopaedia (i960 |i62|, 126 7, 1290, yellow available to him in othria ;see c'/. Ll.ie,'ll IS .1 bright selloss w liu h s..■m--
ger 1975 ^'j)- The literary evidence added the important qualification that Genmni 1971 |i84|. xlvi. But see Manus the same as th.it in the toliagc ■'! the
for 'optical mixture’ has been discussed by haluriius is ‘violaceus’, that cyanus is 'fus- 11976 |268|. 3X tor earth as blask, white, nearbs trees
Keuls 1975 I252I, loff and 197H |97|, 7ort', cus' (dark) and that ochre is 'vitellinus’ red or vellow . S. Y. F.dgerton 1969 |204|. 72 Bi'sshini iri-( !l77). 2“ 3 losse .nul
78 f (the colour of egg-yolk). 1231! glosses over some important sinler- ( avals aselle I xs I |89|. 11. 12s .onset-
29 For glazing in Egypt, Forbes 1964 -72 43 The tidiest discussions are Gast 1981 ences betsseen the views ot the .^ncIents ted this store to a slutum asiorsling to a
|2i3|. III. 229, 247 and in (ireek encaustic. 1183I and Massing 1990 |269|. and ot Alberti. See p. 1 19 above tradition still preserved Bos. linn bascsl
Schmid 1926 I325I, X6f. For the literary 44 Hind 1938 49 I242I, V, no. 29. Hind 55 Pedretti U)(<\ |289|. sti. Green .mil Ins .u count on the intormation ot I iti.in’s
references, Horelli 1950 (451, 55tF, (I07tr) gives the fullest account of the yellow hast often been coiilusesl siiue pupil Palma Gios.ine. whose testmions
30 See espec. the late ist-century .so mysterious Rosex (de Rubeis. Rosa), The Antiquity. h.is been .icicpted b\ most modern
portrait of a youth From Hawara (Sains- figure ot Apelles seems to depend on that 56 Ucceih 1940 |339|. 1. siholars (Keiinvils I9''4 I251I, i('>“t, P.in-
biiry Collection. University of East ot the philosopher in Filippino Lippi’s 57 Alberti 1966, 1153I. 74 I. otsks 19319 I283I, ir. i,si (irunewalil
Anglia, no. 326) and one in the British Triumph of St Thomas Aijuinas m Sta 58 For a useful tabulation of these esiuiva- 1912 |235|, 2o2 links the store to the late
Museum, NCT1265 (Shore 1972 I327I, pi. Maria sopra Minerva. Rome (Scharf 1930 lents, Lertullian 1961 I333I, l.xxxiv f ,ind painting ot flesh but both the ee orks cit in
$)■ |3i8|. tig. 76), which may allow us to date for Gorippus. thesubstanti.il discussion bv n “ 1 above ,ire late and e elloee ee as not in
31 Onemtisfifixi VII, 128-9. For a (ierm.in the print between 1307, when Rosex is A. G.imeron in Gorippus 1976 I187I, Titian’s alleged tri.isl
translation, Berger 1917 |i66|, i82ff. Ber¬ documented in the city, and 1315, when 144 6. 73 Kennesle 1964 |25i|. I3i2. U ethee
ger stresses (i95-i>) that Pollux’s very records of him cease. 59 See Gage 1978 |74l- 1031!’. 1961; 73 l349|. III. no 39 3 1 the patent
incomplete account is not that of a 45 For the broken column representing 60 A 10th-century Byzantine example is of kmghthooil granted to I man be
professional. jortezza in the Mantegnesque repertory, discussed by Mango 11963 |268|, 63 6; .1 3di.irles V in 1333 iWethee ibid. II
32 Shore 1972 I327I. pi. 8 (NG2912); cf trom which Rosex drew so many graphic German example of s . 1300111 Huth 1967 (1971). 7) and the letter of 2~ September
also pi. 16 (NC;3 139). ideas. Wind 196913511,2, 18 -19. See also (245I. 69; several other medieval and 1339 from Titian to Philip II 1 I letze-
33 Witural History XXI, xlix, 85; XXXV, Fabio Segni’s phrase in his early 16th- Renaissance instances in P.inofsky 1969 Gonr.it 1944 |337|. 120).
xxxi. 49. Scheibler 1974 |322|, 92ff also century epigram on Botticelli's Gialumny: I2S3I.423. 74 For ’Fiti.in’s membership ot the ,^s-
suggests that the encaustic painters’ pal¬ ’Terrarum reges parva tabula moiiet’ 61 Pacioli 1889 |28o|, 33; Speziah 1933 cademia Pellegrina. ee hich included Doni
ette was far brighter than that of the 4- (Vasari 1962-6 |34l|, I (1962), 204). l33i|. 302f and Dolce, be 1332, iireiuller n/n; |233|.
colour painters. For the use of glazes in 46 Cihiberti 1947 |22o|, 24. 62 Wuttke 1967 I353I. 322; also Diirer 38.
encaustic, Berger 1975 I167], zoFifF; 47 See Geometria in the I'arocchi series 1936 69 |20i |, I (i95f>). 43.‘>. 490. 75 Aretino 1937 fro 1155I, I, 1 36, 242f 11,
Schmid 1926 [325], 86f. (Hind 1938-49 I242], pi. 343) and the 63 Diirer ibid., II (1966). t99f; also 109, 192, 198.200.221. For .^retino’s borroee-
34 Louniyer 1914 I259I, i47ff; Weitz- tablet at the foot of the astrologer in 113 (1312). 133 (1323); HI (l9''>9). 4.18 mgs from Pliny. Beccatti 1946(163!, 1 ~.
mann 1976 |348|, nos B i, B2, B3. B5, B9. Cecco Acerha. Venice, 1324
d’AscoIi, {1527/8). for his aid to I itiaii as a letter-ee riter.
Bio, Bif), B17. (Gazette des Beaux-Arts, VI' ser., XXVII, 64 Forster 1887 |2I4|, 93f Lrasmi Ridolfi 1914 I305I. 208.
35 Oil the Soul and Resurrection, I'‘atrologia nM-V M9). Hpistolae 11906-38 |2o6]. III (1913), no. 76 3hi colours. Doni 1349 |i98|, 7r; on
Graeca 857 c56 1116]. XLVI. 73b ff. 48 Nahm 1964 |277|. 59. 809; also his Apologia for the 1318/19 edn, flesh-pamting. 9V. 14V; on .Apelles (and
36 The evidence for the use of the palette 49 Pacioh 1889 |28o|, 84-3. Pacioli attri¬ 82. For Diirer’s own Calumny, Massing Titian), 37V fl'.
m ancient painting was assembled by buted the notion to Plato, basing himself 1990 [269I. 77 Roskill 1968 |3o8|. 132 3. Roskill
Biimner 1912 I43I, IV, 1879, 459!! and onTimaeus 55c. 65 Hrasmi Hpistolae 1906 38 |206|. nos (299) links this evith .Apelles’s stark var¬
contested by Berger 1975 '73^- 50 Gornford 1937 |i88|, 51,70. 1398 (1323), 1336. 1338 (1323). nish, evhich IS also referred to as hruno m a
who showed convincingly that there was 51 Pacioli 1889 I280I. 96f, Gf. Timaeus 66 Diirer 1936 69 (2011, 1 (1936), 297. letter of G. B Adriani to Vasari in 1368
no substantial reason to assume such use. 49c, where water is shown to perform a The fullest commentary on this text is For Apelles, Roskill 104 7, 138 9. 148 9,
Keuls 1978 |97|. fii. n.io points to the lack complete upward and downward cycle. Panofsky 1931 [282]. 130 I. 136 7. 174 3.
of word for palette in either Greek or Plato’s contemporary Timaeus of Locris 67 Diirer 1936 69 [2011, I (1936). 289; II 78 Thylesius l.ihellus de Golorihus (1328)
Latin. For the paintboxes of the Egypt¬ (Fr. 101 c) had a scheme of four basic (1966) 393f (cf 94ff). Diirer’s note is m 3’.oethe 1937 |225|. 118. Dolce 1363
ians. where colours were ready-mixed colours, black, w'hite, red (phoinikoun) and hardly the chapter on colour itself, as |l97|. I7r eehere he insisted, astonish¬
before use, w’ith separate brushes for each bright (lampron) but he did not relate claimed by Hofmann 1971 I243I. 17. ingly, that painters still used only the
colour, Forbes 1964-72 I213I, III. 244f them to the elements. Kuspit 1973 I254I, i88f shows that this evhite of .Mill). He reterred to I hylesuis’s
37 Bruno 1977 |5o|. 89ff. The first Latin 52 The influential 10th-century Arab and related remarks reported by Mel- book on 6v.
translation of this ch. of the 7'iinaeus. by writer Alfarabi also sustained the view ancthoti are part of the humanist’s argu¬ 79 Ihylesius 111 Goethe 1937 |225|. iit;
Marsilio Ficino, interpreted the terms in a that the elements were themselves un¬ ment for the simple style m language. See Dolce 1363 |l97|. 7r. Dolce also referred
similar way. distinguishing ni^er from coloured but manifested colour when Dittmaiin 1987 |l96|. 119 for Diirer’s to Titian on 3 t v and 641.
nit^redo and characterizing xanthon as yel¬ mixed (Dieterici 1892 1195I. 139). See also neglect of his own principles in practice. 80 There is no mention ot the 4-colour
low ijiainis): Plato Opera Omnia. Venice, the extended discussion by the 12th- 68 Hrasmus Hpistolae 1906 38 |2o6|. III theory m Pino (1348), although Pino, a
1581,415). century south Italian writer Marius. 1976 (1913), 303!; VI (1926), i6f and letter painter, was interested in technique,
38 Aulus (iellius .4ttic Sii^hts 11, xxvi. (268J, 58ff', espec. 63: the ancients ‘never l.•i44 admired Titian and told several stories
niirbeck 1977 |20o|, 38fF is the only made any reference to colour’ when they 69 Ridolfi 1914I305I. 1. 107. about Apelles. Nor was it especially not¬
modern discussion of this passage and has discussed the elements. This view was re¬ 70 See 11. Ruhemann’s technical analysis iced by Lodovico Domemchi in the com¬
translated ihridis as ‘yellow’ to accommo¬ stated c. 1200 by Daniel of Morlcy (1917 of the Berlin Portrait of a Youth 111 Richter mentary to Ins translation ot Pliny (Ven¬
date the sense. |l9l|, I lO- 1937 I304I, 126, which identifies only ice. 1361), although he made several
39 For flavus as .xanthos and fuluus as 53 Seznec 1953 |326|. 47. Marius 1976 black, white, red and brown. In the early references to contemporary artists, in¬
pyrros, Ficino’s translation of Plato (see n. |268|, 63 cites a contemporary view that Pala di Gastelfranco, (horgione used 4 cluding 'Titian (2nd edn 1 373, 10X7. 1 110)
37 above); Keuls 1975 Usi], ij. Aristotle, earth is black, water white, air yellow and reds, 3 yellows, ultramarine. 3 greens and For Domemchi. who had been close to
however, refers to the product of red and fire red; a 15th-century French Lumen black and white but no samples were Doni in the 1340s. G.rendler i96<z |233|.
green as white. Luminum de Golorihus proposes the same 4 taken from the flesh areas (Lazzarim et ah. 32fl. ClZifl.
40 Ginnabar is the usual term for red colours as ‘pnncipales’ but without refer¬ 1978 I256I. 46 7). Giosefti (1979 |222|, 93) 81 Borenius 1923 |l75|. I2tf. .Montjosieu
sulphate of mercury (HgS) but Alexander ence to the elements (cit. Thompson has made a rather surprising comparison 1649 |274|, Pt HI. 59rf
is probably thinking of rerniiculuin or i934/.‘i l33b|. 468). Writing c. the 1220s, between Giorgione’s ‘4-colour' palette 82 Ridolfi 1914 I305I. 107 For the later
keriiies made from the dried insect coccus Wiliam of Auvergne gave the equivalents and the 4-colour problem in interisretation of Rubens’s flesh-pamting
illicis (cf, Pliny XXXIII, 111, 7: XXXV, air blue, fire red, water purple (since mathematics. in termsofa tess simple, bnght and ;>piiiall\
xxxii. 50). Dragon’s blood is a reddish purple derives from a sea-creature) and 71 Ridolfi 1914 I305I. I. 134. 20<7 .A 19th- mixed I olours. 3 .age 1 1217|. 3i2t. 8011-
resin produced by a variety of palm, in earth grey (hissus)'. 1674 |350|. 1, 32); in century restorer. Palmaroli. thought that nenburg and Preusscr iim l33o|. HI. n p

^7}
N( ) I KS I () l})t I I X I

H3 [m iiiihIith \ r\vs ot the arhitr.iniic'' \ellou I ibet iiioiiilciis. dheodorie ot Vienna, dedicated his treatise to Rudolph watercolour .it Lille, his cloak is pink and
111 the 'prmi.iry' set. (llexe ivst'.s I224I, Freiberg (1714 |334|. 60) has 'c.ieruleiis II. one of whose physici.ins was de Boodt. Ins palette faces the spectactor but bears no
I hriKil-kr.it’t ] 12131. leaH. sell citnnus, quein .X.inctoii xotaiu' from whose view of the primaries may depend colours. In the 1820s the English theorist
H4 Hut see p- eti .ibuve lur purple .is red the Creek .XiUilhos. The 8th-centur\ (llos- on Ins. Another theorist discussed by Charles Hayter (1826 |24i|, 14 13) pro¬
.lud fur the .iiitK|Ue t.iste tur reilihsh gokt siino Ahsliiiui aiul Aholilti gise ciuiiilcus Parkhurst (1773 I287I, 242ff) was Louis posed that the ancients had used the 3
I he sth-senturv m writer lull ut C.'hius .ind iinileiii as rindis, pLiunir I'cl iiiyer Savot but I have been unable to trace a 3- primaries plus black.
.ilsu tells .1 stur\ .ibout ’purple' ulmli ((llossiirui Liiniui 1726 31 |223|, III (1726), colour theory in Savot 1607 |315|. Savot 114 ChevreuI 1834 |l85|, i}342. In the
suggests th.it the (Ireeks were perteetly 20, 110-11: Miiiellaiciiiisilics H'orterhtich. does oft'er a 4-colour theory based on 1820s H. R. Haydon was showing
.i\\ ire 111 the diserep.iiiey bet\s eeu eoluur- s.v, cocnileus). CLuiciis. usually tr.inslated Pliny (Index, 6r ft; cf 13V, 17V ft) which Thomas Phillips that the range ot the 4-
pereeptiun .iiul euluiir-tenuiiiulugs' (Rus¬ as 'grev', could .ilso mean yellow (see interprets sil as bleu and appeals to the colour palette could be extended by con¬
sell .ind Wiiitcrbuttuin |i;72|3l2l.4 s). Bacon 1877 1700 |i56|, 11, 177; 1737 'daily experience' ofcrattworkers, includ¬ trasts. including the 'management’ of
83 See the list of 1.( colours iu .i 12th- |is7|. 70tf;' MacLean 1766 |26i|, 40). ing painters. All these authors were stu¬ black to look blue (Haydon 1726 |239|. 1,
centurv ,\is ot the Mapihic ('Jai'icitta Theodoru of Freiberg (44) has 'citnnus dents of medicine; colour was particularly 373). Phillips remained doubtful that the
(Rooseu-Runge 1967 |i3lj. I. iSsfly A sue glaucus' as does the 13th century important to physicians, for the study ot whole r.inge ot colour could be represen¬
slightU' .implitied version with i s colours collection of lapidaries at Prague (Rose urine, as a diagnostic tool. The Peripatetic ted with the 4 colours, rather than the
IS 111 the 14th-century Fr. (?) /j'/ki i/c 187.3 I307I, 34.s). On Colours as well as Thylesius were often modern primaries (Phillips 1833, |29i|.
(.'I'/iin/n/.' (Thompson |333|. 2S8). 91 E. Barbaro 1334 |i59|, 378. In Pt II printed as appendices to J. Actuarius De ,Ct- ,1).
The isth-centurv I’ortuguesc Lirro ilc (465), where he discussed the 4-colour ( 'niiis (e.g. Pans i 34S, 237). 115 Northcote I 8 I 8 I279I, 1, 40.
I OHIO sc /iiciin iis C’biTs lists 10 priiicip.il painters, Barbaro was less exrtain that sil 98 Botilenger 1627 li78|, 106; cf 10, 14 116 Reynolds 1 832 117I. 11, 328f
colours, most of them n.mies ot pigments could be a blue, as well as yellow ochre. on Pliny's 4-culour story, reproduced 117 Eastlake 1 847-67 |202|, II, 233ft'.
(|i;2S-i4 .ind 1730 |238|. 130 and So For his otherwise empirical approach to without comment. For a comparable 118 Reynolds 1832 | ly], II. 337; cf 328.
respectn ely). M. F. Edgcrtoti 1763 |203|. editing Pliny, Branco 1763 |i8o|, i73fF. vagueness, Pierre le Brun Recueil des cssois 119 Ibid., 337, and 337 on the pre¬
174 points out that the word color in a 92 Vitruvius 1321 |343|, exxv, with re¬ des inervcilles de la peinture (1633) in Mer- eminence of this system. Du Fresnoy
I sth-centurv Cler. 'I'roclaliis do Cdoloribiir ference to VI, XIV, where imitation Attic rifield 184712711,11,771-3. (1667 |l99|, 11. 337-40) had characterized
usLiallv reters to a colouring-agent rather sil was described as an iiitusion ot violets, 99 Van Mander (1716 |265|, 302fF) clearly the corriiptio coloruin as specificallv Ven¬
than a concept. An exception to this although the resulting colour, called sillo- regarded Attic sil as yellow, tor he con¬ etian. For Reynolds as a glazer, FI. Buttery
general rule is in the 13th-century ad¬ cetiis in the later Middle Ages, was a gratulated the moderns on having 4 yel¬ in Hudson 1738 (2441, 248ft'.
ditions to liritcliiis. which list black and yellow (Merrifield 1847 |27l|. 1, 36, 231). lows where the ancients had but 1. Sec 120 Blake 1736 |l7l|, 612 (Descriptive
white ill several varieties and then the Thylesius in Goethe 1737 |225|, 118. also Schiffermuller 1772 (324I, 36, 38. Catalogue).
intermediates riihcin, viridis, crocciis, piir- Philander 1344 [290I, 232 noted Barbaro’s 100 Cureau de la Chambre 1630 (l9o|, 121 Bindman 1777I168I, i23tf.
piiroiii, piiisiiius, iitri/r and hidicus, only the view but preferred to regard sil as ‘colons I37f The reference to lightning is to 122 Bentley 1767 I165I. 468; tor the
last of which is clearly a pigment, purpurei violacei (qui et lanthinus Apelles's piainting of Alexander the Great drawing, Butlin 1781 |i8i|, no. 733.
although the list includes 2 blues and 2 dicitur)’. Veronese's patron Daniele Bar¬ holding a bolt of lightning, and presum¬ 123 Blake 1736 11711, 617 and 370. where
greens (Mernhcld iSyy (2711. I. 244-3). baro took the more comprehensive view ably the painting of lightning itself, both Apelles and Protogenes are called 'fresco’
86 De Anc Illumiuandi 1773 |iy3|. 36ft. that sil was a variety of ochre, 'ma di recorded by Pliny (XXXV, xxxvi, 72, painters. Blake 1773 |l72|, 32: 'Ghiottos
Since the attribution of a 3-colour theory colore alquanto diverse, o die pentlesse 76). circle or Apelles line were not the work of
to Pliny is clearly an error, some earlier all'azzurro, o al purpureo, & violino' (D. 101 Sandrart 1673 I313I, 86. The Latin Sketchers drunk with wine'.
editors amended the reading Plitiinin to Barbaro 1627 |i58|, 323). version (1683 I314I. 67) had an additional 124 Bindman 1777 [i68|. 136ft’. For the
pliysiciiiiL 93 Barocchi 177 1-7 11611,1, 632 t.ltwas section on Classical painting, including a marginalia, Blake 1736 [1711, espec. 77ifF.
87 Cennini 1971 I184I. xxxvi, 33. These partly at Borghini’s request that G. B. reference to Apelles’s 4 colours, but with¬ 125 Gilchrist 1742 |22l|. 60. For T.nocb,
pigments have been analysed in detail by Adriani supplied the resume ot the history out comment. Bindman 1778 |i69|, no. 413 and for
Bensi 1778/y |i64|. 37-83. The division ot Greek painting to Vasari for the 2nd 102 De Piles 1677 I292I, 131, 257-8. He technique and dating, Essick 1780 |207|,
into ‘natural’ and 'artificial' is an ancient edn of the I 7(c in which the competition later (1708 (293], 352) argued that the 4 161-3. Blake’s own palette (Victoria and
one; for Vitruvius (Vll. vii) the 'natural' with Protogenes and the dark (bnttio) colours could only be an underpainting, Albert Museuni, London) is too badly
colours were yellow-ochre (,s/7). red- varnish were mentioned but not the 4 which would be finished in lighter 'aerial' pre.served to reveal much about the order
ochre. minium, white, green and yellow colours (Vasari 1878-S5 |34o|, I (1878). tones. ot colours to optical inspection.
(orpiment). His epitomizer Faventinus (c. 1 stF). 103 Pliny 1723 [2951, 44. 126 C. Lenormant, Cerard, pcintre
AD 300) omitted sil but added the blues 94 Gregoire 1376 |232|, 363ft'; see the 104 Hagedorn 1773 [236I, II, 201 d’bistoire, 2nd edn 1847. 35, cit. Rubin
thrysocolla, armviiniin and iiidicuiii (Plom- index: 'Coloribiis quattuor omnes alios (original Gcr. edn 1762). 197.3 I309I. 787-9.
mer 1773 [297]. 74?!). For the medieval misceri’. Elsewhere (242) Gregoire de¬ 105 Ibid., 202f. Anxious to save Pliny’s
interest in Faventinus. in the context ot scribed black and white as the chief story, he also stressed that it could only
pigments, (iraitsden 1737 |23o|, 370. For colours and proposed a scale with 3 apply to flesh-painting, since there was
3 Light from the East
Michelangelo Biondo the 'natural’ intermediates: alhiis, plaiiciis, piiuiceus, ru¬ clear evidence in Pliny (XXXIII, iv, ii)
colours were blue, red, yellow and green, ber, purpurcus, viridis, iiiger. Scaliger 1601 and at Herculaneum that blue was used by 1 Mango 1772 I5011. 72.
plus black and white (i 347 1170|, 21 r). |3i6|, 1047 included sil among the blues. the ancients (201, 204). 2 The non-religiotis character ot much
88 E.g. Mario Equicola, Lihro di iiatiira 95 Montjosieu 1647 [274], 37-60. He 106 Forster 1887 |2I4|, t slT, 45-6, 48-9. Byzantine ekpbrasis has been emphasized
d'etinore {i s2<,) in Barocchi 1771-7 (1611, II proposed instead that the ‘lines’ were the 3 107 Col. pi. Apollo, LXXVL 1762, 377. by Macrides and Magdalino 1788 |494|,
(1773). 2133; F. P. Morato Del sigiiificalo tonal areas corresponding to highlight, 108 Trevisani in col.: Connoisseur, 31. Chorikos does refer to the ico¬
del colon' (1335) in ibid. 2176; also Borg- mid-tone (splendor), in which the hue was CXCIII, 1976, 207; Montreal version of nography ot the symbolic scenes in other
hini I 384 1176I, 230. clearest, and shadow. This solution is close Tiepolo in Morassi 1735 I275I, pi. II. The parts of his account.
89 Parkhurst 1773 I287I, espec. 423. to Gombrich 1776 (228], who has solved absence of blue was a standard feature of 3 Mango 1772 |50l|, 67-70.
90 The earliest unambiguous use of the problem of the 4th colour rather 18th-century palettes for flesh, yet Webb 4 Ibid., 83-6.
ceriileus or caerulens as a yellow 1 have neatly by proposing a blue ground for the 1760 |347|, 8011. cast doubt on the authen¬ 5 Gnoli 1771 |83|, 23^1. A renewed inter¬
noticed is in Matthew Paris’s illustrated panel. It was probably Montjosieu’s ticity of Pliny’s story because the 4 colours est in the collection of examples ot these
inventory The Jewels of St Allnnis {1237, example that led Carlo Dati (who cites cited were incapable of forming ‘a perfect marbles is an aspect of that 17th-century
British Lihary, Cotton Nero 1)1, fiyb): him in 1667 [l92|, 167) to consult Giro carnation’. revival of polychromy described in ch. 1
'geminam oblongam coloris cerulei, Fern on the nature ot Apelles’ line but 109 .See Pliny XXXV, xxxvi, 73. For above (see Mielsch 1783 [521], 7-11).
videlicet topaziuin' refers to a stone Ferri was inclined to the ‘outline’ theory Oescr’s Tiepolesque prototype, see Mor¬ 6 Abel 1731 |357|. espec. 6, Sft'; Downey
painted yellow. Luard’s edn (Paris VI, (Minto 1733 I273I, 116). assi 1762 I276I, 13, 42, and tig. 233. 1737 |420|, cols 738ft'.
1882 I285I, 383) reads 'caerulei'. The 96 These mixtures were follow'ed by no See De David a Delacroi.x 1774/5 7 Abel 173 I l357|, laf
Suiiiiiia Philosopbiae {1265/73) attributed Vossius 1630 [344I, 74f but were attacked |i94|, no. 37, pi. 147, dated c. 1814. 8 Ibid., 26, n. 1.
to Robert Kilwardby refers to 'color by Schefferus 1667I319I, 161 f(see Ellenius 111 This may be the Alexandre cedant 9 For this type ot imagery, Maguire 1787
caerulens et inaxime scintillans, qualis est 1760 |205|, 181 ft). Schiffermuller 1772 Cdaiiipaspe (Salon 1817) pi. 18. [496I.
topasius Chrysopassus itemque Chryso- I324I, 3 8t cited them as an instance of how 112 The painting was with Wildenstein. 10 Mango 1772 |50i|, 63.
litus’ (i.e. yellow stones; McKeon 1748 even learned men could err if they neither London, in 1781. 11 Salzmann 1782 |i33|, espec. 37ft.
I262I, loff; text in Crosseteste 1712 I234I. experimented themselves nor consulted 113 Paillot de Montabert 1827 (2811, II, 12 On this pavement, Tomascvic 1773
631). For the topaz as a yellow stone, artists who did. 243-6 and VII, 367-8; Ziegler 1852 (355), [586I, 37ft' and for the subject-matter.
M.irbode of Rennes 1777 [267], sof Pliny 97 Scarmilionius 1601 I317I, 122, where, 13. It is not clear whether Ingres was as Maguire 1787 |496|. ibff.
(XXXV, xxii, 37) and Isidore of Seville however, it is argued that certain colours interested in Apelles’s colour as he w'as in 13 On Tivoli, Ltigli 1728 |49o|, ibSfF; on
(XVI. IX, lo) had referred to the island of cannot be mixed from these primaries. his line (Ingres 1747 I246I, 1, 37): 111 the Sta Costanza, Stern 1738 |577|, 3yft.
Topazios as a source tor ochre, which may Boodt 1607 |l74|, I, viii, 8 (see Parkhurst Apotheosis of bloiner (1827, Louvre) 14 Lugli 1728 |490|, 172 and tig. 14.
be the origin of the idea. Young (1764 1771 |286|, 3f). .Scarmilionius, who was Apelles, wearing his standard blue cloak, 15 For vitris, Pliny I296I, X.XXVl, Ixiv,
|354|, 43) notes that Virgil calls the usually professor of theoretical medicine at holds .1 palette seen trom the b.ick: in the 187; Statius, Silvae. 1, 3. 42 3; Seneca,

^74
 M II I s I I I I Mt I I \ I

lipiUoLii'. LXXXVI. I'll, [or iiiiisii'iiin, 29 Bruneau 1972 |39o|. 24s •Medico 1943 |so8|, i)S <1 Red 'Cttiiig- 58 I i >: ,:i., .. .; \, r,1l: .2 , . ■ I 13
Svcnming 1941 (579|. C^ai.iln- 30 Dakeshott 196- I532I. 57. captions to beils has e been lound. e g . in .1 vtli- IS nid p'- \ II
Liiiu-iu.ini iy<S |39f>l. 14; A Ualdc, pis 17. 18. lenturs nios.iK in ( \ priis .Meg.iss aiul 59 I Iil iin isi ns; n . .n.f . c ; ■
l.autiiis(h<> /:ryni<’li’i;i.<i lii^ (I tirfcr/iui/i. II. 31 .^s in Fiorentim Roncuzzi l9~i |430|, Hawkins 19-7 i5lo|. I !2ti and in Sta dl . 'T.ltl.'Il' is W .1. ; ',(• , . 597
19S4, '-.v. iimscuni. I lif (iri-i-k us.igc licr- 13 For the Hallle ot .-l/t ajin/cr. Fuhrm.inn Sophia. Istanbul, troni the 9th centurs, 60 Si e espi. D. - Ci i 1 .. 418
ivo troin the I atiii .nut is no e.irlifr th.in 1931 |73|; lor the small panels in .Naples. althongh earlier and latei examples there 61 In thiss.nsi. Ki'/niec: ■ Li'i.r.; .'
the 6th eentury .M) iP C'h.intr.iine. Bieberand Rodenw.ildt 191 1 |379|, espei.. are set 111 yellow Fins ditlerence mas be at loll ot :h. 'magn'l .in ; -k . in
loiiiuiirc flyiUi'logiijiic i/e /.i /iiiiijiic i>reii/iie. I7f For an opposite view, that the Ro¬ attributable to the dillereiu fuintions ot S P.iiKi.i/io -iims nnp .1 ,0; . i i”
Ill, 1974. meiT.s.i). L.iv.igne (lyN t I4S2I. man technK|ue is .1 'stale continu.ition ot the iniderpaintnig the rcsl was to .nies t U72|. 42 I 111 cx.imp.c .It P.Ui. ni. 'ndi-
2621!) h.is stressed the link between the the illusiomstK ancient mosaic art', the tnial .ippearaiice ot the inosaus. the perlijps tin most spn, i.,, niai ..t ilu'.
orient.il t.iste tor gemstones .ind the taste Nordhagen 1963 |530|, 165 6 It is argu¬ vellow siiiipK to give the ['.iinter an d.iw n sku s bn; n in.is 'n. 'In r. 'Hi ■■tain.
tor glass 111 .Maretis .^emlluls Stauriis, to able that the 'Roman' technu]ue relates overall guide to the s olonr-i omi'osition 19th-i entui\ rnstoration l ■niti i-jss
whom the new t.isliioii was .ittribiited. just as closely to the 'impressionistic' Lor the rel.itcsl use t>t .1 resl groniul tot 1401 1. 1 . !
t6 Perler lys.t |539|; 1.'Orange and mural paintings of the catacombs. gold le.it 111 .MS illumination Iroiii. the sth 62 t .ipi/zi i9''t i397|. l■llI;. •2'fl lor
Nordhagen 1965 I>I3|- 74 (pk 39)- bm' 32 See the e.gs cit. (Lige 1978 |74|. lentnry.S .M .Alex.nuler 1 utia 13631, 421! B\ z.niinn h\ nni' t. t. rrnig to tin /’.line*
gold mosaie in a pavement at Antioeh, 114 IS. A red silk core w.is uses! lor some t.n.'i 111 terms oi light
Levi 1947 I4H7I. 1. 6301!; Dyggve 1962 33 Ptolemy 1936 |546|, 11. 93 6) 39 61: medieval gold thread i( i .\1 ( row foot in 63 Aeihelwull I9t'~'359]. si.i '.n,
|42i|, 220; in an Larly Ohristian oratory 'Now \\e see . . how. because of distaiise Battiscome 1936 I373I. 4331. although 64 I oi displ.is on the altar. 8.1181 I'ja)
on the \'ia Augusta at As|iiileia, I iorentim or the speed ot mosement, the sight 111 yellow core was also w isiespread T alke 1560]. 1—I. Henderson lu.c" 453! 121'
Ronenzzi 1. 1971 |430|. 54. 9th-eentury each ot these |c.ises| is not strong enough 1921 I449I. 26). I or proiessions. IsHi.mll. 19s 1 ,.S89|.
vkpliriisis of a clnireh in C.'onstantinople to perceive and interpret the parts indiv¬ 42 Letter 20. trails. .M.ithew 1973 I505I. Steenboik 1963 l575|. s2ti
eondeinns the use ot gold 111 pavements as idually'. Alexander of Aphrodisias (3rd 218 19. 65 Hie Bamberg insenlors ot 1 1 a' lists
'excessive luxury' but without citing any century) discussed the case of optical 43 Photius 193S |540|. 140. 'sex t.ibulos .111 nnponendos hbios .uno el
e.gs after 1 lomer {Frolow 194s |4341. 46). mixture at a distance in his coinmentarv 44 Stratton 1917 11411. - 11' ' 1 he passages gemniis orii.ui' .(/if/c/.i/tiT/i.In .S./Mterir-
See also Hrenk 1971 I3S9I, iS 25. on Aristotle's (Ri .Scii.sc440a, 16 rol.Mex- [of the eye| are arranged alternately of fire 2( li/lMI.'.'C 1. 196" I I09|, |-i
17 Vopel l>'99|594|, 3. iSf. ander of Aphrodisias 1901 |36i|, 33 7). and water: by the passages of tire we 66 Keiuirick et al 19'’o |466|. II. !■ Also
iS Stern 1951S I577I. iXS. 34 Dennis wrote (1949 I409I, .tX^ff) that perceive white objects, b\' those of water, l.ddius 1.J2'' I423I, f; Svmeoms .Mona-
19 Of. ibuL, 163 that the turret seems to the technique of using several smaller things black; for 111 e.uh of these cases |the cliiis. I XX2 s I580I, 1. -8
have been an afterthought. See also ibid., tesserae tor each detail from the late 3th objectsl tit into the given |p.iss,iges|.' For 67 John ot 1 tamascus. cii Kantorowuz
2o6rt'. For the gold highlights m Sta century (e.g. at .S. Vitale m Ravenna) 'was Lmpedocles and Pl.ito '/'niwcn.' 6-c f. 1963 I463I. I 4 I ll. ( onst.nitnie ot Rhodes,
Pudenziana, Kitzinger 1963 I471I. lOXf very much in the way of nineteenth- Kranz 1912 l99|. 126. cit. Runciman m-s |555l. 8” I Ins under¬
Oakeshott 1967 |532|. 64 suggests that the century pointillism. Like illusiomstic 45 Photius 1938 |540|, 294. Haas 1907 standing ot the Virgin as unloiking Para¬
metallic tessserae in Sta (lostanza may painting in general, this technique of 14491. 334 62 gives a good sunimar'. of dise was, by the loth century, embodied
have been .ulded during the extensive mosaic was meant for the distant view. these theories, inclialnig the eclectic Larly in By/antnie court cereinomal. In the
iS3t')-43 restorations but Stern (19.3S Looked at from a distance the colour-dots Uhristian opinions. Paul the Silentiary ( 'hnsimas Day court hturgs. chanters 111
l577l- 193O shows on the basis of a 16th- appear as modelled forms .. . The evo¬ had held the opposite view to Photius. the Imperial progress, by the clink ot’Sta
century drawing that at least one of these lution from the fourth to the eighth namely that vision w as .1 function of ra\s Sophia, repeated the verse ' I he \'irgin, al
vaults must have been restored substanti¬ century may be likened to the stylistic emanating troni the objects seen (Mango Bethlehem, has re-opened Paradise,
ally as it was. developments of modern French painting 1972 I5011. 86. 87). which was 111 I den Rionstantine \ II
20 Torp 1963 I5S8I (good col. pis), espec. from Monet to Seurat.' For a discussion of 46 Photius 1938 |540|. 187. .Mango refers 1933 40 |400|. 1. 311.
461!; Pelakamdis 1963 |538|, 34 6. For the this passage, (Jage 1978 I74I. 11 afF. this passage puzzlingly to Aristotle Mtlo- 68 .Aiidreescu 1976 I367I. 23Xri has dated
dating, Kleinbauer 1972 |474|, 27 and 35 L'Orange and Nordhagen 1963I113I, pliysics 983b; Photius's source is surely the apse mosaic to the late 12th centurx.
Speiser 19X4 I574I. i3of, .37- Alexander of Aphrodisias On .\ti.\iiirc. about a century after the inosans on the
21 For S. Vittore, Bovini 1970 [386|, 36 Ptolemy 1936 I546I (11, toff) 15 17. 2 14 111 Ttidd 1976 |338|, 1 10 II. W. wall; but she postulates an earlier
14613; for Sta Eirene. (leorge 1912 |438|. Schultz 1904 |i36|, 103. 47 See Pauly-Wissowa 1894 197XI117I. fresco in the apse which niav have in¬
22 Dennis 1949 I409I, for a survey of 37 They are espec. prominent in the nave IX. cols 2349tT; tor Myriohihlioii. Photius cluded the same iconographs
these mosaics. mosaics of Sta Maria Maggiore, in the I9.S9 77|54I|.IL 19(10. 149 39- 69 For the remarkable iconography of
23 July 1965 |46i|, 51 73. But a small C.'hapel of S. Zeno in S. Prassede, Rome, 48 Photius 193X |54o|, 183, this programme. .Maksimovic 1964 |499|.
fountain-niche from Baia (? 2nd century and in the Cdiapel of S. Aquilino in S. 49 On the re-use of materials, del Medico 247ri; but see also n Cii above.
.41); Fitzwilliam Museum, CLimbridge) Lorenzo, Milan, as well as in the narrative 1943 (5o8|, 83; Mango 1972 |50i|. 132; 70 (Irabar 1933 (442|, 3031!; Sacopoulo
shows a far looser setting and more cycle in S. Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna. Frolow 1931 |435|. 202; Mouriki 1983 197.3 I558I
irregular tesserae. For an example in an earlier pavement, see |522|, 103. On changes in iiiediuni. Fro¬ 71 Mt'loUis. often translated as enamels',
24 First half of 5th century. For good col. the heads of Dionysus and a maenad from low 1931 |435|. 184. On hierarchy of referring to glass mosaic; but Cold-
pis, Zovatto 1968 |6li|. For the techni- Utica (f. 400 All) in the British Museum materials. Underwood 1967 -73 |l46|, 1. sclimidt 1940 |439|. 137 points out that
que. Deichmann 11. 1974 |4o6|, 70. His (.34g. k). The tesserae at the Rotunda of St I79f On substitution of materials, Bovini iiiflaUuin derives Iroiii the (ireek mtulloii.
observations of the size of the tesserae iti (ieorge have an average of ooscni- and 1934 |38i|. 10,3. 19,37 I382I. 24; Cormack a (niarble-)quarry. A reference to vilrtt
the lunettes of the Ciood Shepherd and St those at S. Prassede about o.hyciiH (DiV- 1969 I402I, 40; Cormack and Hawkins imialli in the 6th-century poem ol
Lawrence are not convincing; nor are lioiinaire (i\ircht'oli\i;ie chrhieiinc ei liturfie 1977 I403I, 218; Mouriki op. cit.. 101. Corippus (I. 99) may be read in this sense
Nordhagen's on the flatness of Italian as 193.3 l4i2|. col. 70). 102; Belting, Mango and Mouriki 197X rather than as the glassy metal' proposed
opposed to Byzantine setting (1983 [5311, 38 See espec. the 13th-century mosaics of |378|. 89; Megaw and Hawkins 1977 bv his reient translator iCorippus 1976
S3, n. 32). the Pangoritissa at Arta (good col. pis in jsioj. i32rt'. |i87|, 89 and 13311.1 Since there is tre-
25 Forsyth and Weitzmann 1965 |433|. Orlandos 1963 |534|); Underwood 50 Statius and Seneca, see n. 13 above; qtiently a mixture of marble and glass
pis CXXlV-CXXVlll; Cormack 1969 1967-73 1146I. 11. pis 33. 34, 45, 69. 70. Koldewey 18X4 I476I, 39f; Karageorghis even in Roman mosaics, it seems belter to
(402I, 30; Hawkins 196S [4511, 155 and 39 Winfield 1968 |6o6|, I28;j. Plesters in 1969 I464I, pis 173 6; Bovini 1934 |38i|, translate with the less specitic
fig. II. Falbot-Rice 1968 [582], 229. 16 'mosaics' In SS (iosmas and Damian
26 (ieorge 1912 |438|, jifl'. Other e.gs of 40 Bovini 1934 |38i|, 7; Forsyth and 51 See refs in n. 13 above. there is very little gold.
raking adduced m the literature, e.g. in Weitzniann 1963 (433]. 16; (ieorge 1912 52 Methodius 193815151,222. 72 (Likeshoti 19611532I. 94 Flic Roman
the halo of the symbol of St Luke in S. (438I. 47; Mango and Hawkins 1963 53 Dc Bruyne 1937 |392|, 336, 360; limit have been collected b\ I . I )iehl I9t>3
Apollinare in Classe, Ravenna (Bovini 15021.12.3. M.iier 1964 |497|. 1 i. I414I. For the 6th-century limli at Pores'.
19.34 I3811. 10; L'Orange and Nordhagen 41 The 12th-century treatise of Theo- 54 Khatchatrian 1962 |4()7| .Maksimovis 1964 I499I. 247 8. tor the
1965 1113|. 62) and the small cross on the philus specifies white glass as a basis for 55 ( yril of lerusalem. cit. I )olger 191X similar 1 ith-cenlurs inscription on the
triumphal arch at Hosios 1 )avid in Thessa¬ gold mosaic (1961. 46). At Sta .Maria Uol.’.i i- ciborium mosaics there. Deimis 1943
loniki (Frolow 1951 l435|. 20.s), do not Maggiore the gold tesserae are on a base of 56 Sciarett.i 1966 [567I. 29! (although |408|. 2381!. Some Bs zanline e gs are in
seem to have the effect of accenting the fall several colours; greenish, brown, yellow¬ Khatchatrian 1962 I467I. 63 had suggested the (ireek . liillioloi;)’ I9t>9 |447|. 1. I I 8
of light but this may simply be the result ish, pmk as well as colourless (Astorri 1934 that there were originally 2 entrances at 73 Bovini n/14 or I383I. I 8ii|. Hieinssrip-
of too even modern lighting. I368I, 56). .Mr L. Hawkins has kindly ■Mbenga. on the L. side of the building, tion IS now largelv criaieil but sutsives
27 Underwood and Hawkins 1961 |59l|. informed me that he has found no flanking the apse with the mosaics). De 111.1 I 3ih-centur\ i opv ot the 9th-seiiiurv
194. It seems to me that the settings of examples of gold on a red glass base Bruyne 1937 |392|. 3(>o also points out l.ihn I’oiili/iitili' /:ii/e'i.ie W.ireiirum
Hosios Loukas and Daphni in (Reece are outside Italy. Some gold cubes in the that the monogram in the vault must be 74 .Mango lo'e 15011. 39. Palmer 1988
also flush. For the mosaics of the Nea nuiseum at Pula in Istria (Uroatia) read Uioking W. |535|. 132 Also 1 Orange I9"4 s I533I.
Mom. Mouriki 1985 |522|, expec. 98. have a green glass body, as do some at 57 Bovini 1934I381I. I7f notes a cupola 191 202
28 Reali 1838 |s48|, lafl’; Muraro 1961 Ravenna, Aachen and (lerniigny-dcs- inos.iK in the Temple ot Diana. Baia. aiul 75 Muhehs 19113 |5l9|.22ltL Kahler l■/>'•
I547I Pres (from mosaics in Ravenna): del 111 titlier pagan temples. (462I. toll, iM.iinsione 1988 '498!. I2a '•
Non S T() nil-. TI XT

76 I )cimis I'/io I410]. Syn., 207. For .1 aiul Herrin 1977 |393|. 181. no. 10. .See V. 130). A late Western example is in century); in the Anaslasis in the Church ot
siniil.ir bKukiiig-iip ut windows 111 Sta alsti the decree oFthe Seventh Ecumenical Baudri of Bourgueil’s Carmen 134 (once Sta Barbara at Soganli, Cappadocia (early
Maria Maggioro. Uonu-, Karpp njMi Council, cited by S.ihas I98('i|559l, lOi. 196), on the quarters ot the Countess iith century); a 12th- or 13th-century
I465I. in; for tin.- PalatiiR- Cdiapol, I’al- 95 Gregorv oF Nyssa (AViiiiicnUiry on ihc Adele, whose mosaic pavement was des¬ Transfiguration mosaic (Louvre, Paris)
(.Tino. Ik'ck mn|377|. isi. Sony of Sonys I, 1 in Mathew 1973 Isosl- cribed as a 'glass sea’ (vilreum Mare) and and this scene in the 14th-century wall-
77 I ■'ciiuis 1049 I409I, I 10. 220; see also St |ohn Chrysostom in was perceived to be in movement like the paintings in the Church ot the Hodeget-
78 For SlIioir- 1979 I566I. Mango 1972 |50l|. 47-8. sea (Baudri of Bourgueil 1979 l374|. i68, ria, Mistra; Cavalhiii’s scene of the Dor-
4011 A Lataloguc ot Mir\'i\'ing c.gs in 96 For the Council oF734, Anastos 1933 11. 728fF), For links with Mosaics repres¬ mition in his mosaics at Sta Maria in
Ciiiiitcr 196S I448I, Sort. For glass, SsiioiR. I365I, 179; Photius 1938 |540|, 290; for enting the ocean, Barral y Altet 1987 Tr.istes'cre (1291). See also pp. 74-3 above
ibid. sif; Oiintcr, ibid. .S3; Mngaw i9i'i3 |ohn ut 1 )amascus, l\uroloyid Cirai'ca 11161, I372I, 41-34. The analogy with textiles for stained glass.
I509I, 149 Mango 1964 |50o|, 43. XCIV, col. 1361D and Mathew 1963 was not uncommon: see Mango 1972 124 Khitrowo |468|, 1889, 751'. The ap¬
79 Mango 11;74 Isoi |, 74. Fins rcHci'ts the |i05|, I 18; Manasses, cit. Maguire 1974 |50l|, 104, 194, 216; Mesarites 1937 I514I, pearance oFthis light was still a feature of
Kontakioii For the and inauguration ot 14951, 127- X. The closest prototype tor 890. For the textile origins of the vault- the Good Friday Vespers about 1400
Sta Sophia at Ohnstnias 392 (Palmer 19,SS this \'iew seems to be Plato Statesman pattern in the Mausoleum of Galla (ibid., 174) and it has been noted as
277b-c. Placida, Kitzinger 1977 |472|, 34. recently as the second World War (S.
|535|. OO-
80 ('oiitiii \ 'i\;ihiiiliiini. cn. Mathew s 1971 97 Lange 1969 I480I, 233. 109 Athenaeus Xll, 542D, cit. Robertson Runciman ,-1 Traveller's .4lphabel. 1991,
|506|, 149; I )blger 1923 |4r8|, i07rt'. 98 The decorative (i.e. unrealistic) use ot 1963 [552I, kqf; Horace Epistles I, 10, iqfF; 206), 'A'hen it formed part of the celebra¬
81 Oblger I93ti I419I. tort'. colour in animals in the Byzantine 'inha¬ Statius II, ii; Cdrcek Anthology 1969 |447|, I. tions of the morning of Holy Saturday.
82 Egeria i960 I424I, tiff; 1971 I425I, bited scroll' mosaic pavements has been 10, 60-2 (of walls); Prudentius Crowns of 125 Brehier 1945 [388], 19-28.
I23f. noted by Dauphin 1978 I404I, espec. .Martyrdom in Davis-Weyer 1971 I405], 14 126 For examples, Gage 1978 |74|, 125,11.
83 Underwood 1967 73 |l46|. I. 1 3; see 404rt'. (mosaics under arches). For the Byzantine 40.
also Metoehites's own account in I. Sev- 99 Carmen de sc ipso el de Episcopis 111 period. Mango 1972 (5011, 37, 76, 164. 127 Mesarites 1957 I514I. 872. The refer¬
cenko, 'Theodore Metochites. the Chora Palroloyia Craeca |il6|, XXXVIII, col. 209; Runciman 1973 [555|, 96; Frolow ences arc to Psalm 97, 2; Mark 9:7 and
and the intellectual trends ot his times' in 1220); Galavaris 1969 |436|. 1945 [434], 34; Zovatto 1963 |6lo|, 47; Luke 9:34.
Underwood, IV. 66-7, which emphasizes 100 Underwood 1939 |59o|, 239; Kostot Davis-Weyer 1971 [405], 138. 128 Aalen 1931 [356|, espec. 81, 319;
simply the sense ot community. 1963 [478I, I02f; Lazarev 1966 [483], 6y. no E.g. Mango 1972 |50l|, 203;John the Hempel i960 [452], 353-8, 367^ Scholem
84 CF. Constantine Vll, 1933-40 |40o|. 1, 101 For Sta Maria Maggiore, Astorri Geometer (lOth century) Carmen 96 in 1974 [565], espec. 3, 23f
3, 12. 1934 |368|, 39. Patrologia Craeca [il6|, CVI, col. 943fT; 129 Koch 1956/7 [475].
85 Mango 1972 I5011, S9 yi. 102 Frolow 1931 1435], 303. Maguire 1987 [496|, espec. 37 for a 6th- 130 Pseudo-Dionysius 1987 [545], 107,
86 Khitrowo 1SS9 |468|, yiF, iiS, 264. 103 Mango 1972 [501], 203; see also centLiry ekpitrasis by Avitus. 263; cf Puech 1938 [547]; Ivanka 1959
For the 1 So lamps, chandeliers and candel¬ Mesaretes in ibid., 232. Later admirers of 111 On the Aquilean Mosaic, Zovatto I458I. cols 3 30-8.
abra presented by Constantine to the the Pantokrator figure simply marvelled 1963 |6l0|, 631!'; for the wave-pattern, 131 See also the 14th-century ms in Paris
Lateral! Basilica in Rome, the Liber Poiuif- at the discrepancy between its real and its ibid., 141, 161IT; Stern 1937 [576|, 387, fig. repiroduced by Reutersward in Hess and
iiiilii in Davis-'Weyer 1971 I405I, 12. For apparent size; Nicephorus Gregoras in 4 (Salona); Barral v Altet 1985 |370|, aqfF, Ashbery 1969 |454|, i 14.
the 27 lights used in even a small domestic ibid., 249; Clavijo 1928 (399|, 74. 45IT, 79fF. 132 Pseudo-Dionysius 19S7 [545|. 137.
chapel in north AFrica in the 2nd century, 104 Bultmann 1821 (394|. 231. See also 112 Mango and Parker i960 [503], 239fF. For other links between him and Sinai,
Dix 1943 |4i6|, 24-3. In the museum at the 9th-century sermon of Leo VI 113 Mango 1972 |50l|, 219. Gage 1978 |74|, in.
Stax, Tunisia, is a 6th-century mosaic (Mango 1972 |50l|, 203, 203, and espec. 114 Mango and Parker i960 I503I, 237. 133 McGuckin 1986 [491], 137-8,
panel From the Baptistry at La Skhirra, Frolow 1945 |434|, 46). 115 Mango 1972 [50i|, 75; also Photius 134 The texts are in Patrologia Craeca
depicting 4 gemmed crosses, each hung 105 Mango 1972 |50l|, 13. on the Church of the Virgin of the Pharos: [116], XII, col. 1070.
with 2 lamps. Some of the few surviving 106 Paulinus Carmen XXVII, 387-8 'it seems that everything is in ecstatic 135 Reiter 1962 [550], 77ff.
glass lamps From the Byzantine period (Goldschmidt 1940 l439|, 52fF, 96, 136); motion, and the church itself is circling 136 The list is recorded in a Life of Ptolemy
have been studied by A. Grabar 1971 Venantius Fortunatus Opera Poelica III. round. For the spectator, through his in the library of Photius (1959-77 [54i],
14441. loyff- vii, in Monnrnenla Germania Historica IV, i, whirling about in all directions and being VII, 1974, I28f) and copied in the Suda
87 For this view, see espec. Mango 1972 1881, 37; Giselmanus I'ita Droclovci in constantly astir, which he is forced to Lexikon (1933 [578|, III, s.v. opsis, 602) but
[501], xiv~v; Mango 1963 |266|, espec. MCH Scriptores Rernm Merovinyiarnm III, experience by the variegated spectacle on without the attribution to Ptolemy. The
dgrt’; Maguire 1974 [4951, espec. laStf. For ed. Krusch, 1896, 541. See also Sidonius all sides, imagines that his personal con¬ colours may correspond to those 'quidem
the earlier period 'Wallace-Hadrill 1968 Apollinaris, on a church at Lyon dedi¬ dition is transferred to the object’ (ibid., splendidos’ mentioned by Ptolemy (1956
[598], 97f cated 469 or 470, Letter II, 10 in Davis- 185). Both these passages were studied by 1546], IX, 4) as seen 'simpliciter'. They are
88 Michelis 1932 [517], espec. 39ft'; ibid., Weyer 1971 I405I, 55: '"Within is shining WulfT 1929/30 16081, 336-9. See also black, white, orange {xaiithos). phaion,
1955 |5i8|; Mathew 1963 11051, espec. chs light, and the gilding of the coflFered, Frolow 1931 [435). 206 and Michelis 1964 yellow {ochron), red {eruthros), blue
1, 3; Lazarev 1967 I484I, espec. 24f; Riith ceiling allures the sunbeams golden as [520|, 259. The idea was taken up in the (kuanos), purple {halurgos), lampron and
1977 I556I. 737, which extencis a symbolic itself. The whole basilica is bright with West by Theophilus 1961 (583], 61-3. dark brown {orphninon). The most useful
reading of late Byzantine art back into its diverse marbles, (door, vaulting and 116 Psellus 1953 |543|, 188-90. discussion of these terms is Mugler 1964
earlier history, lames and 'Webb (lyyi windows all adorned with figures of most 117 For the iconographic programmes [523]. The lost first book of Ptolemy’s
[459], 1-17) have sought to reconcile these various colour, and mosaic green as a from the iith to the 13th centuries, Optics has been discussed by Lejeune 1948
two traditions by an appeal to the rhetor¬ blooming mead shows its design of sap¬ Lafontaine-Dosogne 1979 [479|, I, [485], 19-20. See also Smith 1988 (57i|,
ical context of ekphrasis. phire cubes winding through the ground 287-329. Lazarev (1966 [483], 32) has iSqff.
89 Meyendorif 1964 |5l6|, 127; C. Diehl of verdant glass.’ estimated that at Sta Sophia in Kiev the 137 For knaneos, porphurios and oinoros
lyio I413I, 303. 107 For the heaven image. Mango 1972 spectator must move from W. to E. and (wine-colour) as related to black. Bliim-
90 Anastos 1935 I365I, 179. For the 'real¬ l50i|, 26, 58, 63, 83, 86, 197-8, 219, 229. circulate 3 times clockwise under the ner 1891 |38o|, 188. Bltimner also cites
istic’ basis of icons, see also P. J. Alexander See also the mid-7th-century tilnhis in S. dome in order to read the frescoes in Servius on Virgil’s Georgies III on the
1938 [362I, espec. 199. Stefano Rotondo, Rome (cit. Bovini sequence. distinction between candidtis and alhus.
91 Khitrowo i88y I468I, 93. 1964b [384], 105-6); Nicephorus Kallisti 118 One of the few art-historians to have 138 Suda 1935 I578I. IV, s.v. phaion,
92 Dionysius ot Foiirna 1974 [415]; for Xanthopoulos (14th century) Church His¬ appreciated this is Prandi 1932 l542|, 29if 709-10.
Ulpian, Mango 1972 [5011. 214-1 3. tory in Richter 1897 |55l|, 368, no. 980; 119 See the discussion in Smith 1983 139 One modern attempt to identify
93 Mango 1972 [501], 237; also a 14th- Beck 1970 [377], 122, and for the ceiling [570|, I34ff, such a symbolism is Hacberlein 1939
century example on 249; Pausanius 1971 of the Palatine Chapel in general, Ett- 120 Alberti 1972 [154I, 92-3 on oppo¬ [450], 78ff, The ancient link between
|ll8|, II, 477, where Onatas, son of inghausen 1962 (426], 448'. sition to gold in painting. Elsewhere he colours and elements persisted: see Kirsch-
Mikon, when asked by the Phigalians'for 108 Richter 1897 [551], 368, no. 980; recognized that the effect of mosaic came baum 1940 [469], 209-48. One of the rare
a statue of Deineter, found a copy or a other examples in Mango 1972I501I, loi, from irregular reflections from its surface contemporary descriptions of colour
painting of the ancient wooden idol, and 102, 197, 205; Mango and Parker i960 (1966 |I53|, VI, X, 309). symbols, in the qth-century account of
Found out most ... by a vision of it in his I503I, 239-40, 243. For the traditional 121 P. Reutersward, 'What color is the mosaics in S. Apollinare Nuovo,
sleep, and made the Phigalians a statue in description of the 12 slabs of green Pro- Divine Light?’ in Hess and Ashbery 1969 Ravenna, does not describe the colours as
bronze’. For the Christian adoption of conessian marble in front of the sanctuary [4541, loqff. they now are, although this section (the
pagan attitudes to idols, P. h Alexander of S. Marco, Venice, Gunter 1968 |448j, 122 On the Annunciation including the Magi) was inserted at the instigation of
1938 1362], ch. IF 38. The petrification of the sea, an idea Christ Child, I. Rogan in an unpublished the writer. Bishop Agnello (Mango 1972
94 Rosenthal 1973 [554I, 44. On the which may derive from Statius IV, ii, is paper given at the Fifteenth International (5011, 108). The changes may be due to
whole question of the portrait, Spath- analagous to the idea of ice in the i ith- Byzantine Congress, Athens, 1976; on the restorations, although this has not been
arakis 1976 [572]. A 4th-century text of century Romance Digincs Akrites (Mango Sinai icon with the dove, Weitzrnann noted in a discussion of Agnello’s ad¬
Athanasius of Alexandria, emphasizing 1972 [501], 216) and to the vitrified sea in 1971 15991, 169-70. ditions (Bovini 1966 I385I, bsff). For the
the importance of a recognizable likeness Altano da Salerno’s contemporary poem 123 See, e.g., Christ’s halo in the crypt colours of the Magi, McNally 1970 (493],
of the Emperor, has been repr. by 13rycr on Monte Cassino (Acocella 1963 |358|, paintings at Prousa, Greece (loth or 1 ith 667 87.

276
 \( >i 1 s i( I I in 11 \ I

140 Braun 1907 [3H7I, y’yrf. l.ubcr k 1912 l,Miif|; ch f VIII has a red-green combina¬ written atter 1122 1 Battiscombe ibid, i'i4'/ c. 4551. Ill !■/) 11. ;■/ 1
I489I. Xo2t argues tor some eonstanev 111 tion but otherw ise the triads i.iii be seen as 99 io~] I he vestments ilo not sursise 186 Ni.holsi.'j 1.J14 528' s ff. Mi-in-
the use of black, white and red in the the same genus ot colour. since they were removed aiul used in the dez \ Pe!.iv.. |.j|. :5ll| '; r t :;i:
bastern (Ihurch but also mentions that red 150 For mosaas. bogviii lo"! 488|, pi. (iathedral, where RegniaLl mav. ot tr-iditU'ii .'I Plotinus, lakht. 428
was used as a mourning colour bor a well 58; tor enamels, (iauthier I9~2 |437|. nos course, have seen them obid ,111 i ! <J
documented and extensive listing of lit¬ 45 Y), 4X. SS. i;o. For an ex.imple as late as 170 See espes the tith-cenlurs lommen- 187 |ob ot 1 des\.i |.j; < I46O1 ,
urgical usage, see "Farbe (Liturgisch)’ in 1439. .Muntz and Frothingham ixxj tary on .Aristotle's Meleorolox’y quoted and 188 Asiienn.i insf. '369 11. ''
RfdlU’xikoii 2ur tlailsclicn Kiiiist-(icsihichtc. |52b|. 9s. trails bv Schultz 1904I136I. 103 .As u ■.•nIla'^ I Ith-ieiitins Peto.in ..un-
Vll, 19X1 |,S49|. c'ols 54 139. 151 D Wmtield in dalbot-Uice 199.S t7i sHiapiro i9“> 1562]. Is See .ibo nient.itor, N.i'ir .il Dm al 1 um, nu ii .oed
141 Demus 1949 I409I, 140. 145; Forlati I582I, 199 ~ notes this in an Apostle in the •Mentre 19X3 |5I2|. 11.p Picasso's debt to the number ot hues to iiu hide \ ellow and
1949 |432|. ><<''; brolow 1951 |435|, 204: scene ot I loubting 7 homas at 1 rebizoiul this Spanish style is clear both in the blue but ret.lined the tonal ptogiession in
Kitzingern/io |470|, 130. n. 106: Mango but the only Apostle in these colours is colour and the tonus of Ins 1930 (.'rn, iti.i- cash \\ ledemaiin I603I. "I
and Hawkins 1965 |502|, 117; Young shadetl tonally; he probably means the 1011 Leger's interest in the earlv 1940s was 189 See espe. Bauer 191 1 i37.‘>' 1 here
1976 16o9|, 269 -7S; Kitzinger 1977 IST^I- figure in the short green tunic, modulated suggested by Schapiro I9''9 I563I. jati 'till no modern edii ot Alhazeii ' ( iim.
71 2; bavagne I977/H |4«i|. 43' 44: C. with red, in the Miraculous Draught Itten used 2 pages from the Pans .-Ipotoly- but an exiellent 1 ng trails. loSo 1364!
Halnelle and J.-l’. Harmon. 'L'Artisan- scene immediatelv below . pse oJ St .S'li'ir. troni this group, to One l ith-eenturs commentator. Kam.ll
mosaiste dans I'AntUjUite tardive; reflex¬ 152 tin the proplJ^lnu^ or black ground. illustrate Ins .-Irl 1961 I457I al Din al-f.ir.lsl. dul turn his attention to
ions .1 partir lies signatures' in Barral v Underwood 1997 75 |l46|, 1, 3048; Win- 172 See espec. Werckmeister 1965 |602|. the various saturation ot different lolours.
Altet 19^9 |37l|- -3.“; 4.S; X, Barral y tield 1998 [9o6|, lootf. 933 7)7 and .A (Irabar in sliscussion tibid . asking, e g . whs pure blue and purple-
Alter, ‘(iommanditaires mosaites et exe¬ 153 (lalen ()n the i 'sejiiliiess of the Ports of 977ff)- At least one ms has m.irgnial red seemed the strongest odours in the
cution specialisee de la mosaii.|ue de pave¬ the Hotly X. 3, annotations in Arabic (Maslrul, Archivos rainboss 'Winter 1954 |607|, ai.i' xi
ment au Moyen Age’, ibid., 255 62. 154 Basil in Wallace-Hadnil 199s |598|. Historicos Nacionales 1097B; see Mundo 190 Fischer 1965 I431 j. espei 2331!
142 Scheller 19(^3 I564I. Cfnly Scheller’s 50; Baudri 1979l374l.no. 199. and Sanchez .Manana 1976 I525I. no. 1 1) 191 For histre-ss are, Ssaiiloii lot'X '561],
4, 6. and 20 give indications of colour; 155 For the green stones, bheophrastus The question has been reviewed in Klein 18S 95; C aiger-Simth 19SS |39.S|. I'spes
Dionysius of Fourna (1974 |4I5|. 3M. .19, 1995 1584], 95; Phny |296|. .XX.XVII, xvi, 1976 1473). 287ff. 24, 59; tor monochrome silks. .Muller-
40) also gives very few. The written 92 3; Pseudo-Aristotle 1912 l544|, 134. 173 Isidore 1960 |4.s6|, 1 5 i7;Evansi9So Christensen i9r)o|524|. t^rt
instructions to painters in the 4th-century 151. I427I, espec. 42rf. Mentre (1984 |5I3|.

.MS the Quedlinburg Itala Fragments do 156 Martinelli 1999 [504], sift'. Von 192) has linked the anti-naturahstic qual¬
not mention colour (Davis-Weyer 1971 Falke (1921 I429I. 9). however, has linked ity ot the Beatus illustrations to Isidore's
I405I, 24 5). For some medieval mss the .vytueiilo 111 the Theodora panel with 4 A Dicanysian Aesthetic
idea of painting as fiction {ftiliiro: lilym
which do have indications of colours to be 5th-century (ireek stuffs rather than with XIX. xvi). 1 Panofsky 1979 1783], 46 7 I he mosaic
applied, sometimes in terms of pigments Persia. See also the tiitzokioti. the Imperial 174 Klein 1976 |473|, 238rt'has identified svas removed in |■’7l Verdier |< 1974]
and sometimes of abstract classes, (iousset overgarment imported to Byzantium in some dozen 'primary colours' (Houpllor- 1820). 708, n. 39 suggested that it may
and Stirnemann 1990(441!, iS9-9X;Spec- the 8th century by the daughter of the heii) and 6 'basic' colours: white, vellow. have been a mosaic-encrusted stucco relief
lale 1990 |573|. 339-.SO. On ,mss as models, Khan ot Khazares, who married Constan¬ sepia, minium, blue, green. For col. il¬ ot a C.irohngian type.
b. Kitzinger, 'The role of miniature paint¬ tine V. Its name probably derives from lustrations from a handful of .mss. Mundo 2 For Suger's visit to Italv, as tar S as
ing in mural decoration' in 'Weitzmann et the Turkish tschitschek. 'flower' (bbersolt and Sanchez Mariana 1976 I525I; Wil¬ Bitonto, S. .VU K Crosby. '.Abbot Suger's
al. 1975 |6oo|, espec. 109 on the Cotton 1923 I422I. 52). Also Kondakoff 1924 liams 1977 |604|, . program for his ness Abbey Church' in
Cenesis, whose colour has recently been [477]. 7 49- The 14th-century official 175 Baudri 1979 |374|. 9 ((formeit 1. 11. Verdon and Front (eds) 19.X4 |82l|. Mzjf
recontructed in Wenzel 19H7 |6oi|. Hook oj Office.i variously noted that parti¬ 95fi). 3 Goldschmidt I940l439|,44
79-100. For mosaics see also Bruneau cular costumes were of Persian or Assyr¬ 176 Wackernagel 1872 [596], 1. i88f 4 Panotsky 1979 I783I, 50-1. A 9th- or
19X4[39iJ ian origin (Pseudo-Kodinus 1969 I124]. 177 Pastoureau 1983 (536]. I1989I I537I. loth-centry .ms ot Pauhnus's P.pi>iles.
143 For further details of Peter's colours, 1812, 218 -19). For a more cautious assessment of the which detailed his building campaigns,
(iage 197H |74|. loH. Uiith 1977 [556], 798 157 Sabbe 1935 [557], 760 i.8i3ff,82off, early documentation, Volbehr 1906 I593I. svas in the library of the .Abbey of Cluny
sees Peter as one of the few figures with a 1283. 355-^5- in Suger's day (Dehsle 1884 |667j. 345)
more or less fixed colour iconography but 158 Ibn jobair 1949-7)5 |455|. HI (1953). 178 Mariale (1 502), cit. Meier 1977I107I. and IS nosv BN nouv. acquis ms I at 1443.
he also points out that Joseph sometimes 391. I95f For Suger's friendship svith the Abbot ot
wears the same combination and has the 159 Mango 1972 [501 j. to. 179 Henderson 1987 (453], I9ff (espec. on Cluny. Peter the Venerable 1967 (786]. 1.
same physiognomy. Certainly physiog¬ 160 Eusebius, cit. MacMullen 1994I492I. the orpiment of the Hook of Durrow), 272 3 (who knew his Paulinus: ibid.,
nomy was always more important than 438ff, where the whole question of the I o6ff. 288t) and Giirsel I958;'9 [780], 54 5.
colour for recognizing the Apostles: barbaric tastes of the army is discussed. 180 Schapiro 1979 1563], 323. Among several parallels of language and
Mango 1972 [5011. 42 and Davis-Weyer 161 Ebersolt 1923 [422], 38!'. 125. 143. 181 For Beatus's career, Williams 1977 thought in Paulinus and Suger is their
1971 I405I. 78 -9. 162 Carandini 1961/2 [398]. 9ff. For a col. [604], 27; Beatus 1930 1376], 377. A 12th- liking for symbols of the Trinity in the
144 Schultz 1904 [136], 103; Bieber and pi. of a se.^mentiim. Lemberg and century Parisian writer, Andrew of St arrangement of doors and in ceremonial
Rodenwaldt 1911 |379|, 2. Schmedding 1973 (486], pi. Land pi. 11 for Victor, in a commentary on Isaiah 16 18, (Golclschmidt 1940 [439]. 44; Panotskv
145 Urso von Salerno i97f)l592|. 110. a late 4th-century Egyptian wall-banging also detailed the significance of the idea of 1979 |7«3|. 44 6. 154 5).
146 Serjeant 1972 [568|, 142-3. showing figures with such panels on their scarlet sins and pnire wool in terms of 5 Panofsky 1979 I783I. loi.
147 l achau 1988 [581], 96, 11. 34 (cf. 327, tunics. The most recent study of the pigments and dyes, by pointing out that 6 Lhe figure of i 5 foot-candles inside
n. 36, 329, n. 43). mosaics of Piazza Armenna has argued wool and other soft threads were dyed the cathedral, as opposed to 8(xx}-90oo
148 b.g. 1338 Inventory, nos 207, 208, for their N. African workmanship (Wil¬ with coccinns. while paper and other hard outside, given by Johnson 1964 |736|. 10,
227. 239, using the terms qtd colorctii riniltU son 1983 16051. 44). substances were coloured with I’enniculmii contested by Sowers 1966 |809|. 220 who
and aii;iidcolore (Alessandri and Penacchi 163 Delvoye 1969I407I, 126 7. (cit. Smalley 1952 I569I, 389 90). There found in a September (October period
1914 1360], 86-7). Mr Donald King has 164 Egeria i960 I424I, 35; 1971 1425]. seems to be some confusion of terms here that the outside reading could be 200 800
kindly informed me that a Pisan broker¬ 127. since coccus and ocrmiculum were usually toot-candles and the interior reading
age list of 1323 mentions tartariui dicli 165 De Waal 1888 |595|, 315, 318. identical. for the U' windows 3 foot-candles
colore, which both points to a 166 Nicephorus (iregoras Aiilirrheliciis in 182 Gospel of Philip 1963 (440], 111. 24 30. for a skv reading of 200 foot-candles
central Asian origin and suggests that the A. Cirabar 1957 I443I. 177 9- 28L Till regards the text as a 4th-century 7 I.ilhch 1970 I748I. 26ff
term was a novel one. 167 Mathew 1975 I505I, 219. translation from the Greek. The number 8 Roiiioii de Perce forest 1951 |79l j. IL 3 I6t.
149 I'heophilus 1961 I583I. sf, ijf It is 168 Flavius Josephus .■iiiliquitotes 72 is intriguing, since Coptic colour- 256 7. Lhe sense ot darkening in the later
conceivable that Theophilus was thinking Imieontiii 111, 183; Philo of Alexandria I 'ilo terms were generally as limited as in other 12th century is implicit in the widespread
of tonal rows modelling forms in mosaic, Mosis 11. 88. Another Byzantine writer, ancient languages. (Till 1959 I585I, enlarging of windows to take the darker
but in what is perhaps the most compli¬ Cosmas Indicopleustes (.Topoj^ropliie clirel- 33■ -42)- glass but retain the older light-levels
cated 13th-century modelling. the icmic. 11. 1970 I587I, V. 35. 62 3). also 183 O. Grabar 1964 (445], 70. 82 8. For (Grodeckl I949|709j.9. 10, n 20)
columns in the scene of prayers for the refers in general to the symbolic link with col. pis, Ettinghausen 1962 (426j. 18 27. 9 More 1551 |77o|. IL ix
recovery of the body of St Mark in S. the elements but adds that the colours 184 Rosenthal 1975 |554|. 73. 265 6. to lohann Matthesius .'ioieplo oJer Hrrg-
Marco, Venice, no more than four steps were quite beautiful. 185 Gf the 10th-century decription of postill (1562) 111 (Fidtmanii 1929 1776],
can be identified (Demus 1984 [411|, figs. 169 .Schapiro 1977I562I, 12; Battiscombe the Palace of Ghumdan in Yemen in O 467. See also Vasari 1. I9('>2|34l|, isat
9. 10). bhe limit so far discovered is five >956 |373|. loyff. The immediacy of the Grabar 1973 [446], 79 and Ibn Jobair'v It Antonio da Pisa 1976 |62o|. 2s. For

(Winfield 1968 [6o6|, ijfiff. See also account is the more remarkable that Regi¬ account of the .Martorana in Palermo, Siena. .Milanesi 1854 Zi|766|. II. nz’ s

Dionysius of Fourna 1974 |415|. 8); 'Her- nald was not an eye-witness and was where the 'sparkling fires' ot the gilded 12 E g . Grodeckl 1977 |717|. I2ff, ibid ,
aclius' 111 Merrifield 1849 [271 j, 1. ch, bVl. writing 70 years after the event. There is glass windows 'ravish the sight and will be 1986 |7i8|. 343. 353 For the Fr develop¬
250-7 has combinations of white, red and nothing similar in the earlier anonymous capable of throwing the souls into a ment ot the notion of the 'darkness' ot the
blue; brown-black and blue-green (I'cr- account of the opening ot the tomb. disquiet which we pray God to guarantee' .Middle .Ages. Voss 1972 |825|. 28 31

277
NO'II S lO Mil If X I

(inulci ki's iiiti.'rpri't.ituin h.is .1 piilcniu'.il S.ilzm.in 1926/7 |796|). The only early e.irliest known use of this method was in and by the Secreta Seeretorinn ot the late
til? In \s.i' ioiilctiiclI to n.hiit tin.' window price I know is th.it tor the m.ijor Svri.i 111 the mid-8th century (Frodl-Kraft 9th-century writer Al-Razi (Rhazes), who
Diiri r\' .i?iini?g 111.111V It. .irtist-- ,i?id the windovs at Soissons, which cost 30 P.ins 1970 |692|. 20). The Eng. coloured valued It as highly as real gemstones (1912
pi'iic r.il puhlii. tii.it the reMniatiiui of the /iiTC.' in 1'. 1220 (Grodecki 1953 |7ll|. window-glass excavated at Monkwear- |6i9|, 87). That glass was a stone was
gl.is\ lit’ C.h.irtres 'West haJ left the 175). If this w as the |esse Window (tr.ig- mouth and |arrow was sometimes painted assumed by technical writers such as the
\'. iiieliuvs tar tini bright and hael 111 parti- nicnts formerK' in Berlin), it w.is prob- to snmil.ite striated tr.insliicent marble 9th-century author ot the Mappae Clani-
suiar Jaiiipeiiei.1 the eHett nl the blues (see ablv about twice the size ot the Jesse (Gramp 1968 |662|. ifi; 1970I663I, 327ft). enla (1974 17571- ' Ci). See the tormal
/I’cri/e Jc l\irl. lu^ti. XXXI, fitT). See also window at St-1 ienis; if we take .iccount ot File earliest surviving Fr. glazed ,ipse is comparisons in Engels 1937 |676|, 57 and
Clriiinell ivati |7o8|, iSari; Seliiiiie ivyy price-iiiH.ition in Fr.uicc during the 12th that ot St Nicholas at G.ien (Hehot I9ti8 lohnson 1964 I736I, 57ft'; also the frag¬
|566|, tsh'; s'on Siiiisot? i^^.s |805|, ih. 2; century (Duby 1971 |670|, 363 gives .irate I724I, 89(1) of 1083/93 but a nearly coin- ment from St Pierre de Chartres illus¬
b. Ileuehler, 'Clothie (Hass' 111 Hess arid of 10 20 times for .igricultur.il produce temporary record has Bishop Hoel ot Le trated in Franse Kerkranien 1973/4 |69o|,
Ashberv iptii; |4.S4|. .t4lT; for .1 wide- between the first Grusade and the mid- Mans also decorating his chancel with no. 4.
r.iiigiiig general survey, Nieto Ale.ude 13th century) we re.ich an astonishingly glass (Grodecki nXub I713I, 60). The 45 Theophilus 1961 [583 |, II, xxviii; Oidt-
ii;7S|773|, low figure ot some 2 Pans lirro tor each glazing ot Poitiers also began trom the E. mann 1929 |776|, 36; Grodecki 1977
13 For .1 sunimars' ot the he.xaenieral ot the main wiiulows at St-I )etiis. end in the 12th centry (Grodecki 1951 I717I. 35, 350.
tradition, (1. F. Veseinini Stinli m la 25 For the St-1 )enis grisaille. Grodecki |7io|. 138). For the spiritual meaning ot 46 Panofsky 1979 I783I, 65. Verdier |r.
proifu-llira iiu-tlwralc. li;6s. i6f; tor the 1976 |7i6|, 122H; for Gistercian gris.ulle, Early Christian apse windows, P. Reuter- 1974 |82o|. 701 has linked this passage
1 tth-eenturv disenmin.ition ot lii.\ ,uid Zakin 1974 I838I, i7ff; M. Lilhch, 'Mon¬ swlird, 'Windows of Divine Light' in appropriately with Pseudo-Dionysius
liiiiicii. Sehnnd 1973 |799|. 9td. That even a astic stained glass: patronage and style' in Rosand 1984, |792|, 77 84; for the pro¬ 1950 I789I, Celestial Hierarchy XV, vii.
seientist like liaeon in the 1 tth century did Verdoii anil Front 1 9S4 |82I |. 218. gramme of apse-mosaics and paintings, 336c.
not teel obliged to use the terms consist¬ 26 d hcophilus 1961 15831, 11, .\.\i. For col. Ihm i960 I734I In the Carohngian period 47 Viard 1927 1822], 257. One of the
ently, Lindberg 19.S3 |750|, 33(1 fiy. pb, Grodecki 1977 |7I7|. si and for the Rabanus Maurus attempted to derive the more extravagant accounts ot the car¬
14 Palrolot)ia Laiiiia |ii6|, CXXIl, eol. tradition of white grounds in eastern word 'apse' trom light itselt: 'Absida buncle is in the Pelerinage de Charlemagne
1 28. PiMiice, Grodecki 1949I709I, 12. graeco sermone latiiie interpretatur luc- (11. 44if) ; for its Byzantine background,
15 See the inscription on the gre.ise-pan: 27 Panofsky 1979 I783I. 19. Lilhch in ida; eo quod lumine accepto per arcum Schlauch 1932 |797|, 50off.
LUCIS CdN' VIRTUTIS Ol’US Verdon ami Front 1984 |82l|, 222H has resplendeat’ ('Apse' in Greek means 48 Bede Explanatio Apocalypsis II, 21 in
DOCTRINA REFULGFNS (Oman contested this judgment most vigorously. 'lucid' in Latin: that which shines in a bow Patrologia Latina |ii6|, XCIII, cols 97- 8.
t90|777|. I). It has been translated' This Suger’s interest in Dionysian theology has of received light) (Dc Uninerso XIV. xxiii Bonner 1968 |638|, 10 has been able to
flood ot light, this work of virtue, bright been doubted by Grodecki 19S6 |7l8|, in [’aliolopia Latina |ll6|. CIX col. 403); find no earlier source tor Bede’s lapidary
with holy doctrine instructs us so that 221 and more stridently by Kidson 1987 the deris-ation is from apsis = rainbow here.
Man shall not be benighted in vice' (N. |737|. sff- But his close dependence on the (Aristotle Meleorolopy. 11, 2.3). 49 Theophilus 1961 I583I, 111, Ixi. Sextus
Stratford in English Roiiiaiicsqiiv .drt, Dionysian language of Hugh of St 'Victor 34 See espec. Mortet 191 1 (772|, 85, 94. Amarcus 1969 |8o2|, 183ft'; also ibid., 29
10(1(1-1 >00 lySg [678], no. 247) and 'Carry¬ .ind Richard of St 'Victor has been estab¬ 35 Brown and Cothren 1986|648|, 3. on this tradition ot exegesis. Manitius
ing the candle is the task ot righteousness. lished by G. A. Zinn, 'Suger, Theology 36 William ot St Denis Vita Sngeyii II 111 dates these poems to 1. 1100—1120 and
In light is the Church's teaching, whose and the Pseudo-Dionysian tradition' in Lecoy de la Marche 1867 |742|. 39 if. For points out (33) that the passage on stones
message redeems man trom the elarkness Gerson 1986 [yoo], 36. See Hugh’s Expo- the context, Glaser 1965 I703I, 26S. A was copied in the 13th century. If Sextus
of vice’ (C. Sydenham, Biirlinqtoii Maga¬ sitio in HierarcUiam Oacleslcin II in I’atro- later 12th century panegyric by Radul- was Theophilus’s source it helps to con¬
zine. CXXVI, 19S4, 504). lopia Latina |li6|, CLXXV cols 967, 977, phus Phisicus dwells on the gemstones but firm the now generally accepted date for
16 Boethius 1906 [636], 313, 346-7; A. de Bruvne 194^1 |65o|, II, 215! and Weis- makes no reference to the glass at all (1962 Of Divers Arts (Hanke 1962 |72l|, yiff; L.
Smith 19S3 |570|, I54ff (Avicenna and weiler 1952 |830|. 1 have been unable to |790|, 763fl). 'White 1964 |835|, zzyfF; van Engen 1980
Alhazen); Giitje 1967 |697|, 294-5 document von Simson’s claim that Hugh 37 See Ciidtmann 1929 |776|, 47; [677], 161).
(A verroes). was a friend of Suger’s (1988 |8o5|, 120) Lehmann Brockhaus 1955—60 |744|, II, 50 Montesquiou-Fezensac 1973 [768].
17 For early scales see pp. 165-6 above. but their affinities of thought have been no. 4616. 108.
See also Avicenna 1956 I369I, III, 1 4; studied by Rudolph 1990 |794|, which is, 38 Martene and Durand 1717 [759|, col. 51 The earliest example seems to be in Sta
Grosseteste Dc Irtele in Grosseteste 1913 however, also critical of a Dionysian 1584. Maria Maggiore (Brenk 1975 |644|; see
|234|, 77; Bacon 1897 1900 |i56|, II, 19; emphasis in the interpretation of Suger’s 39 Bettembourg 1977 I629I, 8-9; also Matthiae 1967 [762], figs 89, 101-2,
Albertus Magnus De Seiisii II, ii in Hudec- thought. For William of St Thierry Acni- Bouchon et al. 1979 [6411, 19. For traces 136, 145, 177, 196, 228, 229, 33S-9. For S.
zek 1944 1732], 130, pnia fidci, Patrolopica Latina |ii6|, of cobalt 111 glass from St-Denis, Crosby Vitale, C.-O. Nordstrom 1953 [774),
18 For col. ph, Grodecki 1977 I717I. 73, GLXXX, cols 422f and Dictionnaire de et al. 1981 [665I. 81. For the sources of 23-5; K. R. Brown 1979 [649], 57. For S.
fig. 58. spiritnalite, 1953-, |668|, s.v. 'Denys cobalt 111 the Middle Ages, Rumpf 1961 Apollinare in Classe. Deichmann 1958
19 Panofsky 1979 (783], 2 1. I’Areopagite’, cols 335ff. |795|, lyffi Bezborodov 1975 I630I, 64!’. |666|, pis XII-XIV. For the same arrange¬
20 Ibid., 72-5. 28 For this programme, von Simson 40 Theophilus 1961 [583], bk II, xii. For ment in Byzantine metalwork, Hahnloser
21 S. McK. Crosby in ibid., 239; Conant 198S |8o5|, 120-2; espec. Grodecki 1961a Roman glass coloured with cobalt, Geil- 1965-71 [719], tav. I, II, and II, no. 72 and
1975 [658I, 727ff. figs 4. 6. |7I2|, uyff; Hofmann 1968 I729I, 63; mann 1962 [699], 1 86t, who also mentions tav. LX). Theophilus (1961 [583I, II,
22 Grodecki 1976 |7i6|, 25-8. Grodecki Esmeijer 1978 |68o|, 14-15. cobalt in mosaic glass from Ravenna, the xxviii) reports the continuing popularity
estimated a total of some 52 or 54 29 Celestial EHeranliy II. I have used source of spoils in northern Europe of the ot the combination in the West; tor
windows glazed. On 27 he suggests that Eriugena’s version in the synoptic collec¬ type also mentioned here by Theophilus western mss, Grahar and Nordenfalk 1957
some surviving fragments tif border (cf. tion of all Pseudo-Dionysius’s Latin texts, (cf. del Medico 1943 [5o8|, 85, 97). I707I, 155: de Hamel 1986 |72o|, pi. 36.
130-1) may be from the W. windows. 1950 I789I, II, cols 742fF. 41 For blue glass excavated in Constant¬ 52 In what seems to be the only pirecise
23 Grodecki 1976 (716], 27 argued that 30 See espec. Panofsky 1944 |782|, 95ft'. inople, Megaw 1963 I509I, 362, who account of the distribution of these stones,
Suger’s statement can hardly have in¬ 31 Eriugena 1968-81 |679|, I (1968), relates it to the sapitirigraeci mentioned by a 12th-century German poem on the
cluded the transept (which was only 194!, and in general, Bicrwaltes 1977 Theophilus (II, xix). For a later date and a Heavenly Jerusalem (in Schroeder 1972
beginning to be built when On Ai/niin. 1632], I27ff. Suger’s borrowings were possible Western origin. Lafond 1968 [801], I, 96-111), jaspis is given to the
was written) or the nave, which was noted by von Simson 1988 |8o5|, 12511. |740|, 234ft'. 1^- T- Harden 1969 I723I, 98 foundations and saphirus, smaragdiis, cal-
about to be demolished. The plan in 32 Eriugena 1968 -81 |679|, II (1972), and Frodl-Kraft 1970 |692|, 14-16 have cedonins and sardonix to the walls (see
Formige i960 (689], 66-7, fig. 49 shows I 86ff. suggested a Byzantine origin for Western Lichtenberg 1931 |746|, 14ft).
20 windows in the nave. The precise 33 The Lihcr Pontificalis 1 886-1957 I745 [, glass-technology. The windows of King 53 Evans 1922 (6821, 212-13. 'Daini-
fenestration of the Carohngian church is refers (ch. 98) to Leo IPs work in St John Hugon of Constantinople’s palace in the geron’ has been thought by some com¬
unknown but a description of799 gives a Lateral! c. 800: 'sinuil et fenestras de absida Old Fr. epic Pelerinage de Cliarleniagne mentators to be as late as the 6th century
figure of loi windows, very close to ex vitro diversis coloribus conclusit ate]ue were of hrasme nilramarin, which might AD.
Suger’schurch (Bischoff 1984 [635], 2 1 sf). decoravit’ (at the same time he also mean a blue stone or glass; but this poem 54 Isidore of Seville (Etyin XVI, ix),
Brown and Cothren 1986I648I, 36,11. 150 enclosed and decorated the windows of may be as late as the late 13th century following Pliny ((296I, XXXIII, xxi 68)
suggest that Sugcr did not claim literally the apse with variously coloured glass). (Faviti 1965 |688|, 124). stated that saphirns was never transparent
to have glazed the whole church and The note adds that the other windows in 42 Grodecki 1961c I714I, 184; 1986 [7l8|, and he referred to its purple cast, as did the
could, practically, only have glazed a the basilica were repaired not with glass 255f; Crosby 1966 |664|, 28; Crosby et al. early Christian lapidary of Epiphanius (in
much smaller number of windows; but but with translucent marble (c.v tnetallo 19S1 I665I, 67, 84, 86 and nos 15, 16; Patrologia Craeca |ii6|, XLIII, col. 297).
Kidson 1987 |737|, to notes that he glazed eyprino). The same source (106) records Stratford 1984 |8l 11, 21 5. 55 See the felts sent by Charlemagne to
at least 30 in the choir. work by Benedict III Haifa century later 43 Mortet 191 I [772], 139. Harouii al-Raschid {Alotnitnenta Ger-
24 For Suger on the cost, Panofsky 1979 in the apse of Sta Maria in Trastevere: 44 The idea that glass is a stone or a metal nianiac Historica Scriptores Renim Gertnani-
I783I, 52-3. In mid-14th-century London 'Fenestras vero vitreis coloribus ornavit et goes back to ancient Egypt (Trowbridge canttn i960 I769I, 63).
blue glass cost from 4 to 6 times as much as pictura nuisivi decoravit’ (He ornamen¬ 1928 |8i9|, 19ft'; Ganzenmuller 1956 56 Bede in Patrologia Latina |ii6|, 11.47;
white and about a 3rd more than red ted |it| with colour-glazed windows and |694|, 131) and was transmitted to the Hugh of St Victor, ibid., CLXXVl cols
(Brayley and Britton 1836 |643|, 176-80; embellished it with mosiac pictures). The West by Isidore ofSeville (Estym XVI, xvi) 820f.

278
 \ (111 s 11 ■■ I n I 11 \ I

57 Tin.' (.MrlR-st. sth-iciuiirv AD .iccinint 74 .Albertus .Magnus u/r 614I. t.i and trc'Co. I niton .iiul .Meis- o.it.: X151. . ;:e : . . • , c . ;. , : ...
ot this stDiic (Soliiuis DJ5X |So8|. i.tst'; \sas "7, For I he assoiiation ot the i.irbuiu le¬ 13; lot the Fiiigu.ice ot cl.i. P. .s- 'ill . s I ' . .
t ontincd to tlu- bliu’ variety hut a late vth- ss itli gold in .ilchems. (.anzenmuller 19'' ' 17871. - 1 n I 4. ',a 1. n s- -.i C, m -I., :
eeiitury text by (aista Hen Luca slescnbeii 1936 |694|. xsf! and tor its rej-'ut.ition m 86 .At .I popular le\el this ^ urii .Sits .ihoii; ms - n'. ■!- w . M. (m;. • '-■ 1: .-
the three types and his version passed on medieval literature. /.lolkossski d/u prue '.111 be seen in .1 loin.m-■ 'luF. .i- iss.. 7671 1-:
to Marbode '1977 I267I, 170, 1 lerrad oL l^39|. 3 ' 3rf; A R H.irden I9''i' |722|, s9ti ( hretien de Iroses'^ /u, ,r t Hui,. L 100 M.o , 75X
Landsberg liowever. described uuiiitlio> On the identification of the garnet ssith I s-.m!. w here a dress ot r, nci, iss.ndt. lot t ..ui:i:. : 437, ' .' ■ ■
simply as blue (I.ipinsky |752|. the c.irbuncle in the e.irls .MuKlle .Ages have been trimmed with nioii- th.in . .. !'<!• B.m.p. :\F..! i. ,1 ■ 1 ' 795
l.ipinsky also has miportant material front aiul their high value. .Arrhenius i9,Ss marks ot be.iten goLI. but, .0 ( lueiien 1 : :i' ■
I yth-ceiitury lapidaries). |623|, 238. B.irtholomeus .Angluus's resent eilitor shows, the figure s.iriC' 102 (i.iuthiet ' 437 ;
5S rheophilus 1961 I5H3I, 11, Ml, svuiels used l)c Piopncljlilni^ Ptriiiii u frs'in MS to MS aiul in one is .is low ,0 : 103 1 or e.irfel c \ ,1: c p, ' ■ C : hi- . . u;1
Dodwell’s trails, is 'white' but jllnini 12301 I625I, suggested that the s.ipphire mark . lux'- I652I. iiq ' Suger slid not go .itioii, i .'..dc. ki I';-' :7l5i. 1- .111,1 to.
should read 'colourless' here as in 11. vi, svas the mother ot the carbuncle iXVLsh. so t.ir .IS to put .1 priie-t.ig on hts ..'bieits an ex, client dis. nssi, ,n . ,| the : .-ijii, 'ieliip
XV, xvii. d lie use of Sij/i/nrus in the context X6). Both these stones ssere called 'la but this w.is not uiuonimon .Sshlo'sei i'ctw -.-en gl.is- .111.1 tiesio in ( i.i.Lli
ot'mosaic cubes is t'ound as earls as the 9th gemme des gemmes' in the Lite 13th 1X96 |798|, 29' . Krempel 19-1 l739|. 2.1. B.ltoiui lli t h.ip. . Ill M,i t ro,e 111 lloi-
century in a description bs Seduluis of century: Stiuier and Evans 1924 18l2|. (Isnseii I9~'i |706|. lO.Si ciue. 1 lilb |.;s-I727I. SI [orsi.iiK.'t
Liege (Traube 111, 1X96IS17I, 19X). 120, 126. 87 For the sosial role ot the meshes.il tlu ditiu iiltk's t.u c,l bs 111,'di 111 sp,-, tat,irs
59 Theophilus 1961 I583I. 11, xxviii; also 75 Albertus .Magnus i96';’|6i4|, 141! goldsmith. C'laussen ly'X K’Sh], a'tl in rel.iting glass to painting at .A-.-isi.
.V/ii/i/nif (Uji'iaiLt 1974 |757|, ('17, XX. 76 See M. .Meiss in (iilbert 1970 |70l|. 88 On . hfnnni.s/i.int'n .X.X.XIII. t H ul .M.irtiiuf.iL I'/ss ;79i' i-.g, B,.'-o,,k
60 Lor the earlier account, 1 lubert 1949 49tf. For B.icon's discussion of tr.insp.i- \/i f.nniir;'//i'.'t. 11, s. 1 or Suger's lres|uent i>;.xo :639|. 2 ;
l73i|. 72 3. The early 13th-century ac¬ rency (O/nc' .\/.ni(s Pt IV', dist iv. ch. 1). use ot the tag. P.inofsks l9“9 |783|, l''4 104 Inlet In',' 6811. -st 'o' Hi itiiig
count already refers to 'saphirs' (Viard 1 lills 19X7 I727I, 66. For other earls ex.imples, Sshlaush 1932 19” . 6281. 4 I1 oulmin I')". 816!. IS.
1927 |822|, 257); Montesc]Uiou-Lezensac 77 (irosseteste 1912 I234]. 202; .Albertus 17971. s I 3; Ssiliring 1900 |807|. soa. 1 riss h 105 I spi-. Belting Iv' ■ j628|. , li II .iiid
I97.f I7h8|, 90rt’. 2X5tf. See also Albertus Magnus i9f>X |6i5|, loX, 123; B.icon 1971 |69I |. 39 3X1I
■Magnus 1967 |6i4l. 41. 97f 11 sf 1X97 1900 |l5h|, 11, 409. 412. 4s6. 310. 89 .Alessio icgis |6i8|. ,S3, i s6rt; Stern.igel 106 I inlori and .Meiss notu ed gold in the
61 Martmdale 1972 |76o|, ch. IV espec. SI9; Pech.mi 1970 I785I. X9. isi;, B.irth¬ 1969 |8l0|. 1 2 1; Ovitt 19X3 I 781 |. s,; los; hangings ot oiiK one 'iciie D;',' Xisf
Xo- I. olomeus of Bologna 1932 |626|. 3^3t. tor ,111 extensise smses. W, hitnes 1990 14X1. see also | (j.irdner. res lew ot Belt
62 Becksmann Dji'iy |627|, 143!', 42. 78 On the importance of transparenev in l«.R>|. iiig 19" 628|. Ill Kin/'t./ir.'Mik XXXII.
63 Wenzel 1949 |832|. 54f bor the late stained glass, Schone 1979 (566|, 3911. 90 Isss) architectur.d examples, relating ii;'9.f><. \\ lute ivXi |834|. t'l Protessoi
medieval association of painters and 79 William of Auvergne 1674 I350I. to slesign rather th.in m.iteri.ils, .ire in \\ lute h.is kindls sontirnied nn obsers-
glaziers 111 the same guilds. (Lilin 1979 Supplementum 207; Lheodonc of Mortet 191 I 17721. I 'i'll! ,111 si s on Simpson ation th.it real goKl w.is used in the saull
[6511, II. An early I4tli-ceiitury Eng. f reiberg in Wallace 1939 |826|. 37of For 19X2 |804|. si;' 613, decoration at the F etui lor insi riplions
treatise. Ad faciciidiiiii emalliiiii. suggests ruby glass, Johnson 1964 |736|. 33-7. 91 (..'olish 196X |657|. 3'itl; for a slirierent reterring to gold aiul glass in t osniati
that jewellers were no longer familiar Oauthier 19X1 |698|, 33, 3X notes the tr.ms. (i.iuthier 1972 |437|. 361. no. 112. work, (liovannom 190X l702|. 2X0. Hut¬
with the recipes of glass-painters (1S46 special status ot rouyif clairi' enamel at this I he context ot the uiea has been sketched ton i9so|733|. Is. Since the ( osiiiatesijue
|6i2|, 172). time. by Bialostocki 1967 (6311, 361). altar in the Upper ( hurih has been
(14 M. 1’. Lillich. 'European Stained (dass 80 For cutting Indian beryl. Pliny 92 For e.irher preceslents for this em- entirels restored, the rel.itioii betsseeii it
around 1300: the introduction of silver XXXVII, XX, 76 7, followed by Isidore ph.isis. Latarkiesvicz 1970 '4 |8i3|, II, and p.iiiited ('osm,itess|ue decoration is
stain' in Liskar 19NC1 |753|. 4,3 fio. Ptyiii X\d. vi. For cutting other stones 23 6. Lhe mcnption on a pair of candle¬ best stiulied 111 the loss er C diiirs h (i.ir-
65 Morgan 19X3 |77l|, jsf The most with saws. Theophilus 1961 I583I. 11, xcv. sticks at Hildesheim (i ith century) states ihier 19'3 I695I, qot has pointed to the
accessible Latin text is in Lehmann- A Roman necklace with facetted that they .ire not made of gold or silver mosaic origins ot even the narrative stsle
Brockhaus 1933 60 |744|. 1 (1933). no. amethysts is in the Victoria and Albert (’I schaii 11, 1931 I589I, 129). For Alexan¬ ot the St Francis cycle
Museum. London (1X32 1X63) and 9th- der of Hales (13th century) on art trans¬ 107 /.icc.iri.i 1963 |837|.sIoc. 14'
66 The link with (Irosseteste was sugges¬ and lo-century Viking necklaces with forming nature bv putting noble forms 108 For s .1st shallow s in these sieties,
ted by E. Nordstriim 1933 |775|. espec. finely facetted cornelians are in the Na¬ into base material or s ice versa, sle Brus ne I niton .ind .Meiss i9fi' |8l5|. 1 tvt and tor
23X but has found little echo, (irosseteste's tional Museums of Antiquites at 1 lelsinki 1946 |650|. III. 113. elsewhere in the Lower Uluirih.
rainbow theory has been studied by East- and Stockholm and the Oslo Unnersitc 93 ,\/ctii/i'i,no'n. cit. Eco 19XX |673|, 94 but Mcdinms 1971 |755|. 63 4
wood 1966 [6711, jijtT. The Last ludg- Museum of National Antiquities. see also 93 6 tor Scholastic viesvs on the 109 Bihl 1941 |634|. sit Brooke dates
nient in the North Rose, i. 1200/33, 81 In the mid-ljth century Bacon had Inmtaton of art. Hie popularity 111 the Statute III. ix to r 124' S' but there is
includes a 'Olirist as Judge' seated on a noted that diamonds were not cut in the I 3th and 14th centuries of some pre.is lung nothing so specific in the Dominkan
yellow and purple bow (Morgan 19X3 manner described by Pliny (XX.XV'II. xv. manuals called l.iiiiini AiiiithW. ss Inch cite Uonstitutions of 122X and 1241 to w hu h
I771I. H.L). 33 61), by softening with goats' blood, recipes attributed to Theophilus (though she compares it (1939 |647|. 2x9) and it
67 Lor Clallo, de Bruyne 1946 |65o|. Ill, but with fragments of the same stone (Pt not found in his book), are a further may well be later For the Uistercian
SXtf; Bseudo-I honysius 1930 I789I, I, 6731}’ VI, 1. II. 1X97 16X; III, lyoo, 1X0). A indication ot a concern tor technology at Statutes oft 134, de Bruyne 1946(650!. II,
and espec. 6S3; Albertus Magnus 1972 French inventory of 1322 refers to an this tune (Rouse i9'i |793|, 3-1 13). 133. .ilso on cnriu.MM.' 134! For the uo-
|6l6]; Aquinas 1930 [6211, trails. Coo- emerald 'taille .1 maniere de dyament’ 94 E.g, Hoberg 1944 [72*)|. ■6X. nography of the choir w iiidov .Mar-
niaraswaniy 193X |66l|, 6631'; Engelberti (Falk 1973 [6831, 12), which suggests that 95 Ibid., 17, 23, 1X4, 233, 233 6; Braun chim 1973 I758I. 231). I he earlies, xiiown
1923 (675I, trails. Ooomaraswamy 1933 diamond-facetting was commonplace by 1907 I387I, 322-3. The earliest reference Franciscan glass, the three F. windows of'
|66o|, 333F. Lillich in Verdon and Front this time. For the study of refraction in the to glass gems 1 have found is in early 9th- the Barfiisser Kirche at Erfurt (1230 3,.
19X4 |H2i|, 223f has suggested the dis¬ later Middle Ages, Orant 1974 [2311. century (iermaiiy (Miilfljlicrttiln- SAuu;- related to .Assisi by W enzel 19x2 (8331.
crediting of Eriugeiia as a suspected here¬ 420fF; Eastwood 1967 |672|. 406tf; Lind- vvr^cichiiissi' 1, 1967 |i09|, 90); see also 69I. also has a Life of Uhrist and a Jesse,
tic in the 13th century as one reason why berg 196X/9 17491, 24ff. (lallo 1967 |693|, 279, 2X3 and for the together with a Fife of St Francis (Dra-
the Dionysian negative theology sank 82 The diamond was already regarded as general picture. Holmes 1934 |73o|. chenberg et al. 1976(6691, tiff).
into oblivion until the Uenaissance but her the most important of stones in the i ith- 193-6. 199. no Bonaventure 1XX2 nzo2 1637(. II
argument is weakened by a ret'erence century Byzantine lapidary of Psellus 96 V'escovim .S'fm/i mi hi jirii^pi-tlirm (iXXx). 321 and l\' (1XS9), 102X. For an
(230. n. X4) to a niid-ijth-century .MS (19X0 I788I, 77) but as late as the begin- IIH'dil l'ilIl', 1963. i'4ri. assessment of the central role ot light in
from .St-Dems (London, Lambeth Palace miig of the 13th century in Venice rubies 97 Meyendorfl. 'Spiritual trends m Bonaveiiture's thought. Lindberg 19X6
3X2) which includes the parallel versions were commanding prices twice as much Bvzantium in the late 13th .ukI early 14th (7511- i-rf
of Eriugena, .Sarrazin and (lallo. .IS even facetted diamonds and continued centuries' in Uiidersvoosl I9'>' '3 |i46|. 111 .Alessandri and I’enaichi 1914 (36o(.
68 Albertus Magnus 1972 |6i6|. 1X9. to be more expensive than diamonds for IV. lOI 6. 133X Inventory no. 32. In 1233 Innocent
6y Pseudo-Dionysius 1930 l73l9|. some centuries (Sirat 196X |8o6|. 1073--6). 98 Onasch 1962, I778I. espec. 13. i9;.ilso IV had granted the friars the right to ow n
Cc/esfii)/ HkrMcUy XV, vii. Forc/i/nroi/. see But see also Heyd 1936 (726|, 633f for II 12 on Barlaam and asri sin the con- and use precious objects and vestments
ch. 2, 11. 7 above. higher values of diamonds m the e.irly troversv m Russia. (/.accaria 1963 (837!, doss 33 6).
70 Herrad of (Landsberg) 1 lohenbourg. 16th century. For the problem of iden- 99 I he onlv w riter to give much atten¬ 112 Bonaventure 1XX2 tizoa 1637(, \'
tifving the diamond m the early gem tion to the decoratuiii is Schone 1937 (1X91). 322t. For the Uosmati, (ilass 19X0
■ 979 I725I. 1. «9.
71 1 hldegard of Bingen PliyAcs IV, Patro- literature, B.irb 1969I624I.66 X2. |8oo|, 30 116; 1979 1566], 32 fi. 23'f 17041
loyiii Laliiui \ 116|, CiXDVlL cols 12473). 83 For (ierman and French literature, Belting 1977 |628|, 2143!' is chieflv con¬ 113 Frevis.mo nR>l (8l8(, ixjtL
72 V'meent of Beauvais 1624 |823|, XL Weise 1939 |829|. 477rf; Lsdgate 1X91 fined to the Roman and antique elements 114 Bigi 1961 (633(. 396, 419
ch. cvi. He specifically mentions the |754|. 11. 46ff. III the \ aults and fictive architecture For 115 For 'harmony'. Bonaseiiture
sapphire. 84 Lightbown 197X |747|. 64. yXH; the textile designs, Klesse 199' |738|. 2s. I SX2 1902 (637(. V (t X91). icxif. Ill w hu h
73 Thomas of Ciantimpre 1973 I814). Dauthier 19X1 |698| 34II. 49. 36. nos. I. 6. '. 16. 17, 22. 29. colour IS preterred as a mean between
.T^.'i- .339; ‘<lso .Ariioldus Saxo 1903 |622|. 85 Thompson 1936 |24|. I44t and espec. 30 3, 30 For col. reproductions ot siniilar extremes. Bonaventure does not .idopt
70. /)(■ .Irre llliiiitiihitidi 1973 |i93|. 193 L"r ilesigns, ,M.iv 1937 I763I. frontispiece aiisl ,As)um.is's inoshfuation ot ( ucio s >11,11 1
NO U S TO I UT TEXT

1,1} ti> ,l,ini,i} tdc Bru\nc 194'’ |650|. III. 5 Colour-Language, Colour- ■VUinro, ‘The mediaeval scarlet and the 39 Serjeant 19~2 [568]. 210; Delort 1978
49Srt i. ()n Kilour as .1 mixture.- eit the economics ot sattorial splendour’ in Harte [875], 29ff, 1261.
Symbols and Pouting 1983 I899], 59. As late as the 40 Delort 197S 1875], 42ff. 53 iff (hierar-
fk-ments. Bim.u ciicuru i.sxa- 1902 1637!,
I\’ 11XX9). 1025; for ScholastK interest in earlv 14th century documents still reter to chv of furs in the 14th century). I245ff
mixture around 1300. iVlaier 1952 I264I, 1 There seems to be no general agree¬ ‘scarlets’ of several colours (Weckerlin. (prices).
lod Even Ouccio made use ot many ment among psychologists about the ibid., 12; R. van Uytven, ‘Cloth in 41 Latin armorial text written in Swit¬
mixtures m the Mjala. starting from a number of discriminable colour- mediaeval literature ot western Europe’ in zerland in the 1240s, Konrad von .Mure’s
limited palette of 7 pigments (Brandi 1939 sensations: H. Terstieg, 'The CIE colour¬ Harte and Ponting. ibid.. 158). For refer¬ Clipearius Teutonicorum. still used a very
|642|, 19-tf). coding system’ in Mollon and Sharpe ences to kermes as escarlate. Poerck 1951 loose vocabulary of black, 3 yellows
116 I )ante /-I ,nr III, vii, 4. He cites 1983 [931]. 563, proposes 1 million and (94l],2l3ff'- (crofci', auro.gili’o) 3 blues (lasurio, hlaveus,
Albertus .Magnus De IiitcUccni cr hneUt^i- only X commonly recognized names; U. 18 Dolce 1565 [197J. 13V. For the defi¬ ghnicus), 3 whites (niveo, albus, candore
hili 1, 111. 2 hut he must also have been Eco, 'How culture conditions the colors nition in the Reichenau Glossary, H. nitentem). 3 reds (rubco, rubro, rufus) and
impressed by the long discussion in Barth- we see' in Blonsky 1985 |853|, 167, cites .Meier 1963 [927], 106. The fullest studies green: Ganz 1S99 [891 j. 172-85,
olomeus of Bologna 1932 |626|. 23 3, 23"! the Optical Society of America’s estimate are Toynbee 1902 I965I, 307-14; Mann 42 Gage 197) < [74|. loS.
on light passing through stained-glass ot from 7.5 to 10 million sensations. This 1923 (924]. 186-96; Hoepffner 1923 (905I, 43 Cf M. Plouzeau, ‘Vert Haeume: ap¬
windows. For his knowledge ot Barth- seems to be a desk-exercise. 592--. proaches d’un syntagme’ in CUERM.A
olomeus, Simonelh I9(')7 |8o3|. 2oSlt. 2 For a discussion of Berlin and Kay's 19 M. L. Wagner 1916. 17 |974|. 234; H. 1988 [873], 598ff. Plouzeau denies the
117 Bassera 1921 I784I. 13!'. effect on language studies, Grossman 1988 -Meier 1963 I927I, io6f problem.
118 Bottari 1967 [640I, >3 9; Fallani |86|. i6f 20 H- Meier 1963 I927I. io6f 44 See e.g.. in the Chitflet-Prinet Roll
1971a [684]. itsff; ibid.. 1971b [685]. 3 For a critique ot these methods. Kus- 21 For peach-blossom. Du Cange in (1297. Brault 1973 [86i|. no. 80) the arms
i37tf; ibid., 1973 |686|, i03fF: Conti 19H1 chcT and .Monberg 1974 |9l6|. 2i3ff: Toynbee 1902 I965I. 307-14; for Persian of Gobiert de Montsablon, ‘a trois pens
|659|, 7. 39; H. Gibbs, Maga- Sahlins 1976 I949). 12; Grossmann 1988 lilac. .Mann 1923 I924], 189; for persele. vaires d’argent et de vert au chief d'or’. In
:tnc. CXXVl. 19S4. 639. |86|,2i. Brereton and Ferrier 1981 |862|. 271 and Glover's Roll the spelling is very various:
119 For France. Orderic V'italis 11. 1969 4 Bolton 197S |854|. 306. 3 10. 329n. The interpretation of this passage verre. verre, verree, vairee, vierre, var-
|779|- 86; for Germany. Lehmann- 5 Merrill et al. 1975 [930], 54-60; Born- trom a late 14-century text is complicated riee. varree.
Brockhaus 1938 (743]. no. 3007; for En¬ stem 1975 [856]. 401-19. by the author’s inclination to see the 45 Pastoureau 1986 [937], 25 trace the use
gland. Lehmann-Brockhaus 1955-60 6 Chapanis 1965 [867]. 338; Grossmann flowers ot the cornflower (perseau), purple of sinople as green in a heraldic context to
[744I, 1 no. 1859. Theophilus 1961 [583], 1988 (86|. 6. It is well known that women corn-cockle (iiee/le) and pink rose-mallow the anonymous romance Durmart le
6-10. Brunello has noticed the word in an are tar less prone than men to visual (passe-rose) as of all the same colour and all Galois, written in Picardy in the late
8th-centurv .vis (De Ane Illuininandi 1975 colour-deficiencies: Barlow and Mollon red (yenneille). 1210S. The use of the term in French to
(l93|. 3)- The best survey of the question 1982 [847], 197; for a dissenting voice, 22 Pocrck 1951 [941]. 167; Sicily Herald denote red also seems to have a heraldic
is Wattenbach 1896 [828|, 347. also 256, Wasserman 1978 [975], hpff. i860 [954], 88. For the cost of English pers origin: in the Liber de Coloribus Faciendis ot
3634!. Wattenbach cites the 13th-century 7 Wattenwyl and Zollinger 1981 [976]. in the late 13th-century as second only to Peter of St. Audemar the use ot the term
Chronicle of Salimbene to show that the 303-15. The tests described in this study scarlet, whereas light blues were much sinopis to describe a particularly beautiful
term was still something ot a novelty in showed that art students in Switzerland cheaper. Cams-Wilson 1953 [866], go. vermilion is attributed to shield-makers,
that period, although it had been known and Israel had more difficulty than science 23 Brereton and Ferrier 1981 [862]. 133. scutarii (Merrifield 1849 [271], 1. 143). For
in Italy since the 12th century. students in naming colours quickly 24 H. Meier 1963 [927], 106. the date and authorship L. van Acker
120 For William of Malmsbury. because they were more concerned with 25 Robert Guiscard’s gift to .Monte (ed.), Petri pictoris carmina nec non Petri de
Lehmann-Brockhaus 1955—60 [744J. 1. individual nuances. Cassino, c. 1085. in Lehmann-Brockhaus Siincto audemaro librum de coloribus f,iciendis
no. 1859; cf. also Walsingham 1, 1867 8 Isidore Etymologies Xll. 1, 48; Palladius 1938 1743). no. 2844. For Persia as the (Corpus Christianoum continuatio
1827]. 94 (before 1259). For references in Opus agriculturae IV, 13, cit. M. L. Wag¬ chief intermediary in the silk trade be¬ mediaevalis XXV), 1972, 163-6.
inventories. Ehrle 18S5 I674], 43, 346, ner [974], 1916/17, 234. Some of these tween China and the West. Falke 1921 46 Sicily Herald 1860 [954], 46!'. As late as
347; Wenk 1885 |83i|, 2784!, 284; Ales- terms were not what we term 'colours’ [429]. 2f the mid-16th century the Imperial Hun¬
sandri and Penacchi 1914 (360). nos 300, but refer to markings on the coat. 26 Fernandez Arenas 1982 [887], 95. For garian Herald [ohann von Francolin felt
308. Bolognese usages ot illuminator in 9 Schwyzer 1929 [951], 93-100. the building as it survives, Azeona 1972 bound to explain that the sinope, sinoble,
Brieger et al. 1969 [646]. 37; Malaguzzi 10 Steiger 1958 [9611, 768, 778. Old High [843|. sinople used by heralds was ‘auf die recht
Valeri 1896 [756]. 267. German terms have been estimated to be 27 De Ornatu Ecclesiae in Summa Major. Frantzosisch sprach', verdt (Berchem et al.
121 Alain de Lille 1955 (613], 57, 94: see 11 (‘Farbe’ in Handworterbuch des deutschen (Antoninus 1959 [841]) Pars 111, tit. xii. 1939 [851]. i54f)-
Ciotti i960 [655]. 257-67; Baudri of Aberglaubens. U. 1929/30, col. 1190). cap. X. §ii. col. 546f For Antoninus as an 47 Nicholas Upton also wrote that he
Bourgueil 1979 [374|. no. 1. p. 9. 11 Radloff 1871 [946), 302f Kohalmi opponent of art, Gilbert 1959 [893], 76. had when young written in disparage¬
122 Eco 1988 [673], to. 1966 [913], 46 (about 40 terms); Sundberg 28 Brault 1972 [860]; Pastoureau 1982 ment ot green but now wished to retract
123 Weise 1939 I829], 88, ii2f 265, 1985 [963], espec. I56f (58 terms, 16 of [935]; ibid. 1983 [936]; ibid. 1986 [937]; this (1654 [967]. 123).
447ff- them ‘basic’); Hill 1972 [904], i2of has ibid. 1989a [938]. 48 Tremlett 1967 [966], 7, 36-57.
124 Chnste and James 1981 [654I, facsi¬ found 20 terms in modern Slavic usage, 29 Seltman 1924 [952], espec. 24. 49 Christine de Pisan 1937 [868], 290; see
mile 32. cf. 2iff. 66, 72f 77, 93. An some of them quite unknown to lay 30 Bouly de Lesdain 1897 [858], 69-79; also Have 1901 [901], 283 (1456). Both
iconographic link with Rheims has been people. Gras 1951 [895], 198-208. depend on Bonet 1949 [855]. 206 (1387).
made by P. Kurmann, ‘Le portail apoc- 12 Boethius 1906 [636]. V, 10, 24. 313. 31 Bouly de Lesdain 1897 [858]. 71; 50 Dean 1967 [874]. 25. For the date.
alyptique de la cathedrale de Reims’ in 346f Dennys 1975 [876], agf argues that this Dennys 1975 [876], 6of. Humphrey
Christe 1979 [653]. The Great Angel in 13 The fundamental study is de Vries shield is only proto-heraldic since we do Smith 1956 [908], 19!'. notes only 3 Engl¬
the slightly earlier Trinity Apocalypse is 1965 [970]. 35iff. For the study of colour not know whether it was used by ish examples using purple c. 1300.
not smiling (Brieger 1967 [645], facsimile terms in 17 contemporary novels, which Geoffrey’s son, Henry II Plantaganet, 51 For Glover’s Roll, London 1967 [921],
folio lov). found white used 957 times, black 694 and King of England. 106; for Walford’s, Brault 1973 [86l|. 38,
125 For the De Jaulnes Virgin, Les Tastes red and blue almost equal at 477 and 482 32 Barker 1986 [846], 4-6, 176-83. 46, 57-
dll Gothique 1981/2 [687], no. 25. For respectively, with the next most used 33 For Chanson de Roland. Bouly de 52 Argote de Molina 1957 [842], 86
illustrations of the type, Vloberg 1936 colour, grey, far behind at 400, R. M. Lesdain 1897 [858], 70; for mid-i2th (rojo)\ Salazar de Mendoza 1618 [950], 37:
|824|, 69-93. For the literature of smiling, Evans 1948 18841. 230-1. century Roman de Thebes, A. Wagner campo de goles 0 purpura ... Icon rampante
Menard 1969 [764]. Weise 1939 [829] 14 On this relationship, Lucy and 1956 [973I- I2f bermejo. See also Bouton III. 1884, [859],
gives many Fr. and Ger. lilterary Schweder 1979 [922], 599f. Also Kouwer 34 See German text off. 1156 in which i85f
examples of the Virgin as a source of light 1949 [914I. 9f- ‘Greek’ lazur was described as optimus 53 Menestrier 1661 [929], 54; cf 55 and
(I12ff, 214, 455). 15 Oribasius 1. 1940 [934], 125. 127: for color (Schlosser 1896 [798], 234) and a 67 on the arms of Spain.
126 Ficino De Liimme V, 16, cit. Lmdberg the Greek, Oribasius 1851-76 [933], V, 76 Florentine 13th-century treatise in which 54 Douet d’Arcq 1858 [879]. 322; Sicily
1986 |75i|, 23. See also Epistolae, Venice Bk 11, §44: V, 78, Bk 11. §55 and Mugler azura is ‘nobilior ceteris coloribus’ Herald i860 [954|. 47'ff.
1495, folio Lxx'' and the comment byjohn 1964 I523), s.v. xanthos. For the colours (Thorndyke i960 [964], 58), See also 55 See espec. Brunetto Latini IV, 1883
Colet in Jayne 1963 [735], 114. Lavin 1981 of wine. Fitton Brown 1962 |888|. Kurella and Strauss 1983 [915], 34ff. [918], Pt III, ch. xiv, 53ff on comparison as
I7411. i93fFdoes not notice this expansion 192-5. 35 Glover’s Roll (f. 1235), ed. in London the most ‘beautiful’ of the 8 colours of
ot the idea of light and smiling in Ficino 16 May 1957 I763], 62f For variously 1967 [921], 891! and in Brault 1973 [861], rhetoric. On the tradition in general. Faral
but (203) relates Leonardo da Vinci’s coloured ‘purples’ in French romances, 31-7. Bigot Roll in Brault ibid., 16-28. 1924 [886], 49f and for the medieval
smiling Jolin the Baptist (Pans, Louvre) to Goddard 1927 [894]; for the same in the 36 Goddard 1927 [894]. 131-3. For the opposition, 92-3.
the identification of St John's feast (6 Vatican in 1436, Miintz and Frothingham derivation, Tobler-Lommatsch .Altfran- 56 Maguire 1987 [496]. Sff; Coulton 1953
January) with the Feast of the Holy 1883 [526J, 6off. For various purpura in .ms zbsisches IVorterbuch. 192$-. s.v. gale. {872I. 554. _
Lights. For Leonardo’s reading of Ficino, illumination, Silvestre 1954 [956], 138-9. 37 Huon de .Men 1976 [910], 75, 84; 57 Peter of Poitiers 1938 [940], 4. For a
Garin 1965 [696], 69^ 70. See also p. 27 above. Princt 1922 [943], 43ff. survey of medieval ideas about symbols.
17 Weckerlin 1905 |977|, 85; J. H. 38 Delort 1978 [875], 1228, i27off. Chydenius i960 [869].

280
 N ( 111 s I < > I 1U U \ I

5« 1 ljupt ii;4i |900|, X4 <>. Lists ot jmi- /siin.'/ucsi/ni/iri. VIL 19x1, s \ Tarbe i~ tor thn conibiii.itioii in l.iti ( lotfu :ii I' r,. . .1.
tlK-tK.il nu'.imngs were alreaity ilrawii up (Liturgischf panel painting and ^tallll•cl e..i" Fr. dl- ‘ .u< 1 . ' . , ' . ‘l.* . . B. ' :
by Waikenianel 1X7219721.444 40 I he 77 For red. Sicily Herald 1X60 |954|, 4St. Kr.ift 19-' X 215|. espe, 114. 1 f-. .L 995i : .C.l N- ; ' .
slietionary ot inedies al ei)li)ur-syniholism Durandus 1X59 |88i), 140, for blask. Kraft, 't arbendu.iht.iteii, ( .1 gc iit.i: • Hi. ■ . ■ I:1 cii -w -
Cdiristel Meier lias been compiling will Sicily Her.ild ibuL. 56!'; Durandus ibuL. Grundf.irbeii in der goto, hen .M.iicei
t.ike account of these ambiguities: see (L 141. The link between armorial and ht- Flenng-.Mitgau et al 19X1 l902|. er.'cir tfi.i; !■. I’lc.f. -..111: , 1 h,,v .
Meier 1974 |926|, espec. 4X7 yy. 1977 urgual colour-developments was sugges¬ 294 8S0I ’ Xc, .1:-' rl;. :i
|l07|, espec. I47tl; also liriickner 19X2. ted by Pastoureau 19X911 |939|. 22 1 fbiit in 97 .Mehs 1. I9('2 |928|. <-< 1.:.,: . ;-s .'I R..:,v::i.k i , , ,
1X631. 44 5. the context of his impl.iusible idea that 98 Forv'/.iDoi.'and ofiWin-. see p ts.n 9- /' iMp.nei; Xtl.e’-, ; ■ i;-; ■!'.
59 I remlett 1967 |966|. 59 and no. 14. they were both abstract systems. abose For blot. else ix-x I978I. 2xs I’, iw h.i' 2 111.1111 - I •:, - 11 i-
60 I he earliest literary example of green 78 Skinner 19X6 |957|, 52 has traced the The dual colour ot the topaz m.idi u '.r. 4 "1 c , ,i R,•! 1 j». : I I 22 j. 4 --et
as faith I have noticed is 111 the L.itin song scheme of the Siena frescoes to Brunetto possible to gi\ e it .1 2-told interpretation 6 l.ir Biiddlii-:'; 111 A:..ii..:ii'i ii; B
ofr. icxx), (,‘ii’is iflcilis /iiifric, where green Latini’s encyclopaedia of the laCiOs. Lt blue tor heaven and gold lor the (.odlu .id Ri'wl.uid. |r, Xii ,fi, ^ rl], ilu.i.ili. ,1 .iri
jtispis aiuf the emerahl are its bearers l.ii’res doii Ircior'. but an Italian writer Tiach 1944 I844I. \\ 45x911 .Mthough ■ itB.imnaii th. B.-dF..-.ms .1 .g t ti,-up 1
(I)ronke 1972 |KSo|. 77). See also (lervais closer 111 time to Lorenzetti, Francesco da the tradition ot Isidore had meniioned 2 111 Barath.i Is, I i(4' 986 4'.ii l.iiX.'uth
dll Hus 191419 IS92I. 20of (1410/14): i/c Barbenno (1264 144X), has a scheme of colours in the top.iz, oni\ 1. yoiden. wa- .Ameru.iii lnd;.i:; . iihiirc-. 1 c\'.-Sti ni"
lot loyiilv cf d’csporjiii f. the same Virtues which gives green to named i.Marbode 19~~ (267I, s' I Sextus I'l^i '1079' 24t>I>. tlu Art ti.ilicis III
61 bor the history ot the Sniluitt l iilvt. M, I'rudence. white to (ustice and red to .Amarcus. 12th centurx. claimed that the Perth. W AiiMi.iha. h.o « r.i:;,\ii"!i "I
hvaiis 19X2 |883|. 22rt; Lewis 19X7 I920I. Fortitude (1X75 |890|, 424tF). For the topaz w.is white, red and green and thus .Aboriginal I'.irk painting' nlu'ti.itiiig tlv.
i9stT. Moeslii. Borsook 1966 |857|. 42 4. It has symbolized the uiiitv of the Theological N .Arnhemland msth ot the \\ .nine ik
62 Reeves and 1 first h-Reich 1972 |947|. been pointed out that the colours of the Virtues in St Paul (1969 |8o2|. ixul. For sisters and the rainbow snake lor the
194. Theological V'lrtues, red. white and the ()ld High German blao. Konig 192"' moslern histors ot p.nheh.i and gK'iiC'
63 Didreck 1924 I877I. chs 172 Xf), 2241!; green, correspond to the hvery-colours of |98|, 150. For the Slav languages, Herne (ireenler Igx ; 1056) Ihe histors ot the
I )idreck 1941 I878I IS the original the Medici in Florence (Ames-Lewis 1979 >954 I903I, ~i; .McNeill 1972 |923|, 2 1 .A relatesl .oiitusions i>l the colours ot st.ir-
Icelandic. I840I, 129. 147. 144) and that they bor¬ late medieval French Ms on physiognottis studied bs Boll IVI X I 1003 I .nid M.ilni ainf
64 Seyler 1XX9 |953|. 125 cites several rowed them from the Gonzaga at Man¬ seems to use the term blot 111 both senses, .Murdiii 115X4 11082'. I 24. ss
examples from early 14th-century rom¬ tua; but they were also the colours of the yellow for the skin and blue for the eses 7 .Menzel I X42 (1087I. 2SV
ances. The earliest use of tiiwiiy 1 have Este at Ferrara and were glossed 111 the both signify courage {_|ord,ni 191 1 I249I. 8 Durbeik 19— |200|. 421!, Isidore ot
found is in the linghsh mid-i5th century same way (Gundersheimer 1972 I896I, 5 i, 7020. A student ot Greek colour-terms Seville 115(10 (456). 2X41, t H id Mctamoi-
■Ashmolean Tract' , ed. Humphrey 19(10 86, 109). Mantegna made prominent use has found evidence that karopos mav have pito.'.es \’L (IS ■■. cit Senes a (Jtiacaioiu -
I907I, ihyf. The author implies that it is of the red. white and blue of the Gonzaga meant both amber and light blue but Saltirale.' 1, 4 4. Virgil .-li'Mi ii/ 1\ , aiul
used only in the Empire and in France. and Este arms, which were also the rejects this as incredible (.Maxwell Stuart \’, XX.
65 Suchenwirt 1X27 |962|, 4ff. colours of the planets Mars. Venus and 1981 I925I. 2it). Frodl-Kraft 19" x|2i5|. 9 For .Aetius. t) (hlbert 1150" |i050|,
66 The earliest instance I have found is in Mercury, in his paintings for these patrons 99 has pointed to the stained glass of the 6015!; .Ammi.nius .Marselhnus Htaory XX.
.\ lowhray's l-rcttcli 'I'rcalisf in the College ot (Lehmann 1974 |9I9|, i65f, 172). Sainte-Ghapelle, Pans (completed 124X), 11.2~ (trails J. t Rolfe. 11. 1941 ' ,Am-
Arms, London, which probably dates 79 Hadamer von de Laber 1850 |898|, as an example of blue yellow tonality; inianus gives a surprisnigls reasoned ac¬
from the end of the 14th century (Camp¬ 244-50; i'oti den Parhen in Lassberg 1820/5 here a good deal ot its force is due to the count ot his bizarre senes
bell and Steer I, 19XS |865|, 64, no, L.i2c, I917I, 1. I 54-8, on which see Bartsch iS64 ubiquitous blue gold of the French royal 10 Rosenthal I9~2 (1124), 4s. col. pL in
folios 42 -45V). 18481, 48ff. arms, gold lilies on a blue field. Eggenberger iv't (l030[. 44
67 Douetd’Arcq 1 X5X |879|. 424. 80 See espec. Squibb 1959|959|, 14-16. 99 Gage I97'8 l74|. 107. 11 For the Pergamon mosaic, .Merkev
68 Sicily Herald i860 l954|, 4Sff. 56ff. 81 Bartolo De Insifiniis et Armis (1458). too Forbes 1964-72 |2i3|. IV (1964), 110. 196- )io88|, XI 2; tor a col reionsiruc-
69 Hunter Blair 1940 [909]. The stones chs 24 - 27 in Jones 1944 |9* • !• 244-7. 101 Pastoureau 19X6 (937), 9of tion. Kawerau and W'legand ivm [1072I.
are mixed with more traditional tinctures 82 Johannes de Bado Aureo Tractatus de 102 Pastoureau 19X2 |935|. 144 has dis¬ pi. VIIL
(e.g. 96, I I 8). Arniis (?f. 1494) in Jones ibid., 96-9. counted the earlier idea that seal- 12 For St Gregors. Patroloqia l.atuta
70 A. Wagner 1956(973!, 148. Nothing is known of Johannes, who has engravers sought to indicate colours by 1X44 55 (116). LX.X\ 1 11X541. cols 6" X.
71 A. C. Decembrio De Politia Lileraria even been identified with the early 15th- hatchings. Different capital letters were Hugh of St Victor, in the 4th book of his
(c. 1462), cit. Gundersheimer 1974 I897I, century heraldic writer Nicholas Upton, occasionally used in the 16th century to encyclopaedia De Be.-tit> et alii> Rebu^. has
I o6f apparently the only writer to cite the indicate colours (Seyler 18X9(9531, syiff). the same colours but reverses the order,
72 Sicily Herald i860 |954|, 44ff, 86f For Tractatus, w'hich was first published with 103 Potnpa fttnebris optinti potettties prtn- which had not been specified by Gregors
Alfonso’s taste for black, Vespasiano da Upton’s own De Studio Militari in 1654 cipis Alberti Pti arcitidticis &c. oeris (ibid . GLXXVIl. col. 149). For the Re¬
Histicci 1964 I969I, 74. In 1476 Charles V (cf. n. 47 above for Upton on green). intat^ittibus expressa a Jac. Franequart. Brus¬ naissance see beloss
of France had bought a quantity of brown 83 (ones ibid., 103. sels' 1624, pis XXIX L. 13 Boyer 1959 (l009(. 48 9; Siorna)olo
{laime) cloth for 'Friday robes’ (pour robes 84 Ibid., 109. 104 Vulson de la Colomhiere 1649 (971 (. 1908 (ii42(. 41 pi. 49; Gorneluis a Lapide
des oetidredis):}. Evans 1952 1882|, 27. For 85 L. Valla Epistola ad Candidum Decem- The system was first used in Germany in I X65 (1019). 1. I 44; Picinello l(■•97 (1105(.
the Romantic revival of the idea, Riicklcr- briutn in Baxandall 1986 |849|. 168-71. 1644 (Seyler 1XX9 (953(. 591) and was 96
Muskau 1841-6 |944|. IV, 289 (black 86 For Valla in Naples, Bentley 1988 canonized in Siebinacher’s ll'appenbucit 14 British Library Gotton Glaudius
Friday). |85o|. 108- 22. (1655). For England, Evelyn 1906 (885). B.IV, folio i6vin Henderson 1962(1063),
73 Keen 1984 |9I2|, 7; the story is re¬ 87 Rabelais 1966 |945|, 45f Rabelais has, 127. 1X9. fig. 45b; St Jerome in l‘atroIot;ia
peated in one of the mss of Sicily Herald of course, misread his Blason. 105 Humbert de SuperviIIe 1S27 (906(, l.altiia 1X44 55 (ll6|. XXV {1x4s). col.
(1X67 |955|, 75f). 88 Ibid., 48-41, 8-22. For the context. Stafford 1972 (960I. 41. The idea sv.is repeated in the 16th
74 Peter the Venerable 1967 |786|. I. 89 Gian 1951 |87i|, 167. One of 3II-35- century by Dolce 1565 |l97|. folio 6v.
Letters 28. 11 1, 150 (Bernard’s letters are Gonzaga’s tasks was to have been to 106 Souriau 1X95 (958!, 859. Souriau's One colour-formula svhich seems to be
missing). For the earlier history of monas¬ explain the reasons for the meanings attri¬ aesthetics of dynamism has been discussed very rare in represented bosvs is the 4-
tic dress. Cppenheim 194 1 |9|. espec. 79f. buted to colours, which makes the loss of by Roque 1990(948!. 15 18. colour boss related frequently in the
See also Pastoureau 1989b |939|, 222- 4 on his book particularly regrettable. literature to the 4 elements, humours and
the variable interpretation of'black' in the 90 For a survey of these and other public¬ seasons (several e.gs in Wackernagel 1x72
Benedictine robes of the 14th century. ations on colour-symbolism, Gian 1X94 |972(. I, 146!, Hellmann I1504 (io62(, 49I.
6 Unweaving the Rainbow S-; Maclean 1965 (l08l|. 144 s, ai tti;
Black was. of course, a very expensive (870), 414 -29.
colour (see below). 91 Portal 1979 |942|. 2ln. 1 Priestley 1772 (i i io(, II, 5X8, .M.-I Vorcin. 'L'arc-en-ciel au Xlll'
75 Burchard 1884 |864|, II. 252f. Violet 92 Ibid., 42f 2 Boyer 1959 (i009(; Nussenzveig 1977 siecle’ in GUFR.M.A 19XX (873). 241 4I
was the liturgical requivalent of black. 93 This was pointed out by Vallier 11979 (1097), 116 27; Ret’enboyeit 1977 (1114I. .As seen in ch 2 above, there svas verv little
76 For Innocent Ill’s De Saero Altaris, |968|. i2f For German poetic compa¬ 175 252. agreement in the Middle Ages about the
Braun 1907 I3X7I. 749tf; for Siccardiis risons of red and purple being as green as. 3 Priestlev 1772 (lllo(. 1. 50. identitv of these elemental colours
Milrale. Wickham Legg 1882 |979|. 99. or greener than, grass, Zingerle 1864 4 Raehlm.inn 11502 11112(. iirf; Westphal 15 Dante Ibirqatorto XXI.X. '(> X. Pata-
Both these ideas were introduced by |98o|, 49Iff. 1910(1155). 1X2 206; Boigey 1924 | ioo2(. diso Xll. in 12; Austin 1929 [984!.
Durandus of Mende (Guillaume Durand) 94 Gigc 197X (741- 108. iX 19; Diminick and Hubbard 1949 416 !■'. svhich quotes 1 andino's 1 sth-
1859 |88l|. 40. 140). The only recent 95 Thus in the 14th century Witelo men¬ (io28(.242 54; Beare 1964 (99.s|. 24X 56. centurs commentary that Dante realls
discussion of the question overlooks these tioned roseus and riridis as the most beauti¬ 5 Vf. I'reyer Dte Sccle des Kutdc>. 2nd intended 4 colours, red. sanguine, green

disagreements (Pastoureau 1989a (938|. ful colours (Baeumker 1908 (845). 172 edii, 1X84. 16 in Vfaetzoldt 11509 (1153). and svhite; Boser 19x9(10091. inx 9. and

2l7ff). An exhaustive history and survey and on the beauty of green in nature, 174)- 455. The colours were red. yellow , green 62 for a Greek --colour theors attributed
of liturgical colours in both the Roman 96 G. Faubert, 'Erwahnung von Text- and blue, the same set as that proposed in to Ptoletns
Catholic and Protestant churches is pro¬ ilien in Mittelhochdeutschen Epen’ in the 14th century by Theodoric of 16 British Librars t otton Glaudius

vided by the Reallextkoti ziir deuisclieti Flury-I emberg .ind Stolleis 19X1 |889|. Freiberg (Hover 1959 [l009[, 1 14). except B.IV.ff. 2. 4S .Also Mever ni^'l 11089(. x ;

’Si
\() U S TO I III IT X I

17 WcixTuiirtncr iv'>- |U54|, ‘j\ f<: Konig's Soah's Sacrifice {Berlin, Sta.ithche Rogers 1956 111211, 275. 83 For Koch and Rubens, |affe ibid., 321.
liiTilin^ |y97|, I I 1 or .1 posMbU Museen, U.ihlem. 1843) has ,1 double bow 62 Wilson 1927 11156I. 1. 253. The Karlsruhe version is possibly from
iiiiMi' c.irrlib prototrpi.' tor the Ncnheini (no iinersion) with ,1 similar tri.id ot 63 Cams iSis |I0I5|, II. e.g 5: Rogers 1805 (ibid., 42-3) and the Munich picture
eh 'r\ . M.'r' i se .ibo\'C. white, vellow .ind blue-grey, as does .1 I 95fi 111211, 205 6. 1815; for the Stuttgart Rider, Council of
iH WcixIp.irtiKT ivoe i 1154I. os 7 gou.iche of the subject (Mazlitt, Gooden 64 See his sttidv for Obere Stanbbachfill ini Europe 1959 11020), no. 235.
ly U'ei-xIp.irtiK'r .mnbiites tiiix to pos¬ and Fox, liiiiopeaii Drawings: Recent Ac¬ Lanlerbninneiital (Aar.iu, K.intonale 84 Rottinann copied Koch’s Munich
sible sl.im.ige through repe.iteb ele.ining quisitions. London, 198N, no, 48 111 col.). Kuiistsammlung, R.iebcr 1979 111111, no. kindscape as a young man (Decker 1957
jikI restoration. 40 Teyssedre 1963 |ii46|, 267; Gliick 181), Das ll V/ir /)<■/ .Miihletal ostlich Inner- |l025|, no. 14). Wallis’s Heidelherger
20 X’C'ei.xlpartiier ibid.. 20; Thiel lot? 194s |i05i|, no. 15. The Fiermitage ver¬ kirchen (1776, Zurich, Laiidesnuiseum, Schloss, incTucfing a rainbow, is in the
llI47|. KeS 0. sion ot 1‘astoral Landscape with a Rainbow ibid,, 252) and the 2 \-ersioiis ot Schneeb- Frankfurt Goethe-Haus; for a linked
21 ! mil,I 1S44 ss |ii6|, .\X\' seems to be an early example ot the rncke nnd Regenbogen in Gadniental 1778 drawing, Baudissen 1924 |994|, 38, fig. 7.
(|S4s). r'ol. ti. See .iKo j 12tli-eentiiry correct observation ot d.irker sky outside (Basle, Kunstmuseum, and Bern, Kunst- Other landscapes with rainbows are nos
Liniopes en.iinel, CTiiny Museum, Pans, the bow. museum, ibid., 381, 382). 12, 20. For Wallis’s relationship to Koch,
u here the r.iinbow-throiie is in 2 \-.ilues ut 41 Parkhurst 1961 11102|, 34-50. 65 Byron, lonrnal. 23 September 1816. ibid., 17. Olivier was in the Koch circle in
blue, .ilthouph other eolours ,ire used 42 Peiresc to Rubens, 27 October 1622 in He also increased the reputation ot the Vienna c. 1816 (Grote 1938 [1058I, 122,
elsewhere in the design. Rubens 1S87-1909 |lI26|, 11, 57. The Term rainbow by including it in Childe 156-7) when he used the bow in his
22 See e.g.. Rogier win der Wes den hii.'f substance of the conversation has not Harold's l^ilgriniage IV, 69-72 and note. Hnhertnslegende (ibid., 127-30, fig. 67) and
/i((/y;m';i(. lieaune; Stel.in Loehner l.tisl survived but it may have reterred to the 66 Decker 1957 |i025|, 132. The sketch later in the Babylonian Captivity (1825/30,
/iii/y'iiii/if, Uologne. W.illraf-Riehartz .Marriage of .Marie de .Medici and Henri H at no. 174, fig. 325 corresponds closely to ibid., 335-6, fig. 213).
Museum; |erome Boseh Piirailisf, Hi'll ,iiii1 Lyon since Peiresc’s immediately follow¬ this account. 85 Abrams 1958 |98l|. 300.
IaHI /iii/y/Mein, Vienna, Ak.idemie; j. 15. ing remark about a ‘victoria romana in 67 MiqucT 1962 |l09l|, 87, 86 Haydon 1926 I239], 1, 269; more drily
Zimmerm.inn ('hiii-i in /iii/yiiie/i/, eeiling habito di Minerva’ tallies with the figure 68 Leslie i860 |l077|, I. 193-4: see also in Haydon 1960-63 |io6o], 11, 173.
treseo Wieskirehe. H.iwina. Also Cor¬ in the chariot in that picture. Valenciennes 1800 |ll50|, 217, 87 Haydon 1876 |i059|, II, 54-5, Abrams
nelius a Lapide I .xt's 11019I, I, 134. 43 Paradin 1557 |lloi|, 64; Picinello 69 Kitson 1937 |l073|, 166. Cotman’s (1958 [9811, 306) forgets that he did drink
23 Rip.i 10 1 I 11119|. lO'S-o The origin ot 1687 |il05|, ch. XVIIl, 1)255. Needless to early patron Sir Henry Englefield had in the end.
the emblem has not been traeed b\' sav, it was hardly an appropriate sign tor described his experience of this pheno¬ 88 See his enjoyment of a Devon sunrise
Mandowsks' loto I1084I, and may be the queen who presided over the St menon in 1802 and may have communi¬ recorded by Redding 1858 |lll3|, I, 123.
Ripa's own iiisention, although an Bartholomew’s Day massacre in 1572. cated his interest to the painter (Englefield 89 Ruskin Praeterita I, iii, §63.
F.lizabethaii jewel is said to have shown a 44 For Rubens's confusion of the royal 1802 (1031I, 1 4, illustration p. 3). It is 90 Ruskin .Modern Painters III. 1856, Pt
figure of siniLTL (or viKG(i) holding birth-signs, 1887-1909 | II26|, 111, 10-11. possible that Cotman’s monochrome IV, ch. xvii, §42.
eompasses and standing on a rainbow 45 For Descartes, Boyer 1959, 11009|, ch. drawing, which exists in 2 versions, was 91 For Goethe, Barry, Runge and
(Ciraziam 1072 11054], -> 1 ■ o- P)- 8. for a similar scientific illustration. Turner, see pp. loS, 1 10, 112, 114-15. For
24 Butlin lO'Si 11811, nos. 26.S-71. Ripa’s 46 Goethe to Eckermann, 18 April 1827, 70 Grigson i960 [1057I, C5- ^ Hew' pages Palmer, Palmer 1892 llioo], 314, 319,
emblem is mentioned by Blunt |l938|, in Gage iy8ob [1043], 205-6. later Palmer made a trial rainbow spec¬ 328; for Olivier, his poem Schonheit in
stfl in eonneetion with this design but 47 Ruskin 1900-12 [1129I, XXIL 21211. trum (Butlin 1962 |loil|, 163) but no Grote 1938 [10581, 4; for Overbeck,
that Blake knew Ripa has been denied by The painting is Adler 1982 |982|.no. 55. compositions of the subject are known. Overbeck 1843 |l098|, 10, where Raphael
Nas'iiavutty 10.52 |l094|, 261. The link 48 Fiiiberg 1909 [1036I, 1, 192. The paint¬ 71 15ierhaus-Rddiger 1978 |999|, nos 25 1, is dressed in white ‘as symbolical of the
between Blake's W'wtoii and Ripa's /m/t,'- ing is Adler ibid., no. 40. 467, 615, 626. universality of his genius, uniting all the
iiu'iil IS one ot idea, not design. 49 J. Smith 1829-42 I1137I. VI (1S35), 72 Friedrich’s strong sense of the bow’s qualities which we gaze on with wonder
23 Ripa itiii, |iii9|. 19S y. For Cam- 25-6. religious significance is clear from his use in their separate states, in others, as the
panella. Garin 1930 I1048], 275. 50 L W. von Goethe Riiysdael as a Poet in of it behind the Crucifix in a lost drawing beams of light include the seven prismatic
26 Ripa 161 I |lll9|, 275-7. Gage iy8ob [1043], 213-15. Goethe did (Bdrsch-Supan and Jahnig 1973 [l006|, colours’,
27 Riehter 1970 |lll8|, I, 229-30, 300. not mention the rainbow, which was not 229) and from some remarks c. 1830 in 92 Rossetti 1895 111251. II, 328, 19
28 CaiTi 1960 |I0I3|. eol. pi. 126; draw¬ reproduced in the sepia copy by C. Lieber Friedrich 1968 |l039|, 1 12. A ms illumin¬ lanuary 1876.
ing (Florence, Uffizi) in van Marie in Goethe's collection. It may not have ation attributed to Pinturicchio in the 93 Hunt 1905 |l066|, I, 159-60.
1923-3S [io86|, XIV (1933), 269, fig. 176. been visible in the picture, which Smith Vatican (Vat. Barb. Lat. 614, folio 2iyv) 94 Newton 1730 |l095|, 1, 11, prop. V,
Carli 1974 |I0I4|, 12 argues that described as very dark at this time. For an also has a 3-colour rainbow immediately theor. iv. Experiment 15. In Experiment 9
Pinturicchio’s bow derives trom a treseo earlier interpretation on similar lines, C. behind the Cross. For the identification ot at least 5 primaries are implied.
by .Sodonia. See also Piecoloniini 1960 F. von Ramdohr in Friedrich 1968 11039], Friedrich’s as a lunar bow, Caspar David 95 Field 1845 I1035I, 182-5.
|II04|, 30, 36. 153: for Constable’s moralizing reading of Friedrich 1974 11040], no. 80. For dis¬ 96 Barry 1783 |993|, i 16, 120-1; for a
29 C. Gilbert 1952 |i049|, 202- 16; Gom- other Ruisdaels, Leslie 195 1 11078], 3 19. cussions ot the lunar rainbow in Germany discussion of the painting, Pressly 1981
brich 1966I1053I, 107-21. There is, e.g., a 51 Rosenberg 1928 |ll23|, 31-2 and tigs in the period, Gilberts .4nnaleii der Physik |llo8], I 13-22, 294-8.
rainbow in the Beheading of John the Baptist 59-60. Both drawings were engraved XL 480; Schweiggers journal LIIl, 1828, 97 Barry 1809 |34|, 1, 524-6 (?1793)- See
by Niklaus Manuel Deutsch I, Basle, in 1670. A recent discussion ot the context 126, cit. Menzel 1842 |io87|, 274. also Dayes 1805 |i024|, 299.
Kunstmuseuni. of the pictures is in Sutton 1987 |ii44|, 73 .-irtists' Repository. Ill, 1808, 93. 98 Novalis 1956 [1096I, 100. For Smart,
30 Castiglione 1946 |I0I7|, 127; Sorte in 100. 74 Butlin and |oll 1984 |I0I2|, no. 347. Greene 1953 [1055], 327-52.
Barocchi 1960-62 |992|, I, 275. Most of 52 For The Triumph of Painting and Sittn- The halo was first identified by Bell lyoi 99 I have discussed this in some detail:
the 16th-century accounts seem to derive mer. from the Four Seasons (Cropper 1984 I998], no. 182. Gage 1971 [1041], 375-6.
from Castiglione. [l022|, fig. 56), in Goethe’s collection, 75 Gage lySoa [1042], no. 288. Turner 100 J. T. Smith 1920 (u38|, II. 384; see
31 Wethey 1969-75 |349|. Hi (i975), ”os Schuchardt 1848-y |ll32|, 1, 87, nos. did not mention the halo. also Samuel Palmer in Palmer 1892
11 (r. 1 566), 43, 44 (f. 1 560-5). 833-4. 76 Farington 1978-84 |l033|, 13 July llIOO],243.
32 Valla 1501 III52I, XXI, xxxvii; XXII, 53 Baldinucci V, 1728 (985I, 479-80. 1813. It was West who probably told 101 Field 1845 [1035], 69. 1 16-18; for the
xxiii. 54 For a discussion of the various inter¬ Constable that his skies should be ‘a white identification with Turner, see Field’s
33 Brucioli 1537-8 |I0I0|, 11, xix, pretations of Testa’s death, Sutherland- sheet thrown behind the objects’; Leslie index. For Martin, Somerset House Gaz¬
32V-35V. Brucioli was an important Harris 1967 [1143I, 35-69- 1951 [1078I, 85, cf. 14. ette, 15 May 1824, 81.
translator of Aristotle into Italian. Fiis 55 Cropper 1984 11022I, 236, cf. 218, 240, 77 |Pott] 1782, [1107I, 52-3. See also 102 Leonardo 1721 |i075|, 72 (1956
Dialoghi was briefly noticed by C. Dioni- 244. Turner on the advantages of the British §185)-
sotti, 'Tiziano e la letteratura' in Palluc- 56 Lopresti 1921 |lo8o|, 75, fig. 10. weather in an Academy lecture c. 1810 103 For the ‘nobler’ colours of the bow as
chini 1978 11099], 268-9. 57 Bottari 1, 1822 11007|, 450-1. (Gage 1969 [217I, 213-14). opposed to pigments, Pecham 1970 I785I,
34 Weixlglirtner 1962 |ll54],93. 58 For Gilpin’s tours, Barbier 1963 [990]; 78 Miquel 1962 [1091), 112-13. 236 trom Aristotle .Meteorology 372a; also
35 Reynolds Discourse IV, 1771; Leslie for his influence, Hussey 1927 [1067], 79 Butlin 1981 |i8i|.no. 368; Blake 1956 Grosseteste 1912 (2341. De hide, 77. See
1951 11078], 299. Manw'aring 1925 [1085]. For his colour, |i7i|, 633- also Pecham ibid., 234 for these nobler
36 De Piles 1743 |lio6], 127-8. Barbier 19592 [988], nos 71, 81; for 80 Valenciennes 1956/7 (1151I, nos 3, 4 colours as ‘light-bearing’. At one mo¬
37 Teyssedre 1963 I1146), 266-7. f^e Clark's treatment of Gilpin’s Day, ibid. are on the backs of calendars for 1785 and ment, Leonardo seems to have adopted a
Piles did refer to the bow to distinguish it 1963 |990|, 85. 17S6; nos 17 and 86 are dated 1817; nos 72 specifically anti-Aristotelian stance in rel¬
trom the colouring of clouds (1743 59 Barbier i95yb I989I, 25-6. and 100 include rainbows. See also Valen¬ ation to painting the rainbow, since he
[ll06|, 129). Deperthes (1822, I1027], 60 Hussey 1927 I1067], 124. Another ciennes 1800 11150], 2iy-20, 227, 260. argues that the principle of the mixture of
4 5) referred to Rubens as a master of the leader ot the Picturesque movement, 81 Musper 1935 |l093|, 182-5. Koch the painter’s colours might itself help to
accidents of light but without mentioning Uvedale Price, did refer to Rubens’s reported that the fills were said to surpass explain the phenomenon (Richter 1970
the rainbow. weather eft’ects, as ‘sublime and pictur¬ Terni but his sketch shows no bow (183) |iii8|, I, 229, 1)287). He also noticed the
38 Adler 1982 |982|, no 29, 36, 39, 40, 47, esque’(Price i8io|ii09|, I, 130-1). 82 Frankfurt, Stiidel Institute; version of mingling of colours in the centre of the
54. 5 5- 61 Valenciennes 1800 |lI50|. 217; 1814/15 in Berlin, Schloss Charlottenburg bow (ms E, cover, verso, cit. Duhem
39 Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz Museum. Rehfties 1804-10 |ui5l, IV, 150-1; (jafl’e 1905, |lo68|, 37). 1906-13 [1029], I, I73f where Leonardo’s
 \( )i I s 111 mi 11 \ I

.ipproat h IS seen to be close to tli.it of the 6-coloured bow . Thirtle seems to depend 153 Resnolds 10X4 Iii7(. 2v 1 1 2042. 14s. e .io« ‘ !i." 121' ; . It' e i.t .
14tli-eentiiry I'linon the |ess', on ss hoin chieriy on Leonardo and van .Mander For 20 4.1. .t 1 2 5 hi/.irie I 1 - . "i..11! I" w ;i, i;; !,l - ■.
seeClroinhie ivtu |i02i |. 26irt). C ez.iime. see p. 2io.ibove. 154 Eg RevnokR 1961 (1116|. Ill' 1x3.1; ..'1 pi m R.'h, It e: Sett,.; I), . i/'-
104 l ewis Ii;X7 |920|. 7lrt, 120 1 B, Desc.imps /.(> I le.s de.' pciiifrc.' 19X4 (iii7l 2~ 11. Parris and I leming- Pans, Musee de ( Ar’ M. dene .L .1 \ .'..t
105 Menzel I S42 11087]. 2(')5. diiiiMiii/.s I’si. I, 310, in L.istlake 184- ^,9 Willh.ims ivvi (1103(. nos 2"f> <1. de P.iris, e\h .at . us | [j. . ,.ii\ ..t itu
106 Boethius i9Sy|iooi| ii')7. His source |202|, 1.492 3; Hog.irth ii;ss|io64|, 133. 155 h ,ii LoikIoii. (More (i.illers tor the rainbow in the ss.irk .'I tiu Impre-.i"tiists
IS Ptolemy HarnHVius in B.irker 11. 19S9, Revnolds Discourse \ 1, 1—'4. 1 urtier Bequest. TB, ( 1. 4'. ( Xll. .ind Post-hiipressioir.sts is sinkm.; I h.ise
|y<>l|. 2S3. vs'hich does not. howeser. 121 Musee tie Montpellier 1x76 (i092|. I~.i I 8; t 1 ."k, '3.1 ■’4. I oil ml it Olds Ml .111 e.irls Monet. /iat 11
det.nl the colours. For Leon.irdo's know¬ 161 3 For a col. siet.nl. lohnson 1963 ts6 Bonacina 193^ |i004|. the inipossi- llaiii list.X. in I Rew.ii.l I lu lit -.a,
ledge of Boethius's On Music. Solmi 1976 11069], pi. s. For the painting Inow m the bihts ot some ot (iotistable's rainbow Impii ssumem. 4th edn. i't~:. iss .iml
11140I. 104. Louvre), Johnson 1981 9 | 1070I, no. 100 effects has been pointed out b\ Sihwei/er Camille Pissarro's I in Pia:ii li iu.iu
107 Junius ifiiS 110711. 2.S0 (with .1 refer¬ •ind pi. 11. 19X2 11 t33(. 42-. : Rainbou I is--, m ( s MoiK t; Du
ence to Boethius V. 4). See .ilso 25S th.it 122 S.iiul 1896 11130I, 84 s. 157 ( onstable to 1.ucas. 11; l.muars 1x3-, \ew Paintuit^ Impti'oowun /.'.'C.
the term luirtno[;c w.is borroweil from 123 Delacroix 1980 |i026|. 13 lanuarv Beckett IV. 1966 (996(, 433 luxti. 434, Among P.'st-liiipressioriists I
music. Another discussion of this term 1837. 158 Constable to Lik.is, r. Septetnber base loumi it onls in ,1 8eur.it studs tor
proposes impl.uisibly th.it it me.ms optical 124 Runge 1959 |ii28|, tia. 111; also 16 1 83 5, ibuL. 42 1. /i.riyii.ide iixs), Berggrueii Beque.st to
fusion (Keuls 197S |97|. 77!). See .ilso p. January 1803 letter in Runge 1840;! 159 Field 184 s 110351. 198, He had been N.itioii.il (i.illers. 1 oiuloii. see P Smith
lOK above. 11127I, 11, 195. using the t Mirom.iscope since at le.ist 1X19. Iv't' lll39|. 1x4 on Its idealism) .ind in
108 Barb.iro l.■!68(987|. 176. 125 Runge 1959 11128|. 20 1.24.49.92; For his relationship w ith C (onstable. (i.ige Sigii.u s Intiame to tin Pott oi llonthni
109 Van Mander 1973 |io83|. i.SS 91 st. Fiow.ird 1848I1065I, 155. 1989 11045(, 48 52. I Xi;9, Indl.in.ipohs .Museum ot Art Per¬
(Vll.22-2). 126 Runge 1840/1 |li27|, 1, 60 1; See 160 Shirles' 1930 (1135|. no. 39, 202 haps the problem ss ,is that the boss ss.is
no Farington 1978 - 84 110331. 24 March also to Steffens, March 1 809. 151. 161 Resnolds 19S4 |lll7(. 163. 39.4. still being usesl ssinbolualls in Lite 19th-
1804. 127 Ibid,. 61. 3(1.6. I he topography is based on .1 pencil seuturs Freiieh painting, e g in I -I
111 Ibid.. 4 December 1817. Ftoiii the 128 1). Runge in Runge ibid.. 228: Mil- sketch of 1 820 which has no bow (20. i“,i. .Millet s Spring (1 x-3. P.iris. I oils re
notes taken by Chillcott at this lecture we arch (1821) in ibid., 11, 533. 162 Ibid.. 33-49 52. lor Constable’s in¬ 174 Klee made mm h ot the boss as ,1
know that apart from the students and 129 I raeger 1975 11149!. nos 272, 282a-b. terest in scientitic meteorologv. Fhorties 'linear representation ot colours' Klee
himself. Henry Howard. Fuseli. Turner. 130 Cage 1969I217I, 186 7. 1979 I I I4ff|. 697-704. M/'a 11074I |6- m.
William (.'iwen, Thomas Phillips. Henrv 131 Howard 1848I1065I. 154-5. 163 Millais 1X99 |i090(, 1. 240. Glover’s
Thomson. Clhalon, Mulready and Prince 132 G.ilton 1799 11047], 509 13. He as¬ watercolour is inscribed 'painted from
Hoare attended (t)xtord. Ashmolean sumed that the proportions he discovered nature while the effect lasted’.
Museum ms AWCi ih folios 1701, 204tF) could be the basis ot harmonious interior 164 Shirley I949[ll36(. 192.
and we may assume that R. Leslie was slecoration and stress; his ideas were spread 165 File bow has been studied from a
7 Disc^no versus Colorc
also present since it was he who reported by the poet Erasmus 1 )arwin (1806 110231, meteorological point of view bv 1 Cgo P.inziera Della mentale a;ione. cit.
to Farington. 1. 257-60). Young 1800 11157I, 393 notesi. Bonacina 1938 (i005(. who points out the Assunto 1961 I1165I, 42 3 See also ,Abel-
112 Aniuits of rite fine .drf.'i, 11. 1818, .s37f. like C.ilton, that in disc-mixing Newton’s incorrectness of the lighting outside and .ird 192- |ll59|. 316 I-. Viment of
113 On the portrait, Schweizer 1982 proportions were unreliable, since they inside the arcs (605), and by Seibold 1990 Beaus'.11s 1(124 (8231. .XL s h. \i\.
|il33|. 437- depended on the horizontal spectrum. |ll34(, 80 I. who is more sympathetic. 2 Bax.indall 198(11849(. (12 .A later huma¬
114 Callcott. see n. iii above, 133 Priestley 1772 111 lol. 11, .588-630; cf Turner’s watercolour sketch (London. nist, .AntsMiio de Ferrariis, associated ss hat
205V-207V. Boyer 1959 11009], 276- 8. Clore (iallery. TB, XXV, 84) has been he considered to be an irrelevant taste for
115 'In the course of the observations on 134 Priestley ibid., 590-1; Bsiyer ibisl, studied by Ziff' 1982 (ll58(, 2-4 m the decorated books ssith an es|u.illv irrelev¬
the Annani.is |.<iV| Mr West pointed out in 278. context of Turner’s caption. ant riorid style ot ssritiiig ill Oalateo. ,.
his management of the blue color be¬ 13s faust 11, ‘Anmutige Gegend’. trans. 166 London. Clore Gallerv. TB. I 500. Ill Gann 1982(1224!. t tot'i.
tween the Red and yellow of the leading P. Wayne. CLXVL 52.1. 3 For St Donatiis ot Besanyon's njection
apostles the feeling Raphael had for ma¬ 136 Femmel i9.<;ff-7.t li034|. Va(i963),7 167 George Jones in (i.ige 1980a (l042(. ot colour in images, .Assunto 1963 (1166(,
king beautitul shapes in colors remarking and no. 352. 8. For the painting, Daniel MacHsc. 1972. 74. I'or grisaille in Lent. Smith 19s'’ 9
that in order to avoid making two spots of 137 Farhenlehre, Polcniisclicr 'fell (1810) London, Arts Council, exh. cat., no. 98. l>303|. 4.3 .(4; Phihppot I9(>6 (i279(.
the Blue on the breast and under the §609. 168 Butlin andjoll 1984 |I0I2(. no. 428. 225 42. For the Parainent de S'arbonne,
yellow tunic ot St Peter he had not only 138 Goethe 1953 I1052I. 661- 5; see also The picture was still bright enough in Pastes 1981 2 (687]. no. 324; see also the
extended it to the disciple immediately his Tufiehnch. 19 August 1797, (Weimar 1898 for the inaccuracy of the colour- mitre no. 324 bis. Lhe somesvh.it earlier
I I but the one also by his side’ (folio edn 111 Abt., vol. 2. 1888, 83) and .1 letter sequence in the secondary arc to be grisaille illurninatiiMis to the Hours of
207v). After the lecture Howard asked trom Dornburg to his son, 14 July 1828, noticed. Jeanne d’Horeii.x (ibid., no. 239) have
West which was the highest red in the on the importance of Alexander’s dark 169 Thomas Campbell. ’To the Rain¬ coloured grounds and are more closelv
Aiiiiniits, to which West replied that of the band (Weimar edn IV Abt., vol. 44. 11909. bow’ (tst version 1819) in Poetical ITi'rL’S relates! to enamellesi silver than to slrasv-
right, at which Howard objected that it 191). 1837, 102-3. Turner’s watercolours for ing. Giotto’s even earlier grisaille frescoes
was not the red in the picture nearest the 139 Goethe Dichtung nnil li'tilirhcit 11. ch. this book are now in Edinburgh, National in the Scrovegm Chapel, Padua, mutate
source of light, as his theory demanded. xi. Gallery of Scotland. monochrome ss'ulpture.
West countered this and a similar objec¬ 140 Goethe Cesprache mil fckernuinn. 1 170 For the painting. Butlin and (oil 1984 4 Cohen aiis! Gordsni 1949 (l205(. 99ff;
tion that the brightest yellow was on St February 1827. (ioi2(.no, 376; for the subject, (iage 1987 Bornstein 1975 (1184I, 416; Rathf 1976
Peter by claiming that Raphael wished to 141 Goethe to Boisseree, 25 February 11044], 224-5. ( I286(, 321; .Mollon 1989 (1271 (. 3 1 2.
direct the spectator’s attention to these 2 1832 (Weimar edn IV Abt., vol. 49. 1909. 171 For the subject. Gage 1969 (2i7(, 5 .See. e g.. Andrs'a Vicentino’s modello
figures (folio 20sv). 250) 186 7. tor the painting in the Sal.i siel .M.iggior
116 Forster-Hahn 1967 [1037]. 381-2. A 142 Cams 1948 |ioi6|. 18-19, -^7-^, 172 Butlin and joll 1984 (ioi2(. no. 430. Consiglio. 1 )oge’s Palace (r. 1 577). nosv in
hint of a theory of warm and cool .tX-9- The painting was destroyed earlier this Minneapolis Institute of Arts, dray is the
arrangement based on the rainbow was 143 Shirley 1949 11136I, cspec. 87, 171 2. century and is known only in a very poor (Color 197.3 4 (l233(. no. 19 The import¬
already suggested by West’s American 144 Reynolds 1984 |iii7|. no. 36.14; cf black-and-white photograph. The rain¬ ant 16th-century taste for monochrome
associate Copley as early as 1774 (1914 Leslie 1951 |i078|, 304. Constable’s draw¬ bow (not mentioned by Butlin and Joll) oil sketches, espec. in Venice, has been
|ioi8|, 240). In the late 1770s students at ing. which was taken from an uncoloured was noticed by Bell 1901 (998(, no. 266. studieti bv Bauer 1978 (1171 (, 4 5 59
the Royal Academy were being taught engraving, and is generally in sepia, gives 173 See Kandinsky’s .\lurnau with Kain- 6 .Mazzei 1880(12651.11,404.
(by an unnamed tutor who may have the bow in pink, yellow and grey-blue how (1909) in Munich (Roethel and Ben¬ 7 See the brilliant characterization of the
been West) that fruits like peaches and from the top. jamin 1982 (ii20(. no. 310) and Section of colour ot the Scrovegm (Miapel as sub¬
pears also displayed a prismatic sequence 145 Bonacina 1937(10041.485-7. (Composition II' (1910/11) in London ordinate to design in Hills 19X7 (727!.
in their modelling (Sowerby 1809 |ll4l|, 146 ReyiKilds 1961 [iii6|,no. 117. (ibid., no, 367). Marc’s drawing I.anJscape 52 4. Fechmc.il examination has shosvn
3 4). See also the recipe for painting 147 Beckett IV. 1966 |996|. 427. with .-hiimals ami Rainbow in Vienna was that they are based on a ihiaroscuro
sunsets in Hayter 1815 |io6il. 168. 148 Shirley 1949 I1136I. 171-2; Boulton used for a painting behind glass of 1911. uiulerpainting in bl.uk or brossti (L.
117 Cialt 1S20 11046]. 11, I i s; Farington 1984 I ioo8|, 29 44. Fora summary. Parris w here, how ever, the colours are arrangeil Linton. ’ I einpera colors in mural paint¬
1978-84 |i033|. M December 1797. and Flenimg-Williams 1991 |ll03|. no. differently (L.-G. Buchheim Der tilaue ing of the Italian Ren.iiss.iiue’ in Hall 198~
118 Leslie i860 |l077|. 1. 57-8. For a 210. Reiter. 1959, 53. 143). See also .Marc’s (1237). (x^F
rainbow landscape by West, von F.rfla and 149 Syndow 1921 (11451,247. drawing Blue Horses with Rainbow. pL 86. 8 Cennini 1933 (l20l(. 46; 19-1 1184).

Staley 1986 I1032I, no. 478. 150 Schinkel to Grass, 1804.111 B.iudissen Robert I XMaunas’. w ho was closely assim- L\\ II, 78. M here are no sertain attributions
119 See the version in the treatise of the 1924 |994(. 17- ated w Ith the Blaue Reiter, painteil a num¬ to Ceniiini as a painter (Bosiovits 1973
Norwich watercolourist John Thirtle 151 .Schinkel 111, i863(ii3i(. 158. ber of subjects with rainbows before the !ll«7!. 201 22) Vasarmlesi ribei! I addeo
(1777-1839) in Allthorpe-Cuyton 1977 152 Council of Europe 1959 (I020(, n. to First World War iL.i I'leche tie Sotre Dtime (i.iddi’s murals in the Baroiicelli ( hapel as
19831. 3 1 and no. 20 for a watercolour ot a no. 235. 1909; 14, col. pi. in Francastel 1957 (I038|. particular IV ’fresh’ 11 adis 10X2 (I250(. 33 )
N( ) I F S K) I FFF- Tl XT

For the mliuir of'CT-niiini's master, (aile 22 Alberti 1 960-73 111611. I, 202. tegna and other artists in Isabella d’Este's 1982 I 1204I, col. pi. A); Antonio da
I I206|, 4 I. 23 F ile best edii is now Bcrgdolt 19XX Studiolo at Mantua, I’)elbourgo et al. Fabriano Sr Jerome (1431, Baltimore,
9 ('cimini 1971 I1H4I, nwii xx\iv. cs- |ii77|. which traces the use ot earlier 1973 |I2II|, 21- X. Walters Art Gallery). For discrimination,
pei XXXI. ( iatltll's ///f/ic I'l’iii- sources in great detail. 48 Langton Douglas 1902 [12511, 163. see the Annunciation and Saints (c. 1360)
j'l’ 'pi i;t)! IS sliseiissesl h\’ Ames-Lew'is 24 Ibid., 4. derised from Witelo 1372 document 11. The Tabernacle is illustrated attributed to Barna of Siena in Berlin
19N I I I i64|, 11323 |, 11, tlefuiitioii 1, tl 1. in Baxandall 19XX |il73|,y. (Dahlem); the miniature by Lorenzo da
10 lioth eersiuns are iniw .isailable to- 25 1 have given e.gs 111 Cage I972|l222|. 49 For the S. Agostino contract, with tull Voltolina of the teaching of Henricus de
petlier in Alberti I'/ki 73 |ll6l|. HI 364 s; see also FTipsburg o/ys |i238|. Eng, trails., Mciss 1941 [1267], 67-8. For Allemania (r. 1380, same collection). Bar¬
(1974). Ftir their rel.itionship. Sinuinelh 26 Hills 19X7 I727I. 67. Lippi’s letter about his altarpiece. includ¬ tolommeo di Tommaso’s Puneral and
1972 113011. ~s 102. whose argument 27 This is the term used in one ot ing St Michael, Baxandall ibid., 3-4. Canonization of St Francis (Baltimore,
that the It.ihai' preeerles the l .itin has not Chilaerti's most trei|uently cited sources, 50 Bresc-Bautier 1979 11192|. 2 16. Walters Art Gallery) and Sassetta’s Recog¬
been .ueepteel bv (Iraysun {Alberti ibaF.. John I'echam (1970 I785I, 86). 51 Shearman 1963 |i299l, 11, 391, docu¬ nition of the Transiscan Order (London,
50s, n. 2) or by (i. I'.irkhurst, 'Leon 28 Bergdolt 19XX |II77|, 20 The mi- ment 30; White 1979 I1322I. 33. For the National Gallery) use both conventions in
liattista Alberti’s place in the history ot medi.ite source is Alhazen I, 4, 20 (lyXy Lorenzetti Madonna in colour. Hills 1987 the interests, apparently, of spatial articul¬
colour theories' in H.ill 19X7 |i237|, iSs, I364I, 34), who gives the colours red, lapis I727I, pi. XXll. ation; the miniature of the l-’apal Consis¬
n. 1. Mv quotations are lightly ementleel lazuli, wine-coloured, purple, (ihiberti's 52 Gonrad-Martius 1929 |i207|, 362; the tory by the ‘Maestro di i 328’ (New York,
From Alberti 1972 |l54|. blue nuances seem to come From dyeing reference is to Goethe 1937 |225|, §779; l^ierpont Morgan Library) includes car¬
11 Alberti ibui , SX 91. (FC'bora 1970 I1287I, X). For a similar Briickner 19X2 |863|, 23. dinals robed in grey, pale blue and pale
12 See Ch. 9 below. obseiwation of the change ot colour in 53 E.g. 1). Dun and G. Bonsanti, ‘Fra pink, but all hatted in vermilion.
13 Gas el 1979 1219], qy-.s I. His argument darkness by a Venetian comtemporary ot Angelico e gli Aff'reschi del Convento di 65 For Venice as a centre of the pigment
lias been much extendeel to cciwriccio by (Ihiberti’s, Ciovanni cia Fontana (r. San Marco (r. 1441-30)’ in Borsook and trade, L. Lazzarini, ‘The use ot colour by
l-’.irkhurst in Hall 19X7 (1237I, 1X7 X.n.S. '395 145 5), Canova 1972 |ll99|, 23. Superbi Gioffredi 19S6 |ii86], 17 (Virgin Venetian painters, 1480-13X0’ in Hall
14 Alberti 1960-73 111611, III (1973). 3 1 1 29 Cage 1972 |i222|, 364-3, in light red); |. Ruda, ‘Color and repres¬ 1987 |i237|, 117-19.
(my emphasis). The notion ot earth as the 30 Kosiiiska iyX6 |l29l|, 127, n. 40. entation of space in paintings by Fra 66 Borsook 1971 [1185I, 803; Chambers
/i’.v cU'im'iitonmi. the dregs of all the other Sandivogius argued that vision cannot tell Filippo Lippi’ in Hall 1987 |l237|, 42 1970 |l202|, 26-7. For Gentile da
elements, had been discussed by Bacon m us what a colour is. only ‘discussion and (Virgin in lavender or green); M. Barasch, Fabriano’s purchases of colours From an
his Lihcr ilc Sciisii I'l Scmnlo (1937 |l57|, science' can do that; he gave the example 'Renaissance color conventions: liturgy, apothecary (spezier), Armanino da Nola
30). of seeing colours in a dark place, where humanism, workshops’ in Hall ibid, 141 in Venice, while he was working in
15 Miintz and Frothingham 1XS3 |526|, they seem black, not the green or red they (El Greco’s Espolio at Toledo, Virgin in Brescia in 1414, Christiansen 1982 [1204],
() S . really are. For the crucial importance ot dark violet). I30ff. For Domenico Veneziano’s sending
16 IVlaltese 1976 [1254I, 243 is thus close Chiberti's chief source, Alhazen, for 14th- 54 Coulton 1953 1872], 264, 350ft’(mostly from Florence to Venice for blue (from a
to the truth when he interprets ceiicriccio as century optical developments in Italy, Fr. e.gs). branch of the Medici Bank) in 1439,
'grey-content', although he is using the Vescovini 1963 [1319I, espec. iX. On 33! 55 Hennecke and Schneemelcher Wohl 1980 I1324I, 341; for Raphael’s
20th-century Ostwaldian concept, which Vcscovini shows how Ghiberti expanded 1959-64 I1241I. I. (1959). iXqf sending to Venice t'or pigments in 1518,
does not quite express Allierti's meaning. the concrete reterences to colour in his 56 For the early Jewish tradition, Golzio 1971 [1230], 75f; for the Dossi
17 Alberti iy66 |i53|, 303-5. version of a passage from Alhazen. See Scholem 1974 [565], lof brothers sending from Ferrara, Gibbons
18 Ibid., 309. Alberti’s patron Ciiovanni also Vescovini 19X0 |l32o|, 370, 373. 57 Hugh of St. Victor Sermon 46 in 1968 I1227I, documents 9, 29, 176. For
Ruccellai, whose Florentine palace he 31 See the discussion in Hills 1987 I727I, Palrolo^ia Latina 1844-35 |ll6|, Parmigianino visiting Venice to buy
designed, also showed a notable taste tor 81-3 and col. pis Xlll and XV. For CLXXVII, col. 1025. pigments in 1530, A. E. Popham, Burling¬
ancient mosaics, although he is not scotopic and photopic (cone) vision. Bar- 58 Cameron 1981 [1198I, 51-3. Purple- ton Magazine, XCI, 1949, 176. For Lotto’s
known to have patronized the medium low and Mollon 1982 |ll69|, 103-4. This clad Virgins in the Western tradition dealings with a Flemish colour-dealer in
himselt. On his view ot the mosaics at Sta feature of the mechanism of vision was include a crucifix of 1257 by Simone and Venice, Lotto 1969 I1253). 170-1, 211-12,
Costanza, Ffoine. FUiccellai 1960 [1293], not identified until the 19th century. Machilone of Spoleto (Rome, Museo 221, 316. When Michael Coxie in the
74. For IDoni, liarocchi 1971-7 |l6l|, t 32 The development was noticed by Nazionale di Palazzo Barberini) and ano¬ Netherlands wanted ‘azure’ for his copy
(1973)- 5117-9. Weale 1974 [13211, 27. ther attributed to the Master of the of Van Eyck’s Ghent Altarpiece, he could
19 P. 'W. Lehmann, 'The sources and 33 For Ghiberti and Angelico’s collabor¬ Bigallo (same collection); and Fra get it only in Venice (van Mander 1916
meaning ot Mantegna’s Piiriiiissiis' in Leh¬ ation on the LinainoH Tabernacle (1433). Angelico’s fresco from Fiesole (l-’aris. 1265), 200v), perhaps from Lotto’s
mann 1973 I919I, yo. Some personal Middeldorf 1955 I1269I, 179-94. Louvre no. 1294). These types of mourn¬ supplier.
contacts between Alberti and Mantegna 34 Baxandall 19X8 [1173], 81. ing Virgin can be expected to be in violet 67 Guareschi 1907 [1234I. 343ff.
have been proposed by Srutkova-Odell 35 Equicola 1323 I1213I, 183. but there is also a Madonna and Child by 68 Uccelli 1865 [1313], and espec. Bensi
197II I1305I. lOltT, who applies this ac¬ 36 F. I^. Morato Del Slgiiificato de Colori, Gentile da Fabriano (Washington, Na¬ 1980 I1176I, 33-47. After the destruction
count ot draperies to the London Agony iu Venice, 1533, in Barocchi 1971- 7 [161], II tional Gallery) where the Madonna is in of the convent in the 1529 seige of
tlw Gardfn. (1973), 2177; Iholce 1563 I197], 36r. purple and the Child in blue. For the Florence, their recipes came into the
20 On variety, Zubov 1938 11329], 260S. 37 Baxandall 198X [1173I, 11. See the col. imperial connotations of the purple-clad public arena in Alessio Piemontese 1975
D. Summers, ‘The stylistics of color' in pis in Wyld and Iffesters 1977 I1327I, 16. Virgin in the 6th and 7th centuries, and 1977 [1162], folio 84V ff and espec.
Hall 19X7 |i237|, 207 has adduced In his 1st edn (1972, lo-ii) Baxandall Nilgen 1981 I1274], espec. 20. folio 55v ff respectively.
Alhazen I, 3, 120 and 'Witelo 1572 [1323], mistakenly used the panel reproduced 59 Nixdorff and Muller 1983 [1275], 129. 69 For vermilion, Thompson 1933
IV, 4X as pointing to the pairing of pink here. 60 An early modern student of Van [1310I, 62ft’; Gettens et al. 1972 [1226].
and green in medieval theories of beauty, 38 Wyld and Plesters ibid., 11. Eyck’s Lucca Madonna noticed the many 43ff.
although neither text speaks of juxtapo¬ 39 Thomas of Celano 1904 [1309], 12; reds, including a deep piurple, which go to 70 Milanesi 1872 |i27o|. Another docu¬
sition. The modern scholar who has Wyld and Plesters ibid., 11 for kermes. make up its extraordinary richness (von ment ofjuly 1481 mentions that Leonar¬
argued most strongly tor Alberti’s 40 Gargiolli 1868 [1223], 30; Herald 1981 Bodenhausen 1905 |il8o], 63). do bought an ounce of blue and an ounce
medieval attitude to colour, S. Y. Edger- 11242], 131. 61 In De Pictura II, 48 Alberti uses the ot yellow (giallolino) from them.
ton, referred this pairing to the draperies 41 Guasti 1877 11235], 5f Latin terms purpureiis and rubeus to de¬ 71 Pino 1954 I12821], 47-8.
of Christ in the Brancacci Chapel murals 42 Gargiolli 1868 [1223], 53!', 78f. scribe the dress of the nymphs but in the 72 Eastlake 1847-69 [202], 1, 9-10, 327-8.
by Masaccio, the only painter to be 43 Mazzei 1880 I1265I, II, 3851', 412!'; Italian version both terms are rendered by 73 Urso von Salerno 1976 l592|, 115!'; Sic
referred to in the Della Pilliira (Italian Mernfield 1X49 |27i|, IF, 400 (§§36-7). rosato (Alberti 1960—73 |Tl6l|, III {1973), el piclores colores siios cum oleo et clara ovi et
version only); S. Y. Edgertoii 1969 I204], 44 For the role of the guilds in contracts, 86). lacte ficus conficiunt, ut accidentali lAscosilate
110, n. i; but cleaning has revealed this Glasscr 1977 |i228|, 29. 62 Newton 1988 [1273], 84; also 18, 26 parietibus vel lignis inseparabiliter hereant
pair to be pink and blue (Berti and Foggi 45 For Florence (1316), Fiorilli 1920 for the reds of mourning. But even illiniti (‘Thus painters make up their
19X9 11178], yX-y). Sicily Herald, who has |i2i8|, 48; for Siena (1336) and I^erugia Sanudo might on occasion confuse creme- colours with oil and egg-white and fig-
a ch. on the beauty of colours in juxtapo¬ (1366), Manzoni 1904 [1259I, 32f, 87f sino with scarlatto (86). milk, so that the qualities of the paint-
sition, disliked red and green together, The Siena regulations were renewed in 63 R. Sachtleben, ‘Mit den Farbstoffen strokes will, by means of this stickiness,
although he said they often appeared in 1405. dutch die Jahrhunderte’ in Kramer and adhere inseparably to the walls or the
liveries; but he found various combin¬ 46 Pope-Hennessy 1939 [12851, 156; Neri Matschoss 1963 I1248I, 254. wood panels’). The technique of mixing
ations with white ‘very beautiful' and di Bicci 1936 [1272], 223 (1464); 64 Some e.gs of the uniform treatment of egg with the juice of fig-shoots was still
thought that in painting green 'resjouyst' ILosenauer 1965 |l290|, 85. hat and robe in vermilion are in the used for wall-painting in Cennini’s time
the other colours (Sicily Herald i860 47 Kristellcr 1901 [1249], 487, document frescoes by Ugolino in Orvieto Cath¬ (1933 |i20i], Ixxii, xc) and, as Eastlake
|954|, U3t, 116). For e.gs from I3om- 33. An ambiguity in the language makes it edral, an illustration of the Concisloro pointed out, the mixture of egg-yolk and
ances, Michel 1852- 4 [i268|, 1, lyofF. unclear whether the pigments mentioned Papale in Vatican ms Vat. Lat. 1389 3v fig-juice is already mentioned by Pliny in
21 Antonio da I^isa 1976 |62o|, Antonio (not listed in the surviving version) were (Conti 1981 I659I, col. pi. xxviii); St the context of medicine (XXllI, Ixiii,
also used Alberti's term ‘onore’ to refer to ordered for or by Mantegna. For an Jerome in Gentile da Fabriano’s I'alle 119). Since Urso was a doctor, it is
the effect of green. analysis of the materials used by Man¬ Rornita Altarpiece (c. 1410/12, Christiansen tempting to imagine that he or one of his

284
 M III s ii) I in 11 \I

collc.ij'ucs introduced the ide.i to p.iinter\ lir.iperv, see ch 2. n ti6 abos e 105 /rc.in.M ^144 Leonardo i';sr. |I076| 'h.irpK iicund Tint:.
No Salernitjn panel paintings earlier than 87 B.ixandall 1980 I I 172I. 42 X "I I or grounding in ereen. Ru liter ]■)-’ \\ .ishiiigtoii. N.iti.'U.ii 1..ill, IS w 'l-
the and half of the l lth century appear to 88 See the rueful passage iCod trlani Ill8|. 1.5628 M.irs 111 red. ereeii ,uid d.irk :'lii, ui.i
have survived (Ciarnson li;4c; 11225I. 22i;, I 19'I in which 1 eonardo detribed 106 \ erbr.ieken I na¬
il3l8|. oill Jc'H ph 111 .iraiici .iiid \ . :
4X9A; Bologna 1955 (1 iSi |, 1,4) and their himself .IS the l.ite-comer at the fair, tive 5^'. 43 .Jill'le I 1/ ihtaie , aro. -to 123 R.'smH i./.s J08; . '
technique has not been analvsed. The puking up onK’ those gooiis whuh h.is'c pitton ihniandono hinie et ondna lor tiu 126 Ibid 1 ' l '. see .lb, ■ Pit:,. 1 i. ;
earliest known oil-paintings on panel, been rejected bv others before him (cit. suggestion that these p.iss.iges are due to j I282(. f.2
from late 13th-century Scandinavia, have C.inn 196s |696|, 38) the editors, Folena 19s 1 |l220|.(ii 127 Aretiiio i./s' 6 I55|, I. 4st. ' ■ B\
been studied by 1,. Eb and U. I’lahter, 'The 89 Cod. . Illanl. 207va. trails. Kemp i';Si 107 Shearman 1962 I I298|. 30, 44, n 44 sir.iw berries and 'iiails Aretiii.. iiu ini th>
technique of’ a group of Norwegian |l247|. 129 For Pecham's original and 108 1 eonardo losti ; I076|. 55l'A'. 2 Is, borders ot I r and I leiiiish Books . '
(lothic oil paintings' in Hronielle and I eonarslo’s translation. Solmi lu^o 226, 24 1 Hours ot the l.iie 1 sili .eniiirs . e
Smith 1976 11194], 36 42. II I40|, 226 - 109 Ibid . 5ioo Howeser. in 5(ji8" and H. irthan 1 v— ! 1240(, 1 1 s to. 12!
74 Johnson and Packard 1971 |i246|. 90 Ristoro d'.Arezzo (1 282). 11. 8, 16, lo-o 188 1 eonarilo had said that all loloui' 128 Aretino ibid . II. 2 ; s
145IT; Howron 1974 |iiKHl, tSoff. For a 112881 220tf. look best 111 their illuminated parts 129 Pino Ivs4 1282(. In,
sensitive discussion of mixed media from 91 Richter 1970 |lii8|. I, aj- 8. ijjno 110 Veltm.in loXti 113 17I, jant 130 Ibiil . 43. - See .ilso the .Uioiint ot
the 14th to the 16th centuries, del Serra Ristoro was summarizing the view of'the 111 I eonardo 19311 |I076|. 5108. it p.unting .1 fire .1 task Pino regarded .0
I9X3[I297|,4 It). Arab writer Al-Kiiuli. where 1 eonardo 551 lo, 434. p.irtii ul.irK difluulti b\ the late ir.tli-
75 j. A. van de (iraaf, 'nevelopment of started from the far more sophisticated 112 For sellow and blue as li.irnioiuons. centurs \’eronese artist t risiolero Sorte,
oil paint and the use of metal plates as a analysis of .Alhazen (Spies 1937 I1304I. ibid, 5182. For the dr.ipers suidies, ss ho gas e the prei ise mixtures he used tor
support’ 111 Bromelle and Smith 1976 17 19). (ladog.ni 1983(11971,2' <>2 sarious parts ot the sub|ect Baronin
|il94|. 45^X- 92 Both themes have been examined 111 113 X'as.iri 1903 |13I5(. 34 s X'asari had i9'>o 62 11170(, 1. 2ui 2
76 l aubert 197X ll308|, 19 mentions the some detail by Veltm.in 1986 I1317I; for not seen the picture himself Pedretti I9S~ 131 I 1 .i/zarnn. ' I he use ot . olor b\
standard reference to drying oils in mountains, ayStf; for smoke, 3 17. |i276|. 133 For the lighting Fihpczak \’eiieti,in painters. 1480 iss. materials
medieval recipes for painting statues. For 93 Jaffe and Croen 1987 11245I. 16,Sf 1977 |i4i7(. 3i8fl. The .Ambrosiana .Sr and technique’ in Hall (1237I. espec
glazes over silver in the Herhn Altar 94 Maltese 1983 |l256|. 21S. John has been published bv Bora 198' I 2i itl See also the remarks on spontaneous
(1466), Bachmann et al. 1970 I1167I, 95 Veltman 1986 11317I. and Farago 1991 I 1 i83(, col. fig. 13. mixing in Piccolp.isso 1914 (i28o(, fij 4
38iff. For the painting of statues by ||215|, have made valiant attempts to 114 1 eonardo 1936 11076I, 58'’2; et, if(;i92 132 For the Venetian ins ention ot p.ipers
Robert Clampin and Rogier van der Wey¬ bring order to the notes on several aspects and 763 on lighting the p.iinted landsiape coloured 111 the pulp. .Meder 1923 |l266(.
den, Rolland 1932 |i289|, 333 4s. An of aerial perspective and chiaroscuro. 111 the same way as the natural landsiape. 112 13. and Pino 1934 (l282(. 43 on the
unusually detailed contract of 1316 for a 96 Steinberg 1977 11306|, 83. w here there Examples of this working from nature are uses of these oirtc ttnte tor ai hieving units
sculpted retable at Tournai mentions that IS also a discussion of the quotation from the annotated drawings of mountains .it For'Ciorgione’. Ruhemanii I9ss (1295I.
in the (yucijixioii and the Christ hciiriiii; the the De Dirinis Soininihu.'. on a 1309 Windsor (nos 12.412 and 414). on which 281; tor Sebastiano del Piombo in fresco.
Cross the ground should be of fine matt painting by Fra Bartolommeo. See also see (lould 1947 (1231 (. 239tf. These are, I. intillo 19'2 (1307I. 33 43; for I nilor-
gold ‘et le reste glacie a olle' (de la (irange Ihrcusc e La Tosiana . . . 1980 | I2I9|, nos however, in red chalk on toned paper, etto, Plesters 1980 (1283I. 36, 31;. 41
and Cloquet 188S I1232I, 233-5). 79 (in col.). 84 {Madonna della Miscritor- heightened with w lute. 133 Bellori 1976 |ii75(. 206 Barocci’s
Sassetta’s glazing over silver in the St dia). It is possible that the astonishing dark 115 Richter i97o(iii8(. I, !;366. L eonar¬ proceiiure is sumni.irized by l.mihain
Francis altar (see p. 129 above) used an (iod the Father of Titian’s Assnni/nion do IS elaborating on an idea of Alh.izen’s 197s |12I2(. liv-v. The chiaroscuro studs
egg-tempera, not an oil medium. (1316/18) has a Dionysian significance, (1. 3. I 16: 19S9 (364!, 44). for the . l/i.sii/iiriii)i of St I raiui, is in St
77 Wolfthal 1989 I1325I, espec. 27, 32 for although Coffin 1986 (1229|, 96f’thinks he 116 Pedretti 1968 (1277!. 28. 30, For a Petersburg. I lermitage, and the colour
technique. lEouts's liiuombitu’itt in this is the source of light in the painting. general discussion with further references. 'cartoon’ 111 Urbino. Calleria Nazionale
technique has been contrasted with his oil Elsewhere (94, 103) she notes appropri¬ Zubov 1968 (1331 (. 141. delle .Marche (Emiliam ibid , no. ■■4I For
I'ir^iti and Child (both London, National ately that he is in a cloud, as in Exodus 117 .Agostini 1934 11 i6o(, 20. the importance of the oil studies from
Callery) by Bomford et al. 1986 |ii82|, 16:10. At the end of the century Annibale 118 Richter 1970 (iii8(. I, ((320. for nature, Pillsbury 1978 (12811, 170- 3 .M
3<>~57- Carracci in Venice complained that the I.eonardo’s knowledge of Alberti’s writ¬ .A Lavin (.drr Hiilletin, XLVI. 1964,
78 Corenians 1930 |i209|. 114, n. 3. dazzling light from the 2 large choir ings, Zubov 1960(1330!, I 14. 232 3) has drasvn attention to the svstern-
Vasari's story that Van Eyck’s piaintings windows made the painting exceptionally 119 For mixtures see espec. Richter ibid.. atic element in Barocci’s handling of
could be smelled has suggested his use of hard to see (Fanti 1979 |I2I4|, 160). For a §619. For oils. Marazza 1934 (1260I. 33. colour and suggested that he may hase
volatile thinners to Ziloty 1947 |l328|, substantial discussion of the theological For the technique of the oil murals. had access to the sections on light and
142. For a survey of more recent work on connotations of cloud painting in the Travers Newton 1983 (1312!. 71 88. shadosv in the earliest ms of Leonardo’s
Netherlandish oil technique, Perier- High Renaissance, Shearman 19S7 |i3oo|. 120 Milanesi 1872 (i27o(. 229. The only I'rcatise. in the Ducal Library at C’rbino
d’leteren 1985 |i278|, i5ff. The impor¬ 1, 637- 68. Shearman |66i| cites (Jregory technical analysis so far available is San- until 1626.
tance of the many lost Netherlandish the Creat’s commentary on Ezechiel. paolesi 1934 (i296(, qofT. For the glazes, 134 Barocci’s methodical laving-out of
mural paintings of the late 14th and early where clouds with the brilliance of Maltese 1982 (1255!. '72f Ins canvas is seen in the late untinished
15th centuries, as well as the link with electrum - an alloy of gold and silver - are 121 Vasari 1962-6 (341 (, 111, (19313), 303f Lamentation fFniihani lo'.s (I2I2(. no. 280)
painted statuary, has been stressed by characterized: a passage in which (iregory 122 Vasari 1878-83 (34o(, VI, 203 speaks For the pastel-like painting technique,
Hagopian van I3uren 1986(1236!, 101-3, paraphrases Pseudo- 1 honysius {Celestial of such works 'solamente disegnata ed l.avin I9s6 (|252(, 433 9; C. Dempsey.
112. Hierarchy A-C\ 1987 I545I. 18S). aombrata con I’acquarello in su gesso’ Federico Barocci and the discovers of
79 Ames-Lewis 1979 |ii63|, 233-73; 97 Kemp 1981 |i247|, 97; Richter 1970 which Fra Bartolommeo left to be fin¬ pastel’ 111 I lall loX” (1237I. 62 4
Wright 1980 I1326I, espec. 42 -6; Ruda |iii8|, I. §1 19. See also the discussion by ished by Bugiardini. For the altarpiece, 135 I he sculptor Baccio Bandinelli. a
1984 |i294|, 210-36 takes a far more Barasch 1978 |ii68|. 33-4. !hren<e e l.a Toscana . .. 1980 (i2i9(. no. pupil of Allsertinelli. seems to have
cautious view of the Italian debt to north¬ 98 Richter ibid.. §121. For Leonardo’s 80. Shearman 1963 (1299!, 1, 136 considers thought that .Andrea del Sarto had a vers
ern Europe but deals with iconography categories of shadow. Barasch ibid., 33 the notion of broken colours to have been particular 'modo sli colorire’ ami tried in
rather than technique. and n. 38. transmitted to Andrea del Sarto from vain to learn the secret of it; he svas not
80 Fortuna 1957 [12211, 43. 99 Ibid., i77f. Venice via Fra Bartolommeo, who was successful and sve knoss nothing ot it
81 Filarete 1972 |i2i6|, 11, 6671". Bugatti too Richter ibid., I, §348. For another there in 1309. (Vasari 1962 6 (34i(, IV (19631, 302
was in Brussels with his master 1460 3 discussion of Leonardo’s Aristotelian con¬ 123 Poggi et al. I. 1963 (1284!. 3i6 7. For 136 F. Pacheco 1649111 Fernandez Avenas
and Filarete is thought to have completed cept of infinity in connection with the Sistine ceiling Mancinelli 1983 (I257(, 1982 |887|, 166. See also Eil (ireco’s notes
his treatise in 1464. sfuinato. Zubov 196S 113311, 67. 362-7; Cdiastel et al. 1986 (i203(. espec. on the difEicultii-s of colour in his cops of
82 Bromelle 1939/60 |ii93|, 94 (orange- 101 Meder 1923 li266|, 116, i22ff. 136. 223 on the palette and 244 on technique. the Barbaro edition of Vitruvius (.Manas
red priming); Massing and Christie 1988 For a red chalk drawing on red-toneif For the Quattrocento tonality, (1. and Bustamente 1981 (12611, 78tf).
|i262|, 35-6. Sjoblom 1928 |i302|, 47f paper for judas in col., Ames-Lewis 19S1 Ciolalucci, ‘Le lunette di Michelangelo 137 Bauer 1978 |ll7l|. 32 Fhere are
and 84fTcites Filarete’s account and argues |ll64|.49.pl. Vll. nella (iapella Sistina (1308 12)’ in Bor- manv Bassetti monochrome sketches in
that Van Eyck and other Netherlandish 102 Euir the materials, Harding et al. 1989 sook aiuf Superbi (iioffredi 1986 (ll86(, the English Royal (Collection (Blunt and
masters also used dark grounds but this |I239|. 44 4- 78; Mancinelli 1988 (1258!, 12. For diss¬ (Croft-Miirray 1937 (1179I, nos 1 24, see
cannot now be sustained. 103 Brachert 1970 I1189I. 84fF ; 1974 enting voices, Conti 1986 |l208|; Beck also Brugnoli 1974 (1195(. 31 irfT
83 Degenhart and Schmitt IV, 1968 |ll90|, I77ff; 1977 (1191], 9fT. 1988 (ii74(, 302 3 . For the Doni I'ondo.
I I2I0|, no. 302 and pi. 278. 104 For drawings Meder 1923 |l266|.92; II Tondo Doni . . . 1983 (1311|; Buzzegoli
S The Peacock’s Tail
84 Vasari i960 11316I, 213. for paintings Brachert 1977 (11911- '4^ 1987 (I I96(, 403 8.
85 niirer to Jacob Heller, 1508/9 in Hours 1934 |i243|, 17 18; 1962 li266|, 124 f^or Sarto. Shearman 1963 (I299[. ch I (ieorge Riples I'weire (iate< in E-
Uhde-l$ernays i960 113141, 9 1 1. I24rf. For the unusual Islack uiulerpaint- VIll: ‘Colour’; for Pontormo and Rosso. .Ashmole (esi 1. Ihealitiin Chemnnin liril-
86 See the ch. headings on colour for his ing of Cihnst’s red sleeve in the l.asi .Maurer 1982 |l264|. iCM^ri; Caron 1988 annitiini. I6s2. I. 1. ixs, xu Read 1939
projected treatise (c. 1308) in 1 )urer Siipi’er. Matteiiii and Moles 1979 |l263|. (l20o(, 333-78; Rubin 1991 |i292|. |l39o|. u' On ELiplev. Elolmv.ird lU'"
1936 69 (2011, 11. 94f; for the section on 1 jotf. 173 91. For Bronzino, see espec. his (13601.182 s

2K5
N( ) 1 I^S 1 ( ) I (If TfX I

2 I 111 Ix-it cilii I't the Stoikhiilin anil (eh 2 abiwe). 32 P.xperuueula do Colorihus 111 Merritield discussed in an early 1 sth-centtiry Buch der
I i \ lien l’ap\n, now il.iteil earl\ 4tli een- 15 Simeon ot (iologne I 9 I 8 114011, (13. A I 84(1 1271 [, I, 66 9. The large collection ot Hoiligou Dreifaltigkeil, which adds a num¬
tui \. IS M.illeux I, ln'<i | 13371 I lalleux is 1 sth-centiir\' w riter described ,1 seL|uence the Le Begue mss is ibid., 16 -321. ber of unorthotiox scenes to the standarLl
less lategorual aboiil the tunetion ol the after 170 d.ws' cooking ot black, red, 33 'Lhe cl.issic .inalysis ot Panotsky (1934) cycle (Ganzenmuller 1956 |694|, 244-6).
texts than I’tister i'H > | I 3^5 ~ ■s!.\\ht> \ ellow , green 'peacock-colour , betore in Gilbert 1970 I7011, i- 20 has now been 45 Sicily I lerald i860 |954|, 43f 86f
aioiieil that the\ were luwer praitieal. A the tin.il 'waiter of gold': Forbes 19(11 superseded by Bedaux 1986 |i336|, 3-28. 46 Bedaux 1986I1336I, 13.
tar tighter tit between earls nieihesal 113541. I- 20. For the later use ot the For excellent tig. details of the painting, 47 Sicily Herald i860 |954l. 47f, Syf
teibnolops' ami alibeins' has been pro¬ colour-sei|ueiice. Read 1939 |i39o|- I Lihnens 1980 11349| ■ Sicily, who was a Netherlander from
posed b\ A Wallen, 'Alehenn and 14s 8. tine kite text even has blue .0 the 34 For the fruit, Purtle 1982 I1389I, 123. Hainatilt. copied Isidore’s detinition ot
inediLW.il .irt teihnolop\' m M.irtels ivno final stage ot the process: I roitotus .durous 35 Bedaux 198(1 (1336I, 19 21 has sug¬ purple as light from Jean Corbichon's
113731- I >4 'n. M .illert is p.irtienlarly Honuotis. cit. Jung 19(13 I1367I, 14. In gested that this saint, traditionally identi- 1372 Fr. trans. of Bartholomeus Anglicus
illtiniin.itiiie, .iboiit ,i eiirioiis recipe tor illuminated .Mss blue was otteii the colour fed as St Margaret, patroness ot child¬ (M. Salvat, ‘Ee Tr.iite des coulcurs de
'Sp.imsh ould in riieophiiiis III. xhiii of silver (Ctbrist 1983 |l379|. 2iof). birth, may be St Martha, patroness ot Barthelemi I'Anglais’ in CUERMA 1988,
(into I3H3I, n'l tsj wliiili he interprets .is 16 Croskiiid 19(12 11348I, 30-2. bCi 73. housewives. The suggestion is strength¬ |873|, 384). For scarlet of Ghent, R. van
b.ised on .111 aleheinie.il \ersion ot the 17 Cit. Read 1939 11390I, 2(1. ened bv reference to the tradition that St Uytven, 'Cloth in mediaeval literature ot
sulplitir-inerniiw' theory ot niet.ils, and 18 Reusner 1388 |l393|. 48-30. Martha subdued her dragon (represented western Europe' in Harte and Pouting
.iboiit a recipe for '.irtitici.il azure' ill the 19 Cit. Maguire 1987 |496|, 30. in the carving) with just such a brush, the 1983 |899|, l.■(8-9-
I-tth-centiiiw Bolognese inaiiiiscnpt 20 Dobbs 1973 [1350I, 178; fir the Latin asperpilhtiii. used to sprinkle holy water. 48 Sicily Herald i860 |954|. 38f. 46!', shff’,
(Mernfield l.Syy |27l|, II. 3S7), whose text with alchemic,il symbols, ibid. 2s 1 36 Panofsky 1966 I1382I, I, 203 argued 83f87fF.
product must be \ erniihon. not blue, and For the image of the tree in traditional al- that the beads were crystal and reterred to 49 The Buch der Hoiligou Dreifaltigkeit
IS .ilso an .ilchenncal t\'pe ot chemv. Szulakowska i<;8(i I1404I, 33 -77. the purity of the wife but they are clearly proposed equating red with fire and green
sulphur niercuiw compound. 21 lioullo.xikou :ur doutsolioii Kuust- yellow and w'ere identified as amber by with water (Ganzenmuller 1936 I694I.
3 Sarton i9s4|i39H|. lyotl'. pcscliiilito. IV, col. 743f, s.v. 'Ei'. Eastlake 1847-69 |202|, I, aSqf He ment¬ 243). For other equivalents, see pp. 32-3
4 W.illert in Martels ii;yo |I373|, is_S 22 Do l.upido Philosopliortuu in Zetzner ioned them in connection with the early above.
argues coin incingly that e\en betore the i(is9 |i4io|, IV, 838. For Newton's pur¬ development of amber varnish. See also 50 Dahnens 1980 11349I, 199.
transmission of Arabic alchemy to the chase of this (i-volume compilatican, Sch.ibaker 1972 [i399|, 396, n- 34- whc> 51 See the prohibition of the practice ot
West, m.iin' ot its concepts were preser- Dobbs 1973 11350I, I 3 iff. points to Bruges as a centre tor the alchemy for the merchant, who was
\ ed in texts such as the Sth-century 23 For New ton's theory and its immedi¬ manufacture of amber paternosters. concerned only with cose stabili, in Cot-
('.oiiipoiilioiici and Miipptii' ('Jtu'i- ate antecedents, Sabra 1967 |i396|, espec, 37 Bedaux 1986 |i336|, 1 sf gives the rugli 1602 11346], 83.
iii/ii. lie cites the recipes tor making (17, 242. I )obbs (ibid., 224!', 23 I) has traced greatest attention to the sacramental status 52 Vasari 1878 |340|, III, 190.
vermilion from sulphur and incrcury, tor .Newton's notion that the smallest part¬ of the painting. 53 For the commission, Ettlinger 1965
w Inch see below. icles of metal were black (Newton 1730 38 An early Christian tradition in the 11352], 23-8. The contract is reprinted on
5 Now 111 St Marg.iret, 1 lildesheiin; |l095|, 239-6o)and his belief 111 the trans¬ Greek world that the pearl was the pro¬ 120- 1.
Tschan II, insi I589I, 129-40. I have been mutation of light into matter and back duct of lightning striking into the sea and 54 Vasari 1S78 -S3 |34o|. III, 187-9.
unable to trace the Svii'cnnii Si'crcloniiii (374) to Ins experience as an alchemist. reaching the oyster, thus creating a union 55 Vasari I 'ira di Bernardino Piutoricchio in
quod siih pociiti uotcniiic duiiuunioiiis rcliiiquo 24 Tieck 1798 I1405I, IV, ch. iv. of fire and water, does not seem to have Vasari III, 1971 11408|, Testo 574f (1 330).
uii'is siicccssorihii.'. cit. |. M. Kratz Dor Doiii 25 Lightly emended from 1. A. Richter been current in the 'West until after Van 56 Steinmann 1901-03 |i402|. 1, 201,
:ii Hildislu'iiii. 1S40, 111. 11 and 11. 1. 1932 |l395|. lo-i I. The Italian text is in Eyck's time (Ohly 1977 |l38o|, 297fF). 222. The leadership ot the group has been
6 Bacon iSsn |i334|. 39ft. See also Ins Reti 1932 |l392|, 722. C. Vasoli, 'Note su Ohly (307) cites a poem by Venantius debated. Vasari stated that Botticelli was
fuller account. Do l:.\posiliouo niiipiiiLitiiiii Leonardo e I'alchimia' 111 Loouardo 0 I'otd Fortunatus in which Mary is reterred to as leader but Ettlinger (1963 [1352I, 30-1)
Alkiiiiio. in ibid 1912 |l335|, Ssf. on the della raqioue: Atti del Coitueptio, Milan crystal, amber (electriuii). gold, purple has argued convincingly that Perugino
application ot the doctrine ot the elements 1982 112551, 6(9-77 suggests that (ostruui), pearl {concha alba) and emerald. had this role. Mesnil 193S 113751- 79-
and humours, and S4, where 'reddening' Leonoartlo’s scepticism was shareii by 39 Los versos doclarau cotno se cugaiiau [sic| argued that the unity of style in the series
IS decribed as making gold and 'whiten¬ some alchemical writers themselves, such (/((III) (i/iKni (Allende-Salazar 1923 |l332|, derived from Ghirlandaio. But it remains
ing' silver, fair an earlier phase in the as Petrus Bonus ot Ferrara (see p. 143 191, 11. 6). Allende-Salazar’s transcription that Rosselli executed i more scene than
revaluation ot art, see pp. 73 -b above. above). The mixture ot golid with the blue gives the nonsensical eustauati = deceive, any ot them. Horne 1(908 I1363I. 103
7 Thompson 1933 |i3io|. 62-9. The stone w-as mentioned by Bartholomeus which must be eiigauchati = link (ct. Eng. pointed out the use of bright colours and
manuf.ictiire ot vermilion is discussed in Anglicus, De Proprictatihus Ronuu. XIX, 'engage'). Dahnens 1980] 1349], 197 trans. gold by members of the team betore the
the igth-ceiitury I.ihcr Clarilaris Tortus viii. 'plight their troth’. It is not inconceivable Sistine commission.
Alhiitiiodo Artis. 1923/7 |i37l|, 'VIl (1926), 26 Vasari 1878-83 |34o|, VI (1881), that Arnolfini's shifty look and the tra¬ 57 Ettlinger ibid., 89-90.
263. where artificial sermilion is de¬ 606-9. Vasari tells us that while he was dition of Dutch brothel-scenes in the 17th 58 Ficino Della Religione cristiana, prinia
scribed as lapido qiiciu ootullai'cruul philo- working on his bronze group of St John century led the compiler ot the inventory versionc in lingua toscana dello stesso Ficino,
soplii. The treatise is attributed to the ? helit'ocii the l.evito and the Pharisee (i 309, to detect some deceit, just as he read the Florence 1568, 112. cit. Calvesi 1962
9th-ceiittiry Arab writer Jabir ibn Hayyan Florence, Orsanmichele) Rustici could single burning candle (the token ot a legal 113411- 236-7.
(fleber), the chief proponent ot the tolerate no company but Leonardo’s, contract) as indicating a night scene. 59 Monfasani 1983 I1376), 11. The ac¬
sulphur mercury theory (Read 1939 who also helped him (604). 40 For the large number of medieval MSS count, by Andreas Trapezuntius, is dated
|I390|, 17-18). 27 J. P. Richter 1970 |lll8|, 1, 641. The of the Fasti, Reynolds 1983 |l394|, 266ft'. April/May 1482. For the sequence ot
8 Hopkins 193S I1362I, 343. other passage on 'varnish' is §637. Bedaux 1986 I1336], 14, without reterring work, Ettlinger 1965 [1352]. 27-8.
9 F'or religious imagery, see below; tor Richter’s trails, mixes some ot the meta¬ to Ovid, suggests that the verses may have 60 Condivi 1964 11345], 32. In tact Mi¬
heraldry, Christ 1983 |l379|, lyofF; for phors and gives ‘iron’ tor 'Jupiter'. These referred to the consensus of the couple, chelangelo was paid double this sum for
pseudonymity, Pseudo-Aquinas 1977 terms also occur in a painterly context in which Aquinas considered to be the causa the work and the figure for expenditure
ji388|, 22-114; Kibre 1942 11368], 302- 3. the 13th-century Portuguese treatise Liuro efficiens ot marriage. on colours seems very modest.
10 The chief studies are still lung 1933 do ooiiio so fazaii as Cores, 1, 1930 I258I, 41 Petrus Bonus Pretiosa Margarita Nov¬ 61 Vasari VIl, 1963 |i408|, 139-41. The
|i366|. and espec. 19(13 I1367I. For an 71-S3; 1928-9, 97-133, which also dis¬ ella, Ch. IX, cit. Zetzner 1622 11410I, 661. term cauipi had been interpreted as
overview. Luther 1973 |l372|, 10-20. cusses the terms on iiyff. Pedretti 1977 There is a new Italian edn by Crisciani 'strokes of paint’ by Stumpel 1988 11403I,
11 For IDuchainp, Golding 1973 |l356|, 11384], 11, 18-19 tlates Leonardo’s notes to 1976, who has published an introduction 228 but I do not find his arguments
83- 93; |. H. Moflitt, 'Marcel Duchamp: 0. 1313 and relates them to his work on to Bonus in English (1973) |l347|, convincing.
Alchemist ot the Avant-Garde' in Tuch- mirrors. Boni 1934 |l337|, 405 suggests 163-81). See also Holmyard 1957 |l36o|. 62 Conti 1986 |i208|. 42-3. But cf Man-
ni.in 1986 I 1407I, 237 -71. For Chagall, that they are concerned w-ith a patina for 138-4 .V cinelli 1988 |l258|. 13 that the medallions
Compton 1983 |i344|, no. 22: Hotuupc to bronze. It is possible that the note, not in 42 Bonus cit. Zetzner 1622 |l4lo|, 709. were heavily restored in the i8th century.
.-[ppolliiiuirc 1911/12. For Beckmaini, G. Leonardo’s hand, in Codice Atlautico Another, late 14th-century alchemical Condivi (1964 [1345I, 30) is surprisingly
Schiff. ‘Max Beckmaini: die Ikonograplne 244vb which includes the alchemical term text, the Liber Phoonicis (1399), attributed ambiguous about the use of gold in these
der Triptychen' in Buddensieg ami Win¬ tor gold {sole) was supplied by a triend to Solomon the notion that the Philoso¬ medallions: he says ‘si son detti fniti di
ner 19(18 11340I, 276, such as Rustici (Reti 1932 11392], 664). phers’ Stone was 'husband and wife’ and metalli' (my emphasis). For Michel¬
12 Paul of Taranto Ilicorito et Proctioa. 28 Vasari U903 |I3I5|. 41 ■ cited 'Aristotle' on the conjunction of w'et angelo’s use of gold in the Doni Fondo,
lit. Newman 1989 I1377I. 434. 444 4- 29 Carbonelli 1923 |l343|, ix-xi. For anil dry, cold and hot, and one 'Mir- Btizzegoli 1987 [1196I, 403-8.
13 Eanion 1980 [13511, 204 9. Leonardo’s knowledge ot Hermes cherio' (?Mercury) on that of tire and 63 Roskill 1968 (308I. 207-9: undated
14 Hopkins 1938 I1362I; ibid., 1927 Trismegistus. Solmi 1976 |ii4o|, 142!. water (Carbonelli 1923 |i343|,9, 39). letter from Dolce to Gaspare Ballini.
113611. 10 14. Since the term for the 30 For a detailed description of the table- 43 Bonus cit. Zetzner ibid., 648-30, 661 64 Ottonelli and Berrettim 1973 |l38l|.
alchemical still, kcroUtkis. is the same as for top and its scheme ot correspondences, and 648. 38f, [Bottanl 1772 11339], 234ff'. The story
the p.ilette in wax painting, Hopkins Scheckenburger-Broschek 1982) I400|,32. 44 See the fine detail in Dahnens 1980 is put into the mouth of the late Baroque
suggests (II I 2) a link with the 4-coloiir 31 BaxaiiLlall 1986 I849I, 106 anti for the 11349], 200, also 203. Christ’s Passion as an painter Carlo Maratta.
palette attributed to the fJreek painters Latin, 165. analogy of the Great Work was also 65 Vasari IV, 1976 |i4o8|, Testo 343-3.

2S6
 M il I s I" I HI 11 \ I

T lie stiiry is given more Hilly in Vas.in's 88 Bl.iki* I9st) |i7i|. 3^^ Si’c Nurmi 17 I lookc 19t.l I I519I. "4! s. . .h : i2 ;
^nd edii and the evideiue tor and 19'" l>37h|. 206 - lor .111 kleiitific.ition Hus ghens in/'/iW, ..p/11,.1/ I i.m-.i, iien
18 26 I cs-s,-,ir. i.j/ s [1620 1 . ■ ■
against it is weighed hy hreedberg ivso with the rainbow I or the serpent in XI \ 1. It."!, reprinted in t ohen 27 1 Bl..n.l .1. i.i 1 , .,o I . ■ -
|i355|. 143. '^ho inehned to diseount it. iheimstrs.l [, lies her Oo/i/mo t.'/jcnn. inn. I 4601. 1 3fi sc.lr, .Ind . - d. IfU- :■) . -I.I ,
and by hagiolo dell'Areo lyyo |l353|. 1699. cit ( Tosland 191.2 |i348|. i-, I he 19 Kuhn i.it.s 1534I 2 -z. .'pe. n 1 .III.' In I, n .
who in.ikes it the basis of ,1 svule- vers \ .iried colouring ot the several copies if.s on Xermeer's iiniisu.il us. .'I iilti.i- 28 F.i.,- i/s, liyhs In., iimu.l.
ranging alehenneal interpretation of ot Bl.ike's books ni.ikes inierpret.ition of ni.irine. Sonnciiburg Oi"! l6io|. .liter h.o. . intiu. :i.. .1 I - ;;k;. . fc. r i... .
I'arinigianino's imagery. the colour impossible but suggests his II Vermeer', t.iscin.itioii ssiih light h.o to b.f i.’s .■ th.it F.'iissui h.i.l w ntu-n 01.
66 I he most thoroughgoing interpret¬ riuid interpretaiion of svmbohsm as such. .ilss.iss been noli.cl, but sc. espe. S. s- siib’c. t H. n.'iic tlu .-. ss .ictic.l ssith ;l..
ation of 1 )hrer's .V/c/aiii/ie/ia as .111 alehem- 89 Blake 1936 11711, 191 niour l.;fi4 116011. 323 31 1 .■: ( harles Ic s. lemisis that th. primats ...|..ur' w. r.
leal allegory is Calvesi nXn; 11.342I. 37 96. Brun's siess th.it sellow .111.1 blue .ire tlu re.L selloss .ind bhu- l.sss.-.lic i|si,l
which sliders somewhat from the docu¬ colours ot air and light, see 1 elibicn .11 !' ‘X
mentary overkill. The identification of B.i.it 1969 11423I, 3 3.J
9 Colour under Control 29 x.'p'.i : '.eri 1 . .ii, t .imp ineil.i
the distant bow with the r.iinhou h.is 20 For I looke s .juite subst.inti.il .lis- in'o ' 1452I. 's2
been challenged hy Horst 1933 I ■3^41. 1 (loclenius itiii |i494|, 3931!. .ussi.in ol this .|iiesti.in. H.iokc l.gn 30 Fip.mmer m- (1568I. ..p.. is.;,
426. 431. n. 9. who argued that it is ,1 2 (. T. Bartholin Speaimu Plnlo^opliiac I 1.SI9I. ' 21.4. S..)tt ivsi I1598I i-iil i.,r I'.th-
precisely observed ring of Saturn. See .ilso .V.ifiir.i/i... Oxford 1703. ih. VH (tr.ms. 21 Flesiers 19,S3 |i.S73|. H |t. Kemp .eiitiirs It.ils . N.-w ton 1 o" i I 2731. u.
I’lossetal. 1970113«7|. 24 UonlHirerand Kuehm 19X1 11533I. atoti). 1990 |iS29|. 1..4 h.is .irgued th.it the B.mibe Oijs |l439|. '! li.e.-n., in
alchemy, perh.ips the best modern survey 3 Kepler 19X0 |i530|. 1 uf. Fhe back¬ p.iinting exemphties p.irtu ul.irls . losels Is <41 ,\l.'st the r.'. ip.s in the nii.L
ot alchemv from all points of view. ground to Kepler's theors has been several ot d'Aguilon's rIc.is ol light 1 he Itilh-.emurs \ enetiaii .Isets manual
67 This was pointed out b\ 1 lartl.iub sketched In l.indberg 19X6 |75i|, 29 36. palette ot 10 pigments, uiclu.hng 4 blues, Plhllio were tor bl.u k ot 1..I Ros.iti \<)i»)
iy.‘i3 I 65. The drawing is discussed An interesting medieval survisal 111 an.l the complexitv of palette-mixtures in ,15891, x\I- In I s ti, Fietr.i .Aretino w r.'l.
in Tietze and Tietze-Cionrat 1970 |I406|, Kepler's view is Ins uncert.iints w hether the .Antwerp Desienl Itom ihe C.'ri'.s.. 1 it.ioi ihanking the I )uk.' ol M.nitna l.ir a bl.i. k
no. 379. the c.irbuiicle has its ow n light libuL. 134!- base been studied by C'oreni.ins and an.l gold outtil he .ailed gll .ibiti .ie I
68 Hind 1910. 11359]. 492. 4 Frills 19X7 11578]. 293 4- 1 hissen 1962 I1464I, 1211L 126 1 he later priiuipf .M (ireg.iri. ' 1 i/iaii.. .
69 Kristeller 1907 11370]. 3, 5 M. Mersenne. (Questions llieoloi;u]iie<. portrait Ihe I lerinei l amily use.l some 2.. I'.Areliiuf 111 Fallu.ilnin |.i"X 1 1099I.
70 lojiinis Aurctii P. Ariiiiiiiciisis pliysiipics, morales ei marijemalh/iit's. Fans pigments, .is well as complex mixtures 2x21 But bv the en.l ot the 1 "th .entiirs in
Chrysopofitt I.ihri III, 1313. There is a hr. 1634, 103 cit. Harmon 19XS |l468|, 891'; (Feller 1973 |i479|. '9 64). A group of Venue black was being pres.ribe.l t.>r all
trans. of 1330. Augurelli cites Ckimpag- Marcus Marci, fhaiimaiinas. Fragile. paintings ot all periods 111 Miinuh has men .nui women b\ the sninpiuars laws
nola as a painter oflandscape in Hk 111. Tor 164X, 9X and F. M. (irimaldi I’liysico- sielded some 13 pigments (Sonnenburg Bistort 1912 11435I, I soli '
the connection, Pavanello 1903 (1383I, Mailiesis do I.iimine, ('.olorihus el hide. and Freusser 1979 |33o|. ii.p.l. I he collec¬ 31 \ .111 (iogh l9sX I i626|. no. 42X 1 xxfo.
96-7. Bologna. 1663, 399 cit. Marek 1969 tion ot Rubens's materials preserved at cit. F S Jow elL ' I he re.lisc.n ers ol 1 rails
71 For the green, yellow and red pig¬ I >5551.393 406. Antwerp includes 14 pigments (1 iiler H.ils' in / r.iii.' //.i/> 19X9 115031. —. Hals's
ments mined in the Veneto, Lazzantii in 6 Barrow 1X60 I1425I. 107 X. Newton 1969 11516I. 137). tossn. Haarlem, w.is partuularls note.I
Hall 19S7 |l237|. 1 iX. See also the refer¬ prepared Barrow's lectures for 22 Aguiloniiis 1613 I1413I. 41. For tor Its m.inufacture oflsl.uk cl.ith Ti .M
ence by Augurelli to the 'pigmentum publication. scrumbled mixtures 'Optische Farbwir- Humortier. 'Costume in I r.iiis Hals' in
auretim' (i.e. orpiment) of the painters at 7 .Shapiro I. 19X4 | i6o3|, X3, 11. 10. kungen'in Sonnenburg an.l Freusser 1979 ibid., sX, 11. 36).
the end of Bk 1. 8 [Higbyl 163X I1473I. -i4i; Hoogs- |330|. n.p. Rubens’s collaboration has 32 I B Cudry (1 argilhere's pupili in
72 Freedberg 1930 11355|. ^0, 141. traten 167X |l5l8|, 224. Higby was been discussed by Jaeger 1976 |i522|; Rosenteld 19X1 ji586|. 320
73 For a general study. Weise 1937 shown these experiments by Francis Hall Jiidson and van de Velde 197X I1527I. 33 Brown 163.S 11445I, ch. Ill R/epiiiska
11409I, i70fT. (alias Line) c. 1640. Similar experiments 101 1 3. The link with /iim' and .drijii.. was 19X6 |i594|, 107 cites an alchemu.il trea¬
74 Aretino 1339 I3133I. 9V, 16, 17V, 29f had been conducted in the late 16th made by Farkhurst 1961 |ii02|. 37 4X tise b\ Blaise \'lguere. I'raile de leu el de >el.
The book was reprinted as late as 1943. century by Thomas Harriot; they were and another with the Vienna Anniiniialion Fans. 16IX, which articiilate.l uleas ot
75 Ibid., 69V-70, Xo, 117V. repeated by Newton and formed the basis (1609,10) by jatfe 1971 I1523I. 363 6. See darkness very close to Browne's
76 Ibid., loov, 11X. ot (ioethe's anti-Newtonianism. For also Held 1979 |l509|, 237 64 and for a 34 Kepler 19X0 |i530|. cit. Rzepiiiska
77 Joret 1X92 I1365I, 242, 246. 233. For Hoogstraten's use of mixed greens. Fles- general account ot d'Aguilon in Eng., ibuL, 102. The astronomical sigmtuaiue
the Rotihiii dc la Rose, Kirsop 1961 11369I, ters 19X7 |i374|. X2 and for his use of Ziggelaar 19X3 I1644I. ot shadows h.iii stimulated the studv ot
146. glazes, X3. His omission of orange from 23 Helbourgo and Fetit i960 (1472I. es- their projection in .Antiquitv and the
78 Evans 1922 |682|, 22, 24, 36, 1X3. binary mixtures may be due to his belief pec. 32-4; Rees-Jones i960 115791. 307; .Muiille .Ages (Kautmann 1973 |i528|,
79 Dronke 1972 |88o|, 9X, For the dia¬ that it was a red. Flesters and Mahon 1963 11575I. 203. 262 7).
grams. Meier 1972 |i374|. 243-333. 9 Another striking example of the red- 24 For the records ot Rubens's I)e Liinune 35 Kircher 1646 115311, bk 11. pt 11. 34. cil
80 Saran 1972 li397|. zzXtt. See blue-yellow palette in the Middle Ages is el (lolore. which survived in .ms until the Rzepihska ibid.. Ml.
particularly 23 if for cinnabar, citing a late one ot the last products of (liotto’s work¬ I Xth century, (lage 1969 |2I7|. 222. n. 10. 36 Revnolds 1X32 ll7|, 11. 332 3 Ac¬
13-ceiitury recipe-book produced by shop. the I’olyplych off. 1333/4 (Bologna, Foiissin's 1649 self-portrait (Berlin) shows cording to him, even Rubens iiitro.hued
nominican nuns in Nuremberg, which Finacoteca). him holding a book inscribed I)e Luinine light into only a little more th.ni a quarter
used alchemical terminology in the recipe 10 For the perspective. Kemp 1990 el C.'olore but it is not known whether this of his picture. Some examples ot this
for vermilion (Floss 1962 |i386|. 121 2). 11529]. 12H-7. A programmatic use of was his own work or the lengthy extra, ts metho.l ofstiuls are in Reynol.is's sket.h-
(Iriinwald’s inventory of 132X was first primary and secondary colours in from Zaccolini he is know 11 to have made. book. Sir |ohn Soane's .Musenm. 1 oiuion.
printed by Ziilch 193X |i4ir|, 373-3. His Foussin’s //cii/iiii; ofihe Blind (1630, Faris, His biographer Felibien denied that he f.shos 133, 139, 162. 177 X,
ertects also included a quantity ot'alcheiiiy Louvre) has been argued by C"). B,itsch- had written anything of his own (Face 37 .Mancini 1936(15531. 1. loX.
Xriiii'. i.e. manufactured green. mann, Tarbgenese iind Fnmarfarbentrias 19X1 11565!, 16). See also dropper 19X0 38 .Mahon 1947 115511, 3-. 11. 39. 63. 93.
81 Luther .Siitiniit/iV/ie IlVrEe. LXll. Ft IV. in Nicholas Foussins "Hie 1 leilung der 114651. 370 X3. 39 (iiiidobaldo ilel .Monte Ihripeelirae
vol. .X. 1X34, 27f, cit. H. Ci. von Tavel, Blindeif". in Hering-Mitgaii 19X0I902I, 25 Mancini 1936 |l553|. 1. 162 (diseyiio as l.tbri .Sex. Fisa, ifioo. 1. 2. cit. Spe/zaterro
'Nigredo-Albedo-Rtibedo: ein Beitrag 329-36; trans. in Batschmann 1990 11426|. essere indiridnale); Bellori 1976 11430]. 632 1971 |i6i4|. X3, Xnf For C.iravaggio's
ziir Farbsymbolik der Diirerzeit' in It Scarmilionius 1601 |3I7|. 111 12. He {disefino as priiuipio forniale). Maratta's training. Baumgart 1933 |i427|. t>3.
Henng-Mitgau et al. 19X01902|, 3 10. This places his piiiiiceus between Barns and didactic print of c. 16X0 sums up his 40 Bellori 1976 11430]. 229.
important study treats the alchemical riridis in his scale (117). which also has a argument; students busy themselves with 41 Rdttgen 11/13 11591), 4X. 49t See also
iconography of a panel in Niklaus purpiireiis but no ruher in this torm, so 1 drawing, perspective, anatomy and the the lt>02 contract (341. lor a similar
Manuel’s Si l:h[^ius Ahar. exactly contem¬ interpret piiiiicciis as ‘orange'. studv of the Antique, while a palette and stipulation in the Cavaliere d'.Arpino's
porary with (Iriinewald's Isenheim altar. 12 Boyle 1664 1179I, 2 19 21.232. brushes stand idle (Kutschera-VLoborsky I 391 contract for the tres.oes in the same
82 T he only parallel I have found is in the 13 Sir William Fetty, 'An App.iratus to 1919 I •537|. W 2X). See also 1 )omenichino chapel. Rfittgen h/14 11590|. 20s .A parti-
sky of Konrad Faber von Kreutznach's the History of A common Fractices ot to Angeloni f. 1632 111 Mahon 1947 cul.irlv interesting instance ol this pra. tice
portrait of Justinian and Anna von Holz- Hying'in Sprat 1939 | i6i6|. 293 302. |i55l|. 120. In all cases these rem.irks arise IS in the 1612 contra, t for Homeni. hiiio's
hausen (Frankfurt, Stiidel Institute, no. 14 For Le Blon. Lilieii 19X3 |i s46l; (lage from the Milanese theorist (i. F. tres. oes ol the hte ot St ((ecilia, Folei

1729). 19X6 |i49o|, 63-7. Fxir colour-prints in Lomazzo's proposal ( I'rallalo dell’ ,dr/c Chapel, same ihur.h. \s here the patron
83 For a survey. Read 1932 |l39i|. general. Friedman 197X I1483I; S. Lamb¬ della Pilliira. .Milan, 13X4, 24) that draw¬ agreed to provide ultramarine according
2X6 92. ert 19X7 115411, X7- 106. ing is the iiialeria and colour the lonna ot to the painter's .wvn taste I'l.i leiiulo d.irlo
84 (hlchrist 1942 |22l |, 303. 15 See. e.g.. the Tr.idescant .Museum painting. See also Le Brim in 1672 that hit 11 )omenichino| .1 >11.' yioi.'. lanio della
85 For the technique, Essick 19X0 |207|. (1636) in .Allan 1964 I1415I. 263: blacks, dessm imitated les ehoses reellei, and cislour ipiaiilila. .piaiilo della .jiialila ..'»i< .1 /in
ch. 9. yellows, reds, blues, whites as used by only aceideitlels Ilmd.ihl 19X7 (1521I. 36I. I Homeni. hino| »i( i,'/i.'/'jn r.i Spear 19X2
86 Blake 1936 |i7i|, 1X7. dyers and painters. [Sir Locke. 1973 |l548|. 293, 300 301 jl6i2|. 32X1 In the earls ifi2os (luer. 1110
87 |. (ilauber Ihc I’rosperily oj (Icriiuiiiy, 16 Shapiro 1. 19X4 |i603|, 436I. 4f)Ot, I his w as only a retinment of the ancient appeale.l to Fope (,rigors XV tor pav-
cit. tirosland 1962 I1348I. 9. 16. sOOf; .ilso Westfall 1962 [ 1638I, 337. discussion of the colours ot the elements ment lor his huge altarpie.e Sla /Vlr.uii//,;
\()'li;s H) liu I RX I

iDiiw RiiiiK-. C!,ipitiiliiic Museum), in- although the translation seems to be brandt, win de Weteritig 1977 |i64o|, for Waller’s colour-atlas seems to have
I likling .1 speci.il tee tor the l.irge spi.intity r.ither later than his book. Fie was. ot 63: for |.m Steen r. 1660, Butler 1982/3 been Elias Brenner 16S0 |r44i| but, as
ot iiltr.im.iniie l.nisheil over ses'er.il fi- course, describing the standard red-green |i449|. 46. Waller pointed out, this atlas, which
liures, 'it being usual th.it painters never bow of tile early Middle Ages. For a 74 For Caravaggio, Greaves and lohnson provided 31 colour-samples grouped un¬
put this hown to their ow n cost' (I'ollack detailed w orking-out ot this scheme, see 1974 I1498I, 20; for Rubens, Coremans der white, yellow, red, green, blue and
11. IV3I. |i577|. Si')4). hoi a ver\' Lite fheophilu-s 1963 116211,23-3. and Thissen 1962I1464I, 126. black and was directed primarily at
ex.inip'le ot this, see the frescoes ot the 54 Vincent of Beauvais 1624 |823|, Spern- 75 Junius 163S |i07i|, 272. The book miniaturists, dealt only with ‘simple’
C .is.i li.irtlioldv in Rome (now Herlin. hmi \altiun- II, eh. Ixviii. appeared in Latin, Eng. and Hutch. For colours. Waller included about 120
N.ition.ilgalene). p.iinted by a group ot 55 For Albertus Magnus, Ide Scimi. II, 2, Rembrandt's possible knowledge ot it in samples.
Nazarenes in i.'siti 17, tor which the cit. Hudeczek 1944 |732|, 130; for al Ti'isi, the late 1630s, Gage 1969 I1487I, 381. See 91 ‘E. W.’ in .4 Carden of flowers:
p.itron Niebuhr suppliesi the ultramarine Wiedem.inn 1908 |6o3|, SSt. also Felibien on 'couleurs rompues’ in Wherein I 'ery Lively is Contained a True
(Seidler i.Xys 11599|. .104). 56 Theodoric’s .iccount in On colours VI, 1676 (P.ice 1981 115651, i(')7, n. I I 3. i). and Perfect Discription of al the floures
42 For the Cler.isi Cdiapel. Hibbard 19.S3 howex'cr, does not include the notion ot a 76 Sandrart 1923 |i595|, 203. This is my Coutaind iu these foure followinge Bookes,
I 1515]. I i.sih grey-scale, as P.irkhurst (Hall 1987 11237I, free tr.ms. trom .1 difficult passage. as also the Perfect True .Manner of Colouring
43 1'. Accolti /,(i //lyii/i/io i/cy/i Oiclii, 174-6) suggests, since it is concerned with Sandrart’s thought is close to 16th- the same, with their Naturall Coloures . ...
Horence. 1623. ISO. cit. Cropper ip.So the black and white content ot hues as century Venetian attitudes (p. 137 above). Utrecht. 1613, end of bk IV. Schift-geel is
11465I. .s77h hues. 1 have left out of consideration the His sympathy for Rembrandt’s style and recommended as a good glazing colour
44 MaK'asia 1S41 11552I. I. 2. See also the theory of Robert Clrosseteste, which technique is clear in his Cood Satnarilan by C. R. Biens (1639), cit. de Klerk 1982
remark bv the Spanish theorist Ralomino Parkhurst has attempted to reconstruct as (Milan, Brera). See also the emphasis on I1532I. 33-6 (Eng. summary syff). The
(1713/24) that to achies e the right effects a three-dimensional solid (ibid.. 168- 72). harmony through mixture in difficulty of interpreting the colours in
e\'en the iliist of the street might be used Clrosseteste proposed a list of 7 unnamed Rembrandt’s pupil Hoogstraten 1678 16th-century herbals has been discussed
(Veliz ii;S6 |i628|. 164). I’alomino (134) hues which could be arranged in a se¬ |i5i8|, 223, and 291 for Rembrandt’s by Arber 1940 11418I, 803. For some early
.ilso noted with disapproval that the pat¬ quence from white to black and another technique. attempts to catalogue animals using
ron still often supplied the most e.xpensive unnamed 7 from black to white again 77 Groen 1977 |l499|, 74; Coremans colour-names in a more or less systematic
colours. It may be signiticaiu that no (Parkhurst claims that there w-'as only one 1963 I1463I, i83f; Kiihii 1976 |I535|, 27!'. way, Charleton 1677 I1456I, 61 -71,
Spanish contracts stipulating the use ot set of 7). But as Parkhurst himself recogn¬ Catalogues of substantial collections ot which refers to Glisson’s system (see p.
specific colours have yet come to light izes, this scheme was fraught with pract¬ Rembrandts which include technical ana¬ 167 above); Buonanni 16S 1 [1448], 87-96,
(McKim Smith et al. lySS |l550|. 97). ical difficulties and was attacked by Bacon lyses are de Vries et al. 1978 |i633|. and which refers back to Savot 1609 [3151. It is
although a Madrid example ot 11134 speci¬ (■937 |l57|. 74 -s) on these grounds. See Bomford et al. 1988 [1440]. notable that Buonanni. whose work was
fied 'fine and bright colours' (39); at this espec. Parkhurst ibid., n. 18. 78 See n. 19 above and Froentjes 1969 based on the collection ot shells left by
time ultramarine might have been used 57 Barasch 1978 |ii68|, 178-80. For Re¬ I1486I, 233-7; Sonnenburg 1976 |i6ii|, Athanasius Kircher to the Jesuit College at
for the mantle of the 'Virgin (Veliz ibid.. naissance scales see also Gavel 1979 |2I9|, I 1. The technique was noted in the work Rome, did not extract a three-colour
mS). For Spanish colour-principles. 45-6. of Holbein (silver leaf) in the 17th century theory from Savot’s book (see p. 274,
Soehner 1933 |l6o9l. espec. I2f; Spinner 58 See, e.g., the carefully argued scale (Mayerne n.d. |l559l, 1 10) and was used n. 97 above) hut listed as his primaries
1971 [1615I. 173. For the palettes of from white, pale green, yellow, red, locally in the 13th (p. 129 above). white, black, yellow, red, purple, green
Velasquez and Zurbar.in. Sonnenburg purple and blue to black in Vossius 1662 79 Kiihn 1977 I1536I, 226. and blue (turchino).
1970 |l6io|. n.p.; Veliz 19S1 |i627|. 11632I, Cliff. 80 Van de Wetenng et al. 1976 I1641I, 92 L Ritton de Tournefort (1694), cit.
27S-S3. 59 Forsius 1932 I1483I, 316ft’. An Eng. 9.sf Dagognet 1970 [1466], 3 if For the view
45 Mancim 1936 |l553|, I, 108-11; trails, in Feller and Stenius 1970 |l48o|. 81 Restout 1863 115831. A rather different that colour was ot no taxonomic signific¬
Ottonelli and Berrettim 1973 |l38l|. Zsf. 48-31 includes some rather misleading interpretation of the palette’s affecting ance, Linnaeus 1938 I1547I, 138-42.
Cortona's colouristic interests have been drawings after Forsius’s diagrams, reprin¬ style was suggested by Hagedorn 1773 93 C. F. Prange farbenlexicon, Halle.
emphasized by Poirier 1979 |l576|. ted by Parkhurst in Hall 1987 I1237I, 183. |236|. 11. 170, who said that ‘feeling the 1782 and review in Meusel’s Miscellaneeu
23-30. For the Cavalier d'Arpino’s work 60 Glisson 1677 |i493|, ch. IX: ’De palette’ in a painting was to feel the artistischen Inhalts, IX, 1781, cit, Rehfus-
in the Contarelli Chapel, cleaned in 1966. coloribus pilorum’, 34-61. Chn blue hki\ falseness and e.xaggeration of the local Dechene 1982 |l58lj, 13!'. Another set of
II Cai'alicrc d'Arpino 1973 |i453|. 177. The Harley 1982 I1504I, 48-9. Glisson’s ap¬ colours, which must be modified by standards directed primarily at naturalists
juxtaposition of frescoes by Raphael and proach may have been stimulated by the mixing. wasj. C. Schaffer Entwurf eiuer aUgettteineu
Sebastiano del Piombo in the Farnesina. tables in Zahn 1638 [1643I, fund. I. synt. 2, 82 Shapiro 1, 1984 ll6o3|. 460!', who farheuverein. Regensburg, 1769.
Rome, must have been )ust as shocking ch. IX, which show the progression ot conjectures plausibly that Newton inten¬ 94 Schiffermiiller, 1776 [324], 6-7. For
and stimulating to spectators in the High hues from black to white: green, e.g., has ded to write pnniceus for purpnrens. the date and context, Lersch 1984 |l545|,
Renaissance but does not seem to have white, pale-yellow, yellow, green, blue, 83 Harris 1708-10 11505]. I, s.v. ‘Colour’. 301 16. Schiffermiiller was co-author
generated the same comparisons. blue-black, black. In 11 an article on ‘Colour’ is also derived with M. Denis of Systematisches I'erzeich-
46 Bernini 1982 |l432|. ggf and figs 61 Chandler 1934 I1455I, 69; Gage 1984 from Opticks. niss der Sclunetterlinge der IViener Cegend,
33-41. The vault frescoes were cleaned in I1489I. 256. 84 Taylor 1719 (1619I, 67-70. For his Vienna, 1776. where, in spite of the usual
I9.S9. 62 For Zaccolim, Bell 1983 [1429], paintings and collaboration with Newton references to problems of terminology
47 For an early description of Lanfranco’s 227-38. My account is based on Bell 1983 on the theory ot music, see R. S. Jones in (38-9), there appears to be no reference to
cupola, which stresses his range of tones 11428], the Italian text of Zaccolini’s Dictionary of Scientific Biography. Xlll. his system.
from light to dark. Turner 1971 [1625], treatise, which will soon be published in 1976, 263-8. 95 Gage 1990 [9], 338.
espec. 323. For Baciccio, Engass 1964 translation. 85 Le Blon | 1725I |l543|, 6. The date was 96 Williams 1787 |i642|, 39fi It is a
I1477]. 3iy4.T 63 Bell 1983 ibid., 293, 336—64. established by Lilien 1983 I1546J, 140—i, symptom of the still disorganized charac¬
48 Baciccio may have taken his cue for 64 Ibid., 307, 335, 340-1. who also pniblished a facsimile of this rst ter of Eng. science that as late as 1823, after
this yellow-brown-white tonality from 65 Ibid., 293, 3 11, 326. edn. the publication of Symes 1821 |i6l8j, a
Federico Zuccari's cupiola fresco of the 66 Sandrart 1923 [1595I, 209f. The pas¬ 86 Gage 1983 |i488|. 19-20 and 19S6 meteorologist could still look forward to
Virgin adoring the Fdoly Trinity in a sage has been examined in some detail by 11490], 67. One of the first popularizers of 'a systematic arrangement of colours .. .
neighbouring chapel, dating from the end Gowing 1974 |l497|, 90-6 and Conisbee Newton’s Opticks. Francesco Algarotti, by reference to flowers and other standard
of the 16th century. 1979 I1462I. 413-19. already in 1737 show'cd that Le Blon left substances. It would be well if we had a
49 Moliere X, 1949 [1562I, 209, 11. 133-b. 67 Conisbee ibid., 424. his paper white since he could not consti¬ nomenclature for colours which expres¬
50 For Hipparchus. Padgham and Saun¬ 68 Berger IV, 1901 |l43lj, 122-4. For tute it from his primary colours (Algarotti sed them by reference to the proportion
ders 1973 |i566|. 37. Chalcidius 1963 schitpecl. n. 91 below. OK’O I1414I, II. 130). See also Cominale of the primitive tints of which they may
[1454I. 375f. Alexander of Aphrodisias's 69 F H. Bourdon Conference snr la 1754 I1461I. 133. be compounds’ (Forster 1823 I1484I,
account of the rainbow (see p. 3 1 above) Inniiere (1669) in 'Watelet and Levesque 1, 87 Wagner 1967 (1634I, 42. 8511).
although it implies some scalar thinking, 1792 I1636], 403-6, 413. Bourdon ment¬ 88 Scheuchzer I. 1731 [1596], 61. The 97 Goncourt 1948 |i496|. 89. For the
was not yet a coherent scale. ioned a meeting with Claude, whose poetic tradition of the Opticks has been vogue for shell-collecting in Boucher’s
51 Urso von Salerno 1976 |592|. 185. sunrises he espec. admired (406). explored by Nicolson 1946 I1564I; circle. Dance 1966 I1467I, 61.
52 Bacon 1937 1157I, 70-77. 70 Sutton 1987 |ii44|, 10-1 I and 430 on Greene 1933 I1055I, 327 32; Murdoch 98 Scopoli 1763 [1597], n.p. Scopoli used
53 Ai’iccutu! 1972 (14211. 203f. Bacon’s Rembrandt’s Ice Scene near Fanu Cotlai^es. 195II I1563I. 324-33; Guerlac 1971 [1500]. a disc divided into 8 equal segments; his
identification of pallidus with yellow has 71 Goclemus 1613 I1494I, 393fi It is The visual tradition of eulogy of Newton 'primaries’ were vermilion, gamboge.
no basis in Avicenna’s text and it was remarkable that he grouped glancns, has been less studied but see Haskell 1967 Prussian blue, black (atramentuin indicuni)
generally regarded as achromatic (see p. coesins, lividns, cinericius and /iiW/idiis under |I506|, 218-31 and The European face of and white lead, with a mixed green. Some
74 above). It seems possible that the caeruleus. Isaac Newton 1973/4 |l478|. of his mixtures are surprising, including a
scheme of 12 steps, each in red and green, 12. Merrificld 1849 (271). II, 630-7. 89 Turnbull 1740 11624]. 143-6. The link corallinus from 6 parts of red and 4 ot
discussed in the early 12th century by 73 This practice has been identified as with the Opticks had been made on 133-4. green. The Insecta Musei Graecensis of the
Theophilus (I, 16) for painting the rain¬ early as Tintoretto (Plesters 1980, I1572I, 90 Waller 1686 (1635I, 23. See also Har¬ Jesuit N. Roda (1761) does not use a
bow. was influenced by Avicenna. 36. 39); for its use by the young Rem¬ ley 1982 [1504], 36. Lire only precedent colour-notation, although Scopoli is

288
 \t m s i( 1 I in 11 \ I

mentioned in it as a tViend. so the teelini- .Munuh. B.iverische St.iatsbibliothek. ’ 147' I- 11. 1- if. 191, l\ , Sc, .iIm- c. -.c 1 I ■(' . 1622 .
qiie may have been devised in the earlv neither ot which h.o the last plate svith Spestor I9fi~ 11613I, vs, if.j. n - 142 I ; : , ■ , ,
1760s. Sehirt'ermiiller 1776 I324I. 211. was samples ot colour-mixtures, The Yak- 127 Bl.iiu I XO' I 1436I. 24. S'; s , fti.> 4. 143 Mm-.: -. in. - 1 r : I 561 i \
very entieal ot these experiments. Those copy was published in t.usmiile bv 1 '^■'6 I 1437|. '>2 4 144 R( >. (.1 ...... m; .: . , . -; 111. Ii S, .1!
by I'eter Shaw in the 1730s seem to have Birren 111 1963 but with re-u orked coj pis 128 Blain I xo- 114361, 22. 24, n-xti ■ -led .( : I.(, n>.' '.h:. c.i w , ’li .
been eoiuerned only with testing which are quite misleading; the pis ot the 129 BI.uk ibid, ti'jjil H>r orient.ihsin. . ..ps in H.-nu I r > 5 >7! 1 ( . in:
Newton's theory of the heterogeneous .Munich copy are reproduced in Lersch ibid . -ins. t'Otif. ix-ti '1437I. ~2 4. isx2 n.-'.;-r-i.l 1 ■■ s , K-.i.inig ol ll.'n.l
character of white light (Shaw 1755 1984 115451- pis 3J. b. 11438I, 222. p)i). 4' 141, a-'jil (..ie( I .(S ! 14(41 4 1. In th.if .irtii !(■ | \ i
116041, 304). 111 Repton 1 803 11582], 2 1 .X. 130 1 or the 11 i9 . l/yici'. Bl.im 1 x-fi 11 24 I di-( .■untc-d flu- nitliu ii.c .'! R.'..,i
99 [ hus colour plays no part in (1 112 Regnier 1X63 I1580I, 13 is. Hus 11437]. 6xt3. Johnson 1903 |l069|, r..;, lor on the (.(,1(1.6 /.Iff. but I w .IS ■hn-.king fhci.
Clamor's study Optics pflcr Xcwicti view had already been ottered more c.iuti- .iccessories. Bl.iiu 1 X6-11436]. o. (If the sm,ill-s( ale d(-pi(>\ ii..-ni .d ,,'nir,(
ntt’ories oj l.ic<ht in Britain and Ireland, ously b\ Rumford (1X02 11592|. 1. 336); in 131 For the (1 omen ol .-ilyier'. lohnson sted si((ts rather th.in of tiu Luge- ...Imn
170,) 11140. 19X3. 1792 a young Eng. painter. Henrs Ho¬ 1963 11069I. 42 3. pis 23 4, ibul . 19X1 n .ire.IS diseiisse-d he-re I or St-ur.if s nu-.-'mc
too Isidore i960 |456|, 15 17, 202bis. ward, had noticed the ‘oppositions’ of e.g. (1070I. III. no. 336. For Delacroix copies with Henrs. I eiieon |.|~ I148I' I \\.
2i2bis, 2i6bis, 296bis. For diagrams in crimson and brownish green in a I itiaii 111 trom authentic oriental sounes. lohnson tot I Icnrs s interest in 1 le-hiiholt/ .nid Ills
(lassiodorus and Joachim of Flora. Es- Venice (1 loward 184X |io65|. lin). o/ij I1525I. itijf, 19-x |i526|, 1441L D .ift.uk on t hesrenrs iUslc in ixse
meijer 197X |68o|, 3X, 1’sf. See also Evans 113 Chesreul iXsj |l85|, (^16, 237. For Roseiith.il in"’" 11587I, SOS o, .-\rguelles 1(4-2 1419I. -ill
198014271, 32 3. the inriuence of Ampere, (dievreul 1969 132 See espec. tdievreul’s remarks about 145 Hie best (Sail.ibk .olour-
101 See 1). Hue. ‘l)u crocus an jus de 114591. IV. the Png trails, of his work in the earlv reprodiie tioiis of the puiiire- s\ ith its
Foireau: remarques sur la perception des 114 Aquinas 1932 |i4l7|. 630, >(2X9. See 1 X30S (1X7(4 11458I, a'sii-c , 1 ,\l. 24 11'; I or boriler. t.iken .liter eleaiimg. .ire in .\rt
couleurs au Moyen-Age' 111 ClUF.RMA also Alhazen 19X9 I364I. 1, 99; 11, 3X. new versions, see espec. the most in.ignifi- Institute ot t'huago. .\/l(..(•|l(n Siudu-.
198K |873|, i65ff. For Fludd, (iodwin 115 See l.e .Mayasin Pilloresipie. II, 1X34, ceiit ot'them, 1X64 I1457I, .iiul the ixxi; Xl\ . 1(4X(4. pis 2. f', X, I 2
1979 11495I. 65, who notes a i sth-century 63, 90 1; 'Dr E, V.’, 'Cours sur le con- edii ot De la Lot du .onttaae Minullane. 146 .Minersnio |i;-2 1361I. .ol pi
version in Oxford. Bodleian Library, .ms traste des couleurs par .M. ChevreuF, reprinted 1969 I1459I Cue of' the last xxviil I he pre-sciit dotted traiiie is not
Savile 39. folio yv. /.'.drn.ctc. 3rd series. 1, 1842, 148 30.162 3; colour-handbooks cm C hes reuh.iii lines Seurat’s, whieh w .is white iR .Mies.
102 For the complicated bibliography of C. E. Clerget, 'Lettres sur la theorie des seems to be Lacouture 1 X(;o |i538|, dedi¬ Oataloyue ol the late (.allery'. OolUolton oi
'Boutet', Farkhurst ami Feller 19S2 couleurs’. Bulletin de I'.-lnn des .drt.s. 11. cated to his memorv. .Modem .In. 19x1. fisgt. no fioo-f Prof
I1567I. 229, n. 14. A 2nd wheel in the 1S44, 29 36, 34-62, Xi 91, 113 21, 133 See espec .Maxwell (1X36) in .Max¬ R. 1 1 lerbert first ponite-el out to me the
treatise increased the number of mixed 173-83. 393-404. in 1842 Chevreul's lec¬ well 1. 1990 |i558|. 412 13 1 he distinc¬ mixture ot C dievreuhaii and I lehnholt/i.ni
tones to 8. tures were advertised at the Pans Salon tion between additive and subtractive complementaries in the small Po>eua>
103 Frisch (178X), cit. Lersch 1984I1545I. (Herbert 1962 11512I, 77). mi.xing had been described clearly by iP Smith 1(4140 11139|. 1X3. eol pL 111.
314; Bezold 1876 11434I, 114; for Ostwald 116 I have discussed these associations in a Forbes 1X4(4 I1482I. 163 and hinted at b\ 147 Hie letter is translated in Broude
p. 247 above. forthcoming paper, 'Chevreul entre Glas- Hayter 1826 |i308|, 6. The 'paradox’ of 197X |l443|. 16. File- fullest discussion ot
104 Clavel 1979 I219I, 95. This was true sicisme et Romantisme'. the mixture of blue and vellow lights to the painter’s reading is I lerbert et al 1(491
ot many later proposals: R. Agricola in a 117 For Vernet. see the well illustrated w lute had also been reported much earlier 11514). 384 93
discussion of Difference listed blue and cat. Horace I’entet. 19X0, Academic de- by the German mathematician |. H 148 For Seurat’s note, de H.iuke .nid
yellow as centrarii and indigo, red and France .1 Rome. Lambert (1760 li540|, 32X). Forbes knew Brame 1961 I1507I. I. xxis aiul Bl.nu
green as widely separated (Agricola 1967 118 Delacroix 19X0 |i026|, 6 May 1832; Lambert’s other m.ijor publication, the 1X67 |i436|. 399t For orange sunlight.
|i4i2|, 1. xxvii, 161). Zahn 1638 I1643I, cf. 2 September 1834. I'arbenpyrannde of 1772 (Forbes ibid.. Gage 198- |i49i|. 44(4 30, Bl.nu ibid.
fund. 1, synt. 2, ch. IX argued that the 119 For Delacroix’s note, Dittmann 19X7 161 f’). 608. A sust.inied att.uk on the ’scieiititii ’
most opposite colours were the liveliest in I1474], 2X4, and in trans., with the 134 Chevreul 1X79 |i458|, 14, 33, i7XtT. notion ot white sunlight had alre.uis been
juxtaposition but did not specify them. H. triangle, by Kemp 1990 I1529I, 308. He 24X11. appealing to the experience of launched b\ Regmer, who argued that 11
Testelin Tableau sur la couleur (1696) gave and Merimee served on a government painters to expose them. Lhe develop¬ was .1 'light, slightly orange vellow’
red and green, yellow and blue as parti¬ committee in 1831 (L. Rosenthal 1914 ment has been discussed by Shermati 198 1 (1863,113801.2 3).
cularly helpful for enhancing each other's |l588|, 3) and he owned a Merimee 116061. 149 Herbert et al. 1(491 11514I. 394 6. For
brilliance (cit. Teyssedre 1963 |i62o|. watercolour of horses (Bessis 1971 |l433l, 135 Laugel 1X69 I1542I. which recom¬ one of Seurat’s annotated sketches, Russell
298). Lairesse 1778 |i539l, 120-1 gave a 213, no. 123). mended (7. n. 1) Helmholtz’s Handbook of 1963 115931- Rg- 69
long list of harmonious pairs but like 120 For the 1839 circle, Johnson 1963 I’hysiolociical Optics (1867) as the best 150 Piroii 1X63 11369I. 4 i6ti For Seurat’s
Leonardo's they w’ere very fluid: light [ 1069], 36. pi. 34. This is still the best study guide. copy 111 the Signac archive. Herbert ibul .
yellow, c.g., suited violet but also purple of Delacroix’s colour but see also Badt 136 Jamin 1K37 I1524I, 624-42. Cf ^3-
and green, and pale red suited green and 1963 [1422], 46-74; Howel 1982 I1520I. Sheon 1971 11605I, 434-33. This view was 151 Sutter iXXo I1617I For Seurat’s
blue. 37-43- not so far from Helmholtz’s as expressed cross, Rey 1931 I1585I, 12X
105 Cohen 1938 (1460I, 83. 121 The lecture notes, in an exercise in the 1830s in the ’On the relation of 152 Sutter ibid , 2iX 19 For Seurat’s
106 Ibid., 206 (1673). book, are now in the Cabinet de Dessins at optics to painting’ in Helmoltz ujoo colour-circle. Gage 198-114911. 430 1
107 Newton 1730 |i095|, L ii, prop. V., the Louvre (mss Anonymes I d.Xo). They |l5ll|,
11.73 138- 153 Fi-ni-on 1970 (1481), 1. 117 cit. Hal-
theor. iv, experiment 13. See Shapiro are not in Delacroix’s hand but include a 137 E. Duranty La Xouvelle Peinturc. perin 19XX 11502I. 101.
1980 ( i602|. 234; H. G. Grassmann (1833) number of corrections w-hich may be by 1876, in Geftroy 1922 |l492|. 88 440. For 154 Halperin ibid . 139
in MacAdam 1970 |i549|. 37ff. On the him. The 24-colour circle in them may be Duranty and Guillemin, Marcussen 1979 135 For the letter to Durand-Ruel.
history of Newton’s work on the colours related to Delacroix’s late cadran described |l554|, 29. Duranty also owned another Bailly-Herzberg 1980 I1424I. 11, (19X6),
of thin plates. Westfall 1962/3 |l639|. by Silvestre 1926 [l6o8|, 1, 48. For the book w-hich took a Helmholtzian line on 73. File 1 layer circle was no 28 iii . Inof...
181-96; Sabra 1967 11396I, ch. 13. painter’s proposed visit to Chevreul, Sig¬ primaries and secemdaries and reprinted irri/(-r.<, Poltius ... 19X0 (i420|. for
108 iUimford 1802 |i592|, 1. 319-40. nac 1964 |i6o7|, 76; since Delacroix, who his essay on painting: Briicke 187XI1447I H.iyet’s despairing letter about it, Dulon
Matthaei 1962 |i557|. 72-4 traces the lived until 1X63. does not seem to have 138 Vc-ron 1879 |i630|. 220. For Veron and Duvivier 1(491 |l476|. Ck) Both are
term to the Fr. scientist j. H. Hassenfratz attempted a 2nd visit it is possible that it and Huysmans, Reutersvard 1930 I1584I. now 111 Oxford. .Ashmolean .Museum aiul
in 1801. was intended to be more social than lOX -9. Another Fr. account of Helmholt- the circle was reproduced 111 col by
109 R. W. Darwin 1783 |l47o|, reprinted educational: at the time Delacroix was zian complementaries in these years was Dulon and Duvivier ibid. 16(4 Pissarro’s
in E. Darwin 1796 I1469I, I, 368. R. W. suing for membership of the Institut. of Guc-roult 18X2 115011. 174. For the same- preterence for the optical mixture of tones
Darwin pointed out that his work started which Chevreul was President. texts read at this time by outdoor painters close to each other on the circle has
with an analysis of Newton’s colour- 122 Lecture-Notes, i jjanuary 1X4X. n.p. in Italy, Broude 1970 11442I. 406 12. sometimes been related to his earlier
wheel. Rumford had made similar experi¬ Cf. the memoirs of Delacroix’s assistant 139 VT-ron 1X79 I1630I. 243. practice as an Impressionist [Herbert 1970
ments in 1793 (Rumford ibid.. 336 -7) and on some of these schemes. Planet 1928 140 Fcrr impressioniste-lunnniste. Seurat to 11313I, 29; cf Brown 1930I1444I. ijibut
they were also made the basis of a theory 115711. 399- 435t'- Signac 1XX7 in Dc-irra and Rewald 1939 Rood had also recommended the har¬
of harmony by Venturi 1801 |i629|, 123 Vollard 1938 116311, 2 1 s. (1475I, lx; for chromo-luminarisme. chere .'i monies ot the 'small interval’ ((i.ige 198-
113ff. For Goethe, see ch. 11 below. 124 Van Gogh 193X I1626I, Letter 303. Seurat’, Signac 1(464 |l607|. 131; tor |l49l|. 4V3)
no I date Harris’s book to the early 1770s For the ceiling. Johnson 19X1 9|l070|.V. peiniure optupie. Seurat to Fc-neon, 1XX9. in 136 Laugel I 869 11342). I 3 I 2
because it is dedicated to Sir Joshua 113 31; Matsche 19X4 |i556|. espec. de H.iuke and Brame 11461 |i507|. 1. xx. 137 See espec. his letter to Lueien 23
Reynolds, who was knighted in 1769 but 478 82. For other col. details. .Serullaz 141 .M Schapiro in .Meyersoii 1937 February 1887 (Bailly-Herzberg 0480
does not mention 1 larris’s lixposition of 1963 I i6oo|. pis 103, 108. |i56o|, 231. Camille Pissarro recognized I1424I, II (1986). 131)
Biif’lish Insects of 1776. in a long title 125 Du Camp 1962 I1451I. 270; Dela¬ the importance of this new , impersonal, 138 .M Schapiro 111 .Meverson 19S7
which refers to other of Harris's public¬ croix 1980 |i026|. espec, 7 September quasi-mechamcal touch but found in the I1560I. 248. XHeale 0472 I1637I, lOtL lee
ations. The li.xpositicni used a modified 1S36 long run that the sacrifice was too great 1987 11544I. 203 26, see also the responses
version of the Satural .System, which is 126 For Blanc and Delacroix. Matsche (Anquetin 0470 |i4i6|, 430). The fullest by D Freeman and mysell. . In History,
known in a copy at Yale and another in 1984 11556]. 470; Delacroix 1933-8 account of the genesis of the (irande Jalir is XL 198X. I so 3. 3<47

2(SiJ
N() [ 1 S I ( ) I H). IT X r

isy til \ Mil dc Vi'ldc (I 111 (1338-1603). Florence. Uflizi; Palma 25 For the treatise, Vehz 1986 |i628|. Leger, dc Chirico).
/'i>Miir,i niS I I t570|, 124. Giowme's seh-portrait, Milan, Brer.i ( Lite 110, 113, .ind fig. 28. The palette also 38 Col. pi. in Manners and Morals 1987
160 Av pointi'd nut bv liriii-ki.- iStiU (ieiiiiir of I'etiiie 1983/4 |l67l|, no. 69); keeps vermilion and carmine in a separate 11701 j, no. 73.
1 I44f)|, ti.S4rt'. Annibale Garracci's SelJ-l’ortrail leiili ether sequence, as does Murillo's palette in his 39 Hog.irth 1933 11064], 98.

161 (;.ipc I114911- 4'- Ihgiirei Ic. 1383), Brera (Posner 1971 sell-portr.ut, London, Nation,il Gallery, 40 Ibid., 127 30. the palette ot
162 Bnk ku I S-s I 1447I, 7 I1715I, no. 23); Self-I’oriraii loiili an Lasel (no. 61 33 and Kaufmann 1974 11687], 43). Hogarth’s early associ.ite |oseph High-
(1. 1604), St Petersburg, 1 lermitage, (Posner 26 |De Piles] 1684 11713], 40-4 I. For the more, in a self-portrait ot c. 1723- 33 at
no. 143), replica in Uftizi repr. in col. by i ollabor.ition with Corneille, Picart 1987 Melbourne, is set only with white, red.
10 The Palette Honafotix 19S3 I1654I, S3; Apparition ol 11712], 30. 147. Schmid 1948 11724], blue and yellow.
1 K.indiii'k) IU'''2 11686|. 1, 472 the I irgiit to SS. Luke and (iaiherine (i 392). 47 - 31 gives a summary ot the m.nn points 41 For the portrait. Cooper 1982 |i66i|.
2 Nuc. L-.g., ■|ntrullK•llt^ 111 bxpcninciit' 111 Pans, Lou\ re. For the north. Marten van of the treatise, which he still attributes to no. 33. A detail of the palette is on p. 93.
(Inndiiip, r.iich and Sih.ilk’r |i;Si) il674|. Heeinskerk Sf Luke painting the I'irgin (r. Corneille. 42 Cooper 1982 116611, no. 114 (r. 1 S02
1330/50), Rennes (col. pi. in Bcllony- 27 |l.iie Piles] 1684117131,46-9,70. repr. in colour on cover); no. i 14. r. 1821
41 114-
3 One Ilf the best and most usetui Rewald and Peppiatt 1983 |i652|, 26; also 28 Du Puy dc Grez 1700 (1717], 243f (both Yale University Art Gallery).
examples of this stirt ot literature is Ayres Lc Dossier d'nn tableau 1974 |l665|, Havel Although he reports this as the practice of 43 Conisbee 1979 [ 1462], 42 i. lhavebeen
lot's |i646|. Two important items ot 1979 I i<^78|. pi. IV and 43); Kathanna van a friend, it mav be a reminiscence of unable to find an illustration ot
painterle equipment, paint-eontainers Hemessen Sell-I\irlrail al the Easel (1348), Fehbicn 1723 |i669|, V (1679), 16, where I )esportes’s palette setting.
•ind brushes. ha\e been investigated by Basle, Kunstmuseum (col. pi. in mixing with the knitc on the palette and 44 .See, e.g., A. Mascardi’s Dell'.-\rtc His-
Harlev 1071 |i677|. i 12; and ’Artists' Bonafoux 1983 I1654I, 102); Joseph with the brush on palette and canvas is lorica, Rome 1636. 403, where the habit ot
brushes liistorieal es'idenee from the Heintz Snr. Sell-I’orirail ifilh his Siblings mentioned. The Musscher portrait is re¬ identifying artists on the basis ot their
sixteenth to the nineteenth eentury’ in Muriel and Salome (1396), Berne, Kunst¬ produced in colour in lackson-Stops 1983 colour IS dismissed as merely sensual (cit.
Bromelle and Smith 1976 | H94|. ti 1 -6. museum (col. pi. in Prag uni iboo 1988 11684], no. 303. Du Puy de Grez was still Cropper 1984I1022I, 143).
4 See espee. the eolleetion ot nearly 300 |i7i6|, no. 128. pi. 31). These exanifiles arguing that white should be placed in the 45 Oudry 1861 I1709I, I I I. Among the
photographs gathered by Faber liirren have been discussed by Schmid 1948 middle as well as in the sequence at the 'Flemings’ were probably Gerard
and now at Yale. Kautm.inn 1974 |l687|, I1724I, 73 3, but his technical inform¬ edge (236-7, 269). Edelink, whose portrait Largilliere
s I 72 has postage-stamp size illustrations ation is out of date and he contuses a 29 Kirby Talley 1981 |l688j. 333, 342. painted about 1690 (Norfolk. Virginia,
of tile whole eolleetion. 'restricted' with a 'local' palette. Antonis For France see, c.g., Martin Lambert Chrysler Museum), and which shows a
5 Tile ’p.ilette’ of 6 eolours deseribed by Mor (1317-76) Uffizi (Kautmann 1974 Portrait of H. and C. Beaubrnn (1673), col. palette with an unusually wide range of 10
Bazin et al. 1938 |l649|, 3-22 is simply an 11687], no. 7); [oachim Wtewael SelJ- pi. in Ayres 1983 |i646|. Ii8, and Jean- pigments being much blended on the
•irea of the panel used for testing pig¬ Portrail (1601), (col. pi. in Lowenthal 1986 Charles Nocret (1647 17 19) Portrait of the palette (col. pi. Rosenfeld 1981 |i586|,
ments, all ot whieh are tiiiniixed. I1698I, frontispiece); |orge Manuel tiro Nocret in Havel 1979 11678], pi. XVII. cover).
6 laeobus Oiiiiic Boiiiiin, British Library Theotocopuli's palette in El Greco's por¬ 30 Oiidry 1861 11709], 109. See his pal¬ 46 Thus dti Puy de Grez 1700 [1717];
.MS Roy 6EV1, folio yzyr, where the 9 trait of him at Seville (c. 1600/3) has the ette in the Allegoric des Hi'7 of 1713 at Restout 1863 11583]. A self-portrait ot
s.uieers hold > or 6 tints (pi. in Martindale same small number of pigments as the El Schwerin, repir. in col. in Venzmer 1967 lean |ouvenet, to whom Restout here
1974 |76o|. 20); Cieero: Rhctorii. Ghent Greco palette reconstructed in Lane and |l733l.pl-'' refers, and showing a standard tonal
University Library ms 10, folio I9v (eol. Steinitz 1942 I1695I, 23, but their arrange¬ 31 See the palettes in M. Cochereau’s palette, is in the museum at Rouen.
pi. in Belloiiy-Rewald and Peppiatt 19S3 ment of it seems to be an ideal construct. view of David’s studio, Paris, Louvre, and 47 Hagedorn 1773 1236], 11, 170; also
11<>52|. 4s). 15 G. B. Armenini 1988 [1645I, 144 those in a drawing of c. 1800 by j.-H. Laugier 1972 ] 1696], 132; Hoppner 1908
7 Batiele et al. 1976 [1648], y-io. Marciii, (1977. I9.1)- Cless, Musee Carnavalct (repr. in Levitine ]l68o], 102. For later expressions of the
from BN ms Fr 12420, folio loiv was 16 Beal 1984 11650], 244; for the other 1978 [1697], f'S- >7)- Tlif David palette same idea. Bon 1826 ]i653|, s.v. 'Palette';
reprodiieed in col. in Behrends and Kober references, 140ft', 223, 247. given by Lane and Steinitz 1942 [ 1695] has Sutter 1880 [1617], xcv and xcvii, where
i97,t [16511. 14. 17 For a colour reproduction, von Sim- 17 pigments but no mixtures. he claimed that colour-relationships were
8 Dc trciifoirs cii bois pour icciil.x lucllrc son 1968 11727), 19. 32 Gautier 1708 |i670|, 3, 26. For 17th- very hard to judge on the palette.
coutcurs it otic ct pottr Ics tciiir it la ttiaiii. 18 See espec. van de Wetering 1977 century work on colour-indicators, 48 loseph Wright ot Derby in Carey
Laborde iSyi [1693I, 11, 334, no. 4669. |i640|, 63, and idem. 'Painting materials Eamon 1980 [13511. I 809 11658], 20; Farington 1978 ] 1033], 16
9 .See, t’.g., the blue drapery palette of Si and working methods’ in de Bruvn et al. 33 Corri 1983 [1662], 210ft', with col. |une 179S.
Luke paiiititK; the I'irgiii (1487), eol. pi. in 1982 [1657I, 24._ repr. facing p. 193. The attribution to 49 Landseer 1978 [1694], 1, 123-7.
Kaiifmann 1974 (1687I, 33; Derick 19 The identification ot the figure as Gainsborough has not been universally 50 R. P. Knight, Edinburgh Revieti’,
Baegert’s red-drapery palette (?) of 9 Rembrandt has been disputed by W. accepted. XXIII, 1814, 292.
eolours in St Luke paittliiie; the I 'irgiit (r. Sumowski {Getnalde der Rembrandt- 34 For the early palette see the portrait of 51 Bouvier 182S ]l655], 163-7, 249; see
14S3-90), col. pi. in Herbsl des \liltelalters Sehiiler, I, 1983 |i73i|, no. 262), but the Wilson by A. IT Mengs (1732), Cardiff, also Paillot de Montabert 1829 ]28l|, VIE
1970 [1679], pi. VI and no. 39: follower of picture on the easel is clearly in his early National Museum of Wales (Constable 390.
Quentin Massys St Luke paitithig the I irgiii style. Don’s own self-portraits (New I934)|i66o|, frontispiece); for the later 52 Redon 1979 ]l7l8], 136. For Fantin’s
(f. 1300), London, National Gallery (no. York Metropolitan Museum, and a Pri¬ arrangement, sketch by Paul Sandby, palette, Eanlin-Latour, 1982 ] i668|, 36. For
3902), which has a flesh palette of some rt vate Collection) follow this scheme reconstructed in Whitley 1968 |l739|, I, a 'Wagnerian’ dimension to Seurat’s divi-
eolours, including a blue-green (sec Stout (Kaufmann 1974 |i687|, no. 39; col. pi. in 384. sionisin. Smith 1991 ]l729|.26-8.
'933 [1730I. 191); Colyn de Coter St Li/k'c Ayres 1983 11646], 33). 35 For Le Blon, Lilien 1983 [1546], col. 53 See p. 156 and Van Gogh 193S [1626],
(before 1493). also with a blue robe 20 A fine example of this is B. van de pi. 47 and pp. 202, 221,223. For Bardwell, Letter 307, which shows that Vincent felt
palette, col. pi. in Perier d’leteren 1983 Heist’s portrait of Paul Potter (r. 1634) Kirby Talley and Grocn, 1973 |l689|, Wagner’s problem was the subdivision ot
I1711], fig. 27, also 35ff. where the bright colours are placed in the hsff, tot. tones,
10 Kuhn 1977I1692I, itio-y. middle of what is still a surprisingly small 36 Williams 1937 |l74o|, 19ft’. 54 Pennell 1908 I1710]. 11, 23, 231, 274f.
11 Stout 1933 |i73o|, 186-90. Stout sug¬ palette for this date (Kautmann 1974 37 Thenot 1847 |i732|, zff (palettes of The reconstruction by Lane and Steinitz
gests that this is a tancitul arrangement, 11687], no. 38). An interesting variant in David, Gros, Ingres, Watelet, Lapito, 1942 ]i695|, is not reliable.
since there are too few colours for the the order ot the light colours is in the Thenot, Bouton, Renoux, Dauzats, 55 'Technical Notes’, The Portfolio, VI.
painting in hand, and in particular no work of Frans Francken II, who liked to Gudin, Bracarsat, Werboekhoven); 1873, III. Sec also Morley Fletcher 1936
reds, but this would not be a problem if place pale yellow before white, then ver¬ Moreau-Vauthier 1923 [1706], 23-24 I1707I. M-
the palette were a ‘local’ one. milion and darker yellows (see his Christ¬ (palettes of Dagnan, David, Delacroix, 56 Delacroix 1923 ]l663|, 73; see also
12 One symptom of these new methods ian Allegory, Budapest Museum ot Fine Derain, Aman-jean, Andre, Bail. Bonnat, Journal, 21 Augut 1830; 'My freshly ar¬
was the attempt in 1346 by the Guild of St Arts, and his Interior of a Gallery, Berlin- Bougereau, Carolus-lduran. Chabas, ranged palette, brilliant with the contrast
Luke at 's-FIcrtogcnbosch in Holland to IDahlem, Gemaldegalcrie). Collin, Cormon, Cottet, Desvalheres, of colours, is enough to kindle my en¬
preserve the traditional Netherlandish 21 Mayernen.d. [1559], 108-9, '.lO- d’Espagnet, Doigneati, Dupre, Denis, thusiasm’ (ed. loubin 1930 I1664], I, 392,
method of oil painting with superim¬ 22 Bate 1977 [1647), '32- Idomergue, Gaudura, Girardot, Gerome, notin 1980 edii).
posed glazing, by banning the newer use 23 Merrifield 1849 [2711, 11, 770-3. Harpignies, Ingres (not the same as in 57 One ot the first records of a palette set
of a single layer of mixed pigments, a 24 Slive 1970-74 11728], Ill, no. Dby. Thenot’s list), Levy Dhurmer, Maillart, for a specific painting is that for Louis de
quicker, cheaper and less durable proce¬ The palette of another major W'oman- Matisse, Maufra, Menard. Millet, Morot, Planet's copy of Delacroix’s Jeii'isli Wedd¬
dure, See Miedema 1987 I1704I, 141-7 painter ot this period, Artemesia Gentiles- Picard, Pissarro, Point, Ricard, Renoir, ing at .-Jlgiers (1841). Planet stressed that
(with English summary). chi, shown in her self-portrait, Rome, Rixens, Roll, T. Rousseau. Saint-Gernier, Delacroix did not want his colours and
13 Vasari IV, 1976 [1408], 303. Galleria Nazionale del Palazzo Barberini, Simon. Ulmarin, Valloton, Whistler, pre-mixed tones to be blended much on
14 Some examples I have noticed are - is a straightforwardly tonal one. Another Zuluoga); A. C'izenfant, in EtiCYclopedic the palette (Planet 1928 [1571I, 388!').
tor Italy - Dosso Dossi Jupiter and Mereiiry ftesh-palette with white in the centre is Lraiifaisc 1933 |l666|, XVI, 30-3-6 (pal¬ Planet also gave a precise account ot the i I
(e. 1330), Vienna, Kunsthistorisches that ot the Spianish artist Esteban March in ettes of Signac, Renoir, Bonnard, Matisse, mixtures Delacroix made up for some
Museum; the self-portraits by Alessandro the Prado self-portrait (Kaufmann 1974 Utrillo, Duty, Derain (not the same as work in the Library of the Palais Bourbon
Allori (1333-1607) and Gregorio Pagani 11687I. no. 26). Moreaii-Vauthier’s), Braque, Lhote, in 1843 (433f).
 \(iiisi(iiiii n\i

58 l,<)u\ ri'. (;.ihinct dc I )<.smiiv. .dii/o- 7^ i 1 ionier. 'Notes on Seur.it'^ bri'wn t assel Earthl. wliose n.mu due' .1..:./, •: .; I I. I -
t;raplw^ lit' Dihitroix ((' I) A linilf 41. Palette'in Broude oa-.s 11443I. ii"' not pre-date the I sth lentiits. H.irle-. B.. ■ .1: d.if : ' 1755 I
59 I’lot 19.11 |I714|- 4. OiK- lit'the most 77 Signal. 119351 >■' Homer 19''' I1517I. 19x2 I1504I. I49f 13 1 v \, v:h. i 'cl. t;. • c, iXi-
sict.iilcd rcconstriK tions of .1 I lel.uroix isl. I he palette belli b\ Sign.K in a I 1.XS3 88 I.e < .ontier lramai>. is l.inn.irs isxs. 21 1 t. ■: I mill I i ..ici I ,217! _ ■
p.ilettc IS It) I ane ami Steiiiit/ 1944 | lf>9.S|. photograph seems to be tonal 1 (,a:ette tle.- it W elsh-t )vi harov 11738). nr:
l I 111 iiier.isii l.'lin Bnini! . "upi.i.r:, ,1
-}■ Beaii.x .-irt.'A'per .X.X.W'I. 1949. 9X: .An see .dso ibiii . 221 that ihi eiigi.is els' li.ihii ,■! i;
60 1 luct 1911 I i682|. 229. amusing pointillist palette with .m .ipp.i- 89 A lbert 1 X92 11734). tif pii lures 111 tw ilight in order to .L re. ;' tli.
61 Plot 19.11 117141; Ifouart 1945 I1723I, rentlv random arratigetnetit is m Fheo light and sh.idi tor rcpro.hi. tion ..ui'.d
46 says tliat 1 legas's oiuhiisiasm hail heen van Rysselberghe’s Partiait ol . Imi.i Both ihein 10 see red and blue 111 ill, w ' v.e
aroused by hearing tlie many slesi riptions (1. iX,S9, Springfield. .M.A. .Museum of relationship Burnet I't- 117801. ::
ot palettes m I lelaeroix's _/('nr/iii/. whieh Fine Arts).
II Colours of the .\liiid
.ils, > P.iillot de .Mont.ibei t, ! , I 281 f \ 11.
was read to him by his maid, (hgonx 1.S.S5 78 Vibert argued that this p.ilette. which 1 Newton |-U')l095l. bk I, pt 11. prop mil
(1672I, So mentions pliotographs of these was devised to make the location of 111. prob I I he '.issist.iiu' lirst ni.ide ill' 14 R.'oB |s-., 1306), is., ^ei al'o laiigil
'dessins de la palette', whieh u ere able to complementary contrasts easier, would appear.nice as other fudges' in Newton s isfin I1542I. Foru lion i )i<' ,1818,.
pick up the 'eolorations'. underlining not serve all the time because of the Cambridge lectures ot |t>ti9, .iiid as .1 If iwlilih depend' he.nils .vi Rood
their tonal eharaeter. impurities in pigments (Vibert 1S92 'trieiid' 111 Ills letter to the Riw.il Soi lets 111 lor .M.itisse. Barr 19't )i752|. 1 in I his
62 Blane 1 S76 11437I. 69f. I>7.f4|. 56). The first French edn of’ins ifi's iShapiro 1. 19X4 1 1603). stM'i ignot.iiii e IS perh.ips sutpnsing. siiue
63 Plot 19.11 11714I. '>7->< work was published in 1X91, but he seems 2 New ton 1-30 ) 1095). bk l.pt ll.prop. M.itisse h.iil been using Rood in his s. hool
64 I henot 1 S47 11732I, S4 S. to have been teaching at the F.cole before VIL theor. V. in io> x Flam 1 v'-'' l8i6|. .21
65 See the paintings in ('luinliii 1979. that, Robert 1X91 I1722I. 771! states that 3 I he most sigorous e.irls att.iik on 15 Monge f'9 1894I, espe. I ti 4’, lor
I1639I. nos 30, 123. 125 and 111 the Vibert gave his course on techniL|ue 'cette Newton tor ignoring the knowledge ot .Monge’s earls w ork .it tlu I i ole de (leiiie
Hammer eolleetion. I he revivial of inter¬ annee'. but I have not been able to check colours so mamfest in p.nnters ,ind dsers 111 the I—Ol. Valiev |X2i 11969). im so,
est in Cdiardin in I9th-eentury Preiuh the 1X7X edition to see if he was alreadv was bv the I rench Jesuit niveiuot of the 4i2t For ,1 modern .inount .'t lolour-
still-life painting has been analysed bv mentioned then. For Vibert's dislike of 'ocular h.irpsichord'. I ouis-Bertrand C.is- const.incs. Bii k ii;~2 11756). i h 1.
MeCoubrey 11700]. 39 s.t. the Impressionists or 'ecl.itists', see his tel (seeCi.istel 1739 ) 17831. espec. X07; .iiul 16 .Mihzi.i f M I1891), |o- s See .dso
66 (i. (lourbet L'Alclicr tin Pcinnf (iSss, short story. The Delights of Art. Century tor his instrument, Ch. 13). Probablv the Bnies n/ii ) 1779]. r.v lit
Pans. .Musee d’Orsay); A. Stevens The .\Iai;a;ine. XXIX. 1X95,C), 940- 1. fullest .iccount ot the earls svork on 17 A’.illee 1x21 11969). 31 2ll
Paimer ami his Maiicl (iSss. Baltimore. 79 For Monet’s late palette of about X subjective colours is Pl.ite.iu ix-x )i922| 18 .Monge I X20 ) 1895), 11. 130 r,
Walters Art (lallery). colours, including yellow-ochre and plus One important source not mentioned bs 19 A'.illee 1S2I )1969|. 3'4 s. 341, 141;!'.
67 For Moreau, see the loaded palette white, Gimpel 1927)16731. 174. Renoir’s I'lateau is B. CListelh Di.-corso ^opra la ri.aa .f4t .Milizia also pointed to the gap
preserved in Ins museum in Pans (.M.ith- late palette was similar: see the portrait of (1639): see Ariotti 1973 ]l746|, 4tL between the me.iiis of painting and of
leu 1977 I1703I. 223); for Ensor. Haeserts him by .Albert Andre in the Art Institute 4 I’etrini 1X15 Ii9i7i. it His reference is n.iture cMihzia I'Xi (1891). los;
1957 I1676I. 22. 9S. 141, 166; for Burne- of Chicago which shows a palette of 7 to the 1651 edition ot l.eon.irdo’s Trattato 20 See espec the conversation ’Eugene
Jones. see his portrait of 1 S9S by P. Burne- colours running from white to dark blue, sjsjjaX, 332. I’etrini had .dreads discussed Helacroi.x' recorded in Blaiu 1 S6~ |i437|,
Jones. London. National Portrait (Lillery; and also including yellow-ochre (Kauf- coloured shadosvs in 1 S07 )l9i6|. and he 231. a passage whith espei excited A an
for Sargent .dii .drfi.sf in iiis Snuiio (1904). mann 1974 I >*>87]. no. 249). In the most svas something ot an authority on ancient Gogh isee van L'ltert n/iti ~. |i968|,
Boston (Bellony-Rewald and I'eppiatt cogent attack on the spectral palette, the p.initing (see I’etrnn 1S21 2 )i9i8)). I'lie loOtB. Blanc was also tamihar with
19S3 11652). 32); for (lorinth Sclt-Porlrciil Scottish artist and curator H. S. McColl svidespread iXth-century interest in 'acci¬ .Monge s (ieonietrie lies, riptire Blaiu 1 xti-
with While Siiioch (191S). Clologne. argued that the Impressionists had not dental' colours is suggested by the long )i937|.t>oo).
Wallrai-Richartz Museum; Self-I’orlrait at restricted themselves to the 3 primaries, treatment of them in 1 )iderot and 21 Hel.iborde 19X4 ) 1802], 1 33 .A shghtls
the Eiisei (1919), Berlin. National (Lilerie; 'and if the number three is exceeded, there d'Alembert’s Encyclophhe )l805), Siippl. ditlereiit version h.is been published bs
SeiJ-Ponritit witii Paiette (1923). Stuttgart. is no reason in theory for sticking at six 11, 1776, 1. 636-41. For .111 earls 19th- Boyer d'.Agen 1909. ]i77ij. 492. ct. also
Staatsgalerie; the palettes in each have a rather than sixty or six hundred’ (‘On the century instance of a painter. Caspar 4X- X, I tel.iborde ibuL, 1 f and 1 s2 seem
different arrangement. Corinth was the spectral palette and optical tnl.ytnre' in Havid Friedrich, demonstrating a contrast to indic.ite changes ot mind
author of a handbook. Das P.riernen tier McColl 1902 )l699j, 167). ertect to a scientist, Carl Gustav Cams, 22 For their friendship. .N.ief 19114 ) 1904).
Maierei (3rd edn 1920), which I have not 80 Vollard 1959 ) 1736), 223. Friedrich 196X ) 1039), 203. 249 63. Ingres desinbed llittorffs svork
seen. 81 Guichetau 1976 )i675]. 116. n. 164. 5 Petrini iX 1 5 ) 1917], 5 if on polychromy as 'admirable' in a letter
68 Robert 1X91 |i722|.84f For the two palettes, (Serusier 1950 6 Lairesse 177X ]i539]. iiX, 123. Lairesse of 1X51 (lit. .Montaub.in 19X0(1896). X6i
69 For Sargent's portrait. House 19S6 )i725l. 119 22, 169, and espec. Bosle- also advised students to take detailed 23 Sand 1X96 )ii3o). 77 9. It is notable
[16811, 140. See also Renoir’s 1X75 por¬ Turner 19X3 ) 1656). 1512. colour-notes of the juxtaposition of th.it I tel.icroix thought of'local' colour as
trait ot Monet, repr. in col. in Moffett 82 Matisse 1972 )l702], 46. n. 9. colours and tones, and their strengths, appropriate to the underpainting
19X6 (1705I. iSs. 83 Two of the five or so Matisse palettes svhen studying the Old Masters (2X4 5). (ehamlie). svhich svas transformed bs 'ac¬
70 For Renoir’s Bazille at his Tasci (1X67) in the Musee Matisse, Nice, have been His book ssas published in five Hutch cidental' colours in the tinal finishing
Callen 19X2 |i45o|. 50-.33; see also reproduced in col. in Les Chefs d'()envre du editions betsveen 1707 and 174O. in (Helacroix 19X0 )l026). 5 .Mas 1X32!
Bazille’s self-portrait of 2 years earlier. Mush’ .Matisse et les .Matisses de .Matisse. French in 17X7, in (iernian in 172X and Another coloured version of the .tutioJiU'
Chicago Art Institute (K.uifinann 1974 Tokyo. 19X7/S (catalogue by N. Wat¬ 17X4 and in English in 173X and 177X. as and .Siralonice. on paper (1X96). is at the
I1687I, no. 203); J.-B. Cuillaumin Self- kins); another is in Moscow, Pushkin well as in 19th-century editions in ses eral •Musee Fabre in Montpellier (London
Portrait {1X7X), Amsterdam. Rijks- Museum. A self-portrait with palette languages. It has been discussed by Kauf- 19X4 ] 1877). Zioff).
museum Vincent van Gogh. (191X) is reproduced in col. in Watkins inann 111. 1955 7 )i865), 153 96. For 24 For the theatre, see espec Bald.issare
71 Shiff 19X4 11726). 206 gives this palette 1984 ) 1737]. 14X. Two descriptions of his I.airesse’s own painting, 1). R. Snoep. Grsitii. Della Ceontetria e prospellira
as (from the thumb-hole) lead white, palette were given by Matisse in 1923 'Classicism and history painting in the late prattna (I7"il. cit. .M.iri.uii 1930 )i88s),
chrome or zinc yellow, vermilion, aliz¬ (Moreau-Vauthier 1923. )l706), 30, repr. seventeenth century' in Blankert el al. Xo, ss ho makes a link ssith I9th-ienturs
arin crimson, ultramarine blue, emerald by Morse 1923 ) 1708), 26: 12 colours) and 19X0 ) 1764), 237 45. ’divisiomsm’. although iVsmi appealed
green. Pissarro’s palette of the 1X9OS was 1935 (Encyciopedie Eran^ai.se 1935 )l666]. 7 He Riles 170X ) 1921). 271 - 2. onis to 'buon gusto’ and the gr.iil.itions of
essentially the same except that the aliz¬ XVI: 17 colours). 8 Gudry 1X44 )l908|, 39. For Largilliere. nature. Fhe 'pointillism’ of the miniature
arin was now madder, the ultramarine 84 I’. Klee 'I'ai;ehnch 1957 )i69l), March ibid., 42f It IS tempting to think that the painter svas prescribed tor flesh and drap¬
might be cobalt, and emerald was now 1910 §873. publication of tins lecture 111 1X44 stimu- eries bs .Mile ( ’.itherme Perrot, Praite de la
Veronese green (Rewald 1973 1*7>9|. 85 Kandinsky 19X2 )l686). I. 156 7. Al¬ I. ited Courbet to paint a w hite v.ise on a nii^iiatnre (1693), m Fehbien fas )l6ti9).
.xpo). ready in the late 1X9OS, when they were white napkin, a task so difficult that it Ixxxv. but ss ithout .Ills theoretical dis¬
72 W. von Schadow Sell-I\irtrait with his both pupils of the Munich painter Franz took sO sessions (Courthion 1950) 1794). cussion: the method ssas reijuired tor
hrother Ruiloll ami Thorwahisen (c. 1X1 5/S. Stiick. Klee had noticed how closely II. 61). F'or the enthusiastic reception using ss.iicrcolour on an unabsorbent
Berlin (East). National Galerie). I have Kandinsky examined Ins palette (F. Klee ofGudrv's Dmh. ].-B. Ondry, 16X6 f.t.t. surface such as Ivors For a vers clear
not been able to see Schadow’s article, 1962 )i690|. 5). A late Kandinsky palette Paris. Grand Palais, 19X2 3. no. 152. account of the 'inos.ui' ot dots m
’.Meine Gedanken iiber einc folgerichtige has been reproduced in col. 111 Kandinsky 9 t . N Cochin (17X0), lit. Conisbee Chardin’s teihiiuiue. B.ii h.iuinont fso
Ausbildting des Malers’, Berliner Kunst- 1, 19X0 )i685). pi. 28. Its arrangement is 19X6 ) 1790], 59. 111 Ingrams 19-0 ) 1857). 2~
hlaii. September 1X2X, but from its title it hard to recognize. 10 Claude Joseph I ernet ... 19-6 |i972|. 25 .Mottez 1911 11900). ft lor fth-
sounds as though the palette arrangement 86 A loaded palette used by van Gogh at Appendix. Fins 'letter' w as first published centurs us.iges. Brig.mti et al I9X“ ) 1775).
may have some theoretical weight. the end of Ins life at Anvers is now in the III 1X17. and rei'rinted in Cassaene 1XX6 a.f X (.Annibale ( arr.icci and Pietro da

73 Richardson et al. 19X2) 1721), 103. Louvre (Rewald 197X |i720|. .176). For I1784I.142 if. used by V.in (iogh IV-l.i- C ortona): C ames.isia I'/tai 11782). 2~|
74 I'aillot de Montabert 1X29 IzXij. l.\. reproductions of palettes in the self- croix (19X0 |i026|, XXi), attributed tins I Homenii hmo aiul B.iiimo c Rehliis-
I X4 S. portraits from 1XS5 S9. Firpel n/ia perception about greens to Constable. Hechene 19X2 ) 1581). <~. citing ) S Halle
75 I.ibertat 1 iundertpfuiid (? a pseudo¬ 11667], 1.31, 39. 40 11 Purkinje 191 x( 1924]. lixf II erhst.ille der heuti^en Knnae
nym). 1X49 11683I, pi. 2 and p. 26. 87 I’lot 1931 ] 1714). 63, Xzf t hi Vandvke 12 P de la Hire, Dissertation stir les dit- Br.mdenburg 1 eip/ig. f6i,l, tii

291
NO l FS I () 1 HF I 1 x r

26 l'urkin|L' ti' (iiu-thc, February iSa? green had been .inticipated in FG [1833] study proposed by Goethe in 'Gut.ichten 58 The colour-circle of Moses Harris
Ill Krut.i ii;0,S [iHby]. yi: ileduaruin to §802. Goethe's important p.irt 111 the e.irly liber die Ausbildung eines jungen Malers’ (above, p. 172) also represented a solid,
lii i'l’<hliiuin;i}i uinl 1 Vr'i/i/ic :iii study of colour-blindness has been discus¬ (1798) in Goethes li'erkc I1835I. XIII, running from saturated hues at the cir¬

i/('r Sill’ll. i'lirkiii)e 1 o 1 19241■ 1 1 ■ sed by laeger 1979 |l859|, 27- 38. For an 1954. 132. cumference to near-white at the centre,
27 [ or 1 larnoti. I A. Lohne in American summary of his eflect on the 45 Scheidig 1958 |l94i|. 491 2. but its two-dimensional presentation
.'/ Stiiiiiilu Bhiyiiipliy. VI, 12>: b\ incasur- study of physiology. Boring 1942 I1767I. 49 The demand for the Theory in Rome is seems to have prevented its being inter¬
iiig the widthv of the fringes. 1 l.irrlott was 112 19. described in a letter to Goethe by C. F. preted in this way. For the later history of
able to lonipute the retractive indues ot 35 Sihelling III, 1959 |i942|, i9o-i. For Schlosser, shortly after he mentions the the Farben-Kugel. Matile 1979 |l887|, 360.
green, or.inge .iiid red r.i\'s. |l)ighyl iftsS his contact with Goethe between 1798 arrival of the Nazarenes there (Schlosser n. 437.
11473 |, ,t2 1. !2i;. For Hodierti.i, Serio et al. and 1804, Goethe (Leopoldina Ausg.ibe) to Goethe 2 September 1811, in Oam- 59 Runge to G. Runge, 22 November
|iu''t 119531. <'>7 .S, Rainbow-coloured 1957 |225|, II. 3, 1961, XXXlV-xliil niann I93o|i8oo|, 54O. Rassavant’s study 1808 (HS 11127I, II, 372).
fringes .irouiid objects seen through .1 (hereafter LA). of the book in Raris, just before leaving 60 See Lecture V of 1818, in Gage 1969
'bervll' had .ilre.id\ been iioticcLl by 36 Schopenhauer 1816 [1948]; also id. for Rome is mentioned in Cornhill, 1864 |2I7|, 2o9, also 210 (c. 1827). In his
Leonardo (Ru liter lyyo | T l8|. I, §2SS). 1851 |l949|. II. ch. Vll, sjioj. The corre¬ |l793|. k 59. One of Rassavant’s com¬ contribution to Runge’s book (59), Stef¬
28 Cloethe 1 .Sgo 118331. 420. This trails, is spondence with Goethe between 1815 panions in Raris was the Berlin painter fens had also proposed a scheme ot red
reprinted at the end of the best-illustrated .ind 181X has been gathered by Hiibscher Wilhelm Wach, who in the 1820.S was morning, yellow midday and violet
English version, ed. Matth.iei (Cloethe 1960 I1856I, 30-55. See also Borsch 1941 helping Rurkinje to understand the neu¬ evening.
|i;ai I1836I). .ilthough here the supple- I1769I, i97-S. tralizing effects of complcnientanes (Pur- 9l Gage 1969 |2I7|, 2 10.
mentarc translations bv Flerb Aach are 37 Hegel VI. 1927 (i^^45l. ■>^. 343- kinje to Goethe, 27 November 1825, in 62 TC I1833I. §6(j6. Turner’s notes have
unreliable. Eastlake's tr.iiis, is hereafter G)n Henning, R. Matthaei in Zastrau 1991 Bratranek 1874I1774I, II, I95f). been printed in full in Gage 1984 [1823],
referred to as TCi. |i979|. cols 2293-9; Hegel 1935-75 47 M. Klotz Grundliche Farbenlehre. 34-52. This edn also includes a brief
29 1 ki 11833]. >^s2. The somewhat riiqiw 118491, 1 (1970), 393 -4. See also M. J. Munich i8i9, cit. Rehfus-Dechene 1982 account of Eng. anti-Ncwtonian thought
diagratn' 111 watercolour reproduced in Retry. 'Hegels Verteidigung von Goethes 115811, 88. Goethe had been indirectly in in the early 19th century.
Cioethe 1971 I1836I. .S4 may be based on Farbenlchre gegeniiber Newton' in Retry touch with Klotz since 1797 (LA [225], II, 63 Gage 1984 |i823|, 49 (TC I1833I.
this e.xpenence. 19S7 I1919I,'ll. 323-348. 9. 1959. 339-405). §821); cf also 47 (TC §744 and 745). It is
30 A number of substantial modern 38 TC 118331, §851; Koiifcssioti lies 48 Beuthcr 183 3 [ 1762I; for Goethe, 8, 57. notable that Turner’s closest imitator,
studies have appeared in English: Wells I'erfassers, 111 LA I225I, 1, 6, 1957, 4i9. 49 For the 1840s, Hundertpfund 1849 James Baker Ryne, at exactly the same
1997-5 119741, 6y-i 13; Wells 1971 119751- Ingres was also impressed by this method I1683I, 41-2; for the 1850s, Bahr i89o time, and perhaps independently of a
617 29; Ribe 1985 |l93o|, 315 -33.S; Bur- of working, which he attributed to the [1750I, espec. 9f reading of Goethe, was publishing an
wick 1986 117811; (i. Bdhme, 'Is Goethe's Venetians (Boyer d’Agen 1909, [1771), 50 Runge to his brother Daniel, 7 Nov¬ anti-Newtonian account of the produc¬
theory of color science?' and D. C. Sep- 485, 492), and apparently to Raphael: see ember I 802 in Runge 1840/1 |ll27| {Hin- tion of colours in nature by means ot
per, 'Goethe against Newton; towards his Raphael and the Fornarina (1814) in the lerlassene Schriften). I , 17 (hereafter HS). turbid media (Ryne 1846 I1925I, 243-4,
saving the phenomenon’ in Amrine et al. Fogg Museum and his grisaille version of These colours were linked to morning, 277).
1987 I1742I, 147-73. 175 93; Sepper 1988 the Grand Odalisque (I 824/34) in the Met¬ noon, and night, but by lanuary 1803 64 See p. 84 and n. 72.
|i952|; Duck 1988 |i807|, 507 19. For a ropolitan Museum, New York. Runge had come to see red as morning (as 65 Craig 1821 [1797I. 173. Craig's edn of
brief survey of the later reception ot the 39 For Marat and Kauffmann, Fanngton in pi. 162) and evening, and blue as charac¬ Lairesse dates from 1817.
Fiirhciilclirc from Helmholtz to Heisen¬ 1978-84 [1033], 27 October 1793; Brissot teristic of day (ibid., 32). This Trinitarian 66 Howitt 1886 [1855], I, 81. Rtorr spoke
berg. Gdgelein 1972 |l838|, 178-200, and 1877 |i776|, 174; for Marat’s view that interpretation of the primary colours is of the innate character of each colour, and
Mandelkow 19S0I1883I, 174 200. yellow is the most ‘deviable’ ray of light loosely related to one ot Runge’s chief was careful to specify only those people
31 Goethe. Gcspraclw mil Eckernumn, i s and blue the least, see Deccuuertes siir la spiritual sources, the 17th-century Ger¬ who have a free choice in the way they
May 1831. lumiere (1780), cit. The Monthly Reuiew or man mystic Jacob Boehme (see Steig 1902 dress. He applied his ideas in his ‘friend¬
32 Young is a particularly interesting Literary Journal, LXVII, 1782, 294. |i96o|, 992 and Mosender 1981 |l898|, ship’ painting, Shularnith and Maria (1809,
omission from Goethe's reading list, since Goethe’s chapter on Marat in LA [225], I, 29f); but Matile (1979 [1887I, 132) has Schweinfurt, Schafer collection). An
the reviewer of the Parbcidchrc in Gilhcrls 9, 1957. 394 drew attention to this idea. pointed out that Boehme’s ‘primary’ early attempt to base the moral meaning
Aiiiialcii dcr Physik. XXXIX. i8it |i829|, 40 Meyer’s now lost painting Castor and colours were not confined to three. of colour on anthropological consider¬
220 had drawn attention to the link Pollux abducting the Daughters of Leucippus 51 The fullest study of Runge’s theory is ations is J. H. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’s
between Young's ideas in a paper of 1802. (1791) was shown at Weimar in 1792 as now Matile 1979 11887]. ‘Des Couleurs’ in Etudes de la Nature
and Goethe's own. The poet’s pro¬ painted 'according to the new prismatic 52 LA [2251, I, 4, 1955, 257. See Gage (1784) in Bernardin de Samt-Pierrc 1818
fessional acquaintance, the opthalmolo- experiments of Goethe’ (LA |225|, II, 3, 1979 (i822|, 91-5. My interpretation dif¬ I1760], IV, 7S-85, which reached the
gist Karl Himly, had been in touch with 1991, 51). A number of other experi¬ fers somewhat from Matile’s: see espec. modern conclusion that black, white and
Young, and it was his copy of the 1802 mental drawings are mentioned in a his pp. 219-49. red are the colours with the strongest
paper that was passed on to Goethe Goethe letter of 1793 (ibid., 9i). Meyer 53 See his draft of a letter to Schelling, i cultural resonance.
(Ruppert 1958 |l937|, no. 5295). The also interpreted the work of the Old February 1810, HS [1127], 1, 159-90. 67 Gage 1969 I217I, 2o9 . Turner may be
physicist Thomas Seebeck told Goethe of Masters for Goethe: his discussion of the 54 See Runge to Goethe. 19 April 1808 in attacking Craig as well as Lairesse, since
Young's work, but his professed lack of coloured stripes at the bottom of the Runge 1940 [1936], 80-4. Runge had the watercolourist had been lecturing at
comprehension may have deterred Roman painting of a wedding {The already been experimenting with disc- the Royal Institution for many years, and
Goethe from investigating further (See¬ Aldobrandini Wedding) in a letter of 1799, mixtures, which he described in a letter to his ideas were widely ridiculed at the
beck to Goethe, 25 April 1S12 in Brat- included the suggestion that it was a sort Goethe of 21 November 1807 (ibid., Royal Academy (Farington 197S—84
ranek i 874 11774], II, 3 18f). Young for his of ‘key’ to the harmony of the picture 70—6), and Goethe wrote characteristi¬ 11033], 27 February, 14-15 March, 3 June
part attacked the Earhcnlehre savagely and itself, and Goethe was particularly excited cally to Meyer on December i that this 1806, 17 October 1811).
anonymously in the Quarterly Rei’icw (X, that the sequence was opposite to that in was under pressure from the 'New¬ 68 Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, MS
1814. 427-8) concluding that it was ‘a the rainbow: yellow and blue at the edges tonians’: 'I really can’t explain myself AWC, I, d, folios 49r-47v.
striking example of the perversion of the and purpur in the middle (ibid., 92-3); but cither to him or to others’ (Goethe 1919, 69 Humbert de Superville 1S27 [906).
human faculties’. For Seebeck’s mention this is not the sequence as it appears now I1834), 201-2). 9-10; Stafford 1979 |i957|, 92, 77 n. 172,
of this review to Goethe in 1814, and the (Maiuri 1953 ll88l|. 30). 55 Runge to Klinkowstrom, 24 February which cites an unpublished essay, De la
poet's neglect of it until more than a year 41 See, e.g., Meyer’s help with land¬ 1809 (HS |il27|, I, 172). On the Times of ualeur morale des couleurs (182S).
later, Nielsen 1989 [1905I. 193-4. scapes exemplifying various types of Day as essentially an expression of the 70 Stafford 1979 (1957I. 74 n. 16.
33 TC 11833], §160. For Young’s work in colour harmony in France in 1792 (LA relationship of opacity and transparency, 71 Her Elernente, in LA I225I, 1, 3, 1951,
1801. Wells 1971 |l975|, 9i8; but Ernst [225], I, 3, 1951, 119-17). Goethe later Runge to Ludwig Tieck. 29 March 1805 507. For the Temperamentrose, 387-8.
Briicke, investigating the phenomenon in employed another painter, C. K. Kaaz, to (ibid., 60-1). See also Rehfus-Dechene 72 Schiller to L. Tieck, in Landsberger
the 1830s. attributed the renewed interest help him with colour techniques (Geller 1982 11581], I i6ff. 1931 [1873). 156-7.
in It although he noted that it had been 1991 [1827], 17-25). 56 F . von Klinkowstrom 1815 |i897|, 73 Sec R. Schmidt 1965 |i947|, 69-72.
discussed as far back as Aristotle - to 42 LA [225], 1, 3, 1951, 437 (1805/6). I95f For Runge and his copy, A. von 74 Eighteenth-century French oppo¬
Goethe (Briicke i899 |l446|. 94; and cf. 43 See Goethes Werke [1835], XIII, 1954, Klinkowstrom 1877 [i869|, 200f; and for nents of Newton’s theory had included
id, 1852 11778], 530-49). 157, 199. The article on Jean Baptiste Klinkowstrbm’s rather modest assessment L.-B. Castel, J. Gautier d’Agoty and J.-P.
34 See Muller 1826 [l90l|, ch. Vll, and Forestier’s methods, ‘Neue Art die Mah- of it in 1807, sec his letter to Runge in HS Marat, all of whom were studied by
id. 1840 |l902|. II. 292 (more critical of lerey zu lernen’, was published in Pro- |II27|, II, 344. Goethe. For the Romantic period, see,
Goethe). Their personal relationship has pylden. Ill, 1800 [1832], i loff (repr. 1965, 57 See Runge’s painting of the central e.g., Lheal 1827 [i8oi|, which put a good
been discussed by Scherer 1936 |l944|. sec espec. kzqf., 827). group of Day (1803, col. pi. in Traeger deal of emphasis on the study of colour in
For Goethe’s relationship to Hering's and 44 Meyer 1799 [1891I, I59f (repr. 1965, 1975 I1149I. no. 285 and pi. 9). For landscape. For temperaments and colour
later researches on the perception of 994f); for the Weimar school, Schenk zu Correggio’s gold-ground, Fiorillo II, in painting, Pernety 1757 I1914I, 69,
colour, Jablonski 1930 [1858], 75-81. Schweinsberg 1930 li943|. 22. See also 1800 |i8i5|, 284!', citing the opinion of where melancholics were said to incline
FFering’s view of the primary status of the conventional programme of colour- Llenedetto Luti (1999-1724). towards a yellow or greenish-grey tone.

292
 \i 'll s i( I nil II \ I

phlcgDiatics towards a chalky one. and IS still unclear: 1 eneoii in 1914 reported a 98 For (tauguni's , ops, Roskill o/' Hl.ingi .'t red 1,' \cii"W w .!> pr. i mI'.'.
sanguine teniperainents, not surprisingly, general belief th.ii it ssas b\ (iauguui I *^34]. 2(i~. BlaiK I st'~ I 1436J. t.u nig sou. .iflcstcd in Steiner ' :r it!':;:;-r
towards a liveliness in painting Hesh. himself although he was undecided troni/legler I Xs, ' lyXo], l<;9 Hu .lens- t n‘Ctlic s luiulanu iit-c p;:t';.ir\ im;:
75 The Swiss aesthetician Oavul Sutter (Feneon 1970 ] 1481 ]. 2x21. Hie evidence ationisnot as know icslgesi, but Bl.uu sloe' 109 lor cx.iinplc s, lurtli ; ; 194OI
seems to have been the first in hraiiee to has been reviessed most fulls b\ Roskill cite /legler s book tsott troin /leglei I X', ill K.iiiihiisks lux. il686(. 1, I'll.
introduce (loethe's ideas into the dis¬ 1970 ]l934]. 29^ .X and by Herbert et al. iXso ]i98o]. 230 /legler reprinted liw (teriiinc-M.ic'sc .A.i Xis Mi-r >.i 1. x
cussion ot colour for painters: see Sutter 1991 ]l5'4i- I9~ X. Some ot the ideas ui star 111 lXs2 1355]. K' Ho ret-Teiue to Jcaniic.iii n;,!' H828' .it K.indin
I X5X 11964I, based on lectures at the f.cole the piiptcr are very Hose to Blanc’s de¬ cadmium vellow-oraiige must be one ot sks ibiil . 1. lut'ii Sit 1 in.'i'irg
(262 3 tor (ioethe's complenientary dia¬ scription ot oriental practice in 1 X(i- the earliest to that pigment. \s hu h slid not 1813 j, 24 I 41, It It KatKlinsx \ s nil k' with
gram. 271 tor colours and moods). ] 1436]. ()0(lf become generalls available until the imd- (isTiune- Mac'se
Sutter’s equivalents in iHXo (cit. Homer 86 See Ins note on Vincent ot I.X94 and a 1 X40s I Feller 1, 19X6 ] 1811 ]. (i~ x 110 Heriiig i''x 11851] II, l \it\
1970 I1517I, 44), were not precisely the letter to Fontanias ot September 1902 in 99 I)irei~e> Jioso iixi/, Si ni (iauguin simple iolour has a simple s,'l,’Ur. .wcr\
same as (Ioethe’s. See also laivre iX(')2 (iauguin 19-4 ]i824], 294. See also the I9"4 11^44]. |~9 rile tullest treatment ot niixcil lolour a niixcil , •>l,>ur o its ..pp.
|lHio|. 49 on the rejection of (ioethe’s remarks to I ianiel de .Monfreid 111 Chasse (ianguni’s colour is Hess ly.xi 11852], site’ ( I K.mdinsks lux: 1686]. I, 1 xo
theory early 111 the century, and 166 233 1969 ] 1787]. SO. 50 68. For Manao Tupapau. (iani;uin 19X9 For I Icring. how e\ ei. green \s as a simple,
for a summary of it. Faivre owed much to 87 .Amsterdam. Rijksmuseum Vincent J1826], no. I 54. not a mixed ioloiir
hastlake’s Knglish translation of 1X40, van (iogh (F.371). Fins process ot'heigh¬ 100 Fere IXX-11812]. 43 o. He also reters 111 \\ iindt 19, 2 3 ]i977|. 11. 129, sf
which, as he pointed out (344), had been tening the contrasts has been discussed bv to glazing maniacs’ cells with blue or Kaiidinsks 19X2 i 1686]. 1. I'a x,;
directed at artists. For Blanc, 1X67 I1436I, Fred Orton in the most important studs violet glass The therapeutic eliects ot 112 Kandinsks 19X211686],!, I'un
600, on complementary colours, citing ot Van (Iogh .ind the Japanese print colour were alludcsl to in the RoinantK 113 .Mali to .M.ukc, 12 Deietiiber I'ji, .
Eckerniann’s (japnii/ic. An attempt to (Orttni 1971 ]i907]. lo-i 1); for the cases peruui by F.dssard Hayes, a watercolour Ill .Maske 19(14 ]i879]. 2X 3., It is not
suggest the Helacroix knew (ioethe’s of the other copies, I \in <1 19XX painter with an unbalanced persoiiahts, clear w hat .Mats meant b\ spci tral anals-
theory (Trapp 1971 |l966|, 330-1) is ] 1971 ]. no. 62. who committed suicide (Daves iXos sis' 111 this case In the 192,1s Kaiiilinsks
uncoiivincing. 88 (Iauguin to Van (Iogh, 22 September ]l024], 307 Xii). For a brief histors of considercsl yellow to be masiuhne aiui
76 Blanc 1X7(1 11437I, 62. 19XX, 111 (Iauguin 1, 19X4 ] 1825], 232. The Chroniotherapy. How.it 193X ]i854]. 1, blue feniine Kaiiihiisks 19X4 ]i863],
77 HS |ii27|, II, 44; tor Forestier see 11. blue.'yellosv of the angel is close to the and tor two recent surveys of the subject. 52 31.
43- costumes nuerpolatetl by Vincent into Anderson 1979 ]i743]; Kaiser, 19X4 114 .Although the spiritual value ot blue
78 Van (iogh 1958 |i62()|, no. 371 Hiroshige’s design; (col. pi. and docu- ] 1862]. 29 -36 (highly critical). and the brutality of red w ere a common¬
(hereafter CL). For the borrowing, CL iiientation in (Liin;iiiii 19X9 ] 1826], no. so). 101 eg. Raeliliiiann 1902 ]lll2]. 37; place ot Fheosophu.il writing, the at¬
U,4X, for van Rappard. Brouwer et al. 89 (Iauguin 1974 111^44], 24. See also his (ioldstein 1942 ]i839], 150; Heiss 19(10 tempt by .Motiitt 19X5 ]i893], ii,-|l to
1974 117771. Blanc had underlined account to Van (Iogh of the colour of ] 1848], 3X1- 2. trace .Marc s views to this source seems
Helacroix’s instinctive command of the another svrestling subject of iXXX. Rcys 102 Malkowsky 1X99 ]|882], Beilage. 2. over-strained.
scientific laws of colour in 1X7(1 (1437!, ll'rcsl/iiH’. svhose palette is none the less See also Berger 1911 ]l758]. 140; Fried- 115 HS ] 1127], I, 164
(12-4. and another of Vincent’s favourite far more subdued (Cnijiinni 19X9 ]i826]. lander 1916 ] 1820], XX; id. 1917 1 X ] 1821 ]. I 16 .•lll.s.s((//l(IIl,' 1906 ] 1747]. I, XIX
books, (iigoux 1X85 11672], 1X4 had no. 48; (iauguin 1, 19X4 ] 1825], 201). 14 iff. Two artists who asiopted (Ioethe’s 117 Stetanescu-Goang.T 1912 ] 1959], 320
repeated this view. For his reading of 90 F.476. For a col. pi. and a discussion of theory tor a period were Arthur Segal (see Here several subjects found vellow to be
(iigoux, CL 11626], 399, 401,403, R.5X. the results ot the recent cleaning. Kodera his Lichtprobieme tier bilJende Kunst 1925 gentle and temimne. w hile red w as serious
79 Cassagne iXX() 11784], 22, 29; see CL 1990 ] 1868], s6fT and pi. IV. ]l95l] n.p.) and Auguste Herbni (see his and masculine
]i626], 146 tor Cassagne’s book and van 91 F.4X6. Even the rather dry technique I.’Art non-lij^uratif-non-objectif ] 1850], 118 Allesch 1925 11741 ]. I 91.21s Xi
Rappard. Vincent summarized Cassagne on an absorbent ground is closely related espec. 23ff). For the importance of 119 It should be emphasized that the
on black and grey in a letter to Theo of 3 i to (iauguin (L.iugui 1947 ]i875]. 37). Goethe’s physiological ideas, ]. H. question of eolour-prefereiice among F.u-
July 1XX2 (CL 221), and he returned to the Emile Bernard, (iauguin’s companion at Schmidt I932]i946]. 109-24. ropeans is still a vexed one. although
question in 1XX5 (CL 371). See also CL B6 Font Aveii and one of the chief models for 103 Gordon 196X ]i840], 16. For many writers seem to think it is settled
(June 1X88) on black and white as coniple- Vincent’s ’cloisoiimst’ style, claimed Goethe’s impact on Kirchiier. (Joerhe, The standard order of preference tor
iiientaries. Another favourite book was much later that Vincent’s interest in paint¬ Kirchner, IT'iV^crs . . . 19X5 (1837]. single colours: blue. red. green, violet,
Bracquemond 1XX5 ]i772], a study by an ings with a single all-over colour tonality 104 For poetry, Maiitz 1957 ]l884]. orange, yellow , has been proposed by the
etcher and ceramist close to the Impressio¬ had been aroused by his (Bernard’s) intro¬ 19X 237, espec. 209; Motekat 1961 11899], largest-scale study to date. Eysenck I941
nists but suspicious of their emphasis on ducing him to the work of Louis Anquet- espec. 43-6. The freely-moving colours ] 1809], 3X5 94. based on 2 1.060 cases, but
colour. He rejected both Chevreul and in in Paris (ITernard 1934 ]l759], 1 13-14; ot Expressionist painting have been very few of them tested by Lvseiick
Helmholtz as guides, and called upon for Anquetin, I’liii a l\iris 19XX briefly characterized by L. Dittmanii 111 himself For colour-pairs. Granger 1952
scientists to establish an objective grey¬ ] 19711. nos 71 3). Kunstler de Brucke lyXo ] 1870], 45. For the ]i84I), 77X Xo. For a recent studs of
scale (46-7, 244). Vincent read this book 92 (.juoted in French (nu,iiue iimomDuthle debate on colour and association. Cohn single colours which places blue and
several times in 1XX5 and iXX(i (CL 424, eiti/iiffc) in CL ]l626], 42X; Van (Iogh 1X94 ]i789]. 5(>5f. Miiller-Freienfels 1907 yellow at top and bottom but re-arranges
45(1, R.5X), For Bracquemond’s views in attributes this to Silvestre, but its source is ]l903], 24ltT; StefTineseu-Goanga 1912 the intermediate hues. McManus et al
general. Bouillon 1970 ]i77o], 161 77; Braequemoiid 1XX5 ] 1772], Xyf (iiiic icinw ]i959], 2X4-335, espec. 332. All these 19X I J1878]. 65 I 6, and for a survev of the
Kane 1983 J1864], i iX-21. bistri’f, viohice Jii nuance innaininable). studies refer to Goethe. literature. Ball 1965 I1751I. 44iri. The
80 Cassagne 18X6 ]i784], 270-X5. Only 93 Bracquemond 1XX5 I1772]. 55. See 105 Brass 1906 ]l773]. 120. Brass stood in most recent and widespread system of
summer was not given a pair of colours, also Vibert 1902 ]i734]. 72. For the some ill-defnied relationship to a group of psychological testing with colour, the
being regarded by Cassagne as rather the importance of naming to colour- Munich decorative painters (see his Liischer Test, also uses notions ot prefer¬
draughtsman’s than the painter’s season. memory. Bornstein 1976 ] 1768], 269 79. obituary by A. Pieniiig in Technische ence (see the Eng. pocket version. Scott
See Van (Iogh to I'heo (PAugust) 1X84 94 Bracquemond 1 XXj ] 1772], 244. Mitteilungen fur Malerei. XXXIl, ly 1 5/16, 1971 |>950])( n has been criticized as too
(CL ]i626], 372). 95 F. Melzer rather misses the point of 157 9; sec also Richter 193X ] 19311, 7 -10). abstract: see Hemiendahl I9()i ]l847),
81 He paraphrased Blanc 1X67 ]i436]. this dilemma when he speaks on the one 106 According to an associate of 1X5 9; Pickford 1971 I1940I. 151 4; Lak-
59X in CL ]i626], 401 as ’the great hand of the neo-niedieval 'strict codific¬ Kandinsky’s in these years, he did not owski anil Melhuish 1973 (1872). 4X6 9
principles which Delacroix believed in’. ation’ of colour in Symbolist verse, and engage 111 detail with Goethe’s Theory Nevertheless the Swiss Neo-
82 Roskill 1970 ] 1934]. 26(1- 7. on the other of a quasi-musical removal of until 1912, and then in the hope of Goiistructivist Karl (ierstner has included
83 I’osl-hupressioiiisiii . . . 1979/80 ] 1923], a ’prescribed sigiiifie’ (Melzer 197X ] 1890], substantiating Steiner’s interpretation of it the Test among the several useful systems
no. 80. 459). (Harms 1963 ]l844]. 36. 41, 90). Steiner’s available to artists, and Luscher has ad¬
84 There is some dispute about the date 96 See the drawing. I n nuil a I'annirard contact with Kandinsky has been discus¬ mired Ills work (Stierhn 19X1 I1961]. m,
of their meeting: Rewald (197X ]l927]. (188 I) in (iauguin 1. 19X4 ] 1825], pi. 11. sed by Ringboiii 1970 ]i932]. 79. Xi 2. i(>4lf)
502) proposed the autumn of 18X6, but 97 I he drawing for Sailinj^ Hoars at .ds- and the notes from Steiner’s l.uciler-Chiosis 120 Gohii 1X94 11789], (>oi For the
without documentation; Cooper (19X3 rnires (1X87, F. 1409) is inscrilsed with a list published by Ringbom in Zweite 19X2 Almanat. Lankheit 1974 I1874I
]l792]. 17) proposed a possible meeting of some 15 colours, only three of them the jiyXi], 102-5, and 89. fig. 1. Steiner had 121 Kandinsky 19X2 J1686]. 1. 372
through Bernard before April 1887. but names of pigments. Dti the other hand, edited the volume of Goethe’s f 'arbenlehre 122 The best historical studv is still .Mahl-
the most generally accepted date is Nov¬ the Still-Life with (h’ffee-Pot (F.410) was for Kiirschner’s Deutsche Xational- ing 1926 11880]. 1(15 2s7. with an extens¬
ember 18X7, after (iauguin’s return from described to Theo (CL ]l626]. 489) in Literatur (doethe! Il'erke XXV; .Vudirii'is- ive bibhographv Interestingly, .Mahhiig
.Martinique. What is clear is that they ordinary terms ot blue, orange, red and so senschaftliche Schriften. 111. 1X91). with a criticized Kandinsky for taking too much
were closely associated by this time: on, but in a description to the painter polemical introduction and notes which on trust (256 7). See also the popular
(lauguiti owned a number of Vnicetit’s Bernard (CL B s) one of the blues became stress that it had found 'general recog¬ account by Binet 1X92 I1763I. 5X(itf Fhe
Bans paintings (Cooper ibid., 27- X). ‘cobalt’ and in the aecompanying sketch nition’ among artists (3 17, §90011). topic seems to have gone out ot tashion
85 Revised from Van VLyck Brooks’s there are ‘ehronies 1. 2 and 3’. ’citron vert 107 Kandinsky 19X2 ] 1686]. I, 159 among psychologists in the 1940s. per¬
trails. Ill Nochhn 1966 [1906], 167. The pale’, 'bleu de roi’. bleu myosotys’ and 108 Ringbom 1970 jl932|. 86 and pl. 23; haps because of the iiuoiiclusis e results
status of the so-called 'papier de (iauguin’ ’mine orange’. Kandiiiskv 19X2 |i686|. 1. 17X. The I Barron-Gohen et al 19’'"' |i754i. 761),
NO 1 I S 1 O I 111 I PX I

Inn It IS sliMiisst J in suiiR- ik-t.iil by M.irks 133 Signac 11010.1 in 1 81^4'no, M. Monet, up the sc.ile to include more and more ot 223; for the spectrum, Duthuit cit. 'Wat¬
in-s I iSH6|, SI n>i s ou .ire not .1 n.itur.ilist . , . Bastien-1 ep.ige the colours' (tiller on nionitinl totijours Li kins 1984 11973], 63, who suggests that the
12.1 ‘sslu-rHs-i mill [t94o|. i s~; (Icruinc- |.in essenti.ills ton.d p.unter| is iiiiuh y.i/iiiiic el en sen,ml (Airjii/iiyc /tv ehronuit- red-green-blue palette of Dam e (1910)
M.iiss,.- In''" |i82H|. '\huh drew laryoK s loser to nature than s ou! Trees in nature ismes). This procedure has been discussed depended on this knowledge (94) and that
on till must i-\tcnsi\ c c.irh solkntiun nt .ire not blue, people .ire not s'oilet . . .' (cit. \erv sensitively by Badt 1943 |i749|, 247. the greys in the Piano Lesson (1916) may
s.iscs, SiKircz lis' Mcndiiz.i iSi^o I1963I. I louse I98('i |i853|. 133). Onis- a decade 149 See especialK G. Geflroy in 1901, cit. have been chosen because ot the disc¬
I'or K.iiuiinsk\ s notes trom .1 st nacsthctK' e.irher critics ot the Impressionists had Shirt’ 1978b |i956|, 79. Getfroy seems to mixing of the complementanes in the
stud\ b\ F. FreiKlenbertt, Kinnboni in been prep.ired to cl,11111 th.it their super- have taken .1 hint trom Monet's letter to painting red green, orange-blue to
Zwcitc inS2 1 19811. ni, tig. 7; st. Kandin- .ibundance ot violet ss as pertectls n.itur.il: him in 1893. where the painter argued grey (138). Rood's chapter on the Young-
sks insa |l686|. I. isSn. Fur Sshlcgcl, see the texts assembled bv Reutersvard th.it the Rouen cain ases were abandoned Helmholtz theory of s'ision had gener.illy
'Bctrachtiingen Fiber Merrik' in Sehlegel 1930 I1584I, 106 10. House 1986 has by onlv w hen he felt tiretl of them (Wilden- opted for Young's red green -violet pri¬
I. I'loa |l94.s|. Inn 200: Iris analogies are far the fullest discussion of these technical stem 1979 |i976|. Ill, 272). For the mod¬ maries of light (see e.g.. Rood 1879 [306],
rather sN inbolK than st naesthecie, as is the c|uestions, and on 1 10 he underlines the ern debate about 'finish' in late Cezanne. igtfF), but he also reported the red
interpretation ot Rimbaud's 'V’oyelles' by p.nnter's reputation tor being unconcer¬ Rert’ in Rubin 1977 |l935|. 36 7. Ernst green blue theory ot Maxwell (121).
Starkie 11/11 11958|. Kittl'. ned .ibout tlieoiw; see also Bernard 1934 Strauss has re-st.ited the modernist \ iew Matisse's particular love of the light-
124 Oeroine-Maesse 19O" |l828|, nsn. |i759l- 11 > ■-• -Monet's knosslege ot that many ot these late canvasses with creating triad red green blue has also
iBasLjue was another trimtul language complementars' contrast is shown by an substantial areas of bare canvas c.in be been noticed in his late cut-paper compo¬
mentioned here). interview ot 1888 (cit. Bomtord et al. regarded as complete (Strauss 1983 sitions by |. H. Neff in Cowart et al. 1977
12.S File radiealK' rediietiw linguisties ot 1990 11766I, 88). I1962I. 182). 11795]. 33- bee also Flam 1986 | i8l6|. 283.
k'ehmir Khlebnikoi and its relationship 134 'Human Vision'. 1833, cit. Pasture 150 Cezanne’s 'editing' ot the motit can 162 Matisse 1972 |l702|. 46, and for the
to the radical abstraction ot Malevich has 1978 11913I, 3.S7- be readily seen 111 the landscapes he did English, Matisse 1978 |i889], 37.
been studied bv Crone 1978 11798], espec. 135 Helmhciltz 11901 |l849|. espec. 242, side-by-side with Armand Guillaumin 163 CL 11626I, 429: 'It is true, 1 still often
I47tl. For an English account ot 2(13- 4. These lectures were translated into (see Rewald 1983 |l928|, iio-ii, 114 13: blunder when I undertake a thing, but the
Khlebnikov's version of juMtioti cclorcc. French in l8i'i9. See alsci P.istore 1973 1986 I1929I. 132-3); and his elaborate colours follow of their own accord, and
Cooke 1987 11791 |. 84 V Malex'ich was |l9ll|, 194 h. arrangement ot still-lite m the late 1890s taking one colour as a starting-point, I
also a triend ot the phoneticist Roman 136 Clezanne to Bernard. 23 Fdetober was recorded by Louis le Bail (Rewald have clearly in mind what must follow
lakobson (Barron and Tuchman 1980 1906 (Cezanne 1976 11786I, 317). See also 1986 119291. 228). and how to get life into it'.
|l753l- i8;Padrta 1 n79 11909I. 40 1); and the remarks recorded by Bernard: 'in 151 Doran 1978 |l8o6|, 8. Col. pi. in 164 Le Chemin de la conleur (1947) in
lakobson continued to be interested in painting there are two things, the eye and Rubin 1977 11935 |, no. 4; for the brushes Matisse 1972 |l702|, 204; English in Mat¬
itiiditicn lolcrcc in the context ot phonetics the brain; each must help the other: we and method. Vollard 1938 116311, 60. isse 1978 11889], 116. Elsewhere, of
(.lakobson intiS |i86o|, 82 4: lakobson must work towards their mutual develop¬ 152 Helmholtz reckoned that white in a course, e.g. Matisse 1978 |l889|, 100
and Halle I yy .s 118611,4511). See also Vallier ment. at the eye by its visicin ot nature and picture indoors, tor example, would have (1943). he spoke ot colour as a means of
ihV.s |l97o|. 284th In the 1920s it was the the brain by the logic ot organized sens¬ from 1/20 to I/40 of the reflectivity power liberation.
Russian art-\\ tirkshops w hich modelled ations which give the means ot ex¬ of the same white in sunlight (Fielmholtz 165 For the earlier state. Flam 1986
themselves most closelv on laboratories ot pression’ (cit. Doran 1978 |i8o61, 36). 1901 I1849I, 11, 97-8). See also, among I l8l6|, fig. 229 and p. 230.
experimental psvchology and gave special 137 The onlv scientihe book recorded many observations, |amin 1857 I1524I. 166 For .\Iiisie. Flam 1986 [l8l6|. figs
attention, tor example, to relationships among is etfects was an 18th-century espec. 632ft', 641-2; Laugel 1869 11542]. 288-9; for the 1930s, see the Pink Nude
between colour and torm (Lodder 1983 textbook, although he may have known 89-100; Briicke 1878 |l447|. 103; Guero- (1935) in Barr 1974 11752), 472 (col. pi. in
11876]. i2stt: see also Belaiew- Regnier 1863 (1580I. and hooks on ana¬ ult 1882 11501], 176; Vibert 1902 |l734|, Watkins 1984 I1973]. pi. 169), and Alnsic
E.xemplarsk)'. ot the Moscow Psycholog¬ tomy and on perspective (Feff i960 68 9. (1939) in W'atkins ibid., 187, 189.
ical Institute. 1925 |i757|. espec. 423). I1926I. 303-9; de Beucken 1933 |l76l|, 153 Bernard in Doran 1978 |i8o6|, 61. 167 'Watkins (ibid., 138, 143) notes the
126 Kandinsky 1984 [1863]. 230 (1928). 304). For theory. Cezanne to Emile For 'Whistler, see p. 183 above. use of this scraper in the Piano Lesson and
127 TC xxxvii xxxix (Coethe 1971 Solari. 2 September 1897 and to the 154 Doran 1978 |i8o6|, 72-3, Pissarro’s Bathers by a Riper (both 1916).
I1836I. 213-14). See also p. 202 above. painter Charles Camoin 22 February 1903 advice in the 1870s to restrict hirnselt to 168 Elderfield 1978 [1808], 86-8.
The poet lules Laforgue used similar (Cezanne 1976 [1786I, 260, 294) and three primaries and their derivatives, as 169 Matisse 1976 11888|, 92.
terms in his account of Impressionism in Camoin to Matisse 2 December 1903 reported by J. Gasquet, Paul Cezanne. 170 Ibid., 112 (1952).
1883: 'The Impressionist sees and renders (Giraudy 1971 118311. 9-10). 1926, iqkf, does not seem to have been 171 Ibid., 94-3 (1919). A visitor in 1912
nature as it is - chat is wholly in the 138 Gasquet 1921 111 Doran 1978 |i8o6|, taken (see ShitE 1984 |i726|. 206, 299!', n. spoke of the 'flaming flowers’ in June
vibration of colour. No drawing, light, 1 10. Doran is rightly cautious about the 23; Bomford et al. 1990 [1766], 200). For (Elderfield 1978 [l8o8|, 86).
modelling, perspective, or chiaroscuro authenticity ot this conversation, as recor¬ Bernard's palette, limited to as few as two 172 Sevenni 1917 in Archini del Putnrisino
. . .' (cit. Bomford et al. 1990 11766]. 84). ded b)' the wordy Gasquet. For Helm¬ colours, Bernard to Ciolkowski (1908) in 19.38 [1744], I, 214. The subject of the
128 See An Essny toii’tirds a X'cii' Theory of holtz and Kant, Pastore 1974 |I9I2|, Chasse 1969 I1787I, 80; Doran 1978 conversation was a Moroccan sketch
Tiiion. 1709. !;CLV111. The 18th-century espec. 376-S6. Ii8o6|, 61. 'from nature’, possibly Le Marabout
debate on the role of mind in shaping the 139 Giraud 1902 [1830I, 188. Taine has 155 Cezanne 1976 [1786], 3 16-17, 327. In (1912/13), col. pi. in Cowart et al. 1990
visible world has been discusseci in detail been cited in the context of Cezanne by a letter of August 1906 Cezanne had told 11796], no. 3.
by Morgan 1977 |i897|. espec. yoff. on Sliiff 1978 |i955|, espec. 339. but without his son that he regretted his advanced age 173 Matisse 1972 11702], 52.
Condillac. exploring his implications tor Cezanne’s 'because of my colour sensations' (320), 174 For Kandinsky’s probable contact
129 Perry 1927 [i9i5j. 120. style. which may refer either to a feeling of with Matisse’s patrons and associates in
130 Ruskin 1857 [1938]. 1. §311: 'The 140 Tame 1870 I1965I, I, 76-S3. For incapacity to see, or to render what was Paris, Fineberg 1984 11814]. 49L He refer¬
whole technical power ot painting de¬ Lecoq, Chu 1982 |l788|, 278-80. seen. I have not been able to investigate red to the German version of the Notes in
pends on our recovery of what may be 141 "raine 1870 I1965I, 11, 86fF. For Taine the rather inconclusive suggestions of On the Spiritual in Art of 1912 (Kandinsky
called the innoience of the eye: that is to say, and Helmholtz, Pastore, 1971 |l9lo|, Hamilton 1984 |i842|, 23ort’ that 1982 Ii686j, I, 151)-
of a sort of childish perception of these flat 179-82. Cezanne’s diabetes in old age (see Doran 175 Kandinsky ibid.. 1, 386-7 (1913). For
stains ot colour, merely as such, without 142 Taine 1870 11965], II, 122. For the use 1978 (l8o6|, 24) affected his painting. the painting and its sketches, Roethel and
consciousness of what they signify. - as a ot tache in French art-criticism from the 156 Cartier 1963 [1783]. 351. Benjamin. I, 1982 [1933], no. 464, and
blind man would see them if suddenly 1860s to the 1880.S. Bomford et al. 1990 157 Matisse to Camoin 1914, cit. Matisse Hanfstaengl, 1974 |l843|.
gifted with sight’. For the Elements in I1766I, 92-3. 1972 [1702], 94. Matisse added that this
France, Signac 1964 [1607I, 117. Monet is 143 Doran 1978 |l8o6|, 36. side ot him conflicted with his romanti¬
reported as saying in 1900 that 'ninety- 144 Cezanne to Bernard, it April 1904 cism. and left him exhausted.
per-cent ot the theory of Impessionism is
12 The Substance of Colour
(Cezanne 1976 |l786|. 301). 158 See Sideboard and 'Table (1899) in
... in ''Elements of Drawing'". (Dew- 145 For seeing like Cezanne, Frankl; 1973 'Watkins 1984 [1973I, 36-8. 1 Redon 1979 [1718], 128.
hurst 1911 |i8o4|. 296). See in general |i8i9|. 123-30; Damisch 1982 [1799), 42. 159 Matisse 1972 [1702]. 49; sec also the 2 This account is based on three surviving
Autret 1963 I1748I, 77tF. 146 A good example of this sort of interview with R. W. Howe, in Matisse versions of the 'process', which ditTer
131 Ruskin 19081 I1939]. 21 2 . Ruskin’s beginning is the Mont Sainte-1 'ictoirc seen 1978 11889], 123. considerably in detail among themselves.
view ot Turner's eagle-eye has been con¬ from Les Lauves. 1904/6 in Rubin 1977 160 For Denis. Flam I986[i8i6|, 121; for The only published version is the paraph¬
firmed by an analysis of his spectacles, 119351. iit>- 931 and tor watercolour, Mont Cross, Matisse to Teriade, 1929/30 111 rase by Stephen Rigaud of the copy sold
preserved by Ruskin, and now in the Sainte-Tictorie seen from the north of Aix. Matisse 1978 [ 1889], 58; see also ibid., 132; by Provis to his father, John Francis
Ashmolean Museum in Oxford (Trevor- ibid., 130. Derain to Vlaminck 28 July 1905 in Rigaud (Rigaud 1984 [2060], 99-103). A
Roper 1988 11967], 92). 147 Bomford et al. 1990 11766I, 97. Derain 1933 |l803|, 134!', 161. Matisse’s MS copy sold to Joseph Farington, ampli¬
132 For the Popkrs. Perry 1927 [1915I, 148 Doran 1978 |l8o6|. 39. See also attitude to the Neo-Impressionists has fied by notes in his own hand, probably
121; tor Roiien Citthedrd. Monet to Alice Cezanne’s instructions to Bernard (ibid., been studied in detail by Bock 1981 from conversations with Miss Provis, is in
Hoschede, 29 March 1893. in 'Wildenstein 73) on painting a still-life, starting 'with I1765I. the library of the Royal Academy in
1979 11976], 273. the almost neutral tones’ and then 'going 161 For Chevreul etc. Flam 1986 |i8i6|. London. Farington’s Diary is our chief

^94
 N( M I s H :• 1 III I I \ I

sDuric 1)1 knowlcilgc tor tiu' progress ot xxviii on nature as the perfect guide riiiiee i8c |2042|, 14. -1 s. 37 t ’ ic- ^ , 2017 .
the ari.iir. ot wliieh he gives an almost (Leslie 19s I |i078|, 2'’3) ll.ivdon knew 22 Ibid. It.8; I h.l)'t.ll .s - 2000] III 38 i ; ~,... 2101! ' I
slaily aieoiim between lleeeinber t~y6 the/li'i'F b\ I 824 i Diiiry. cd Pope II. mt'C 3” I 39 1 • I- . ; 2013 Mb';
arul May tyyy. A thiri.1 version, possibls |lo6o|. 4.89; and w .is using its reiipes b\ ■
23 Berthollel 1824 |i990i. If i M . \ I :;:i. .1,'. • ■ it.) . . ;■
the earliest, is the ms VVie 1 Viictun ni,iimcr 182- llbld.. III. 22”, and cl V, 84. 2<K! de 1 sji; 2034 ' . Mermie. - di-
I j .Old 1.> li: 1;.1' ‘ i' .:l; , ..1
ol /'aiM/mi; /uirliinLirly hiul i/ihi'ii, rcLiiiiif’ lo (1841. 1841) ). For Ingres's purchase of tiission ol in.idder lorim one tIu
.9 ■- ‘ lii'UIlllg
ilif /ViiifiVc. by .H. / I’.. Ill the eolleetion ot the book m 1840. I ernois 1936 |2067|. loiige't scitions ol ho book i'; 2042 40 D. .-;c 2003' 11.
I Ir Jon WInteley, who kiiully .illowed me >73. 144 r.si 0.1 u d lli.n 1 - Bl. Cl s. Ill, - h 1,1 ' O',
to study It. It does not mention the '1 man 12 See the 1 elden document ot 11143 in 24 Ibid . 293 two j'tmtine-. 1 .3,...ii i.p ,
shade', blit gives 'a negative (jrcy I'liil .Martin 1901 |2040|. xtert. Ciornehs de Bie 25 (.regoire. I812 2023I. o, 1 D)i tin 'length Ml Blew:. Piuk IMili
eompoiinded of Irory /ndrijo and 111 1661 assumed that a single colour- d.ite. I oru bon 1916 11818| I lu \ u w 13O4I. 1- 14
I he reterenees to llunganan or maker would supply a ver\ large range of on Iomplememariis 111 (itegoire si 2 41 Pt.inue);'. liuiidt .Old SMui. i
I’rnssian blue and Antwerp blue as ke\ pigments (de Bie 19-1 119911. 11, 208 in. are essemialls the s.uiie as those exprevNeil ;2050|. A..,'I,line I,. Mi.h.ii;dA B
pigments in the two .\iss suggest the rather For a London colour-shop in 1633, Bate 111 .Merimee's book I'r.iphii I '111 ; ) ■■ . ,1 til .' I •! im.in ■ dll .
reeent origin ot the 'Venetian Seeret'. 1977. |if>47|. i.D. 26 Cregoire . 1812 [20231. 6, .je this work w.r pui'l it ll.iiioi.t in l-si,
since these were I Kth-ceiitury pigments 13 Bouvier 1828 11655I. V.iii Cogh CL .Merimee's i.jrnim in 1840. how ever, w.is.i and .1 ^e^ond III 1 cip/ig III I'■9'/ Ih.iseiiot
I'or an account of the scandal, (lage 1964 11626]. no. 419.1. to a colour man Furnee at colour m.ide not from madder but troni touiuDopies ol this (■erm.Ill s . inioii. .nul
|2014|, 41. I he 1 l.igue (3 .August 1883): 'I use onlv Crnic.' :i24rl:. lie did not name the till Freiu h edli o .iRo e\. i edingls i.in A
.5 West's 'process' paintings were CiVcro the colours 1 get brayed |i.e. groutid| pigments he ..onsidered prnn.ns. lOps ol the tir'l lieiiih . dn. I .uo.iiii.i
iiinl rhf Mafiilriitfi tbscoi'criiit’ the Toiiih of here'. •ilthough the slightly bluish red ot Ins |■8^. IS .11 the libi.iis ot the N.iiioii.il
ArthinifJcs (von h.rtla and Stales' mSCi 14 See 1 iel.icroix to Mine I l.iro, 29 Clcto- di.igr.im could w ell be .1 i .irniine. Callers in \A .isliington. and a . 'ps ot the
|l032|. no. 22). sold Cdiristie 22 Novem¬ ber 1827, ordering 1 8 bladders ot'colours, 27 .Merimee. .\lemoire nit le> lots i;enerjle> seiond in the Bibliothei|ue (. anional m
ber lyHs (fiy); ChipitI .S'finnj by 0 bt-c (von all of them 'more lic|uid than the colours de hi color.uion oppliipies .1 hi form.ition d'une 1 .iiisanne
F.rria and Staley, no. i.t.l), J’ortriiil of you prepare for everyone else' (1 iel.icroix eihelle ihroniiititpie .1 I'us0i;e de> mitur,times 42 Pt.innenschniidt .iiid Si lull/ i“92
Riiphoct ivul BciijLitiiiii ll'vsl (von Erffa and 1933 ■'< l>47i|. (1933). 200). Sec also in Brisse.ui de Mirbel I8is I1994I, 11. |20.S0|. 34 s
Staley, no. 543) and a lost (.'nuifixioii (von Planet 1928 li.S7l|. 47 for Delacroix's 909 24. 43 Ibid . 142 4
Ertfa and Staley no. 336). preterence tor lic|uid colours Liter in his 28 Piiiet 1913 1205 I |. 81. 44 Ibid . 3~ 40
4 Malone 17117 [2039I, I. xxxii xxxiiin.; career. Mis long relationship with the 29 Ibid.. t)8. 1 his seems to be a response 45 Lamarik i~9~ I2035I. sr. I he reler-
lyyS.I.lvi Iviin. Haro tamily has been studied by Sauvaire to Delacroix's De.ttit ol Sordiinop.ilus enee to Ptaiiiiensihniidi is on p “8, n s
5 Farington 7 June 1797. For Reynolds's 1978 I2063I. Due colour which was usu¬ f 1827). .Merimee seems to h.ive had some lamarik's sssteni was reprinted .ilmost
experiments, M. Kirby Talley, "'.All ally made by the artist himselt, a calcined direct contact with Delacroix in the verbatim 111 I atreille 1802 |2036|. 1. 3491!
good pictures crack": Sir Joshua Prussian blue called lirnn de Prnsse. was 1820s. siiue his trieiid Rochard gave De¬ 1 atreille hoped that the .Miisee d'l listoire
Reynolds's practice and studio' in Fenny supplied to Delacroix b\ I l.iro (letter of lacroix a letter to t.ike to him 111 ixas N.iturelle in P.iris would eng.ige t.imous
lytifi I2049I. 55-7, 62 -7. 21 March 1846, in Delacroix 1933 8 (Ephrussi 1891 |2005|, 4f)i). painters to help in the exeiution ot
6 Sheldrake's Disscrrorioii of Poiiiiiin’ in 114711, II, (1936), 266): for the usual 30 .Merimee 1830 |2042|. 29 30. For his Lamarik's scale, which would liirther the
Oil. 'm a manner similar to that practised practice, Cioupil 1838 |202i |, 30. English experiences, Pmet 1913 |205i|, essential work ol the standardi/alion ol
111 the ancient Venetian School', was 15 See espec. CL |l626], 301, 303, 642, 37-3)2. Me translated Fuseli's .Academy colours (3S01 Me preterred a io-p,irt
submitted to the Society in the Spring of and 327, 332, 333, w here van Cogh hopes lectures, but none of his versions w as circle to the 12-part iircle lani.irik had
1797. and won a Cireater Silver Palette the Tasset will make experiments on the published until alter Ins death, when three adapted troni Ptannenschmidt
following year {'I'riiiisaclioiis of the .Society degree ot grinding needed to bring out appeared in l.es BeiUi.\-. \rts in 1844. For 46 Marris c. 1—^6 |2026|. Sowerbs 1809
of .-ins. XVI. 179X I2064I. 279-99). lie the best cpialities in certain pigments. For Constable. Pmet 1913 I2051I.63. |l 141 |. 38 9; f ield |8|- (20t0|, s3i
thought his methods were close to Tanguy as colour-dealer. Bernard 190S 31 Fhornbury 1877 |2068|, 262. For 47 Cregoire. 1. 1 8 1 2 |2023|. 4s. Paillot de
Provis's (297) but this was disputed by one I1989I, 600 14. The only study of large- Merimee and English landscape, Pmet Montabert. 1829 |28il. LX. 1.84 8 See
ot his sponsors (Society of Arts, .Mitiuies of scale pigment manufacture in the 19th 1913 |205l|, 61. and for his reference to also Mundertpfnnd 1849 |i683|. 2~ 31.
the Committee ol Polite .drts, 22 November century seems to be Kiihn 1982 |2033|. Constable 111 1817. Ephrussi 1891 [20051, where ot the basic colours ihosen. only
■797> 9II). The Dissertation was reprinted 33tT, but see also Bomford et al. 1990 462. There is a rieeting reference to natural ultramarine was regarded as 'pri¬
111 The .-irtist's .-issisttint, or the School of I1766I, 34 43, 30-72, and espec, the im¬ Merimee. based probably on the 1839 mary'. 1 he others were Naples sellow
Science. 1801. Cirandi, who had been portant review by Callen 1991 I1999I. translation of his book, in Field's intro¬ and madder
trained by a Venetian master, also claimed espec. 602 3. duction to (dhromntu.s. 1S43 (20I0|, xn. 48 (iage 1989 (2017I. 39 314 4 he earls
that his coloured absorbent grounds were 16 A number of early proposals to teach but he does not seem to be mentioned in historv ot spectrosiops has been studied
like Provis's (Farington 21 May 1797), chemistry to painters have been recorded the large collection of Field's notebooks by Bennett 1984 |i988|
and til 1806 won a Silver Medal from the in England: in 1770 the Incorporated now with Messrs \X'insor and Newton. 49 Ciage 1989 |20I7|. 40.
Society for his method '111 the old Ven¬ Society of Artists employed a Dr Aussiter 32 File following account of Field is 50 .Merrifield 1844 (2043I. 8i .Merrilield
etian stile'. (Tronsiictions. ,\XIV, 1806, 85; to lecture on the subject (_|ones 1946 8 based substantially on Cage 19S9 |20I7|. also cites Field's Chromutottrophy on 1 i~.
repr. in Fielding. Ihtintini^ in Oil. 1839 [2030I. 23), and in 1807 a young Academy 33 Field Chronunics. 1808. Winsor and 120, 123, 123, I 38, 137. Dn I 23. e g . the
I2012I.79 80). student. Andrew Robertson, was attend¬ Newton .visy folio 340f Field was still madders developed by Field are cited as
7 See Farington 19 January, 26 February ing outside lectures on chemistry 'an art thinking in these terms as late as 1843 superior to Cenmni's Uc Like, svhich ss as
1801; lojuly, 28 November. 6, 9 Decem¬ very necessary for a painter to know' (Field 1843 |20I0|, 161). For another badly alfeited by contact svith lead t)n
ber 1802; 6jutie. 25 July 1803. Farington's (Robertson 1897I2061I. 130). In the 1 S40S English anti-Newtonian technologist. I 37 she cites Field on the use of stippled
detailed account of the use of the 'vehicle" the distinguished chemist Michael Fara¬ Bancroft 11986|, 1813. optical mixtures to achieve greater bril¬
is in a notebook now in the Victoria and day was assisting C. L. Eastlake in his 34 Cage 1989 |20I7|. 30. liance. probably a reference to f ield 1 84 i
Albert Museum (P88 1921. folio 72V. researches into fresco painting (Faraday 3.S Chromotics. 1808, folio 322V. By the |2009|. 47.
dated 26 February 1801), but it does not 1971 |20o6|. I. 423 “5): Faraday also helped mid-1830s Field had developed an alka¬ 51 For the Pre-Raphaelites and f ield.
give the ingredients. It was probably the Turner with his pigments (Cage 1987 line Lemon Yellow, and used a sub¬ Cage 1989 (2017), nos 21. 39 <<}. In a
'true Venetian' medium discovered by |20i6|. 223). In Rome in 1813 the Naza- stratum of alumina tor his madder lakes, letter of 2~ CActober 18-9 (lAxford, Bod¬
John Singleton Copley. R.A. and repor¬ renes were eager to read a new book on hence the somewhat far-fetched linkage leian Library) Molman Hunt mentioned
ted by his son in August 1802 (Amory colours by a chemist, L. Marcucci and a of this colour with alumina. Me had also that he had read .Merritield's translation ot
1882 11983!. 2301). restorer, P. Paltiiaroli, Sociyiio oiuilytico devoted much eflort to the production of Cennini as svell as the 1841 edition of
8 Cage 1964 I2014I. 40. For Westall. chimico sopro i color! niineroli (1 lowitt i 886 the highest quality natural ultramarine, a Field's Chromoloyrophy. Millais's reailing
Wamewright 1880 I2071I, 253 3; for I1855I. 1, 316 17). siliceous stone. of Field by 1 84- w suggested bs his palette
lieaumont and Pro vis. Owen and Brown 17 Lemaistre 1889 |2037|. 431'; Prache 36 .Massoul 1797 (20411. 123. See also shossn in a self-portrait iLiverpool. \A al-
1988 |2046|, 94. 1966 I2052I. 234; for the laboratory. I26tl for colours grouped under the ker .Art Callers), whuh is set with a
9 Sandby to Colonel (iravatt, October Moreau-Vauthier 1923 [l706|. 103. Notes categories of animal, vegetable and sequence of black and white and red.
1797 111 Sandby 1S92 (2062I, 93. on Pasteur's lesson ot to April 1863. mineral. .Massoul w.is also remarkable as a vellow and blue Rossetti's interest in
10 Armemni 1820 I1984I. xxxv; see also 'Obscurcissemem de la peinture .1 riuiile'. technologist for accepting the New toman f leld on the primaries is suggested not
108 911. have been published in Bnlletm du lobo- account of colours (i20tT). w hich he did only by the palette ot /:iic . Iiiii//j Domini
II For Blake, Cilchrist 1942 l22i|. 339f r,noire du .\lusee du Louvre. (Suppl. to not attempt to integrate into Ins dis¬ (1830, I ate Callery), but also bv a w ater-
John Liiinell. who lent Ins copy to Blake Ret’ue des .-Irts, June 1936, 3 4). cussion of pigments. Field's chiet triadic colour ot iSst, Dome diowiny on Inyel
about 1822. claimed that it was probably 18 For Merimee's life, Piiiet 1913 (2051I. text was Field 1S16. much expanded in (tAxford. .Ashinolean .Museum/, whuh
the first copy in England. It is possible that 19 Merimee I 830 I2042I, IX. 1846 (2011 ]. I his aspect of Ins thought has shows three pots of primarv colours on
Blake or I.innell showed the book to 20 Ibid.. 7 8; for the date of the resear¬ been discussed by Brett 1986 li993|. the w indow -ledge
Constable, who in an undated note copied ches, Pinet 1913 [20511, 72. 333) 30. although he seems to stretch the 52 Albert i>/02 |l743|. x-. mi 141
out a passage (111 translation) from ch. 21 For Prud'hon and Theophilus, Me- rel.itionshipw itli modernist theory tootar A'lbert c alled his book , sshich went into
NOI FS T() I HI TI-X 1
■ igln pIlntlllt^^ in l.Svi .ikiiH', 'till.' truit nt
thirtv vi.Mr^ nl .ind cxpcrR-ntl-'. Fnr
the l.ilnirator\’ ,it the Reole, n. 17 .ibo\'e.
53 Reii)U\ renr iNn'> I2054I. S3. ! his
hiiok g.i\i .1 giiod sleal nt spaee to the
cheniual eonstituents ot eolours and
media, and .irgueil (S) that the painter
should take the trouble to learn about
materials.
54 Reeousreur iSi;o |2054|, 105: Vibert
1902I1743I, 149 s.v Matisse noted that he
used Vibert s retoucliing varnish
(Moreau-Vaiithier 1923 |l7o6|. S4).
55 Averroes 1949 I19S5I, 20f. For
Leonardo 19.S6 I1076I. 1, 291; for Runge,
FIS I1127I, 1. Si, I So 1; for Monet see p.
209. Not that Monet was always eontent
with his materials: in ses eral letters ot the
iSSos he made the usual complaint about
their inadequacy (Wildenstein 1979
11976]. 11. Letters 394, 403, 460, tiyi), but
he never seems to have refleeted on how
he might address these difficulties.
56 Bourdon in Watelet and Levesque 1,
1792116361,409 11.
57 Poussin's supporter Felibien argued
that black and white were incapable ot
encompassing the extremes ot luminosity
and darkness in nature {Eiitn'ticns 1723
|i669|. V (1979), 5); for de Piles (1677),
lAittfarken 1983 |2053|, 69. De Piles
singled out brightness as inimitable. See
also Floogstraten 1678 |i5i8|. 224.
58 The distinction between the camera
obscura image and the painted picture
was examined by Hamilton 1738 |2025|,
II, 384- 3. For an extreme statement ot the
superiority ot the camera to painting,
Ckiutier d'Agoty 1733 |20l8|, 81- 2. Ano¬
ther illustrator of natural history, SchifFer-
iniiller, argued for the superiority ot
nature to art in the matter ot richness and
brightness {1772 I324I, qff n.). For the
argument that art can overcome these
deficiencies by manipulation, applied es-
pec. to values of light and shade, Barry
1809 134], I, 327-8,
59 Monge 1820 11895], i3of. See also
Vallee 1821 I1969I, 374f on the freedom
ot the artist to manipulate his subject in
order to compensate, a view which antici¬
pates Cezanne's practice at the end of the
century,
60 Janiin 1837 I1524I, 632-8.
61 Ibid., 641-2.
62 Helmholtz 1901 I1849I, II, 121-2,
This opinion was quoted with approval
by Briickc (1878 (1447), 105; cf also 123),
which also published a French version ot
Helmholtz’s lecture. See also Briicke 1 866
I1446I, I33f
63 GuHoult 1882 |i50i|, 176.
64 Field 1845 |20lo|, 119-20. Regnier
1865 11580], hi, 115f also welcomed the
new pigments, used with prudence,
although he regarded the only 'pure' (i.e,
primary) pigments as the traditional
Nafiles yellow, madder and ultramarine
(u6),
65 The use of these new techniques is
demonstrated by Bomford et al. 1990
I1766I.
66 Trevise 1927 |2069|, qqf For chrome
yellows replaced by cadmiums, Bomford
et al. 1990 |i766|, 63-4 and Jones 1977
|2029|, 6. Pissarro was equally concerned
about permanence (Fencon 1970) 1481], I,
.35-6), but continued to use chrome yel¬
low until the end of his life (Rewald 1973
|2059|, 590).
67 Bomford et al. 1990 |l766|, 201 (no.
ii).
68 Naples yellow appears in Renoir’s
296
work from the mid-1880s (iiomtord et al.
1 990 11766], 201 (no. 14)); tor the reviv.il
of the colour, ibid. 68 70. Renoir’s hea\ y
use of It in the ’90s w'as recorded by
l.ib.ir.int 1923 |2o66|, 289: see .ilso
’W.iinewright, Taylor and Harley 'Lead
antimonate \ellow' in Feller I, 1986
1181 11, 219 26, 229 33. In Renoir 1962
|2057|. 342 the painter noted that yellovs'
oi lire, Napk's yellow .ind Sien.i earth
were 'onlv intermediate tones’ and ctnikl
be repLiced bs' mixtures tit the brighter
colours; see also M. FL Butler, ‘Technical
notes' in Pauiliin^s hy Renoir 1973 |2048|,
2 10. The identification ot Cenmni’s
riiio with Naples yellow had been made in
Merimee 1830 |2042|, 1 10-13 J”d espec.
by Mottez (1838) 191 i I2044I, 3311.
69 Mottez 1911 120441, viii. For Renoir's
Irook. Pissarro to Monet, 13 May 1884
(Bailly-Herzberg 1980 I1424I, I, 299! ). It
has been associated with Renoir’s proposal
of 1884 to found a Societe des Irregular-
istes tt) propagate an aesthetic or irre¬
gularity in all the arts, and to publish ‘Une
grammaire complet d’art’ (Venturi 1939
|2070|, I, 127 9). House 1983 |2028|, 18,
n. 33 has proposed that the discovery ot
Cennini dates from betore 1881, when
Renoir decided to go to Italy to study
ancient and Renaissance techniques. It is
notable that Degas, who also made use ot
Naples yellow in his pastels, was a reader
of Cennini (Reff 1971 |2055|, ibzfand for
the pastels, Maheux 1988 [2038], 87).
70 Pointings hy Renoir 1973 I2048I, no. 83,
71 Matisse 1976 |i888|, 101.
72 Kiihn 1969 I2032J.
73 Robert 1891 |l722|, 113.
74 Vibert 1893/6117351,940-1.
75 Vibert 1902 |l734|. 33. A cardinal
subject set in a garden. The Reprimand
(1874), is reproduced in Vibert 1893/6
11735 |. 721; there seem to be very few ot
his works in public collections.
76 For the conservation evidence from
paintings of the 1880s, Bomford ct al.
1990 I1766I, 201 (no. 15); Butler 1973
11996], 77-83. For the lists of pigments in
Cezanne’s notebooks, Rewald 1931
I2058I, 31; Cowing 1988 I2022I, yi; Reff
and Shoemaker lySy |2056|, 30, 133, 239.
77 Doran 1978 |l8o6|, 61,72-3.
78 CL |i626|, 473. Vibert 1902 |l734|.
284-yi usefully identifies the ingredients
ot these colours, often sold under confus¬
ing trade-names. Cezanne returned a cin¬
nabar green to a colour-merchant in 1905
(Cezanne 1976 [1786], 314).
79 CL I1626I, 476. In an earlier letter
(474) he had remarked on the darkening
of Theodore Rousseau’s landscapes, so
that ‘his pictures are now unrecogniz¬
able’. See also CL 430 on the expense of
permanent colours. The fading of his
work has been studied by Cadorin et al.
1987 |i998|, 267-73.
80 Signac to Lucien Pissarro, August
1887 in Dorra and Rewald 1939 I1475I,
LXl. For the Grande Jatle, Russell 1965
|l593|, 22yf; Feneon 1970 |l48l|, I, 212.
For its pigments, Fiedler 1984 |2007|,
44-50, and 1989I2008I, 176-8.
81 For the history and characteristics of
the pigment. Feller I, 1986 11811 j, 201-2.
82 Camille to Lucien Pissarro, 31 May
1887, in Bailly-Herzberg 11, 1986 I1424I,
178.
83 For Signac’s palette, Homer 1970
I1517I. 151, For cerulean blue, Bomford
et al. 1990 11766], 36-7, and for the
reputation of bleu celeste, Vibert 1902
|l734|. 288, where it is grouped with.
among others, Prussian blue as a ferric
ferrocyanide, which indicates the diflic-
ulties Vibert (and historians) have in
translating trade-terms into identitiable
substances. My point is less that cerulean
was an unreli.ible blue (its persistence on
Signac’s palette suggests that he was
rather happy with it, and its manutacture
may have improved with time) than th.it
It was regarded as unreliable in the 1890s,
and is thus an indication that painters like
Signac were prepared to t.ike risks in
order to achieve brilliance. In 1891
Feneon reported that, because ot their
permanence, Signac used the colours ot
the Belgian manufacturerjacques Blockx,
ground in an amber medium (Feneon
1970 |i48i|, 1. 197); and Signac was still
specifying Blockx mixed greens in the
1930s [Encycopedie Frani;aisc, 1933 |l666|,
16° 30-3-6). Blockx colours, espec.
greens, were also much used by Matisse
(Moreau-Vauthier 1923 |l706|, 30; Ency¬
clopedic 193 3 loc. cit.), who had of course
been close to Signac about 1904. Homer
has identified one ot the three reds on
Seurat’s surviving palette as alizarin crim¬
son (Broude 1978 11443 |, 117), a synthetic
colour first developed in the 1860s, and
quite stable. The pigments on this palette
have, however, not so far been analyzed,
and this remains a guess. It was not a
question ot using cheap materials: Seurat’s
supplier, Maison Edouard, where Tanguy
had trained, was more expensive than
Tasset and L'Hote (tor Seurat’s patronage
of Edouard, see the note on a cLrawing ot
1883/6 in Herbert 1962 |2027|, 188, no.
168 and Herbert ct al. 1991 I1514I, 179, n.
2; for the firm, Bomford et al. lyo 11766I,
4if; and for prices. Van Gogh 1958 11626|,
no. 30y). Cezanne bought emerald green
from Edouard (Reff and Shoemaker 1989
I2056I, 133), although his major supplier
seems to have been Gustave Sennelier
(Daval 1985 |200i|, io8t').
84 The lack of chromaticity in the Grande
Jatle had been noticed in 1X86 by Emile
Hennequin (Broude 1978 [14431, 42), but
he could not e.xplain it. Signac, who was
much troubled by it in 1892 (Cachin 1971
119971 > 71^2), had discovered the theoret¬
ical explanation by the end ot the decade
(Signac 1964 (1607I, 42), and used it in his
polemic in favour of ‘divisionism’. In a
letter of 1914, Severini used the same
argument to contrast the greyed effect of
French pointillism with the enhanced
luminosity of analagous tones in Italian
Dinisionisino {Archini del Dinisionisino 1968
|i745|, I, 312); but the Futurist Boccioni
thought (1916) that even the Italians did
not escape this greying (ibid., 58). A close
reading of Blanc’s Gratnniaire should have
been enough to predict the greying effect
ot juxtaposeci dots of complementarv
colours, since this is what his optical-
mixing of stripes, stars and dots were
intended to create (Blanc 1867 [1436I,
604-6; cf. also Blanc 1882 |i438|, 103-5).
Ainadiie Ozenfant, who knew Seurat’s
work over many years, thought it was
greying more and more (Ozenfant 1968
[2047], 30).
85 For Sir V7illiam Beechey’s use of
toning colours, Sully 1963 (20651, 36-7.
The pre-iyth-century evidence has been
reviewed by Kockaert 1979 [20311,
69-72. For the 17th and i8th centuries, O.
Kurz, ‘Varnishes, tinted varnishes, and
patina’, Burlington Magazine. CIV 1962,
36-9; 1963 I253I, 93.
86 15eal 1984 11987]. 143-4.
87 Conti 1988 I4011, 96. Ironically, in the
18th century Veronese was singled out as
a master who allowed time to harmonize
Ins pictures (Algarotti 1764 (1982I. 56 8).
See also Fletcher 1979 I2013I, 23-1) for a
17th-century ‘smoked’ Giorgione.
88 For anticipation, de Piles 1708 in
Puttfirken 1983 |2053|, 69; tor A. Sacchi,
Dowley 1963 |2004|, 76f, n. 119; for F.
Pacheco, McKim Smith etal. 198S |i550|,
I 10. For the 18th century L.uigier (1771)
1972 I1696I. 134-.S.
89 Goethe 1871 |20l9|,26i.
90 Hogarth 1933 I1064I, 130, n. 1. This
was also noted hy Merimee 1830 |2042|,
282. Merimee felt that Rubens had inten¬
ded time to turn his pictures into Titians
(297); but Rubens has provided one ot the
most startling examples of the removal ot
a (19th-century) toned varnish. His Ger-
bier Eainily CWashington, National Gal¬
lery) lay under such a varnish until the
1970s and presented the critic Roger Fry
with a lesson on 'a colour harmony built
entirely and almost exclusively on cop¬
pery reds and reddish browns, and an
almost neutral grey . . The removal ot
this varnish has changed greys to blues and
reds to greens (Buck 1973 |l995|, 49—31).
91 Delacroix 1980 |i026|, 23 February
1832.
92 Undated letter in Goldwater and
Treves 1976 |2020|, 309. The best dis¬
cussion ot Impressionist surfaces is Bom-
tord et al. 1990 |l766|, 93—8. For a more
general treatment of te.xture Hackney
1990 (2024], 22-3.
93 Nakov and Petris 1972 I2045I,
111-12. See also 118-24, 2nd espec. the
remark that ‘the modern painter is distin¬
guished by the very special reverence he
has tor his materials’. See also A. Shev¬
chenko in Bowk 1976 |l992|, 51-2, and
espec. D. Burliuk, Texture (1912) in Bar¬
ron and Tuchman 1980 |l753|, I29f, for
whom one ot the most important
examples was a Monet Rouen Gathedral in
the Shchukin collection.
94 The circular diagram of Bauhaus
courses devised for the 1923 exhibition
(Wingler 1973 I2072I, 32, fig. 17) in¬
cluded both colour-theory - in conjuc-
tion with space and composition - and
‘colour’ - with wood, metal etc. This
scheme may have been devised by Klee,
whose diagram of 1922 fWingler 1973,
tig. i) is close to it; but it may also reflect
the teaching ot colour as material given in
Weimar by Theo van Doesburg, and
described in an article (1923 |2002|,
12-13). He likened contrasts such as blue
and yellow to the tensions between con¬
crete and wood.
13 The Sound of Colour
1 For this characterization see the un¬
dated and anonymous treatise (Bellerman
Anon. 11, 26) in Najok 1972 I2199I, 84-5.
2 Gaudentios Introduction to Harmony (3rd
or 4th century ad) cit. Gavaert 1875
I2133I, I, 85f Gavaert interpreted colour as
dynamic or harmonic function; but Pal-
isca 1985 [2204], 129 calls it ‘qualities that
make sounds of the same pitch and dur¬
ation differ’.
3 Topics, io6a, 9-32; 106b, 4-9; 107a,
11 -17 in Barker, 11. 1989 l99l|, 69- 70; the
Peripatetic On audible things, 8oia-b (ibid.
101-3). Theophrastus’s lost On Music
seems to have equated lightness with a
high pitch (ibid. 113).
 Ni 'll s n I nu II \ I

4 I’lato65in Barker I. 1^X4 subject til a multi-media entert.iinment I2252I, 2S IX. and tor the Hule. iv2 1 37 Xv. i -p. . K.U.tu .c;- I , - , iZIfiL 1: .!
|20Ho|, 14? anJ n. 6r. where tins usage is designed by Bernardo Buontalenti tor the 1 eonarilo w as also a tiiu singer t'>r llu ;:i'i . 11:.o i. • .0 ..-s ,1. D .1: -
iiiterpreteii as 'toiie-eolour' or luiaiues ot wedding ot the (irand Duke I ervhnand 26 /arliiio is-j 2256I. 1, sh xml See I'l'i 2123]. \ II
tuning, for foiios and lh:riiiot!t'. I’linv de’ .Medici in i lorence in 15X9 I’.ilisc.i C rosker i>)i>a i2iio|. i~ iv An inons- 38 S, .11 im'l. 1317!
XXXV. XI, 29. 19Xs|2204|. 1 XX 9ui. nious Lnglish 1 sth-centurs treatise ssIikIi I ; -w 111 r. I X r "vf ■ - ■ , ! .1
5 For I'toleiny. Harmonics. Ill, vi in Bar¬ 13 Rudolt ot St Frond 1911 |22l8|. 9X sought to link musical notes w ith armori.d 't .ill *t .1.1 u tt.t. ■ r'li' ‘ 1.,"
ker II. 19X9 19911. 47X; see also Aristo- There seems to be nothing in the \\ estern blazon listcsl g>>ld. siKet, reiL purple, yttrpui'u .itiii. u ■ ' III .i-,h.. .ill ,1
xenus. litfimnls ol tiarmony. I, 24 B (ihid. medieval tradition comparable to the 9th- green aiul bias k as the priiK ipal’ inusK.il ho .'O' w • • IL. I mp. I "I I' ld r ■ -u i
141); Vitruvius I 521 V. |343|. iv, 1; N.ijok atid loth-centurs .Arab .issimil.ition ot colours, each ot whuli h.id .111 'espial 4 th.ii Ik h.id siMt'd Pi.icK, lor ,1c
1972 |2I99|, X4 5; Adrastus of Apliro- colours to the tour humours aiul tour proportion' troiii whuh all unespial pro B,,o,lt. P.itkhui''t !•; : '28(ij, l-i.uo
disias in Barker ihid. 216; and tor strings ot the lute, tor which see I .inner portions were slenvesl, but this seems lo I'j'i '2123]. ; I'.l I Ik . I I .lur. ,
cowardice, the ?4th-ccnturv Hebih' 1926 I2124I, 1 X. 20. have been an isolates! sport ' IDtutn, lio inlet , olour o ,1, Bi'oilt II, 2085 : 1. h
Papyrus reporting and contesting a con¬ 14 (latfuno isix |2I29|. bk 1\', Ji IV. colore.y mu^ttale} el armorum Htioun 111 i'
temporary opinion (Barker 1. 19X4 Ixxxiv v; ch V, Ixxxv s. Iwxvi r For 1 lasskins ixs! [aisoj. 1. a.ft!: 39 K.pUi n M.oilin i t ■ August 1 s j,j
|208o|2. 1X4). 1 he .Musical .Manual ot Carturio’s interpretation ot' the Creek 27 Pino is;s4 |i282|. 32 4 I 01 niusual 111 Kcpiei \1\, 2165]. , si I h. s,
Nicomachus {raiui century .mi) argued modes in medieval terms, P.ilisc.i 19X5 empiricism, l.owinskv ii;f>fi '2179I. kIc.is .ibout > olour ,lo iii'i cm to h.is. :
that the chromatic scale was like ciiange- I2204I, 11 12, 293 X; and on the elhos of ijo 41; P.ihssa is;X5 I2204I. 2ot, ajstl. .ippeareil in Kcpln , i.u.r ssoik X,, .dso
able people who are said to liave ‘colour’ the modes. 345. Koemgsberger 19“9|2170|. mot 1 h, kreiter i,;'! 2116].: ; ;
(Xll, 263 in Barker II. 19X9 I9911, 26X). 15 F,.g, Bate i960 1162|. I 24 s and Clieh- 28 Bellori 197(1 [1430I, 20(i; see .ilssi the 40 Dlsertori m-is ]2ll8]. si fiX, ,| .,|so
6 Cdement of Alexandria l‘acilayiO{;us. 11, tove 1510 |21o6|, 2iX\. both of whom comp.irison between colour aiul singing Xpear 10X2 ] 1612]. 4 it!
IV, adapted from the translation m translated Aristotle's halotiryon as ,ootneus. 111 .Arniemm 19XX I1645I. 126, wliish. as 41 Mals .isia Ki-x ; 1552]. 11. I m
McKinnon 19X7 |2i82|. 34. See also Ke- For Bate’s skills as a practical and theoret¬ Gsirreri notes, probabls depends on 42 For t aiiiiii, Beal mxi [1650]. u al.
migius of Auxerre's 9th-century com¬ ical musician, Coldine 1964I2138I, 10 27. Vasari 1X7X X5 [340] I (1X7X). 171; Xi lor /,K cohiu, t ropper luXj 1022]. I44
mentary on the I'he H'ciHim; ol PIuIoIoi^y 16 Vincent of Beauvais 1624 |823|. 1. bk 29 Fsir the ideiititications. B.ult 19X1 For the aiihuemhalo ol NuoLi A'Kenluio.
and .Mercury of Martianus Clapella, which II, ch. Ixvn. His musical theory, but not its 12078]. iss. 1X1, n. 1 For 1 iti.in, \ built b\ I sill aiiii sapablc of pl.ising
in Bk IX transmitted a large body of colour, has been discussed by Cdller 1959 Pirotta, '.Musiche intsirno a Fiziano' in iiiK rolones on 132 kess. .niii with wIikIi
CIreek musical theory to the Latin West [21401,29 34- Tici.tiii) 1976 I2234I, 29 14. M Bsinicatti. DomeiiK liino seems to hase been l.iiri-
(Remigius 19(')5 (22I2|, 11, 347). 17 Wagner 19XJ I2244I. espec. T. C. ’ I izians) e la cultura musicale slel suo ili.ir, .M.iniates i<j~u (2187]. 120, 1411!
Macrobius's late 4th-century (lonuncnlary Karp, 'Music', 169-95; Whitney 1990 tempo' in ibid. 461 77. Fsir Fintoretto. 1 lomeiiK liino's work with ke\boo.ir,ls is
on ihe [Dream of Scipio. much read in the 1836], 1 169. Weddingen 19X4 12246], 67-<;2. File mus- paralleled by another niusKian in ho
Mieidle Ages and the Renaissance, also 18 Bryennius 1970 [20911. 174 9. icality ot Jacopo Bassano’s handling of citsle.G B DoiinseeC’ \' P.ilosa,'G B
reported that the chromatic genus was 19 For Aristides' comparison of the arts. colour, 'like a well-tempered instrument Doni. iiuoicologK al arshisot .iikI ho
trowned upon because it induced volup¬ On .Music, 1. in Barker 11 19X9 [991 [. 400; touched by a masterly hand’ was noted bv "1 yra Barberina”’ in t)llesoii ii>xo
tuousness (II. IV, 13; 1952 |2iK6|, 199). see On .Music. 11. iv. 111 ibid., 460. Aristides Boschim, 1674 ] 177]. Pref (2201 ], iXCi I)
also Boethius I 19X9, |iooi|. xxi. The argued that music was superior as an art of 30 P. Preiss, 'Farbe und Kl.itig in sler 43 For Garracci’s skill on the lute and
14th-century Byzantine theorist Manuel imilalion. and this continued to be the basis Fheorie und Praxis der Mamerisiiuis’ in other string instruineiits, see ho obituars
Bryennius still regarded the chromatic of the comparison in 16th-century Venice Peeman 1970 ]2205], 167. Gomanim’s 111 .Malv.oi.i ifMX 11552], I, 42X. but ho
as 'plaintive and pathetic’ and (Palisca 19X5 [2204I, 39X 9). For role as choirmaster of the Mil.inese Aiigu- theoretical interest in music seems to has e
’downcast and unmanly’ (1970 |209l|. Carturio’s use of Aristides, ibid. I74rt, 2O4, stinians is not mentioned 111 M. Goccia’s been strictlv niathenialKal Bril ssorkeil
114-15, 13X 9). 224f See also his On Harmony Ixxxvii r, biography sif him in Di:ionario Hioqrafico 111 Rome, but for other Dut,h p.iinter-
7 Aristides Quintilianus On .Music, 1, ix in on the need for harmony in music, paint¬ de^qli Iialtani, but Coccia does list a public¬ niusici.ins in the north. R.iupp i9^x
Barker 11, 19X9 |99i|. 41S; Athenaeus ing, medicine and social relations. Fins ation, f.’itiizsinicrc spiriiuale, morale e ]2211 ]. 106 29.
Deipnosophislae I The Banquei of the Philo¬ paraphrases Aristides, who was also much d'oiiore. Mantua, 1609. 44 Gureau de la Gh.iiiibre iiiso ]i9o].
sophers), XIV, biXa in Barker 19X4 |2o8o|, used in the encyclopaedia of Ciorgio 31 (i. Gomanuii II l-iqlno. sU'i’crsi del fine I 70rt'
300. Lysander’s style was said to resemble Valla, who had taught at Milan when della Pillura, Mantua 1591, 111 Baroccbi 45 .Mersenne inifi 7 (2193], loot! Des¬
that of the wind instrument, the aulos. Leonardo was there in the early 14X0S 1960-62 ]992], 111 (1962), 36X -70. cartes also reg.irded green .0 the prodiut
which had the almost exclusive capacity (Palisca ibid.. 72rt’; for Leonardo's use of 32 See the biography by H. Polsivedo in ot ’moderate action’ and eipnvalent to the
to play the even more nuanced enhar¬ Valla, Ketiip 19X1 [1247], 250-1). Dizionario Bioy;rafico deytli Iialtani. octave (Darmon 19XS ]i468]. >>71, as did
monic scale (Comotti 19X9 |2io8|, 26f). 20 Richter 1970 [iii8[, I. 76 Xi; Pacioli Arcinibolsio’s grey-scale has been recon¬ Athanasius Kinlier in the complex svstem
Aristides claimed that the enharmonic (1509) 1XX9 [28o[, 1, 3 did, however, like structed by Caswell 19X0 [2103], 157 X, ot correspondences he b.oeii on
scale could be played by only the most Cafftirio, mention colour. Links between who gives a full English translation of d’Aguilon’s diagram (Kemp I9v<i I1529].
outstanding musicians. the careers and thought of Leonardo, Conianini’s text but unfortunately de¬ 2X0; cf .Musiirqia I ntferialis 1650 bk LX.
8 On .Music. 1, i; 11, iv in Barker 11, 19X9 Pacioli and Caffurio have been explored taches the section on the hue-scale from its pt 11. ch. V. (,Ju. I I. bk VII. ch I ) For an
[9911,400,460 1. by Onians 19X4 [2202[, 413 iX. 421 3. context (1 59). attempt to interpret Kircher's scale in
9 On Music, 111, viii in Barker ibid., 506. For Leonardo and Gaffurio, see also Bra- 33 Barascli 197X [ 1168], 179 Xo. Gardano modern terms, Wellek 1903 (2248]. ifiX
10 Pollitt 1974 ji22|. 225 suggests that chert 1971 I2088I.461 6. (1570 ]2093]. Prop. 16X, 175) describes a For the musical activities ot mathemalici-
lottos may be compared to volume or 21 Boethius, On .Music 1, i (Boethius 19X9 system of value scaling closely related to cians at this time, Gohen 19X4 {2107]
pitch in music, but Pliny’s characteriz¬ 11001 j, X). Boethius spoke of the ’learned’ Leonardo on aerial perspective. 46 (aire.iu ,le la Ghambre i6so ]l9o).
ation of It as existing between light and who perceive colour; the passage was 34 Gaswell 19X0 ]2I03]. 161, n. 19 points 2031! For his inriueiice, Feyssedre l>X>7
shade suggests another sort of scale, which repeated 111 the 16th century by Zarlino out that this inference rests on a misunder¬ (2233], 208 10. Kemp i9<zo 11529]. 2X1
was one of the several meanings of lottos in 1573, Proem, 2, but he regarded it simply standing of the Pythagorean system. Zar¬ 47 (,'hromalices, lerlia par t Piilurae It) [ A
musical theory (Aristo.xenus Plenienis of as a pretext for treating theory and pract¬ lino 15XX [2257], bk IV. ch. X\'1L i74f dll Fresiuiy De .drtc (,'raphica. repr 111 Sir
Harmony, II. 37 in Barker 11. 19X9 [991 j. ice together. See also the classical reviva¬ This discussion, published after Arcim- Joshu.i Reynolds, The l.ileiary H iirk,.
153 4, and espec, 17-27). Hiirnuiiif meant list (ialilei 1602 [2130], X2 3, X6, who boldo had returned to Milan, did not 1X52, 11. 273. Roger de Piles 170X (1921].
’fitting-together’, and in musical theory compared the simple rhythms which he allow the possibility of dividing colour on 1(13 already seems to have a vague idea ot
was also linked to the moveinent from favoured to drawing (diseqno) and pitch to a surface except by dividing the surface the p.nnterlv use ot 'i hroniatK]ue', and to
one discrete note to another. Since the colour. Itself For the more predictable ei|U.ition espiate It with discords, or ssitli colouring
harmonai were related to musical modes, 22 Richter 1970 [iii8[, 1, 31-2 (§v;i-2). of light with high pitch and shade with III general.
which were held to have a particular For an excellent discussion of Leonardo’s low, see Testa in Gropper 19X4 I1022]. 48 For the earls studs of the Greek
emotive ertect, this idea may be related to concern for continuity, Koemgsberger 205. 223 and commentary ijXrt; and tiiodes, Nesvtoii I959]2I99]. I. jxs.n 14,
the afTective power of particular combin¬ 1979 I2170I, 6X-75. Mersenne 1636/7 ]2I93]. I, bk II. Prop and for the collaboration svitli I as lor and
ations of colours in compositions (cf 23 Leonardo, like Franciscusjunius in the VI, loort'. Pepusch. P S |ones in Duiion.iry ol
Barker 1, 19X4I2080I. 163-X). 17th century may have had the harmoy;e 35 Kemp 1990 [1529], 274 unaccount¬ Sitentifii Biography, XML sv I.is lor’
11 See CLnser 1965 I75I, 212, n. 65 and recorded by Pliny in mind: his familiarity ably translates ntorello (a dark, blackberry- The MX On .Mutuh is among the lavlor
lX9ff. Sorabji 1972 |2229|. 295-304 points with Landmo’s translation of the Salural like colour) as ’red’. Gavel 1979 I219]. 93 papers at St John’s t lollege. (Cambridge, it
out that in .Melaphysics 1093a. 26 Aristotle Hislory has been demonstrated by Soltiii and pi. Ill has attempted a coloured ss as knoss n to D I lartley 1 l"'4iz ] 2149]. I.
recognized other consonances. See also 1976 |ll40[. 235 4X. For the ertect of reconstruction of Arcimboldo’s svstem. 195). ssho noted that it ss as still prmiarils
Crocker 1963 [2iii|. 192 polyphonic practice on a developing sense but Ignores the evidence ot the grey-scale concerned svith the Dorian scale ot tive
12 Republic (n(rb 6i7d in Barker 11. 19X9 of harmony not as ’scale’ but as a pleasing entirels tones and tsvo semitones
[9911. .17-X. The colours were ’whitish', mixture of simultaneous sounds, C'.rocker 36 L I CM, 1 Arciniboldi musicista’ in 49 Shapiro 19X4 11603], I, s44rt
’reddish’ and ’yellowish'. For analysis ot 1962 [21 loj, espec. 4. Geiger 1954 ]2I32]. 91 3 Fhis interpret¬ 50 Shapiro 1979X0 (2227], !•'>. 11 tx.
this very dirticult description, Lippman, 24 Ricbter 1970 |l 118|, 1, 77 X (§34). ation has rightly been t|uestioned by 19X4 ] 1603]. I. S42I
1963 I2177I. i6f. Plato’s myth was the 25 For the lira da hraccio, Wintertittz 19X2 Preiss in Peeman 1970(2205]. 16X. 51 For indigo, Biernson iu~2 U082].

297
NOTI.S K) riil: I hX'I

S-'i i'l; Ml I .ircn I'jS-; |2i83|, 22s ,iKo I tit) I; tor Le ISIon, see C.istel s review of 74 The scientific poet Erasnuis Darwin 85 For Fechner, Bujic 19X8 |2092|.
letters truiii I' L. M.ieAii.ini ,iiul (iolonllo in Castel 1-37 |2I00|, 14426 h.id .ilready used the sequential nature ot 288-9; also Fechner II, 1898 |2I25|, 216.
M. I aren 111 ibnl .\l I'jNC) |2lX4|, aj t 4 62 C.,istel 1740 |2I02|. a,S4 97 the after-images discussed by Ins son For a modern debate on the correlation
I I'l the ili\ isum of the speetnitn. New ton 63 For I ehbien. Castel m33|209y|, 1447. Robert Waring Darwin in 17S6 as a sign between light and sound. Garner 1978
lOSO |2I9y|. I, \~<< 7: this letter to the iti ja; for the ide.is of de I’lies, who is not ot some neccss.iry link w ith the set|uence I2131I, 2236 Davis 1979 |2II3|, 2iSf.
Uo\ al Soi iet\ in I )eeeinher 1 ti"-; w as first cited, ibid. 1433. trom de Piles 1713 ot musical sounds {llie Botanic (farclen, II, 86 |. L. Hoffmann I 'ersnch einer Ceschichte
piihhsheil 111 I 7s7 |22o6|, ch. .\XI, sit'. Castel .irgucd th.it The Loves of the I’lants, 1789, Interlude 111, der malerischen Harmonie nherhanpt nnd der
52 Shapiro iyS4 |i604|, I. s4('i n. 47- In vermilion fell between orange-red and 111 I i.irwin 1 S06 11023I, 11, 167 8 1), Count Earhenharmonie inshesondere, mit
.mother slr.itt Newton iiotesi ' I he har- tire-red at 7), degrees ot hue (loloris), and S Rumford simil.irly felt th.it the p.ilpably Erldnternngen ans der Tonknnst, nnd vielen
nion\ e\ dtseord .iKo w‘* tire more skilliill sir 9 slcgrces on the value sc.ile (Castel h.irmoiiic relationships ot the comple- praktischen Anmerknngen, Halle, 1786, in
I’.iiiiters observe in eoloiirs' (11, aS). 1739 |2ioi|, .Sly). He otten slrew on de mentaries w'otild give a new impetus to Goethe LA I225I, 1, 6, 1937, 393-9.
53 Uellek I'/i! |224X|. 170. fire Clam- Piles without citing him: sec his account 'instruments for producing that harmony Fioffmann also published a [''arhenknnde fur
brulpe niatheniatieian lUibert Smith of the relative neglect ot colour-study 111 for the entertainment ot the eyes, in a .Mahler innl Eeihhaher der Knnst, Erlangen,
pointed out 111 1741; that Newton’s iiitis- C.istel 1740 121021, a I 2. based on de Piles manner similar to that in which the ears 1798.
K.il seale. while it apreed well enous^h (lySy |I92I|. 166). are entertained by musical sounds’ (Rum- 87 E.g. Suarez de Mendoza 1S90 I1963I,
w ith the pnsmatie eolotirs. w ,is 'not the 64 C. P Telemann Besthreihiinq der .dnyc- ford 1794 |22I9|, 107!); another scientist. 16 (repeated by Gerome-Maesse 1907
properest tor a svsteni ot eoneords', since norqel odor dcs Anqviulai'uiiidials (1739), Sir David Brewster, argued in 1S19 that 11828], 637).
It produced a major third, twei minor repr. 111 Mizler 1743 |2iy4|, II, 269-73. the kaleidoscope, presenting a succession 88 Locke 1973 I2178I, bk III, ch IV, sect.
thirds ,ind tw o fifths, 'sewcrallv mipertect This was a translation from the French, of coloured shapes harmonized according 11. For the historv ot this example in
bv a com 111.I' (17414 |2228|, 42 j, n. e). but the French version in Castel 1740 to the principles ot complementarity, England. Maclean 1936 |2l85|, io6fF; see
54 Clohen |i;.S4 |2107|, 171. The link |2I02|. 4X2-3 was itself .1 re-translation 'realises in the fullest manner the tormerly also Fechner 11, 189S [2125], 216; Suarez
between the two circles was made by from Telemann's Cerman. chimerical idea of an ocular harpsichord’ de Mendoza 1890 |iy63|, 20 (repeated by
Sarpant-Floreiice lyjo |2220|, toj, 112, 65 See the anonymous Explanalion of the (Brewster i8iy |2090|, 68 -y, 131-3). The Gerome-Maesse 1907 |i828|, 638);
ipaff. Zarlino h.id used a series ot circular Oiitlar Harpsiiliord ii/uiii Shew lo the Piihlir kaleidoscope became something ot a topos Wundt 1902-3 [1977I. 11 (1902), 331;
eliayrams to illustrate his six-part system (>737) I7h2, which Schier (1941 |222l|, for the discussion of non-representational Kandinsky 1982 |l686], 1. 1S7; Dehnow
ot consonances as early as 1373 I2256I 1 S3, n. I sS) has .ittributesl to Rondet. The colour in the 19th century: the music 1919 I2114I, 127. For Schoenberg, Craw¬
(31 -2, 41, 43). Newton's first interest in history of Castel’s instrument has been critic Eduard Hanslick linked it with such ford 1974 |2I09|. 388.
the circular arrangement has been traced traced by von Erhardt-Siebold 1931 2 'trivial absurdities’ as the colour-organ in 8y An instance in Ludwig Tieck has been
to a letter of 16144 (Newton lysy- |2I99|, |2i2l|, 333-7, and espec. Wellek 1933 1834, and 20 years later the psychologist noticed by Marks 1973 |2i88|; Wundt
111 (lytii). 343-6. |2247|, 347-73 and 1963 I2248I, 171-6, and aesthetician G. T. Fechner took up the 1902-3 [1977], II (1902), 352, n. I cites a
55 For (leorges Vantongerloo I', lyao, .(cc which cites an tinpublishcd and undated idea more positively, adding his own retercnce in C. Herrmann, .-festhetische
p. 2314. Even more recently Carl Loot has .MS ofCastel’s. Journal des Tranaiix pour son experience of a disc-mixing apparatus Earhenlehre, 1876, 436 de Rochas 1883
argued tor the adaptation of modern ilai'ccin oinlaire (Brussels, Royal Library). such as Rlateau’s (both cit. Bujic 1988 I2214I, 4066 Suarez de Mendoza i8yo
colour-systems which co-ordinate hue. Mason's account, 193S/9 I2189I, 103-16, I2092I. iy--20, 287-9). The toy was still 11963], 20; Souriau, 1893 |958|, 860;
saturation and wilue to the modern octave derives entirely trom Wellek. providing a model for non- Gerome-Maesse 1907 [1828], 638.
(■|)ie Bedetitung der Musik-Cktave ini 66 Guyot 1769 I2146I, 234-40. I owe my representational moving colour tor the 90 Kandinsky 1982 [l686|, I, 182.
optisch-visuellen Bereich der Farbe' 111 knowledge of this, and a photocopy, to early Italian theorists ot abstract film, 91 Both de Rochas 1883 [2214I and
Hering-Mitgau lySo |902|. 227-36). the kindness of |ohn Mollon. Arnaldo Ginna and Bruno Corra {see p. Wundt 1902-3 [1977I, II (1902), 331
56 Newton 1730 11095I, bk lll.ptl.qu. 13. 67 Plateau 1S49 |2207|, 363 -7. For an 243) Arte deli'Avvenire, 2nd edn, 1911 emphasized that timbre was the primarv
57 Sec C. Avison .dii Essay 011 Musisal outline of Plateau's work on colour and repr. in Verdone 1967 [2242), 183. characteristic of music to be felt by syn-
Expression (1733), repr. in Le Huray and movement, Roque lyyo l948|, ly 23. LLis 75 lameson 1844 [2159I, cit. Klein 1937 aesthetics. See also Fischer 1907 |2l28j,
Day lySi I2154I, 61. As late as 1771 experiment seems to have stimulated the I2169I, 188. Klein is the only modern 325; Dehnow 1919I2114I, 127.
Uenjamin Snllingfleet could be puzzled indefatigable Chevreul to make similar writer to discuss Jameson’s pamphlet, 92 For a photograph of the young Kan¬
by the grounds tor Newton's analogy, efforts with spinning discs, and, in con¬ from which he quotes passages on 2-4, 80 dinsky playing the cello, Roethel and
but still accept it, since ‘it tends some way sultation with a Paris organist, he rejected and 18S-9. Benjamin I, 1982 |l933j, 32. For blue,
or other to the perfection ot the universe’ Castel's scale (Chevreul 1879 |2I05|, 1S3, 76 Jameson 1844 |2I59|, 20. For the Kandinsky 1982 [1686], 1, 182.
(1771 I2232I. 146. t;iy6)_. 237flj. borrowings from Goethe and Field, Klein 93 Matisse to Teriade, 1929/30 in Matisse
58 For the review of Newton, Castel 68 F. Webb Panliannonicon, designed as an 1937 I2169I, 80. Field’s equivalents had 1978 [1889], 38. As late as the 1950s
1723 I2095I, 142.S-30, for Newton’s sup¬ illnstration of an cny;raved plate in which is been published in Field 1835 (see Gage Matisse conceived of his large-scale de¬
posed help, Castel October 1733, 20326 alleinpted to he proved, that the principles of 1989 I2017I, nos 43—6). corative works as the orchestral realiz¬
There is no reference to Castel in the full harmony more or less prevail thronphout the 77 See espec. Bouvier 1828 I1655I, 1656 ation of the ‘score’ ot the inaquette, and
account of the reception of Newton’s whole system of nature, hnt more especially in 249 and Storey in The Portfolio VI, 1875, did not want them to be seen together
OptiiEs in France from r. 1719, nor is there the Unman Erame: and that where these III. (Matisse to A. Barr (1954) in Cowart et al.
any extant correspondence with him principles can he applied to works of art, they 78 Johnson 198i-y |l070|, V (1989) no. 1977 11795], 28of).
(Newton, lysy- I2199I, "Vll (1977), l i6f). excite the pleasing and satisfying ideas of 13A 94 Marc to Macke, 14 |anuary 1911 in
In his article announcing work on the proportion and heanty [iSiq], For the link 79 Chenavard to Redon in Redon 1979 Macke 1964 I1879I, 40-1. See also his
harpsichord Castel mentioned New'toii's with Hussey, 1-2, 106 Hussey’s chroma¬ |i7i8|, 63. For Mengs, Wittkower 1962 letter to Maria Marc, 5 February 1911 in
important 'verification' ot the link be¬ tic system was published in Hussey 1736 122531, 149 Gollek 198012141], 116. Paul Serusier had
tween colour and sound in his ‘excellent’ I2155I. 832. There has been no modern 80 Johnson 1981-9 |l070|, 1 (1981), no. already made dissonance a major element
book, but also his own debt to Kircher study of Hussey, but there are some 93, and espec. Kemp 1970 I2164), gyff. in his theory of colour in the i 890s; see his
{Momire ill' Eraiicc, November 1723, 2337, interesting drawings by him in the British Reynolds had argued similarly that draw¬ letter to Verkade of 1896 in Serusier 1950
26ot). The most important modern study Museum, and a painting at Syon House, ing demanded the same constant practice ]2226], 72-3. also 20 November 1905
of Castel remains Seiner 1941 |222i|, Middlesex. The most important sources as a musical instrument (Reynolds 1973 (1 19-22). Macke was studying Serusier’s
whose bibliography of Castel’s writings for his ideas are CL Vertue Notebook. |22I3|, 33). theory in 1911 (Erdman-Macke 1962
is, however, unreliable. December 1743 {Walpole Society, XXll, 81 Delacroix to Chopin, January 1841 in ]2I20], 171 and cf Vriesen 1957 [2243],
59 Ferris 1939 |2I26|, espec. 234, 239. 1933-4, 127-8); Maton 1797 (2190I, 1, Sand 1896 11130], 8iff. The idea is close to 3 15 and no. 254).
Castel’s review of the 'Erailo (Journal tie 33-41; Monthly Magazine, October 1799, one ot Hegel’s in his lectures on aesthetics 95 Marc to Maria Marc, 10 February
Erei’onx. October 1722 I2094I) has been 723-6; Webb in Hutchins IV, 1813 I2153I, (Hegel XW, 1927-8 [1845I, 73-4). Some 1911 in Gollek 1980 [2141], 117.
reproduced in Rameau 1967-72 (2210[, 1, 134-9. links between Delacroix and German 96 Kandinsky 1982 [1686], I. 193. His
xxviiifF. Castel also reviewed Rameau's 69 Ozias Humphry Pocket Book 1, British Romantic musical thought have been letter to Schoenberg is translated in Hahl-
simplified Noiifcaii SYStcnie do Mnsiqne Library Add. ms 22949, folio 103V-106V. proposed by Mras 1963 |2I97|, 270-1. See Koch 1984 ]2I47), 21. See also P. Vergo in
'I'heoriqne (1726) (Castel 172S |2098|, in Some of Duane’s Hussey drawings were also the useful collection of the painter’s Towards a New Art 1980 ]2235j, 35-8.
Rameau ibid., 11, xviitf). acquired by West (Webb |i8i4|, lof; remarks on music in Wiirtenberger 1979 97 See Arnheim 1974 [2076], 346-30;
60 For Rameau's encouragement, Castel Hutchins IV, 1813 [2153I, 13911). I2255I, 36-63. Whitfield and Skitter 1978 ]2249],
August 1735 |2099|, 1640 (in Rameau 70 Field 1S20I2127I, 199,202-3. 82 A. Kersseniakers in Van Gogh 1938 199 206. For Ostwald’s characterization
1967-72 |22I0|, 'VI, 70fl). Castcl’s scale 71 Ibid., 204. For his rejection of Castel's [ 1626], 11, 447. ot the palette based on his system as a
was presented most fully in Castel 1740 system, 226. 83 Van Gogh ibid., no. 339 (?September ‘colour-organ’, Ostwald 193 1-3 ]2203], 1.
|2I02l,221 4. 72 Field 1843 |20I0|, 36-60. 1888). Sec also p. Ch 10 p. 185, n. 53. For i66t, 173. The most extensive survey of
61 For the fundamental white. Castel 73 The painter Guiseppe Bossi invoked the cult of Wagner among Symbolist theories ot harmony in relation to colour-
1726 120971, 4626 for black as funda¬ both Rameau and Fartini in one of the artists, Vaughan 1984 [22411, 38-48. music is Klein 1937 ]2i69j, 61-117.
mental. Castel, 1733 |2099|, 16306, 1662, most systematic early studies of comple¬ 84 Le Huray and Day 1981 [2154], 1006 98 Goethe had made the observation to
2033-3; Castel 1740 |2I02|, 6K, 73 -7; for mentary contrast, LSossi 1821 I2087I, See also Herder Kalligone (1800) in ibid. Riemer in May 1807, and it had been
the practice ot dyers and p.iinters, ibid. 294 314- 236. reprinted in Goethe 1907 ]2I36|, 94. See

298
 \i III s i( I mi Ii \ 1

also (loothc to Meyer, to June 1S07. in 108 Note-, t'roiii ,1 Klee leaure at Desviu. loi L topia in (lerm.ins' in I lu hin.iii ins. 137 t ;r. \ . t l.-n. m.
Cioethe 191'; [>*^34l- IV.I- Kaiulinsks 1927 8 cit. 'Lrt^ka 19-9 |2236|, -s, n. s .. I1407I, 2’.'2 -N I mnp.ir.itis. lal'lc .U tlu 2242! c - tran- 1- .11; A;-.. '. .
quoteil the tag in On r/ir Spinrn,il in . irt See also the coiitlK ting recolkx tiuio nt the - olour-associatioiis oi S. n.ibiii. Sieinei. . 2075,; S. , 1 I.. iuilC! 1 ' ‘ ”.■• ■ ■ ■
(iqXa |i686|. I. i6s, 176. nXi). and in the s'loliniNt Karl (jrehe .iikl I s'onel f einniger K.indinsks and Sihoenbere h.i- iven /t.fif 1 ‘11 I . 'll: -1 ■.11. ;.. I, Ir
liliic Rukr .llniiinth- (Lankheit 1974 l^'72|. in (irote 1959 I2144I, 93. -5; tor Klee's i oinpilesl h\ D Flserlein, T lurlionis. tepi in W M. Til.' A.'-.'! a I , . :
I 12. 170). (uiethe li.ui puked tip the ule.i dislike ot ja//. ibui.. si. "’O. See also the Skrj.ihin und der osieurop.us, he S\ inbol- t olm .Mu-k ' in lucluu.u; 1 1407I
from his reading of Diderot, wlio had important discussion b\ V. (leelli.iar in isnuis' in sun .Maur 19SS '2192]. ,12
called the rainbow the Inissf fciulLtniaiuilf von .M.mr 19.SS I2192I, 423. 42s, (irebe 123 Bes.int iiid 1 e.idhc.iter iv'.i l208p 138 I hen ..'ll.il'i T.iti.-i: i- iiu nt;. .1 icd
ot painting {Us.uii Mir hi /icniri/rc (1766) in noticed the old-t.ishioned sisle ot Klee's r, . I
8 8c!w .i.'il, T .irhlu htniu'-ik un.I .fmti.ik
1 )iderot 196s |2i 17I. I')7X); btit he misread plaving (see Kli-r cf Li iiiii.iqiK 198511 124 Seethedisi ussion ol St riabiii ' .iniui- let Film 111 son .M.iui iv'- 2I92| 1.' n
his source so tar as to imagine that 1 )uierot 121681. 161). t.ited score Bibliothet|iie N.itioii.ile. 4 lor liMliincet. m .d ■■ M.iit.- ;ii
had written of artists who arranged their 109 For Leminger's I 3 fugues. F. I B.uh P.irisi b\ I -H 1 etltTer. i Be I unktion tier I 111 liman m''. ; 1407I. ; 1 i, ,iiul M.-tt, -
palettes 111 the order of the spectrum, ot 111 von .Maur. 1985 I2192I, 331 2. and H 1 uce-Stnmne' 111 Kollerust h ms., I21711. I fiber I'm. ! 21<>6|. I j I ;
which there is no suggestion in the I reiich IF Stuckeiischimdt in ibid., 410, uhuh 131 it 139 lor tKtss.ild. 1 as/lo I'm-.i 2174
(Coethe 1962 I2137I. I. 139-40). for his also (35) reproduces Klee's Pnyin- m Rtd in 125 Msers mis |2I98|. 112 Striabin sin 1 ai/lo - eres-M.ile is repi in son
treatment of Diderot's essay in general. colour. Feimnger felt his love ot Bach thsagrecti ssiih Rnnsks .iboiit IS, ssliith M.mr ivXi 2I92|, no laih He .md
Rouge 1949 [2217]. 227 31'). 'fnuls expression ,ilso in my paintings' he s.iw .is s itilei, aiitl Rnnsks ,is green; the (Ktssald iliared the same publisher, L n-
99 Schoenberg 1966 (22251. S 9. hi one (Hess 1961 |2l_s I |,97t). For Klee'ste.u lung coiitluctor ot the tirsi pertorniaiue ol the e'-iiia ol 1 eip/ig tKtssald built his ossn
ot his references to the C ',i-iicr,illhis.c in 1912 ot value-scales in 1924. Klee 1973 |2i66|. Pioiiiellifio .'^yinpliony in .Mostoss .ind St lolour light imisii apparatus in the late
Kaiulinsky did admittedly show some .TTs 407. Petersburg. Ktuissevitsks, I'elt that 11 ss.o 1920s and oilered 11 to (.ropnis at the
scepticism about the possibility of such a 110 For a structural analvsis of .Wir straw berry-red .Klein 193-I2169I. ,j2i B.iuhaus Ise Cropnis noted that it ssas
ti.xed principle in the niodern world (19S2 Harmony. Kagan 1983 [21611. 76; and for 126 De Sthloe/er i9.s~ I2223I. ss; better than 1 aszlo's Diars. m lime i<;2',
|i686|. I. hj6). .-!i/ Parnassiiin. 853). F.berlein in vtiii .M.iur i9Xs |2I92|, 342 kiiidls conimumcaled hs Dr .Anna Ross-
100 nggeling’s Malcriiil for a 'riioroui^h- Ml Diary. 3 Ntivember 1918 111 Rot/ler For Kandinsks's experiments 111 revo- land' I as/lo ibid . s in seems to lontiise
Biiis oj thiiiilini; was published in .■liiloloi’ic 1972 |22i6|. fii; B. B.unnaini, 'Das ent- lution.irs Russi.i with the daiuer .Mexaii- Klee s I iiyiie in Rid ssiih ssork bs 1 emiti-
Ditdii, 15 May 1919: see t^'Konor 1971 scheidende j.ihr' 111 lolianno Illoii 1980 tier Sacharori. who evtilveil ti.inces trans- ger For teehng. I aszid m2sb |2I75|. 11.
|2200|. 201-4. Although he was familiar I2158I, 31 4; tor a structural analysis of l.iting the p.iinter's watercolours itito fiSo t,
with Kandinsky’s writing (ibid, his Itten's 1916 painting Der /j.ii/i-.S.iin>cr. F. movetnent. J. I i.ihl-Koch in son .Maur 140 Sec the bibliugr.iphs m .Mahling
iimiicdiate stimulus was conversations T. Bach in von Maur 19S5 |2I92|, 331. ihicL, 355. I92fi 118801. i-o 1. and .Aiisi blitz inzr.
with the composer Ferruccio Busoni, the 112 D. Bogiier, 'Musik und bildende 127 Klein 1937 |2i69|, 9. 1 he outbreak I2074I. i.D; tor a neg.itise response bs an
second edii of whose Entwiirf eiiwr iiencn Kuiist in Wien' 111 von Maur ibid.. 350-2, ot svar preventetl this concert's taking experimental psvchologist, (ioKIsilimidt
Aesllietik Jer ToiikuiiM had been published and col. pi. p. 67. place. Rnmngton's osvn colour- 192- .s |2I39|. s. 11.31 2.
in 1916 (see the extracts trails, in Bu|ic 113 Diary, July 1920 in Rotaler 1972 corresptindences svere basetl on analogies 141 See von .Maur i9.Xs |2I92|. 212: lor
1988 |2092|. 388-94 and O'Konor 1971 |22i6|. 72. For a reproduction of the betsveen the niusit.il stale and the spec¬ Fisi lunger s B.iih-inspired Motion Paint-
|220o|. 39. 101). Eggeling worked with colour-sphere. Dor Ham; znni Gosanil- trum, and ssere thus diderent t’rom iny \o. I 1194''). ihiiL. 221..
light and was thus more interested in the knn.ilnrrk 198; |2148|, 379. Itten seems to ■Scriabin's: his I S was green aiul his L 142 See the long and illuminating list ot
additive than the subtractive primaries; have devised his grey scale according to a yellosv (A. W. Rnmngton. ('.oloiii-.Mii.'.ic. (lermaii patents tor eolour-imisu devues
but until his death in 1925 he worked geometrical progression (Diary, 5 |ulv I'lie .-in of Mohile (’oloiirs. 1911, 177). 111 Coldschmidt 192" 8 I 2139]. - Ill
almost exclusively in black and white 1919 in Rotzler ibid., 65). 128 Plummer 191 s |22o8|. 343. 350 1. 143 .An exception ssas the colour-piano
(O’Konor ibid.. 45. 56. 98). Van 114 See Itten in Johannes llien 1984 129 .Vcir 'fork Tunes. 21 .March, 191 5. cit. lies ised by a pupil of Itten's. sshich he
Doesburg’s Tliorouiili-Biiss of Paintin^^ was I2157). 176—7; and tor a collection of these Klein 1937 |2l69|, 248. described in a letter to 1 l.iiier ot .Novem¬
illustrated in the journal C.- Zeilsclirifi fur harmonies. Itten 1961 |2I56|. 130 .As svas pointed out by Washton- ber 1919 lilt, Rot/ler 19-2 |22i6). fi-l. It is
ckmcniare Gestaltiini^, 1923 (repr. in To¬ 115 Moiulrian, Jazz and Neo-Rlastic' in Long 19S0 |2245|. 57lf. For Scriabin. just possible that this pupil was I iidssig
wards a S'ew Art 1980 I2235I. 140). He was I loltzman and James 1987 I2152I, 219. Weber and Lederer. Kolleritsch 19S0 Hirschteld-.Maik. who seems to have
an admirer ot Eggeling. discussing his 116 Troy 19.84 I2238I. 645. For van I21711. 54, 134 6. joined Itten s class at the Baiihaus in
work several times in Dc5fi;7(lV. 5. 1921. Doesburg's painting of 1918/9, Blotkamp 131 Flahl-Koch 1984 I2147I, 96. For the ('ictober
71-5; VI. 5, 1923. 58-62). as well as et al. 1986 I2084I, 25 7. Mondrian's '.di¬ link svith Kandinsky, tirassford 1974 144 See von .Maur 1985 |2I92|. 216 1-.
publishing an article by Hans Richter on stract' style ot dancing in Paris was ex¬ 121091,587 94. The most circumstantial account of the
him. which includes a definition of Ckni- perienced by Nelly van Doesburg (1971 132 See Schleinmer's Diary. December origin ot these compositions is in a letter
eralbass as a language of torm (Dc Slijl. IV. |2ii9|. 180-1) and in New York by Max 1912 in Schlemmer 1972 (22221. “ 8; for from Hirschfeld-.Mack to Standish
7. 1921. I 10). For van Doesburg's early Ernst (1944 |2I22|. 25). the 1912 correspondence svith Schoen¬ Lasvder in 1965. cit. Cilbert nXi6 I2134I.
interest ill Kandinsky. Baljeu 1974 I2079I. M7 See Holtzman and James 1987 berg, von Maur 1979 [21911. I. 39. For 1 It. The tornis are close to some of Klee's
16. I2152I, 222. For Mondrian's Po.x-Trol Schleinmer's staging of Die Cfliiekliche 1921 ss atercolours such as I nyne in Red.
101 See Schmoll 1974 I2224I. 325-43; painting (1920), Troy 1983 I2237I. 93; for Hand, tiurjel 1975 |2I I2|. 378. Reconstructions of several ot
Wiirteiiberger 1979 I2255I. 172-83. and the others. K. von Maur. 'Mondrian uiul 133 See his account in Kandinsky 1982 Schsvertteger's compositions svere filmed
espec. F. T. Bach. 'Johann Sebastian Bach die Musik im "Stijl"' in von Maur 1985 116861. II. 750-1. The staging ss as by Paul 111 1967, and are available from various
in der klassischen Moderne' in von Maur |2I92|, 402. Klee's son Felix: see his annotated score Cerman Covernment Film Libraries
1985 [2192I. 328-9. 118 Rosenfeld 1981 |22I5|,62. nosv iti the Pompidou Centre. Pans (repr. Hirschteld-Mack s compositions ssere
102 Marc to Kandinsky. 5 October 1912. 119 finest 1948. |2[45|, 53-6. in Derouet and Boissel 1985 |2II5|, 314); also interesting to psychologists, and per¬
in Lankheit 1983 I2173I. 193; Klee 1976 120 LRshop 1893 I2083I, 17. Bishop's see also N. Kandinsky 1976 |2l62|, 153. haps his last performance svas given at the
I2167I. 108. attempts to develop his instrument, first 134 H.ihl-Koch 1984 I2147I. toi. .Ano¬ invttation of Ceorg .Anschutz at the Con¬
103 Levin 1978 I2176I. 44. demonstrated in New York in 1881. ther painter suggested svas Alfred Roller, gress ot Psychologists for Colour-Sound
104 Ibid.. 129. For Russell's musical included the destruction of three versions svhom Schoenberg kness tor his innova¬ Synaesthesia. I Limburg 1930. See also
tastes, see also Levin in von Maur 1985 by fire (12. 16). tive stage-lighting. Coldschmidt 1927.8 |2I39|. 8. 31
I2192I. 370. 121 S. Stein 1983 I22311, 6iff. For Appia, 135 Cinna in Vertlone 1967 |2242|. 21, 145 I Ins has been explored ertei tively bs
105 Levin 1978 |2I76|. 23. I'otir-Part Syn- Bablet 1965 I2077I. 263. Ciiina and Corra used the example ot .Moritz 111 Luchman 198/1 |i407|.
clironiy. not inappropriately for a fugal 122 For Scriabin's scale, Motte-Haber W'agner several times in their .Iric 297 .? M.
composition, is reproduced up>side-down 1990 I2196I. 67. The Theosoplncal scale is i/c//'.di’i'cii/rf (1910). 2nd edn 1911 repr. in 146 Creenesvalt 1918 |2142|. 2 fair a
in von Maur 1985 |2i92|. 95. For a in Besant and Leadbeater 1961 |2o8i|, ibid., 178. 183. Cinna cited Besant anil chapel concert in 1939. Creenesvalt 194/1
discussion of the arrangement of the frontispiece. Scriabin's brother-in-law Le.idbeater's Thoniflit Ihnnis as similar in |2I43|. 262.
panels. Agee 1965 I2073I. 53. Boris de Schloezer attested to his know¬ spirit to modern painting in Pilinra 147 The 1919 light-score tor the Beeth¬
106 Tudor Hart 1918 [2239. 2240]. ledge of their writings (de Schloezer 1987 deir.Jrrenire (1915) (ibid., 208). oven sonata, in red. green and purple, is
452 6. 480 <). In 1920 the Caiiihridiif I2223I, 66); for his general contact with 136 For chromatic dramas, (iinna and repr. in Creenessalt 1946 (2143I. 401; tor
.\/iii>iJ2itif published a musical analysis of a Theosophy. 11. Weber, 'Zur (ieschichte Corra (1910) in Verdone 1967 |2242|. Debussy. Creenessalt 1918(2142!. i s
still-Iite by Duncan (irant according to der Synasthesie, oder. von der Schwierig- 185 7. They sass a precedent in the 148 Ziiczer 1981(22581, 122
Tudor Hart's principles (X. 61 and fig. keiten, die luce-stiimne in Pronnllifii.\ zu performances to light accompaniment ol 149 For Bragdon's organ, whiih he soon
facing p. i) and in 1921 Tudor Hart interpretieren’in Kolleritsth 1980I2171I. the American dancer Loie Fuller, ss ho abandoneil. Chenes 1932 |2I04(. 18-
published a critique of Ostwald (ibid.. 54-5. Kandinsky in 1912 described described, in the tradition ot Fi-re. boss 150 Bragdon 1918 (2089!, 1 3/'. tor auto-
106 9). For a critique of his own theory. Scriabin's system as close to that ot the dilFerent lights obliged her to make ditfer- noms. 139
Klein 1937 |2i69|. 102 6. For col. repro¬ Russian Theosophist A. Zakh.irin- ent mosemeiits (1 . Fuller (Juin:e ans dt 151 Wilfred 194- I2250). 252. For the
ductions of I'udor Hart's work. Unkowskv, for whoxe relationship to nia me (1908), cit. Popper 1967 |2208|. 2.X) design. Stein 19-1 (223o(. -s. for the

MacCIregor 1961 |2i8i|. Kandinsky see R. ti. W.ishton-Long. 'F.x- For the colour-piano. Corra (1912) in Institute, Bornstein 1975 (2086(. 251
107 I eviii 1978 I2176I. 14. pressionism. Abstraction and the search Verdone ibid.. 246 152 .Moholv-.Nagv 1922 (2195I. |i»i
 NOT! S TO ITU- TEXT

Siiiiu r.itluT tw ('-LliiiK'nsion.il lonipc- 12 For the ‘nurms' of |,ip.incse design. is there set at 00 (yellow), 67 (blue) and 33 Aubette in Strasbourg in 1927 (Baljeu
.itioii' b^• \\ iltVct-l. to whu h Moholv ni,i\' Cfstwalil in lungh.inns 1982 I2329I. 172. (crimson), as is the pencilled-in triangle 1974 |2079|, 36. 172-3). In De Stiff VII,
bi. referring, won.- published in /'/lojfrc For (')stw,lid's ‘improx'cments', Ostwald on van Doesburg's copy, inscribed by 1926, 4of van Doesburg showed that he
-Iff.' A/iip.jci/ir in luee, and are repr. by L. 1922 I2336I, 2 3. This book ,ilso includeil him 111 1918 (Doig 1986 |2297|. 88, fig. was not averse, in theory as well as in
I leildersun, 'Mvstieisni, Ibinianticisni {1 I 1) an attack on F.xprcssiomsm. 33). Husz.ir's paintings are reproduced in practice, to using earth colours as ‘va¬
aiui the fourth dimension' in Ttuhnian 13 Floltzman and |.mics 1987 |2I32|, 13. S. Ex, ‘Viliiios I lusz.ir’ 111 Blotkamp et al. riants'. In the late 1920s he was parti¬
11407I, aay. For the be.ich scenes ot Mondrian and ipSti I2084I, 98 101. which IS the best cularly concerned about the theory ot
133 Klein li;_0 |2l69|. i'^- -<->■ For Toorop, Herbert 1968 |23i8|. nos 147, account in English; but see also Bajkay colour, and hoped to bring out a second
lirapdon's dislike of industrial and Ins 1984 I2267I, 311 26, which has a rather Bauh.ius Book, a .\'ene Cestaltungslehre
174.
love of natural erteets. Bragdon luos 14 R. P. Welsh. ‘Sacred geometry: imaginative account of Huszar’s use of which would begin with a whole volume
[2089]. 127, 140. For the rapid stKiession French Symbolism ,ind early Abstraction’ (.)stwald. on colour (Doesburg to Moholy-Nagy.
of 'VC'ilfred s instruments. Stein lyyi in Tuchinan 1986) I1407I. 83. 31 See Ostwald 1931 -3 |2203|. 1, 83 for 16 August 1928 111 van Doesburg 1983
122301, 12 14. and tor the pertormanees 13 Welsh and loosten 1969124021,21. the role of green. In a letter to Beekman ot I2296I. 1 i.St’).
b\ 'Wilfred's pupil. Feniiimore (ieriier. at 16 ‘The New Plastic in Painting' (1918) 4 M.irch 1919 1 lusz.ir wrote that Glstw.ild 48 M. Kiiper, ‘Gerrit Rietveld' 111 Blot¬
the B.iris Exposition eles Arts Deeoratits, in Holtzman and James 1987 |2I32|, 36. had shown him that the primary colours kamp et al. 1986 I2084I, 272 3.
I V2s. Mont/ 111 Tuehnian lySU 11407I. 22y. The book of which this article formed a were not three, but infinite (Ex and Hoek 49 Rietveld ‘Insight’ (1928) in Brown
154 Cihenev 1932 |2I04|, i So, iSS. part w.is largely written in 1914 and 1913 1983 I2301I, 203). 1938 I2275I, 160.
155 Wilfred 1948 I22511, yo. (ibid., 27). Mondrian was still arguing in 32 For grey, see Husz.ir’s 1918 review 50 Mondrian to van Doesburg, 3 Sep¬
156 'Wright iy2,3 I2254I.6S. these terms in the late 1920s: see E. Hoek, (above, n. 28), 113. The best reproduction tember 1920, in Holtzman and James 1987
137 Cloldsehmidt 1927/8 |2I39|, passim. ‘Piet Mondarian' in Blotkamp et al. 1986 is in Ex and Hoek 1983 (23011, 48, fig. 72, |2I52|. U-T
138 See the examples of both illustrated I2084I, 69. and cf. 49-30 for a general discussion of it. 51 Composition, reprod. in black and white
111 lones 1972 |2i6o|. 24. 26. 2S-30, 96. 17 ‘Natural reality and abstract reality' 33 See the reproduction by Ex in Blot¬ by Gast in Blotkamp et al. 1986 [2084I,
139 C. Seott Music, its Secret liiflueuce (1919/20) in Holtzman and |ames 1987 kamp et al. 1986 I2084I, 98, fig. 83. 244, fig. 229, where it is dated 1918.
iliroiic;houl the .dyes' (ny.sS), eit. Clodvvin I2132I, 86, 100. 34 De Stijl. 11, 12, 1919, 143. 52 Ibid. 249.
lySf. |2I33|. 2S6. 18 Besant and Leadbeater 1961 |2o8l|, 35 ‘Die Harmonic’ der Farbeii’, De Stiff 53 ‘Unite' (1920) in Vantongerloo 1924
32, fig. 40; For a col. pi. ot Lnolution. C. 111, 7, 1920, 61. The article had originally I2394I, 26-9, 37. The fullest account of
Blotkamp, ‘Annunciation of the new appeared in Innen-Dekoration in 1919. Vantongerloo’s theory is Roque 1983
mysticism: Dutch Symbolism and early 36 For Mondrian and symmetry, ‘The I2370I. 103-28.
14 Colour without Theory
Abstraction’ in Tuchinan 1986 I1407I, New Plastic in Painting’ (1917) in Holtz¬ 54 Vantongerloo 1924 I2394I. 39.
1 Von Scidlitz lyoo I2384I. 32. This same tot, fig. 17. man and James 1987 |2I52|. 40. The 55 ‘L’art ancien et Part nouveau’ (1921) in
tendeney was recognized by an opponent 19 Schure 1912 I2383I, II, 61. The white statement was reprinted in De Stiff V, 12, Vantongerloo 1924 I2394I, 18-19. The
of Impressionism, who linked the liking light playing round Mondrian's central 1922, 183. painting is repr. by Gast in Blotkamp et al.
for colour with 'brute matter' (Caussy figure may be identified with the ‘intelli¬ 37 Ex in Blotkamp et al. 1986 |2o84|, 99. 1986 I2084I, 233, tig. 240 (black-and-
1904 |228o|, 639). gible light' of the female, Mitra (ibid., 38 Holtzman and [ames 1987 |2I52|, 36. white).
2 SchefHer lyoi, I2373I, 187. Kandinsky Grey remained a diflicult concept in De 56 ‘Unite’ in Vantongerloo 1924 I2394I,
cited this article in iyi2 (Kandinsky 1982 20 Holtzman and James 1987 |2I52|, 36. Stijl: van Doesburg regarded it as the non- 40. It may be significant that the only
|l686|, 1, i6[). 21 Schure 1912 I2383], II, 40-2, quoting chromatic equivalent to red, which book on physics found in Vantongerloo’s
3 Cit. G. Kahn, ‘Seurat' (1891) in Broude Reichenbach Researches on .Magnetism woiilel require a more Goethean concep¬ library was a French textbook published
1978 I1443I, 22. Electricity and Light, 1830. For a brief tion of the relationship of blue to yellow in the year of his birth, 1886 (Gast in
4 Blanc 1867 11436]. .395. The idea that account of Reichenbach, W. V. Farrar in than he seems to have supported (van Blotkamp et al. 1986 |2o84|, 237, n. 38).
colour, unlike drawing, is unteachable has the Dictionary of Scientific Biography. Doeshurg 1969 |2296|, fig. 1. and p. 15). 57 ‘Unite’ in Vantongerloo 1924 I2394I,
a history going back at least as far as El 22 Schoenmaekers 1913 I2379I, 94; also This discussion of colour had not ap¬ 29-36. His later and very precise struc¬
Greco (see p. Ch. 7 p. 138 and Facheco 1936 97 for the male as intellectual and the peared in the first version of this work tural use of algebra has been analysed by
I2360I, 1. 440); Le Blond de la Tour and de female as corporeal. (1919), (1983, 22). CoLiwenbergh and Dieu 1983 [2286],
lilies in Teyssedre 1963 |i62o|, 6y, n. 3, 23 Schoenmaekers 1913 [2380], 223-7. 39 Mondrian to van Doesburg, 13 Feb¬ 86-104.
194,11. 3; Lairesse 1738 11339], 133; Castel For radial movement, Schoenmaekers ruary 1919, cit. Hoek in Blotkamp et al. 58 Henry, n.d. I2317I, espec. VII, 728-36
1740 |2I02|, 21-2; Valenciennes 1800 1913 [2379I. 94- 1986 I2084), 34-3. Mondrian’s am¬ on compilementary colours.
|ll30|, 402-3; for the ‘grammar’ of 24 Holtzman and James 1987 [2132I, 36. bivalence about the relationship ot his 59 Mondrian to van Doesburg, 19 April
colour. Field 1830 I2303I, Cjiiichard 18S2 Schoenmaekers had referred to Goethe’s work to ‘nature’ was very marked at this [920, cit. Gast in Blotkamp et al. [2084]
123131. The Purists seem to have been the Theory of Colours, Didactic Part [1833], time (ibid., 30). 1986, 248.
last theorists to sustain the old dichotomy §§765,780,794,802. 40 Mondrian to van Doesburg, 3 Sep¬ 60 Mondrian to van Doesburg (1920) in
ot disei^tio and colore in favour of di's'cyiio 23. Sec his letter mentioning Blavatsky’s tember 1918, cit. Ex in Blotkamp et al. ibid., 234.
(Ozenfant andJeanneret lyiS I2339], 35). Secret Doctrine to van Doesburg in 1918 1982 [2273], 107. This passage is not 61 Huszar 1918 (above, n. 28), 115. Van¬
3 See his assistant Arnaud on his ‘langue (Blotkamp in Tuchinan 1986 11407], 103); included in the version of the letter trans. tongerloo in 1931 was anxious to detach
Limverselle des couleurs’ {1886) in Reynes also Hoek in Blotkamp et al. 1986 I2084I, in Blotkamp et al. 1986 I2084I, 103. For himself from the ideas of other members
1981 I2369I, 181. 49. But Blavatsky had no theory ot Vantongerloo, N. Gast in ibid., 249. of De Stijl, and to argue that they had had
6 Kandinsky 1982 ll686|, 1, 161. See also colour, introducing a number ot tra¬ 41 Blotkamp 1973-6 |2272|, 103. almost no contact with each other (letters
the Austrian poet Hugo von Hofmann¬ ditional three, four, five and seven-colour 42 Schumann 1900 I2382I. 11-12. to B. Oud in Internationaal Centrum voor
sthal Briefe des Ztiriick^ekehrtett (1901) in theories into her eclectic compilation. The 43. See, eg., the stories in Holtzman and Strnctnnranalyse en Constrnctivisme, Cahier
Hofmannsthal 1931 I2323I, 332. Secret Doctrine. 188S [2271], I, 125, 464, James 1987 [2152I. 7. 1, 1983, espec. 132, 138, 149).
7 Ostwald 1926-7 [2338], III, 333. There and 11, 622, 628—9. The book had heen 44 Westphal 1910 |ll55|, espec. 226-9. 62 A. Hoelzel, ‘Einziges iiber die Farbe in
15 a substantial entry on Ostwald in translated into Dutch in 1908-9. 'Westphal pointed to the painterly expe¬ ihrer bildharmonischen Bedeutung und
Supplement I to the Dictionary of Scientific 26 The best account of van der Leek in rience ot at least one observer making Auswertung’ repr. in Venzmer 1982
Biography (igyS). English is by C. Hilhorst in Blotkamp et these contusions. For other Mondrian I2397I. 222, 223-5.
8 For the general reception of the book, al. 1986 [2084], 153-83. For his views on paintings in public collections, using 63 Hoelzel 1919 [2322], 580.
Ostwald ibid.. Ill, 336. It was translated colour and light, see his essay,‘De plaats yellow-green and green at this date. Com¬ 64 Ostwald 1926-7 I2358I, III, 394, 437f
into English as Letters to a Painter on the van het moderne schilderen in de archi- position with Red, Bine and Yellow-Creen Hoelzel’s version of the affair is in Hoelzel
Theory and Practice of Painting, Boston, tectuur’, De Stiff 1, i, 1917, which is (1920), Ludwigshaten, Wilhelm-Hack 1919 I2322I, 577-80. One of the ‘his¬
1907. For Klee, Klee iy7yb I2334I, I, 430. available in a French trans. in Bart van der Museum (repr. in K. S. Champa, .Mon¬ torians’ was probably P. F. Schmidt, who
Klee’s diary entry for May/June 1904 Leek 1980 |2393|, 57-8. drian Studies, 1983, 83 and pi. 14); Compo¬ had published a swingeing account of
(Klee 1937 [1691], no. 561) was far less 27 See Hilhorst in Blotkampi et al. 1986 sition XIII (1920), Private collection, re- Ostwald's presentation (Schmidt 1919
positive. I2084I, 163. For colour reproductions of prod. Cologne, Galerie Gmurzynska. I2378I, 704ff). For the Werkbund context
9 Ostwald 1926-7 [2338I, 1, 30, and III. van der Leek's work at this time, R. W. D. Mondrian nnd De Stiff 1979, 181. and the atmosphere at the Stuttgart
338, 403; for the meeting with Munsell, Oxenaar, ‘Van der Leek and de Stijl, 45 Hoek in Blotkamp et al. 19S6 I2084I, conference, see also Campbell 1978
111. 63f See also Nickerson 1976 [2351I, 1916-1920’ in Friedman 1982 |2306|, 59- 12278], 138-9 and Parris 1979 [2362],
70. 68-79. 46 Carmean 1979 I2279I, 79, 83. This 67-76.
10 For the Farbschau in 1914, Ostwald 28 V. Huszar, ‘lets over die Farbenfibcl catalogue includes a technical examin¬ 65 Van de Velde 1962 [2396], 293-4; ‘-'f
1917 [23331, 367. The Farhenfihel has been van W. Ostwald', De Stifl, 1, 10, 191X, ation ot Diamond Painting in Red. Yellow also van de Velde 1902 [2395]. i87f For
translated by F. Birren, based on a later I 13-18. and Bine (1921), which was repainted in his painting, Herbert 1968 |23l8|, 187-90.
edn, as Ostwald The Color Primer [2357I. 29 Letter to C. Beekman, September 1922/4, 1925 and 1923/7. 66 Hoelzel 1919, [2322], 577.
11 Ostwald, ‘Normen’, Jii/ir/iiif/i des deut- 1917 in E.x and Hoek 1983 |230l|, 196. 47 Doig 1986 I2297I, 90. See, e.g.. Com¬ 67 See Gropius to his mother c. April
schen Werkhundes, 1914, 77, repr. in Jung- 30 The circle is reproduced in col. in Ex position in Discords (1918) and the designs 1919 in Isaacs 1, 1983 [2325], 212; also to
hanns 1982 /2329I, 172. and Hoek ibid., 168, fig. 67. The triangle for the cinema and dance-hall at the Cafe Ernst Hardt, 14 April (ibid., 208). Bruno

300
 N< in s i< I I in 11 \ I

Aillor, the cditiir of' Itten\ tirM piihlic- the timetable ot (,rnnJlehre in 192 s <k 98 l or till- leiture-'. b.1.1,1 1. |,js; 2 32Sj .111, 'lls t. .1 c. \ -.112 1 ..T" . ■ , ■, 11.-I
.itioii at Weimar, I'lopui: Dokiiiiictilc i/cr including his 'elementare (iest,iltung'. 41 s I ho mas have been .11 the m\ it,itk>n ill, I- :i;', s. s /,
W'trkitilikeil |226o|. wliieli piihlohed ibid., 103s Ct' ,ilso io-:’X for rerkiio 111 ot the ilesigner Herbert B.iser ( ,ihen ntantt. II .us /'.; . cc .;.-.i 1,'. |.,
Itten's eolour-star. argued that his Hoel- 1928. The ('.riithllehrc. which iiuTuded I9X4 I2283]. 341’ K.mdinsks ■- B.iuh.iii' ss cr,- F..gills ,lcs. npt'.-, . ,1 1 .
zehaii eoncerii for the 'grammar' of art value-scales, primarv colours, the colour- leiture notei base been poorU ediied ind I 10 Br, \ :.ui I , Bv'i , ,• • -
distinguished him from the F.xpressiomsts sphere .ind peripheral colour-si.ile ' I0201, tr.insl.ited b\ B Seri in his 1 reiu h i dn ot . fi'i.
(Adler in Baird lytx; |2266|. iXt'). See also seems to have been t.iught specitic.iIK to the p.nnter's \s rmngs ,rit-111. ig-s . .md B.iris. I,/1. Si, .lls,. tlk- n. .f. I • - i-..
Muehe lyt'i.t, I234HI, iCiri on Itten's weaving students (1077 9; if, (,111/1,1 seis.ir.iteK .IS .1 p.iperb.ii k K.mdinsks igx.t original Italian , ,ln hs M-,i,s,
'pedagogieal chess-board motif, as tile Slohl 1987 12390], I 29); It w as not ment¬ 1863] 1 hi- dlsi usslon ot tfstw.llds li', . /, ii./.iii.i . n.'iii , \\l\ ! ■, - ,2346
basis for his formal teaching at the ioned among the compulsors bask design ture Is on x.( ot this latter \ ersion. sandss 1- s J ~ ‘;
Hauhaus. courses in a programme of that sear I hed bet ween notes ot 1929.1111! i92s.,itid 111 R 1 F-l.iiiii.is. 1 .1 I uiiui ti I ji .-
68 FSir contrasts, Itteti /■riii;»«einiiri,((die,< (Wingler 1973 |2072|, 144). there is another reference to the leiture 111 R Hel.iun.is o,-- '2291], U" Hu tl-.c
{|i;i6) in Uotzeler lyya |22i6|, 211; for 79 Kandinsky 19X2 11686|, 1. 4(10. June 192- on 22 1. 1 or Kandinsks's use ot general iisc ot :lu iiriii pi.iiuiihsti
Rnnge, AiUcr ig2i |226o|, 7g X i; for the 80 Wingler 1973 I2072I. Xo, ()st\\ald. Boling 19X2 ]2366|. r.i . r,/, - Ir.nue. Sesernii to (. Sp,.c;,r. i-.
colour-star, see n. 67. 81 Kandinsky 1982 (l686|, II, 301. (hie ot Ills I hiet sourn-s 111 these se.irs. J.niu.iis 1914 III .b.liiri 19s' I1744 1.
69 For Schlemmer and Runge, (F 82 The questionnaire was first repro¬ Felix Krueger's journ.il .Vem l'sy,holoyis- 312 Sign.k h.kl been .it p.iiiis i-spl.nn
Schlemmer 1927 (2376I, 1; see also F, duced by Rudensttne 19X1 I2374I, iii, ihe Slinhen. \s as not uiii run al of Ostw aid the ditlereiii e betw eeii the dis idc,!' tom h
Schlemmer 1972 I2377I, 121. For Klee on and discussed by (... V. Boling in KanJin- le.g. II. 192(1. 9). ,nid the mere 'point', but he ,hd not use
Runge as the theorist most relevant to ^ky: Rtissiati and Hankaii^ )'ear> 19X1 99 Wingler 1973 ]2072], 1 .| s .ind photo- the term divisionist Signa, |,/f.4 | 1607],
painters, I’etitpierre 1957 I2363I, 33. C!f I2330I, 27- X, and Fodder 19S3 12342], Xo gr.iphs. 4r)(i .See .ilso Boling I9"*t l.'l 12 :
also Boling 1976 I2365I, iX; Klee 1979a and 2X0, n. 46. For a Clerman trails, of the 112 I rut,/,'ll .V,’ i repr iiin'l in (.iigi’i-’-
U.3h4|.33
|2333|. transcript Xi; d riska 1979 |2236|, svhole, Wassily Kaniliiifky 19S9I2331I too Klee 1979b ]2334]. 11, MSI. helm .Museum tn~i. ‘>2 t t hii- ot thi-
59 60, 83 Kandinsky ()n the Spinlual in Arf in 101 Boling 1973 12364], 32 earhest .iiid most represent.uion.il ot the
70 For Itten, see his letter of 1 )uly 1920 to 19X2 116861. 1, 163, I Xo 9. 102 1 Film 19X3 |23 14], 24 3.93,102 series in the iioii-dotted stvie is repr in
another former member of the 1 loelzel 84 Bowit 1973/4 |2274|. 20” 9. 103 Von l-rffa 1943 l-.ioo], 16 iX, ml in Roheil el .Si'in.i Delaunay I'/Ss
circle, Hans Hildebrandt, In Rotzeler 85 Wick in Johannes Ilten 19X4 12157], (Irunow's contribution to the 1923 Fxhi- I2294]. ti4. no 29 I Ills catalogue repro¬
1972 |22i6|, 72. For Klee, Betitpierre 1937 116. Hoelzel had proposed a circular red bition catalogue, ' The creation of living duces ,1 number ol the senes, and there are
I2363I, 33; and letter to Hildebrandt in and rectangular blue, as well as a trian¬ torni through colour, form .ind sound', other collections ot col reprodmtions in
Klee 1961 [1074I, 322. Klee's strictures on gular yellow (van Biema 1930 I2270], has been trails, in Wingler 1973 ]2072]. Vriesen and Imd.ihl i9''~ I2398I. tigs -
the notion of colour-laws and on the grey 186). 99 71 ,md Rohen Delaunay I2293]. i2~ 34
content of colours in the 1921/2 Batihaus 86 Hirschfeld-Mack 1963 ]232o], 6. In an 104 Ostwald 192(1 7 12358], 111, 409f Hie tullest studies .ire b\ Sp.ite i9-'9
lectures were clearly aimed at (Fstwald experiment conducted by the psycholo¬ 105 1 he scientist in question \s as the 12388], iX' 203, and for the d.iting 3~s (1.
(Klee 1979a I2333I, transcript 101-2), gist R 11. (loldschmidt, apparently dur¬ opthalniologist F. Cu.iit.i, whose La and Winter 19X4 ]2407|. 34 42 lor
71 For Muche at the Sturm school, ing much of the 1920s, a single observer, S(ien;a ilei lolon e la pnuira h.id been Breviati's discussion of tr.nisp.ireiu \ and
Miiche 1963 I2348I, ibtf, 229, andjacoba tested at intervals of more than a year, published in 1X93: see Ar,lnri 196X I1745]. Us techniques, 1929 ]2368]. 1421! cl
van Heemskerk to fF Walden, 13 August associated yellow with the triangle (but 1. 2XXt tor Breviati's letter to his brother ot also .A .\iorbelh La 1'/./ (,'rii,/.s del Dii -
1917 in Jacohit I'titi Heemskerk 19X3/4 on one occasion with the square), blue 24 January 1X94. Cuaita was none the less i.sii'/n.'/tie (1912 141111 ArJnri i9('X|l745|.
|23i6|, 108, no, 43, For Klee, van Heems¬ w-ith the circle, and red with the square cited ill Breviati 1929 12368], 60. 1, 142 4. which cued the ex.iniple ot
kerk to Walden, 27 August 1916 in ibid., (except for a single occasion, when the 106 Breviati 1929 12368], 201 f niedies al stained gl.iss, also of great inter¬
102, no. 30. Muche’s work could be very- association was with the triangle). (Ireen 107 For the d.iting of' Sireel /.amp est to Helaunav (Bm kberrough 19-9
close to Klee's at the end of the War; see was associated with the ellipse; the form- (MOMA, New York), C. (ireen in ,1/)- I2276], espei. 1 10).
for e.xample his Dreikittnfi (1919, Nat- correlations with the sccoiuiary colours in straclion: Toioartis a Xew An 19X0 ]2259], 113 1 hese were the colours especiallv
ionalgalerie, Berlin). this type of experiment in (Termany and 102, who dates it 1912; Lista 1982 [2341 ], noticed 111 the iriiidi'n- paintings b\
72 1 owe this information to the kindness Russia were quite non-standard and often no. 20X dates it 1910/1 i and suggests (no. .August Macke in a letter of 1913 (Vriesen
of Hr Anna Rowland. Clf. Also C. Wilk, bizarre (see pi. 217). (loldschimdt unfor¬ 202) that a pencil study, also in New 1937 ]2243]. 116. n. ,xi Helaunav ment¬
198 I I2405I, 20, n. 12. tunately gives no details of his procedures York, is formally related to the 1 hissel- ioned Rood in reference to simultaneous
73 Wingler 1973 |2072|, 44-3. This was (Cjoldschmidt 1927/8 I2139], 38). dort decorations. contrast in 1912 iR Helaunav i9-\~
essentially the context of colour-study 87 Fodder 1983 ]2342], 280, n. 46. 108 Fista 19X2 ]234i], nos 247 30, 122911. 139); for his know ledge of this
outlined in the 1919 prospectus (ibid., 33). 88 CF Bap in Neumann 1970 ]235o], 79. 236 X 1. 393. The letter (no. 24X) is quoted text, Buckberrough 1982I2277I. 123 31
74 See espec, the student exercises by In the end, however, Klee adopted on 303. There were a number of points of 114 R. Helaunay 1937 ]229l ]. 1X2 3. and
Hirschfeld-Mack and Vincent Weber at Kandinsky's equivalents (Triska 1979 contact between Balia and Breviati's ideas for the date. Spate 1979 I2388], 333 n. 14
the Batihaus Archiv in Berlin (Berlin, [2236], 77, n. 33). at this time. Balia's Hivisiomst iriiii/iuc al 1 le was responding to an und.ited letter
liiiiiluuis Arcliii'-Mtiseiim 19X1 [2269], 89 T. Schlemmer 1972 ]2377], 18X. Dusseldorf {Lista no. 231) seems to have from Marc about his essay 'Fa Lumiere'.
nos 33-3, 38-40). Among the experi¬ Schlemmer's 'instinct' was also that of his been stimulated by a passage on a lumi¬ lit. Hess 1961 ]2i5i j, 91.
mental rings of Mack's 'optischer Farb- master, Hoelzel {see n. S3), nous landscape seen through a window in 115 She claimed inuch later that she and
mischer', produced from r. 1923 in the 90 Kandinsky 19X2 [1686], 11, 391-2, Breviati (1929 12368], 1341!). His term for Robert were simply 'continuing' Fauvism
joinery workshop at the Batihaus, and 91 Von Maur 1979 I2191], 11, no. A. the Hiisseldorf experiments, 'conipenet- (Hppler uj-fi ]2353l. 3X3),
now available in reproduction from the 3 1 8a. razioni', was frequently used by Breviati 116 File earliest of these seems to be the
Batihaus Archiv, are colour circles based 92 Wingler 1973 I2072], 164. (see Fagiolo dell'Arco 1970 ]2302]. 47, n. Smniltaneoiis (lonirast (/luiil in collage
on CJocthc, Schopenhauer and von 93 Whitford 1984 [2403], 102. The time¬ 12), and forms of iridescence were some¬ and gouache, repr in col. in .S'l'ui,/ De¬
Bezold, as used by Hoelzel. Itten's much table shows that Klee taught form for 1 times related to Breviati's illustration of launay I98o]2295]. 133.110 47
later recollection of colour exercises at the hour, Moholy-Nagy form-studies tor 8 the colours ot heated and chilled mica and 117 S. Helaunay 1936 ]2292|. 19 Buck¬
Batihaus includes the use of checqtier- hours, Klee drawing and the life-class for glass plates (1929 I2368]. 71 2; see .ilso berrough in Sonia Delaunay 19X0 (2295],
boards (from 1917) 'to free the study of 2 hours each. Kandinsky analytical draw¬ Martin 1968(2345], 17611. 1). 113 n. (17 argues for this inriueiue ,>n
colour-effects from associations of form', ing for 2 hours and Albers practical work 109 It IS notable that another Italian Robert; see also Sp.ite 1979 |2388|, 201
but none of them can now be identified for 10 hours: this puts the role of colour m Futurist, (iino .Severini, also saw blue and and (iohen 1973 (2282I, 61
(Itten 1964 I2326I, 41). R. Wick, basing the early Batihaus into some sort of yellow as complementary (Severini 118 S. Helaunav (197x1 in .S'um.i/)i-/.ii(/i,i)'
himself on the recollections of Muche, perspective. (1913) in Apollonio 1973 I2075]. 124) 19X0 ]2295). 40; cf also X2 tor their
stated that Mack took over colour¬ 94 'F. Fiix Feimnger in Farmer and Weiss Balia's own .Mani/eslo del (lolorc (1918. discussions 111 the 1930s
teaching in conjunction with Itten's I 'or- 1971 ]2303], 47. There is no reference to Lista 1982 ]234l], 473) confined itself to 119 For the dating of/)i.si and the w hole
kiirs from 1922-3, and that Itten himself colour in the fullest account of Albers's generalities. See also Severim's rather senes Spate 1979 ]2388]. 3'(> 7
had taught it earlier; but he has this course teaching on the Basic Course; 1 lerzogen- well-informed discussion of a colour- 120 R Helaunay 193- ]229i j. 1X4 (19131.
beginning in 1919 and cannot be relied on rath 1979/80 [2319], espec. 237 64. order system, cuing (diaries Henry's pri¬ ct. also 60 (i. 1924) Hie most detailed
(Wick 19X2 I2404I, 99 100, 1 10, n, 90). 95 Wingler 1973 ]2072]. 144. mary scheme, as well as those ot Helm¬ formal analysis ot Dm is in .Albrecht I9”4

75 See Boling 1982 |2366|, 72, and fig. 96 Ibid., 64. Crohmann's statement that holtz and .Maxwell (Severini 1921 [2386]. ]2265|. 30 (1
61). Ostwald lectured at the Batihaus in both 92 9). Blue and yellow were also regar¬ 121 R Helaunav 193- |229l|. 21'' lor
76 R. Wick in Johannes Ilten 1984 I2157I, Weimar and Hessau (19.38 ]23I2], 173. ded as complememary by the abstract the revisions, Buckberrough 19x2 12277],

120. 201) has not been documented; and the film-maker Bruno (iorra (see p 243): see 223 ().
77 Klee 1979a I2333I. transcript 93. For bitterly anti-Ostwaldian views of two Ills essay '.Miisica (iromatica' (1912' repr. 122 Repr III col. in Vriesen ind lindahl

(ioethe's scheme see the modern recon¬ other Weimar masters, Schlemmer and in Verdone H/i? |2242|. 24X It is striking 1967 I2398I. pi 13 For the 1913 sculpture

struction in (ioethe 1971 |t836|,fig. 122. Schreyer are well attested (vsin Maur 1979 that (iorra's brother (Iiniia, when he and Its setting. Spate 19"''; ' 2388], 223. tig

78 Klee i979h I2334I. 11, 1019, where he I2191 j. II. 344; Schreyer 1929 (2381 ]. 276). showi-d tw o abstract canvases in Florence 1(19
97 Soupault 1963 (2387]. 34. in 1912. had them catalogued as decor- 123 Sec espci Helaunay to Macke, earls
talks of the 'damned I 'orlehre' (1926); for

JO I
NOUS I () I HI 11 XI

IV n 111 1^ I V'l.iun.ix I 122911. I Ni'i; tor 129 Albers 1963 [2261 |. text 10. Fhe idea to Fr.mk Stella's work ot the mid-1960s; intrinsic qualities that you could tind out
ilu' cl.lie. Xiie'^eii I'H’" j2243|. 2<>s. had alreadv been .irticulated 111 .in but Noland himself used this sculptur.il of the use of the materials' (Moffett ibid.,
1 K‘l.iun.i\'s contr.iM with the f,ir .R.uleniu context b\' Reynolds aiul des'ice a decade later. 19). For Pollock, E. Frank. 'Notes on
more theoretu alK cwu-iuecl ' e/ \< ir- Turner {(i.ige 19691217!. S31. 143 Moffett 1977 |2347|. .-^o, Technique' in O’Connor and Thaw 1978
U'li In l i.nitisek Kiipk.i (I'lil 12; fhirn. 130 For Tadd's work, O. Ntelzer, 144 Albers 1963 |226l|. Folder XVIll, ]2352], IV, 264.
\lmee N.itionali. d’Art \lodernc .nul 'F-rziehung diircli ni.iniielles T tin' in Win- 7 10. The taxonomv of stripe paintings 156 Inters'iew with Paul Cummings, 8
lhiil.Klel['’hi.i Miiseiiiii ol Art), see l<oweIl gler 1977 12406], 3 1. has been discussed by Kerber 1970 [2332], |une 1978; transcript in Archives of
io~s I2372I. 0- ~() .iiul Kipska 131 Lisle 19.'^''U340|. 233. espec. 23 I, nn. 9. 10. American Art, 33; and 39 for Louis as a
1-33^1- ~ iJiosNiKiMtic ten- 132 l)e Kooning 1930 |2290|. 40. 145 Josef .Albers 1963,fi (2263 j. 9. 'steadv customer' for the free ‘ends of
p.irt 'Pises ot Newton' clev’iseh 1. loio. 133 For the 'Weber-Fechner law, Albers 146 lucker 1971 |2392|, 16. cf Noland, batch’.
Kupk.i secnis to h.ne regarded these .0 I9ti3 |226i|. Folder .X.X, text s.s (12, 'vou can be fairls’ arbitrary about at wh.it 157 Bocour loc. cit, 33, 30. .See also
spiniiiiiL: discs (ibid.. I sS). commentary 39 41. Albers's nnsunder- point vou start ... I pick a color and go Eldertield 1986 ]2299], 34, i82f
124 1 he best sur\ e\ ot Albers's lile and standing has been pointed out by Lee 19.'' i with it' (Moffett 1977 I2347I, 43). For 158 Klein in )'res Klein 1983 I2335],
work IS now fo>c!.\lhci> inNN|2 2641- |2339|, 102. This law may li.we been the Davis on Albers's 'law of interaction ot 194. IKB was developed by Edtniard
125 Albers I';f'~ 122621. 111. [-nr the w ork subject ot some demonstrations b\' I 1. color', which he re|ectest, 'because that Adam, who could produce this synthetic
• It Hottnip in \k esrphali.i, Vv cber ivS4 Holl and F. H.uisgirg at Black Mountain law emphasizes the intelligibility ot the ultra-marine more cheaply .ind in larger
|2400|. s Fur the s'opeinp; ot p.nntinp:s in College. v\ hich caused Albers to le.is'e the pictures before it emphasizes their stimu¬ quantities than other suppliers. Klein
out p.ipor, Albers o;6t |226i|, Foklers room, and some ot Ins students to aban¬ lating - to the s'erge of chaotic excitement procured a patent for his formula in i960,
XIX. I 1. Ki 17 .iiul eomnient.irN pS. don Ins course (Fdarris 19.S7 I2315I, 126, character', Serwer 1987 I2385I, 44. although he described the mixture incor¬
126 For the (loethe-Tn.ingle. Albers and ct. 20 (r. 1941). The Y.ile matliema- 147 See, e.g., fosef .Albers 1963/6 I2263I. rectly in the specification {Yues Klein
I'X'.t |226i|. I'olsier XXIV i, eonimen- tician Ch.irles E. Rickart alsti tound it hard yo: Josef-Albers 1988 I2264I, 37-8. 40. ibid., 247).
t,ir\' 45 .iiui text tiS. For Albers's closeness to interest the artist in his mathematical 148" Josef .Albers 1988 I2264I, 44 and no. 159 Paris, Galerie Beaubourg, col. repr.
to Hirsehfeki-Mack. see his letter to R. interpretation tit his work (’,A structural 24(1; Josef .Albers 1963/ti I2263I. 29. Albers in Colour .Since .Matisse 1983 12285], 46.
Arnhenn. 14 March n/cl. cit. Lcoihinlo, an.ilysis tit some ot Albers's work' in claimed that he had this instinct tor See also Gerhard Richter 236 Ibtrhen, 1974,
XV'. ivS2. i~4. and Torbruegge in74 fosoph Alhers 19.S.S I2264I. 3.S.). A modern materials ,ind technique from his father, housepaint on canvas, col. repr. in J. win
123911. ii;.s. Mack's \ ersion of the triangle analysis of some ot the edge-phenomena who had been an all-round crattsman jiisc/ der Marck. 'Inside Europe outside Eu¬
IS in the lkuihaus-Archi\' in Berlin (no. exploited by Albers uses examples of .Albers 1988 I2264I, 13). rope’, .Artfornin, XVI, 1977, 31.
3.S1S/12: see I’oling ipNg |2366|. 152. n. work by his Yale pupil Richard Anus- 149 Burliuk 1912 in Barron and Tuch- 160 Stella in lohnson 1982 ]2328], 1 16.
Sg). Albers also told Arnheini that Mack kiewicz (^Jameson and Flurvich 1973 man 1980 |l753|, 129!'; .Shevchenko 1913 161 Rubin 1970 ]2373j, 76; Stella 1986
slioweil him tl.irrs \ an Bienia's book on [2327]. 123-31; and for Anuskiewicz’s in Bowlt 1976 11992], 31-2. 12389]. 164.
i loelzel. which includes the fullest dis¬ reminiscences of Albers's teaching, Paiiil- 150 Tarabukin in Nakov and Petris 1972 162 Rubin ibid., 82.
cussion of tins 'Nine-part triangle' in the iiips by Josef Albers 197.S [2361], 22 3). I2045I. 124. See also A. Grishchenko’s 163 Stella 19S6 12389], 71.
section 'Finige H.uiptbegrilde alls Cioethes 134 '^T'lliver 1966 [24011. 6fi. 'Colour dynamics and tectonic primitiv¬ 164 1 am thinking particularly of the use
F.irbenlehre' (van Bieni.i 1940 |227o|. 135 See the 1932 statement repr. in Josef ism' group of 1918/19 in Bowlt 1976 of the Liischer system by the Swiss Neo-
loyfl). .Arnheini {Leonardo, XW. 19.S2. Albers 19X8 [2264]. 12, and the 1949 11992], 43. and Rodchenko's 1921 plan to Constructivist Karl Gerstner (Stierlin
173) argued that the diagram is 'more statement on the I 'ariaiit series, cit. Gom- put faktiira into the programme ot the 1981 ]i96i], i64fF, 193). I haved not
confusing than instructive', since it inc¬ ringer 1968 [2311I, logf. State Art Workshops (Vkhutmas); Fod¬ considered here the distaste tor tech¬
ludes only three ot the six possible tertiary 136 Welliver 1966 |240l|, 6.8-9, der 19S3 12342], 123-4. nology among some Abstract Expressio¬
colours .nid these are ‘arbitrarily chosen'. 137 Holloway and 'Weil 1970 [2324!, 151 See an article of 1919 repr. in Gassner nists, which has been studied by Craven
In the revised paperback edition ot Albers 463. and Gillen 1979 ]2309j, 44. 1990 12289], 72 103. nor their dislike of
1963 (22611 (1975. F>6) Goethe's name has 138 Examples of this 'mitering' are in 152 'Von Maur 1979 ]2l9lj, 1, 283-94, II, verbal discourse, which has been discussed
been replaced by 'equilateral'. A wide¬ Hoiiiape to the Square: Iiiserl, 1939, Na¬ G.603-37. in Gibson 1990 I2310], 193-211. There
spread Bauhaus concept that 'less is more', tional Museum of American Art, 'Wash¬ 153 For the cheapness of materials, Frau: were, of course, tar more thoroughgoing
which was particularly crucial tor ington n.C., and Hontaqe to the Square: Kliue 1979 ]2336], 12, 21, 24, n. 11. Kline programmes of colour-experimentation
Albers's approach, may also go back to Mitered. 1962. Bottrup. Albers Museum recorded that when he was taken up by bv some modern artists I have not ment¬
Hoelzel's 'a few lines (Striclw) may often (in Josef .-iibcrs 1988 I2264I, no. 212). This the tashionable dealer Sidney Jams in ioned, e.g. Louis Fernandez, whose
be much more' (Hoelzel 1915, cit. Bands is a type not considered 111 the taxonomy 1936, lanis asked him to switch to the L’-Apprentissage fdcnientairc dc la peinrnre (r.
1979 I2362I, 266 and pi. .S3). of the series given by Albrecht 1974 more usual materials, and charge the 1933) included a carefully worked out
127 For relativity, Fiedler 1926 [2304[. 12265], 70-96, although he does discuss gallerv for them. section on colour-measurement, ex¬
espec. 39off. For transparency. Fuchs 1923 the implied perspective of the others (78). 154 For Rothko’s scene painting. Hobbs tracted in Abstraction-Creation. Art non-
I2307I. 143-235 (trails, as 'On Transpa¬ 139 Fuller 1978 [2308I, 3 I if. See also the and Levin 1981 ]232l], 116. The fugitive Fignratif II, 1933, iqf; but these investig¬
rency' in W. F). Ellis (ed.). .d Soiini'-Book photographs of Black Mountain classes in pigments used in this type ot temporary ations have never ted into the
of Gcslah Psycholor;]'. 1930). Fuchs's fi¬ 1944 and 1948 (Harris 1987 12315], 82; painting were mentioned by Polunin mainstream.
gures on 134 and 166 are close to some in Josef .dlbcrs 1988 I2264]. 290). For the 1927 (2367], 2211. For other examples ot 165 For an analysis of Lohse’s approach
Kandinsky’s Bauhaus courses. empiricism implicit in changes made in Rothko’s experiments with glue, egg- to colour structures. Albrecht 1974
128 See the interview with D. Mahlow, the process of painting some of the tempera and modern synthetic piaiiits, 12265], 114-53; see espec. 126 for
'Statt eines Vorworts' in the German Homage series, Weber in Josef .-{Ibers ibid., Clearwater 1984 ]228l], 42; Cranmer Albrecht's very general sense that Lohse
paperback edii of lutcraclioii of Color, 40. The English stripe painter Patrick 1987a 12287], 189-97; Cranmer 1987b owed something to 'the colour theory
Gologne. 1970. S. Albers none the less felt Heron was also more conscious of the ]2288], 283-3; Cohn 1988 12284], espec. and technology ot his time'.
that Ostwakl provided 'a most compre¬ tunction ot shape and edge (Knight 1988 10, 17, 27; Barnes 1989 ]2268], 39. 38- 61; 166 Wright 1981 12408], 236-7. Some
hensive system of colour harmonies' (Al¬ |2337|. 34 (i9f>9)). Mancusi-Ungaro 1990 [2343], 134-7. materials for the history of the reception
bers 1963 |226i|, commentary 47). In the 140 Moffet 1977 12347], 13. 155 Rose r. 1972 ]237l], 54-5; Moff'ett and language of black in art have been
late 1920S Malevich had also thought this 141 Moffett ibid., 39. For Albers’s 1940 1977 ]2347], loif, n. 3. Noland also gathered by Stephanie Terenzio in Robert
about Cdstwald, whose work was much lecture, Dubermann 1972 |2298|, 60. recognized the inspiration of Jackson Motherwell and Black. 1980; see also H.
used in Russia (Malevitch 1977 I2344I, 142 Noland in |ohnson 1982 I2328I, 30. Pollock’s use of unconventional paints Weitemeier Sc/ni’iirt;, Diisseldorf, Kunst-
I 16). The reterence to shaped canvases is clearK' and methods, 'with the same kind of halle, 1981.

302
 biblio(;raimiy
c:c')Nc:c')R|)Anc:e
('hicfdocunicncs (cir publications incliKiing chictblocunicins)
and primary sources tor each period are indicated below by the
reterence number ot their bibhographv entries.
I A n t i q n i t )•
Nos. aS, 29, 5S, ('i.t. 7 1.77. 1 1 1 a 1. 122, 12s. 140. 141. 150. 173.212.
2i<S. 240. 24<S. 277. 296. 297. 312, 333. 33S. 343. 391. 394. 447. 344.
S4('), 936. 933. 934. 100 I. 13.S7. 14.S4. 20.S0. 2 I S9. 2 I 99.
2 The Middle Ages
Nos. 44. 109, 124. I 3 I, I >9. 157. 192. I S4, 1 Xy. 191. 193, 203. 231.
234, 249, 25S. 297, 29X. 271,2X3, 32X, 334. 333. 339. 330. 339. 3''>0.
363.364,399,374.379.399,400,414.423,424.423,439.440,433,
436,460.46X.491.314.313.329. 340, 341, 343, 343. 331, 370. 37X.
379, 3X0, 3X3, 3X7, 392, 393.603,612.614.913.A19, 919. 921.922.
923. <126, 933. 937. 930. 932. 990. 99l. 973. 979. 9XX. 991.723, 742.
743. 744. 74.S. 754. 7.S7. 7.s9. 7^7. 7^9. 77a. 779. 7''<.1.7f^.S. 7'X9. 7XX.
7X9. 790.791.79X, xoi. Xoa.xox.X12.X14,X17.X22.X23.X27.X31,
X44,X4X.X31.X33.X39.X9i.X92,X9X. X74.X7X, X79. XXI.XX9. X90.
X91,X92.X9X.910.917.91X.921,940.939.992.994,1092.1201.1241.
1293. 12XX. 1304, 1309. 1323. 1334. 1333. 1371. 13X9, 13XX, 1401.
1410.1417.1421.1921.19X3.2091.21X2.2212.221X.
3 The Renaissance
Nos. 133. 134. 133. 13X. 139. i9i. 170. 179. 197. 19X, 201.209. 220
232. 274, 2X9. 290. 30X. 339. 340. 341. 34X, 920. 701,799. 770. X4I.
X49,X94.XX7.901.909.943.934.933.999.9X7. 1010. 1017. 1079.
1 1 iX, 1 132. 1 I9l. 1 192. 1 170. 1 177. 1 1X3. 1 192. 1202. 1213. 1219,
1224, I22X, 1230, 1231. 1232, 1233, 1233, 1239, 1297, 1270. 1272.
1277, 12X0, 12X2, 12X4, 12X7, 1291, 1293. 1313, 1319, 1343, 1343.
1349, 1379, 1393, 1393. I40X, 141 1, 1412, 1439. 13X9, 1943.2093,
2109,2129,2239,2237.
4 The seventeenth century
Nos. 174, 177. 17X, 179, 190, 192, 199.209,293,271,303,313.314
313.319,317,319.344,930,997,999,9X3. 1019, 1022, 1071. 10X3.
1093, I lO.T I I 19- ■ '-<'>• ' '7.''' '-'4. 1-7'. U'O. I4'.h 141.S.
1423, 142X. 1430. 1431. 1441. 144.S. 144^. '4.S-- U.s'''- Mho. 147.1.
14X3, 1493. 1494. 131X, 1319, 1330. 1331. i.s.ia, i,s33. 1.34^', i.s.sa,
l.s.s.l. l.X.sy- ' .392. 1393. 1377, 1390. 1391. 1.39,3. >399. 1903. i9oX.
I9l9,1923.i92X,1932.1933.1943,1947,1930,1999,1970.l9XX.
1713. 1749, 1991,20X3.2130,2193,217X,2193.ai99a. 2390.
5 riie I'ifjlitt'ciuli eiMitiiry
Nos. 1". .14 I4.V 1 00, 2 30. 2 3 3. 303 324, .If. t 3. n 2 3. lo 3". n
1094, 1073, 1 lot). 1 IO~, 1 1')';. 1 1 n 1. 13 3';. 1 111. 1 (01 1 (O);. 1
1303. 1 339. 1 340. 1343. 1 34-. 1340. 13 s 3, 13112. 13 lit) 1 31;". 1 fl( !4
1 9 11;. 1924, 1 1(')S-. 1 "O);, I ~ 1 ~. 1-24, 1 ",m. 1 -fM 1 I"~f). 1 "S 3
1 X03. 1 X37. 1X91, 1X92. 1 fl94. 1 i;oS, mi 4. ma 1. m-S.; 2003. 20 1 S
202 3. 2029. 2030, 2033. 20.39. 2041, 2030. 21 )f )i). 2i 1O4 21"14. 2i iij 3
2099. 2097. 2O9X. 2099. 2 100. 2101. 2102, 211", 2 1 4O 2I4<3. 2130
2134. 2 1 .S.3. 2190, 2194. 2209, 22 10. 2213. 2219. 222 s 2232.
6 I lie nineteenth century
Nos. 1 X, 19. 20. 2 I , 9l . 70. 1 32, 193. 1“ 1 . 172. 1 X3. 223, 230. 24 I . 24O,
2X 1 . 29 1 , 309. 3 3 3, 909. 944. 93X, (;X3. 9X9, 993,99(’>. toil. 1013. lOiX,
1024, 1029. 1027, 1031, 1033, 1033. 1039, I04f). 1032. 103". 1030.
1090, 109l, 1093, 109('), 1077, 107X. 1090, 1099. K>9X, 1 lOO. I 1 13.
112 1, 11 27, 1 1 2X, 1 1 29, 1 1 30. 1131. 1 1 3X, 1141. 1130. II 3f>. I 1 3",
1419, 1420. 1434, 1439, 1437, I43X, 1443. 1441'.. 144". 1431. I43-.
I43X. 1439, 1471, 14X1, 14X2. 14X4, 1499. 1301. 13O". I30X. 1310.
1311, 1314. 1324, I 33X, 1342. 1 3 3X. I 399, 1371, 13X0. 13X2, I3S3.
1907, i9i7, 19iX, |929, 1929. 1930, 13)3 1. 193 3. 13)33, 1939, 13)3X,
1993, 1994, 1972, i9Xo, 19X3, i3)94. 1710, 1714. 171X. i~22. max.
1732, 1734. 1733. 1730. 1739. 1792. 1793. 1799. |"70. I7~I. I—'a.
1774, 177X, 17X0, 17X4, 17X9, 17X9. 1793, 1794. 1791’- ixoi. iXoa.
iXo9, iXio. 1X12, 1X13. 1X17, 1X23. 1X24. 1X23. 1X29, 1X32. 1X33,
1X34, 1X33, 1X39. 1X43. 1X49, 1X49,4X31, 1X32, 1X33, iX(')('). i.st)7.
1X99, 1X71, 1XX2, 1X93. 1900, 1909, 1913. 1919. 1917, 191X. 1922.
1924. 1923, 1931. 1939. 193X, 1939. 1942, 1944. 194.S. '94‘''. 1949.
1993, 1994, 1993, 1999. 1977, 197X. 19X0. 19'''4. I9!19, 1990. 1994.
2000,2009,2009.2010.2011.2012,2019,2020.2021.2023,2O34.
2039,2037,2042,2043,2044.2034,2091.2093.209X.2070,2071.
20X3. 20X7, 2090, 2092. 2103. 2 I 23. 2 I 27. 2 I 39. 2 1 37. 2133,2134.
2139. 2207, 2214. 2303. 23 I 3, 2399. 23X3.
7 The twentieth century
Nos. 23. 29, 437, X32. XX4. 914, 1039. 1074. 10X2, 1112. M 33. I 1X4.
1203, 1207, 1271, 12X6, 1399. 1 3f)X, 1931, 1999, 1973. lt)Xf), 1990.
1991. 1999, 1702, 1709. 1707. 1723. 1739. 1741, 1744. 1-47. 173.1.
1734. 1737. 179X, 1773, 17X9. 1791. i7‘>)a. 1X03. 1X04. iXo9, 1X09,
1X1 X, 1X2X. 1X31, 1X39. 1X41. 1X44. 1X30. 1X32. 1X34, 1X60. iXOl.
1X93, 1X74, 1X79, iXXo, iXXX. 1XX9, 1903, 1931. 1040. I'A'iO- ''.'.s'-
1934. 1939. 19X9, 1992, 200 1.2002. 2043, 2047. 2099, 2009, 2072,
2074. 2073, 2079, 20X1. 20X9. 2104. 21 13. 21 14, 21 19. 2120, 2122,
39, 2142, 2143, 2144. 2147, 2132. 21 31). aiOo. 2192, 2l09,
21 3 3. 21
2197, 21 99. 2172. 2173, 2174. 2173. 2193. 2 I 9^1. 2203. 220X. 2219,
2222,2223.2229,2239.2240.2242.2249,2230.2231.2234.aaOO.
2291 , 2292. 2299. 2270, 2273. 22X0, 2290. 2291. 22i;3. 2290. 2300,
2334. 2337. 233.S, 2.1.14. 234*'’,
2304, 2307. 2309. 2 3 1 9. 2317. -.1.1.1.
2.139, 213". 23.3''. 2 3 3';, aioi,
2.14''<. 2349. 2.3.30. 2.1.32, 2.1,34. 23.3.3.
2379. 2 3S0. 23X1, 2.3x4. 2 3x0,
2 3 <''7. 239X. 2.174. 2.17,3. 2 3 "9. 23T7.
2.3^7. 23X9, 2393. 2394. 239,3. 2390. a.i'f. 240 1 . a.joa. 2403, 2404,
2409, 24OX.
HIBLKX.RAlMn
Introduction
1 Hiiiinson. H ShcitiiJoi
I’ortiJii.
2 - I .-Ir.'f/K'/ii' i»ii/f/I'.'/i'i)'.
3 . ii/'\ I'Ih-Scli\U'(l
licrcii'-oii. A K-Met (inib.
4 lilKRI N.P. IvCiS- //l.'Yi’l)'|1/CV/i'r b)
I’iiiiiliii};. II nil Xc'ir I'niu'iplci ol C'.olor
/a prr<<ioii.
5 liiirsAilN.M. Sloiiii del lolori.
;nd (.■dll (rr.cdii, Hl>lonf dd lOuhiin.
6 lil'RM-|()NI S, tl. \l)l 2. Ml'niOlhtli of
lidwiird Bunic-loiio. 2 v«K.
7 ClAMtsAS(.A. E. n/ii'i. Arlisli in holtciiii.
8 Hiitmann, L. 171^7. !-arbci;c>ljllnn{; und
rLirhtluwic in dcr nhcndlnndisidicn Malcri'i.
9 ClAi.h, |. 1990. 'Clolor in western art:
•111 I'-Mic'’, .di7 HulU'Un. LXXIl.
10 CIrav, U. n. I9S2. (locllic llic Alidicnii'i
11 Halih.rtsma, K. T. a. 1949. A
Hiitory ol the 'I'Iicoi'y of (dolour.
12 Ethw i\ON, R. 1976. jolin Rnshin: The
.dryunieiil ol the Eye.
13 Liiidbcrg, n. C. i97('i. Theories oj
I 'ision troni Alhiudi lo Keider.
14 Marks, L. 197S. The Unity oj the
Senses.
15 M()R(.LNS1:N, M. F. Rlld Engiish,
H. B. 1926. 'The apparent warmth of
eolors'. .diueritan Jonnud of Psycholoyy,
XXXVII.
16 Rastore. N. 1971. Selective EUstory of
Theories of I 'isnal Perception, iCtyo-11)0,0.
17 Reynolds, Sir J. 1852. The Literary
II 'cirf’-Y 2 vols, ed. H. Beeehey.
18 1
Ruskin, . 1^411. Modern Painters. 1.
19 —, 1853. The Stones of \ 'enice. II.
20 —. iXsS. Modern PaintersAU.
21 —. 1857. The Elements of Drawincf.
22 Rzepinska, M. 19S9. Historia Kolorn
ir d^iejach malarstwa enropejskiego, 2 vols,
3rd edn.
23 Stokes, A. igyp. Colour and Form.
24 Thompson, D. V. |r. 1936. The
.Materials and Techniques of Medieval
Painting.
25 Westphai, ). 1991. Colour: .d
Philosophical Introduction. 2nd edn.
26 Wittgenstein, L. igyj. Remarks on
Colour (1930), ed. A. Anscombe.
I The Classical Inheritance
27 Andre, J. igqg. Etude siir les termes de
conlenr dans la langnc latin.
28 Annas, |. and Barnes, J. 1985. The
.Modes of Scepticism: .dncienl Texts and
.Modern Interpretations.
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Rejormatioii. 2nd edn. 905 lloilTlMR. I i*)2i ' Rl rs en .nil u II 93,s R\S!''I Rl Si . M i.jS; / lltii---,, ■
5 Colour-Language, Colour- 873 t lMRl Gsimrsiiaire DIS En DIS trany.ns'. Romania. XI LX .1 v.u.n.iu
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19XX, /,(•' Couleur^ an inoyen d^e. |X2~ / ..1,11 -111 /I'.i iiyiie- iih 'iidiiioiii III' l.il'lt londi
840 Asihs-Ltwis, 1-. 1979. TmtIv 874 Di an.R I 196- '.An earls treatise daii; le - aiti 937 :i;Si‘-. / . 'll1,1 . ■ i'
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841 Amomms. Siiinniii Major of I. Billing' I lam. (.'I'lil .'I Ifiiii, \ 1 r III To riv.lt ■ d in .l.'ii, i I .mi In -p.-d-ru
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853 Blonsky, M. (ed.). 19X3. On Si'^ns. C:. F. Bell. (ed.). 1X20/3. Lieder-.Saal. 4 vols. 949 Saiiiins. .M in-ti.'Golors .niil
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860 Brault, G. I- 1972. Early Blazon: 893 Gilbert, G. 1939.‘The Archbishop colour terminology'./oiiriiii/ ol 11 Gocheris.
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862 Brereton. G. E. and Ferrieh, J. M. 895 Gras, R. 1931. 'Aux ongines de Studies in Greek Colour Terminology ll, Bulletin de la Commission Royale
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863 Bruckner, W. 1982.'Farbe als an debut du XIR' siecle d'apres la bible de 926 Meier, G. 1974. 'Das Rroblein der 957 Skinmr.Q 19X6 Atnbrogio
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864 Burchard.J. 1884. Diarium, 3 vols, 896 CiuNDEUSiiEEMER. w. lyjl. .4rt and 927 Miier. H. 1963.'Em diinkles .4cademy. LXXll
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of .4rms, 1. 898 1 Iadamer von der Laber. 1X30. Die 928 Mills, F. 1. 1962. .4spetti della vita 959 SyLTBB. G D. 19S9 Phe High Court
866 Gakus-Wilson, E. 1953.'La guede fagd der .Minne, ed. J. A. Schmeller. economica medioevale. ol Chivalry.
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870 Gian, V. 1894. '1 )el significato dei KnoepflE zum 70. Gehurtstag. .Monchskleid nii thristlithen .4ltertum toniratis m earls sesenteentli-ientiirs
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964 1 linUMM Kl . 1. IvCiii. 'OcIkt
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965 Io^^Hll.I^ 190; D.iiitc Slmlifs.
966 luiMLi ri, I P. (cil.). 19C17. "The
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967 UiniiN, Nil iini ^s. itis-p I)c Studio
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I fSinistuiio Mfiiioirs. trails. 'W. (leorge
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970 Vhms. |. di . 196s. 'Rood-Wit-
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971 VulSDNUI L A CIol OMllll ni„ M.
I City, kciucil do I’liiiicf- Pida'i cl Pipiit'C.'^
d'Aritioiro . . . ouci itii Diiiours dcs
fotidoittctils dll lilasoii I't line l\'oiii'clli'
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972 WACKhllNAOtL, W. 1,S72. ‘Pic
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973 WAONbii. A. 1956. Herdids and
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974 Wagnlh, M, L. 1916/17.'Pas
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977 WbCKtin IN, J. W. njos,. Le Drop
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978 WtiSE, C). 1 S7S,'Pic
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981 Abrams, M. H. 1958. The Mirror and
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982 Adler, W. 19X2. Landscapes {Corpus
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987 Barbaro. P. I $6H. Della Perspeltiua,
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988 Bahbier, C. P. 1959a. IVilliam
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989 'SaiHuel Rogers and
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991 Barker, A. 11, 1989. (Meek Musical
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994 Bai dissen. K. Grai von. 1924.
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996 lihCKi I I, R. B. (ed.) IV, 1966. /ii/iii
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1003 Boll. F. 191 X. .4ntike Beohaclitungen
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17
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de Bans, exli. i.it. (,elbe Blau, 1 (eds). 197s J.ukson Polio, k a (.alalogiu /.ntuhntt tur p,, „,i.i p,,,
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2314 FLaiin. B. (ed ). igXs,. Hauhaus B Smith. (Beaning, Retouching and Museum. Kunsl.sthulrelorm igoo tgit
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Mi-MMircniciits arc given in
centimetre'- and inches, height hetore
width
Frnntispiece: F.ngra\'ing from
I. Sehirternuiller. I Vr.-iir/i ei'iir.-'
/■iir/icii.ij'-'tcHi.', Vienna 1772.
1 Robert Fliieid, Ciolour-eircle, from
Fludd. Ciitholica I. Frankfurt
1626.
2 lohn Gibson. Tinted i'ciiiis. 1S51-6.
Marble with slight pigmentation, h.
I7,i (hS). National Musetmis and
Galleries on Merseyside.
} Jean Auguste nominique Ingres,
Aiiliocliiis and Slratoiiiic. 1807. Pencil
and brown wash. 2q x 40 (i 1 g x i sj).
Musee du Louvre, Paris. Photo
Reunion des nuisees nationaux.
4 Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema. Pheidias
and the Frieze of the Parthenon. Athens
(detail). 1868. Oil on panel. By
permission ot Birmingham City
Museum and Art Gallery.
s Tomb ot the Diver, Paestum (detail),
titth century BC. Photo Aaron M. Levin.
6 Six charioteers, papyrus fragment,
Antinoe, Egyptian, e. ad 500.
Committee ot the Egypt Exploration
Society. Photo Ashmolean Museum,
Oxford.
7 Fragment of painted panel, Saqqara,
fourth century bc. Paint on plaster
and wood, 18.4 x 6.8 (75 x af).
Courtesy of the Trustees of the
British Museum, London.
8 Mummy portrait, el-Fayum, Egypt,
fourth century ad. Tempera on
panel, 30.1 x 18.4 (11| x 73).
Courtesy of the Trustees of the
British Museum, London.
y Owen Jones, Design for a temple to
house Cubson's Tinted I'cnns. 1862.
Pen, ink and body colour. 47.6 x 54.9
(i8g X 2ig). Courtesy of the Board of
Trustees of the Victoria & Albert
Museum, London.
10 Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres,
Aniiochns and Stratonice, 1840. Oil on
canvas, 57. i x 1 5.2 {22J x 38f).
Musee Conde, Chantilly. Photo
Lauros-Giraudon.
11 Jakob Ignaz HittorfF, Reconstruction
ot the Temple ot Empedocles at
Selinunte, 1830; elevation. From
Flittorft, Restitution dn Temple
d'limpedoile a Sclinontc, on
3N
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
ran'hiteelnre polyehroine ehez les Crecs,
Paris 1831.
12 Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, AIc.xander
and ('.anipaspe with .-ipelles, 1736 7.
Oil on canvas, 42 x 34 (163 x 2 1 3).
Musee du Louvre, Paris. Photo
Reunion des musees nationaux.
13 Titian, I 'etnis Anadyomcne {The
Bridyeinater I'einis) (detail), r. 1 320/3.
Oil on canvas. Duke of Sutherland
collection on loan to tthe National
Gallery ot Scotland.
14 C.F. Mazois, Reconstruction of a mall in
the ‘Fdifice’ of F.innachia, Pompeii.
From Mazois, Les Rnines dc Pompei.
Part HI, Paris 1S29.
I 3 Mosaic pavement border, Corinth
(detail), first century AD. Glass.
Corinth Excavations, American
School of Classical Studies, Athens.
Photo Madame Hassia.
16 Nicoletto Rosex, Apelles, c. 1 307/1 3.
Engraving.
17 Friedrich Oeser, Timanthes paintinp^
' The Sacrifice oj Iphit’enia'. Engraving,
1733. Frontispiece to J.J.
Winckclmann, Cedanken iiher die
f^achahnninf’ der t^riechischen IVerke in
der Malerei iind Bildhanerknnst
( Thoughts on the Imitation of Creek
Works of Painting and Sculpture).
Dresden and Leipzig 1736.
18 J.M. Langlois, The Generosity of
.■ile.xander, 18ly (detail). Oil on
canvas, 237 x 3 i 8 (101 g x 137).
Musee des Augustins, Toulouse.
19 William Blake, The Man who taught
Blake Painting in his Dreams, c. 1819.
Pencil. 26 x 20.6 (103 X 8^). Tate
Gallery, Lonefon.
20 Mosaic ot Nile scene. Temple of
Fortune, Palestrina (detail), first to
third century ad. Palazzo Baronale,
Palestrina. Photo Alinari.
21 Ceiling, Palatine Chapel. Palermo
(detail), r.i 132-89. Photo Alinari-
Anderson.
22 Polychrome loop tapestry, Akhmin,
Egypt (detail), fourth century ad.
Linen and wool. Courtesy of the
Trustees of the British Museum,
London.
23 Amazonomachia mosaic, Antioch
(detail), third or fourth century ad.
Musee du Louvre, Paris. Photo
Reunion des musees nationaux.
24 Mosaic panel from Hadrian’s Villa,
Tivoli, near Rome. Roman copy of
an original ot the early second
century .vd. Museo Capitolino,
Rome. Photo Alinari.
23 Vault mosaic from eastern apse.
Baptistry, Albenga, fifth century.
26 Vault mosaic from ambulatory, Sta
Costanza, Rome, fourth century.
Photo Scala.
27 The I 'irgin from the Deesis mosaic,
Christ in Chora (Karije Djami),
Istanbul (detail), r. 1320. (^ Bollingen
Foundation, New York/Byzantine
Institute, Inc.
28 Vault mosaic, S.Zcno chapel, Sta
Prassede, Rome (detail), ninth
century. Photo Georgina Masson.
29 Leo 17 kneeling before Christ, narthex
mosaic, Sta Sophia, Istanbul, late
ninth century. Photo Hinz.
30 The Good Shepherd mosaic,
‘Mausoleum’ of Galla Placida,
Ravenna, fifth century.
3 1 The separation of light from darkness,
atrium mosaic, S.Marco, Venice,
thirteenth century. Photo Osvaldo
Bbhm.
32 Apse mosaic, SS.Cosnias and
LOamian, Rome, sixth century. Photo
Scala.
33 The Transfiguratioti of Christ, apse
mosaic. Monastery of St Catherine,
Sinai, f.560. Sonia Halliday
photographs. Photo Jane Taylor.
34 The Empress Theodora and her ladies,
mosaic. South wall of Choir,
S.Vitale, Ravenna, c.540. Photo
Scala.
33 The I'irgin receiving the skein of wool
(detail), mosaic, Christ in Chora
(Karije Djami), Istanbul, r. 1320, ©
Bollingen Foundation, New
York/Byzantine Institute, Inc.
36 Christ appearing in the Clouds, from
a Commentary on the Apocalypse by
Beatus of Liebana, c. 1109. Miniature
from Santo Domingo de Silos. Add.
MS 11695, folio 21. British Library,
London.
37 St Erhard offering Mass (detail) from
the Uta Codex, Regensburg,
1002-23. Bavarian State Library,
Munich. Photo Hirmer.
38 Mosaic pavement, Sta Eufemia,
Grade (detail), sixth century. Photo
Soprintendenza Archaeologica e per i
Beni Ambientah Architettonici
Artistici c Storici di Trieste-Friuli
V.Giulia.
39 The Annunciation, mosaic, Daphni,
f,ioSo. Photo Josephine Powell.
40 The Three Magi, mosaic,
S.Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna, sixth
century. Photo Hirmer.
41 Anagogical window, St Peregrinus
chapel, St-Denis (detail), c.i 140.
Photo James Austin.
42 The Heavenly Jerusalem, detail of
mosaic of the Triumphal Arch, Sta
Maria Maggiore, Rome, fifth
century. Photo Scala.
43 Matthew Paris, The Jewels of St
Albans, 1237. Cotton Nero D.L,
f 146. British Library, London.
44 The Merode Cup, early fifteenth
century. Silver gilt with pounced
decoration and enamel, 17,5 x 10
(6g X 3g). French or Burgundian,
early 13 th century. Courtesy of the
Board of Trustees of the Victoria &:
Albert Museum, London.
43 E.Labarre, L'Escrin de Charlemagne,
1794. Watercolour, 7.7 X 41.4
(3 X 'bj). Cabinet des Estampes,
Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris.
46 North wall of the Isaac bay. Upper
Church, S.Francesco, Assisi, r.1300.
Photo Scala.
47 Henry of Blois plaque, before i 171.
Enamel, 18 (7) diameter. British
Museum, London.
48 Jaulnes Virgin (detail), 1334. Stone.
St Etienne Cathedral, Sens. Photo
Deuchler.
49 The Great .ingel from the Donee
Apocalypse (detail), 1270. MS LDouce
180, p.32. Bodleian Library, Oxford.
30 Jousting knights, from Sir Thomas
Holme's Book, fifteenth century
(before 1448). MS Harley 4203, folio
30. British Library, London.
3 1 The Arming of a Knight, from
Benoit dc Sainte-Maure, Romain de
Troie. late fourteenth century. MS Fr
782, folio 161. Bibliotheque
Nationale, Paris,
52 Matthew Paris, Knight bearing a
 shield ot Haith from I'craldus, SiiiiiiiilI
lie I'iliis, f. I’40/55. MS Harley 5244,
tolio ’S, liruish Library. London.
55 biineral eHigy of'CIeorirev
I'lantagenet, 1151 '60. Lnainel.
63 X 33 (245 X 1 3). Musee Tesse. Le
Mans. Photo Miisees du Mans.
54 Attributed to Byrtterth of Kanisev.
TheJoiir-Jolit sYilfiii oj .N/iiiroie.dii iitn/
Afii nta’sin. c. ioXo -<;o. MS St John's
(College 17, tolio yv. The Pri'sident
and bellows of St John's C.'ollege.
Oxford.
55 Joachim ot Flora. I'hc Holy 'rrinity.
from Liber I'i^iirdruni. twelfth
century. MS (XXL 255 A. folio yv.
Oourtesy of the President and
Fellows of Corpus Christi College.
Oxford. Photo Bodleian Library.
Oxford.
56 Ambrogio Lorenzetti. Moesiii
(detail), c. I 335. Oil on canvas.
Palazzo Communale. Massa
Marittima. Photo Scala.
57 n.P.C. Humbert de Superville.
Syiiopitic Table, 1S27. From Humbert
de Superville. Hmai sur les Siynes
incciidilioiineh dans I'An, Leyden
1827-32.
58 Cieorge Field. Armorial bookplate.
From Field. CAinnnalics, London
1817. Photo Fitzwilham Museum.
Cambridge.
5y The Story of Noah, from Aelfric.
Paraphrase oJ ihe Pentateuch and Joshua,
Anglo-Saxon, second quarter of
eleventh century. Vellum, 32.8 X21.7
(12J X 8j). MS Cotton Claudius
B.IV. folio i()v. British Library,
London.
60 Allep^ory of Judgment, from Cesare
Ripa, Iconohjiia, Padua 1611.
61 Rainbow in the story of Noah, from
Hartmann Schedel. H'eltchronik {The
Snremherg CAironicle), Nuremberg
1493-
62 Pietro Testa. Triumph of Paintirp^ on
I’arnassus (detail), early 1640s.
Engraving, second state, 47.6 x 72.5
(i8j X28j ). Collection Bertarelli,
Castello Sforzesco. Milan.
63 The formation of the rainbow, from J.J.
Scheuchzer, Physica Sacra, Augsburg
and Uhn 1 1731.
64 (jod's Couenant with Soalt. from the
1 'ienna (Jenesis, sixth century. ? Syria.
Cod. Theol. (iraec. 3 i. page 5.
Cistcrreichische Nationalbibliothek.
Vienna.
65 Xoah's .4rk’, from a Hook oJ Hours,
Normandy, f. 1430/50. MS Auct D
Inf 2.11 folio 5yv. Bodleian Library,
Oxford.
66 Matthias Criinewald, Stuppach
Madonna. 15 17/1 y. Oil on canvas on
pine, 185 X 150 (72? X 5y). St Maria,
Stuppach. Photo Kapellenpflege
‘Stuppacher Madonna'. Stuppach.
67 Peter Paul Rubens. Rainbow
l.andsiape, 1636 8. Oil on oak panel,
135.6 X 235 (53 J X y2T) Hie Wallace
(Collection. London.
68 Jacob van Ruisdael. The Jewish
(Jemetery (det.nl). 1670s. ()il on
canvas. 42 X 8c; (56 x 741. The I )etroii
Institute of .Arts,
6y Angelika Kaufl'tnann, Self-portrait as
‘Paintinii'. 1.1780. Oil on canvas,
132 X I4y.8 (52 X 51;). Royal
Academy ot .Arts. London.
70 Alter Johann Wolfgang von Coethe.
Mountain I.andscape with Rainbow.
1826. Coknired copper engraving.
4.7 X 10.7 (Ox 4J). (ioethe-und-
Schiller Archiv, Weimar. Photo
Stiftung Weimarer Klassik.
71 John (ilover (1767- 1841;). .4
Rainbow. Watercolour, 24 x 60
(yj X 23 §). British Museum.
London.
72 John Constable, London from
Hampstead, with a double rainbow,
inscribed 'between 6 A 7 o'clock
Eveningjune 1831'. Watercolour,
iy.6 X 32.2 (7J X 12J). British
Museum, London.
73,J.M.W. Turner, Durham CLithedral
74 with a Rainbow, 1801. Watercolour,
each 17.4 X 12.3 (6| x 4J). The
Turner Collection. Tate Ciallery,
London.
75 Andy Goldsworthy, Rainbow Splash,
River U’liarJ, Yorkshire, October igfo.
Courtesy of the artist.
76 Matthew Paris, Parhelia seen in I2jj
from Chronica .Majora. MS 16, folio
83V, Corpus Christi College,
C.ambridge. Reproduced by
permission of the Master and Fellows
of Corpus Christi College,
Cambridge. Photo Courtauld
Institute of Art. University of
London.
77 John Sell Cotman, Parhelion at
Hunstanton. 6 July 1815. Sepia
drawing, 28.5 x ly (11^ xyj). Leeds
City Art Galleries. Photo Courtauld
Institute of Art, University of
London.
78 Caspar David Friedrich. Landscape
with Lunar Rainbow, 1808. Oil on
canvas, 70 x 102.5 (27J x 40;!).
Folkwang Museum, Essen.
7y Sir Thomas Lawrence, Henjamin West
I>RA, f. 1821. CSil on canvas,
268.3 X 176.8 (105I X 6yJ). Tate
Gallery, London.
80 Philipp Otto Runge, Day, 1803. Pen
and wash. 71.7 x 48 (28J x ly).
Drawing for the series Times oJ Day.
Kunsthalle. Hamburg.
81 Carl Gustav Cams, Alleipory on the
death of Goethe, after 1832. Oil on
canvas, 40 x 56 (15 J x 22). Goethe
.Museum, Frankfurt.
82 David Lucas after John Constable,
Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows,
I he Rainbow, c 1^35. .Mezzotint,
s S. I X 6i;.2 <2 I ; X 2~] : Private
collection
83 John Constable. Dia\;r,im ot the
lormation ot colours in drop~ ot water.
(.1833. Pen and pencil. 16 2 x iv ”
164 X ~J > Private collection.
84 Karl Friedrich Schinkel, .Mediet al
Lown on a River, 1815. Oil on canvas,
64 X 140 (37 X 55i). Natioiialgalerie,
Sta.ithche .Museen Preussischer
Kulturbesitz. Berlin.
85 J.M W. Turner, Ifuttennere Lake with
part oJ Cromaikwater. Cumberland. ,1
shower. I7y8. Oil on canvas.
88.1; X I iy.4 (35 X 47). The Turner
Collection. Tate (iallery, London.
86 Franz Marc, Blue Horses with
Rainbow, lyi.t. Watercolour,
gouache and pencil on paper,
16.2 X 25.7 (6^ X loj). Collection,
The .Museum of Modern .Art,
New York. |ohn S. Newberry
Collection.
87 Fra Bartolommeo, Pala della .Sii;noria,
f. I 5 12. Monochrome on wood,
444 X 305 (174J X 120). Museo di San
Marco. Florence, Photo Alinari.
88 Fra Angelico, The .-Innunciation.
f.r434. Oil on canvas, i 50 x 180
(5y X 70g). Museo Diocesano,
Cortona. Photo Scala.
8y Attributed to Benedetto di Biiido,
.Madonna oJ Humility and St lerome
translating the Gospel of John, diptych,
c. 1400. Oil on wood. 2y.2 x 41 .y
(l 1 J X i6j). Philadelphia Museum of
Art, John G. Johnson Collection.
yo Stefano di Giovanni, called Sassetta,
St Lhancis renouncing his heritage,
1437/44. Panel from an altarpiece,
tempera on wood, f.87.6 x 52.7
(34L X 20^). National Gallery,
London
yi Jan van Eyck, 'I'he I irgin with
Chancellor Rolin (detail), f. 1437. Oil
on wood. Musee du Louvre, Paris.
Photo Reunion des musees
nationaux.
y2 Andrea Mantegna, Parnassus (detail),
Apollo and the Nine Muses, c.i4y7.
Oil on canvas. Musee du Louvre,
Paris. Photo Reunion des musees
nationau.N.
y3 Leonardo da Vinci, CTiievra de'Benci,
C.1474. Oil on wood. 38.8 x 36.7
(•54 X •4i)- National Gallery of Art.
Washington. Ailsa Mellon Bruce
Fund.
y4 Michelangelo, lunette with Lleazar
(detail), c. 1510. Sistine Chapel.
Vatican Palaces. Photo Vatican
Museums.
y5 Federico Barocci, II Perdono di .■issisi,
1 574/6. Oil on canvas. 4 10 x 220
(161^ X 86j). S.Francesco, Urbino.
Photo Scala.
i/i Workshop of Taddeo Gaddi,
Presentation of the 1'irijin, alter 133O.
Sils Tpoini ■.sub ss int,' li. •clu. rnnc
■iiui I .'Iiiur' on p.ip,. r, it. 4 ■ . s ,
11/ ‘ II;' .Muss, du I ous r, P.o'.s
Photo Rs'union de- niusevs
n.ilion.iux
D onarilo sla \'iii. 1. I.i.’i.in..., ■ ;ii,
.M.tgi., 14S1 t >il on ss,-od.
24 5''’ 24ti 4 of-. ■ V- L rlizi
(..diets. Floreiue Photo .Ahiiari
u8 I eonatslo sl.i \ Ills I. I hi .Madonii.i .md
Child with ( at. . 14-8 Pen. ink and
ss ash, 3 3 s > 24 I 13 J ■ u I British
Museum. 1 otuioii
M.iriotto .Albertiiielh. / he
.■innun, lation, is 10 t )il on s aiivas.
32 s X 230,1 2-, X 'xT A,, aileniia.
Florence Photo Alinari
too Feslerui) B.irom. siiuls for head of St
Francis in II Perdono di .dooi pi vsi
Coloured pastels. 34 s x 2t, 8
■13 s X 10 T' National Callers of
Scotland. Fdinburgh
101 I he Peacock, from Gregors the
Great. .Moralia in Job. ssritten and
illuminated bs the monk Floreiitius.
y4\. Biblioteca N.icioii.il, .Madrid,
Photo .Mas.
102 Cosinio Rosselh, Pile Giving ol the
Law ,nid the . Idoration of the Golden
(Li//(detail). Fresco, 1.148 I Sistine
Chapel, Vatican Palaces Photo
Vatican .Museums
103 Matthias Griiness aid, I'he
Resurrection from the Isenheim .Altar
(detail). 1.1515. Oil on panel, .Musee
Unterlinden. Colmar Photo .Max
Seidel.
104 Martin SchatTner. 'Lite Heavenly
I 'niverse. 1533. Wooden painted
table-top. 108.5 X I I 1.7 (42J x 46J)
Hessisches .Museum. Kassel
105 'Lite It'/life/^iisc. manuscript, f. 1550.
From Fi Reusner (ed.) IKindora: Das
ist die edelst Gab Gottes. Basel, 1 582.
MS 1. IV I. pt)6.
Umversitatsbibhothek, Basel.
106 Jan van Eyck. Giovanni . irnolfini and
Giovanna Cenami ( The .-irnolfini
.Marriage). 1434 (hi on oak.
8 1.8 X 5y.7 (32I X 23 (). National
Gallery. London.
107 Francesco .Mazzuoli called
Parmigianino. 'I'he .M,idonna of the
Rose. 1528/30, Oil on oak, ioyx88.5
(42^ X 34^). Gemaldegalene ,Alte
■Meister, Dresden Photo Deutsche
Fotothek. Dresden.
108 Giuho Campagiiola, L,mdscape with
t wo .Men, 1.1510. Pen and brosvn
ink. 134x258 (52JX loljl .Musee
du Louvre, Pans Photo Reunion des
musees nationaux
loy Francesco .Mazzuoli called
Parmigianino. If.'iiijM seated on the
ground t St I'liais?) F.tching, 13x112
(si X4;) British Museum, l.ondon
110 VCilharn Blake. .1 .Memorable l aruy,
from Blake. The .Marriage of Heaven
and Hell. 171)0 3 Relief etching.
 MST ()l II M S I KAriONS
14';- I, .4 ' ' 4 i . Bodk'i.m
1 ibr.ir\, (.''\loi\i
III Alhu lilt I lurcr. ,\/(/r'l;./, I>I4.
I .1\ 1114. -1.1 ') ■ I f' s '1; > ^ 130 Francis Cilisson. The Seale ot Blackness
Briti'-h Musi.'uiii. 1 ondon.
1 14 Idiiv ,111111 I .inti'.iiu'ii. rin As.'-iimpiii'ii
I't ilh 1 ii'pn. KCS brfM'o. (. A'llin^
ot s .Aiidrc.i dcll.i \’.illc, Ronic.
1 1 1 I iin4itudin.ll M.-i.tion ut ii.n c ut II
CicMi. koiiic. I’cn dr.iwinu
Mip4niiipoM. d tu 4:i\c .ipproMiiianon
olAp.ui.il liluMoii. Froiii R. Enppass.
I he Paiiiniip el L iiivcrvitN
R.irk. I’cniiNN l\ ani.i
1 14 IV tcr Raul Rubens, lime end .draiis,
I fi I I. till on caiiwis, 441; X H/i
lU'i X — •>. W’allrat-l^ichartz-
Museuni. CdikipiK', Rhuto
Rlieiniss'hes Hild.irehn, tiolopiic.
1 I s Master ut S.Franeeseo. (jiicitixteti.
thirteenth eentury. Tempera on
panel, i/i x "3. ( t'j x aS;;). .Musee du
Louvre, Rans, Rhoto Reunion des
nuisees nanonaux.
1 It) Nicholas Roiissin, I'hi Hely I\miily on
iho Siopi. Ifi4.s. Oil on eanwis,
ti.s.s X <;“..s (4“ X isM. National
Oallerv of'.Art. Washington IKl.
11“ lohannes Vermeer, The Arri<i in hii
Snidie. r.itititi-- (detail). Oil on
eaiiwis. Kunsthistorisehes Museum,
Vienna.
I IS Frans Hals, I’enrmr efj Mon. 1639-40.
Oil on canvas. 73.6 x 61 (49 x 44).
Rnvate eollection.
119 Rembrandt \ an Rijn, Penroil el .1
Lonpic as lipnres troin the (lid
Tesinineni. knomn at ‘ The U'wish
Bride’. 1666? Oil on canvas.
141.5 X 166.5 (47;! X652).
Rijksmuseum. Amsterdam.
120 Caravaggio, The Calling ot St
Matthew. 1599/1600. Oil on canvas.
323.5 x 340 (127.5 X 134). Contarelli
Chapel. Church ot S. Luigi dei
Francesi, Rome. Rhoto Scala.
121 Uaciccio, The .-{doration ot the Xante ot
Jesus. i66iS/'82. Fresco. Ceiling ot 11
Gesii, Rome. Photo Scala.
122 The colours of urine, from John of
Cuba. Hortus Sanitatis. fifteenth
century. MS Lat. 11229, folio 19V.
Bibliotheque Nationalc, Paris.
123 Colour circle, from Claude Boutet.
Traite dc la pcintnre cn tnignatiire. The
Hague 17O1S.
124-7 Jacob Christophe Le Blon after F.H.
Rigaud. Portrait of Cardinal de Fleury.
colour separations, before 1738.
Mezzotints, 61.5 x 45.4 (24^ x 17J).
Bibliotheque de I'Arsenal. Paris.
Photo Bibliotheque Nationale. Paris.
128 Eugene Delacroix, The Triumph of
.•ipollo. 1850/1. Oil on canvas,
800 X 750 (315 X 295). Ceiling of Salle
d’Apollon, Musee du Louvre, Paris.
Photo Reunion des musees
nationaux.
326
I 29 Francis Ghsson. I'he Seale ol Redness
troin I raLiatiis de I etitruiile et
Intestinis (p.t<i). London iti77.
troin 'I'raeiatus de 1 entneitle et
Iniestuns [p.st)). London 16--.
131 Franyois Boucher, frontispiece ot La
Cenehylielogie. engraving, 17S0.
Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris.
134 Rembrandt win Ri|n. The Shell, itiso,
etching, first state. British Museum.
London.
133 Robert Fludd, The Colours ot Urine
from Fludd, Medieina Catholiea 11.
Frankturt 1629.
134 Sir Isaac Newton, Colour wheel
from New ton. Opticks. Book i. part
11. London 1704.
13 5 Sir Isaac Newton. Colours of thin
plates from Newton. Optieks. Book
11, part 1. London 1704.
136 Eugene Delacroix, Colour triangle,
(■.1830. From a notebook. Pen and
ink drawing. .Musee Chantillv, Pans.
137 Auguste Laugel, Table of colour
mixtures from Laugel. L'Optique et
les -drt.s. Paris 1869.
I 3S Auguste Laugel. Colour star based on
a diagram by Delacroix. From
Laugel. L'Optique et les .drf.s. Pans
1 869.
139 Ogden Rood. Contrast Diagram trom
Rood, Modern Chromaties, London
1S79.
140 William Hogarth, diagram of palette,
detail from engraving ot The .-{nalysis
of Beitiit)'. plate 11. 1753.
141 George Romney (1734-1802), plan
of placing colours on a palette, ink.
38.4 X 27.1 (15^ X lof). The
Metropolitan Museum of Art,
Rogers Fund, 1911. New York.
142 Niklaus Manuel Deutsch, St Luke
painting the I irgin. 1515. Oil on
sprucewood, 122 x 82 (48 x 32j).
Kunstmuseum. Bern.
143 William Hogarth, Selt-portrait
painting the Comic .Muse (detail),
c. 1758. Oil on canvas. National
Portrait Gallery, London.
144 John Trumbull. Self-portrait (detail),
1777. Oil on canvas. Museum of Fine
Arts, Boston.
145 .Aert de Gelder. Selpportrait as Zeuxis
(detail), 1685. Oil on canvas.
Stadelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt.
Photo Ursula Edelmann, Artothek.
146 Camille Pissarro. Palette with a
landscape, (71878. Oil on panel,
24.1 X 24.6 (92 X I3f). Sterling and
Francine Clark Art Institute,
Williamstown, MA.
147 The studio of Eugene Delacroix,
engraving, L'Illustration. Paris
1852.
14.S .Alter W-1. Homer, diagram ot
Seurat's palette, i7 1891.
149 |.-G. Vibert, diagram ot a spectral
palette from 'Vdbert, The Science ot
P,tinting. London 1S92.
150 Henri Matisse, diagram of palette,
193-.
15 I Vincent van Gogh. Selt-Portrait.
iSSS. Oil on cans as, 65 x 50.5
(asd X I9S). Rijksinuseuin Vincent
win Gogh. .Ainsterdani/Foundation
A'lncent van Gogh.
I S2 A’lncent van Gogh, diagram ot
palette, 18S2. From Letter 222, Van
Gogh, The Complete Letters, volume
I. London 1958.
1 s3 Moses Harris. Prismatic Circle,
171776 from T. Phillips, Lectures on the
History and Principles oj Painting.
London 1833.
154 Charles Blanc, Colour star trom
Blanc. Crammaire des .-irts du Dessin.
Paris 1867.
15 5 lules-Claude Ziegler, Colour star
from Ziegler. Etudes Ceramiques, Paris
1850.
156 Philip Otto Runge, Ideal and Real
Circle, 1.1809 from Runge,
Hiuterlassene Schrifteu. Hamburg
1 840.
157 lean Simeon Chardin. .A I 'ase oJ
Flowers, 1.1760/3. Oil on canvas,
43.8 X 36.2 (174 X I4j). National
Gallery of Scotland. Edinburgh.
158 Jean-Baptiste Oudry, The Uliite
Duck. 1753. Oil on canvas,
95.2 X 63.5 (37J X 25). Private
collection.
159 Philipp Otto Runge, Colour sphere,
1810 from Runge. Die Farhenkugel,
Hamburg 1810.
160 Friedrich Schiller and |ohann
Woltgang von Goethe. The
Temperament-t’ane ( Temperamentrose).
1799. Ink inscription and
watercolours, 15.3 (6) diameter.
Goethc-Nationalmuseum, Weimar.
Photo StiftLing Weimarer Klassik.
161 J.M.W. Turner, Colour-Circle Xo. 2,
C.1825. Watercolour, 54x74.3
(214 X 295). The Turner Collection,
Tate Gallery, London.
162 Philipp Otto Runge, The Small
‘.Morning', 1808. Oil on canvas,
109 X 88.5 (42J X 345). Kunsthalle,
Hamburg.
163 Vincent van Gogh, The Xight Cafe,
1888. Oil on canvas, 70 x 89
(274 X 35). Yale University Art
Gallery. Bequest of Stephen Carlton
Clark.
164 Paul Gauguin, The Loss ot Virginity,
1890; 1. Oil on canvas, 90 x 130
(35i X 513). The Chrysler Museum,
Norfolk, VA, Gift of Walter P.
Chrysler. |r.
165 Paul Cezanne, The Winding Road.
(7 1902 06. Oil on canvas, 73 x 92
(28J X 364). Courtauld Institute
Galleries, London.
166 Claude Monet. Poplars I Banks ot the
Epte). 1891. C)il on canvas,
100.3 X65.2 (394 X25 s). Philadelphia
Museum ot Art. Bequest ot Anne
Thomson as a memorial to her father.
Frank Thomson and her mother,
Marv Elizabeth Clarke Thomson.
16- Henri Matisse, The Red Studio. 191 1.
Chi on canvas, 181 x 2 19.1
{71 4 X 864). Collection, The
.Vluseuin ot Modern Art. New York.
Mrs Simon Guggenheim Fund.
168 Henri Matisse, Chapel ot the Rosary
ot the Dominicans, Vence. 1948/51.
Photo Helene Adant.
169 I.M.W. Turner, Light and Colour
( Cdoethe’s Theory) - the .Morning after
the Deluge - .Moses writing the Book ot
Genesis. 1843. Oil on canvas,
78.7 X 78.7 (30 X 30). The Turner
Collection, Tate Ciallery, London.
170 Charles Fere. The effects of colours
on muscular activitya trom Fere,
Sensation et .Moui'ement. Paris 1S87.
171-2 Wassily Kandinsky. Table 1 and
Table q trom Kandinsky, On the
Spiritual in .irt (Munich, 1912,
English translation, ed. Lindsay and
Vergo, New York, 1982).
173 D. Lucas, Portrait ot Field in his
Laboratory. 1843 bound into Field,
Chromatics, London 1817. Photo
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
174 lames Gillray, Titianus Rediihuus,
1797. Etching and watercolour,
54.5x41 C->ix i6i). British
Museum. London.
175 George Field, trontispiece to
Chromatography; nr j Treatise on
Colours and Pigments, and ot their
Powers in Painting. London 1835.
Photo Fitzwilliam Museum,
Cambridge.
176 ).F.L. Merimee. Chromatic scale,
from Merimee, De la Peinture a
I’huile. Pans 1830.
177 William Holman Hunt, The Two
Gentlemen oJ I'crona - Valentine
rescuing Syluia from Proteus, 1850/1.
Oil on canvas, 97.8 x 133.4
(385 X 523). By permission of
Birmingham City Museum and Art
Gallery.
178 Georges Seurat, Sunday Afternoon on
the Island oJ the GrandJatte (detail),
1884-6. Oil on canvas. Art Institute
of Chicago, Helen Birch Bartlett
Memorial Collection.
179 J.-G. Vibert, The Delights of.-irt.
from The Century Magazine. April
1896.
180 Kasimir Malevich, Suprematist
Painting, 1917/8. Oil on canvas,
97 X 70 (382 X 272). Stedelijk
Museum, Amsterdam.

iXi I'.iolo Veronese, 'I'lif .\Iarriii{;c iil
CJiUui (detail). I.'>63. Oil on canvas.
Musee du Louvre, Paris. Photo
Reunion des imisees nationaux.
1X2 (iioseffo Zarlino, Table ot’harmomc
proportions froni Zarlino, Islilimoiii
Harmoniche. Venice 1573.
1X3 Praiifois d'Aguilon. Oolour scale
from d'Aginlon, Oplicorum Lihn Sex.
Book 1, Antwerp 1613.
1X4 Mann Cureau de la Chanihre. Table
of musical harmony of colours, from
Cureau sle la Chambre, Xoui’i’llvs
Obscrvalioits el Cxmjcaurcs stir I'Iris.
Paris 1650.
1X5 Rene 1 )escartes. Circle of major and
minor tones, from Descartes,
Compendium Musicae, Utrecht K'l^o.
1X6 C.G. Giiyot, Musique Oculaire, 1769
from Ciuyot, Xoiivelles RecreiUioii.i
physiques ei meuipliysiques, Vol. Ill,
Paris I7f)y. By permission of the
Houghton Library. Harvard
University, Cambridge, MA.
187 Francis Webb. Pariliarmoiiicoit (detail),
London 1X15.
tXX Attributed to Paul Bril (1554-1626).
.Arris! playing a lute. Oil on canvas,
70.8 X 77.1 (27 j X 30^). Museum of
Art. Rhode Island School of Design,
Providence, Rl. Museum
appropriation. Photo Cathy Carver.
189 Paul Klee, .4d Paniassum. 1932, Oil
on canvas, 100 x 126 (395 X49j).
Verein der Freunde, Kunstmuseum.
Bern.
lyo Paul Klcc, E.xercises in mirror-
reversal in coloured grids, 11.1922.
Paul-Klee-Stiftung, Kunstmuseum,
Bern.
lyi Piet Mondrian, Victory Boogie-
Woogie. 1943/4. Oil on canvas,
126 X 126 (49 J X 49I). Private
collection.
192 Wassily K.mdinsky. Composition 1 7,
1913. < hi on canvas. 19s x 300
(76 j X I I X J). 1 lermitage Museum. St
Petersburg.
193 .Morgan Russell. f.'rciii'K Deus
Uonnnem I .Synchromy ,\o. j: (dolor
Counterpoint). 1914. Oil on canv.is
mounted on cardboard. 30.2 x 26
(1 I s X loi). Collection, The
.Museum ot .Modern .Art. New York.
(iiven anonymously.
194 Theo van Doesburg. Ragtime
I Composition in Creys/. 191X. Oil on
canvas, 95 x sX.s (37,} x 23). Peggy
Cuggenheim Collection. Venice.
19.S Scriabin, score for the Prometheus
.Symphony, page i.
196 Pertorniance of Scriabin's I’rometheiis
.Symphony, from .Scientific .American.
April 1915.
197 Mary Hallock Greenewalt, design for
.d Light-Color Play Console. 1927.
From Greenewalt, Souralhar: The
Pine .Art oj Color-Light Playing.
Philadelphia, 1946.
198 Thomas Wilfred rehearsing a
composition, frtim A.B. Klein,
Coloured Light: an .Art .Medium.
London 1937.
199 Cierrit Rietveld. Red-Blue Chair.
Reconstruction. Black-stained frame,
lacquered scat and back,
XX X 65.5x83 {34I X 25I X 32i).
CHssina SpA,
200 Georges Vantongerloo, Triptiech
f Triptych). 1921. Oil on wood,
middle panel 12.5 x 11 (4J x 4g), side
panels 11 x 6.5 (44 x 2j). Private
collection. The Netherlands,
201 Mondrian, Composition C. 1920. Oil
on canvas. 60.3 x 51 (23^ X24).
Collection, The Mu.seum of Modern
Art, New York, Acquired through
the Lillie P. Bliss Bequest.
202 Illustration of‘film color', from Josef
Albers, Die Wechselheziehuttgen der
I isi ()l II I I SIWAIK I\S
Larin ' Interaction of ( olor s 212 .M.ltk Rotllk.', I I'.l'n'. )eii.u ( l»,;r.,', ,
X\II I , Si,irnberg ly-l 191.9 (111 nil p.ipi 1 nuHiir-.-.l .Ml .nil’ll
1232- 1 . '2 .1 (S ^ i I’ll, ....
203 niy .tnd Retiring; (.oloi.. from M.irlbor.nigli G.illi r\ liu \. \s
l.mily C Noyes Vanderpoel, C.'/cr 'lurk I I .i.;2 Kale R. nlik.p! i.’i i.\
( lliisiopher Rothko ARx. N.ss
Ihohlem. A Pr.utual .Manual toi the
nk
I .ay .Student ot Color. \e\s York Orc
2 1! Kenneth Nol.iiid. 2 tjOj. nX'a
204 (ioethe-triangh . B.irrs SHi.utm.in .iiul
Ai r\ lu on . .Ills .IS. I ■ 2 ~ ■ I "2
ILukstraw Doss lies .liter ( .irr\ sail
f.s . t.s K .isiiiin 1 tsl
Bieiii.i, troiii lose! .Albers. Du
II echselheeleliiingen dn I ,irhe
2141 leiie I Lis is. l.inu liyht .Sound’ .•>
(Inter.unon of Ciolori, XXI\' 1.
(,10”. I'gio Magn.i on k alls as,
Starnberg 1973.
234 9 > 22f. ii .;2 s ' s.^J t ourtess
ot the I st.ite ot (lene I ).i\ is
2os Wilhelm Ostssald, .Section through the
colour-solid, from |osef .Albers, Die
21 s X’lintos Hiis/.ir, (191S
l \ echselheziehiingen der Lathe
1 es hiiiipie. dimensions and
(Interaction of Colon. XX1\' 2,
\\ hereabouts unknown
Starnberg 1973.
2 it. .Allresi .Ariuit. siuestioniiaire tor the
206 Josef Albers, Homage to the .Square.
W allp.iintiiig w orkshop. B.iuliaus.
1950. till on masonite panel, 1923 B.iuh.uis-.Archis. Berlin
unframed 52.3 x 52 (20b x 20J). Yale
University Art Gallery. Gift ot Anm 2i7 johannes Itten. Lotm. and Coloute
Albers .iiul the josef .Albers From Itten. Lhe Art ol (.oloi. New
Foundation, Inc. York I9t'i
207 Giacomo Balia, Iridesient 21S Lmietable tor the Prelnmnars
Interpeuetrations So. it. 1912. Course (detail.. B.iuhaus. W eimar.
Tempera on canvas, X4 x 72 1.1924. 1 luinngian State .Anhise.
(33 X2X^). (ialleria Civica d'Arte Wenn.ir.
Moderna, Turin.
219 Fraiuisek Kupka. version of
20X Robert Delaunay, .Snii. .Moon. .New ton's w heel, c. 1910 From
Simiiltane I, 1913. C)il on canvas, Kupka. Li’oreni 1 ('mcni I ytrarnem
64 X 100 (222 X 48^). Stedelijk I Creation in the Plastii .Artsl. Prague,
Museum, Amsterdam. 19:13.
220 Paul Klee. Suspended Lruit. 1921
209 Sonia Delaunay, Patchwork coverlet.
XX'atercolour and petuil on textured
1911. 100 X Xi (395* X 3 I b). .Musee
paper, mounted on green wove paper
d'Art Moderne, Pans.
on cardboard. 24.X x 1 5.2 (94* x 6).
1 he .Metropolitan Museum of .Art.
210 Helen Frankenthaler, .Mountains and
1 he Berggruen Klee Collection, 19X4.
Sea. 1952. Dll on canvas, 220 x 297.X
(X6J X I 174). Collection of the artist 221 Joset Albers, The 'Goethe Triangle'
on loan to the National Gallery of divided into 'expressive colour
Art. Washington DC. combinations', from Albers
Interaction ot Color. Loiislon and Ness
211 Morris Louis, Colden .Age. 1959. Haven 1963.
Acrylic on canvas, 230 x 37X
(90J X 148^). Photograph 222 Frank Stella at svork in his studio.
reproduced by kind permission of the Ness York Photo .M Knoedler and
Trustees of the Ulster Museum. Co. Inc.. Ness York.
3^7

Fij^urcs in luilus indnatf pLitf c.iptuin
inimbtT'.
Aauon's HRhAS'i'i’i Al 1.12 stoiiL’.s of 74. Sy
Abvtract ExprcsMonisni 267, 261S, 702
11.164
abstract film 244 s, 246
abstraction 204. 212, 215. Chapter 14,
pilSiiltl
Accadcinia lA'Ilcgrina 273 11.74
Accolti, I’letro 1 s6
acrylics 267
Actuarius, |. 274 11.97
Adam, E. 302 n. i 3.S
Ael /ill iVin/iiiH t'tiuilluin 279 11.63
Adler. Uruiio 300 11.67
Adrastus of Aphrodisias 297 n.s
Adriaiii, G.B. 274 n.93
Ai’lfric's Piiraphrase of the Pentateuch and
Joshua 93, 94. oQ
Aethelwulf 43
Action 29, 34
Aecius 12, 29, 32, 93, 272 11.7
Agnello. Bishop 276 11.139
Agricola, Rudolph 2S9 11.104
Aguiloii, Fraiiyois d’ 95, 134, 229, 23 i,
297 11.43, J14, iSp
Akenside, Mark 107
Alain of Lille 77
Albano, Francesco 173
Albers, Josef 7. 260, 262, 263, 264-6, 267,
301 11.93, 302 11.146, 202, 204, 206, 220.
221
Alberti, Leon Battista 32, 33, 1 17-9, 120,
130, 136, 136. 166, 168,92,
Albertinelli, Mariotto 137, 99
Albertus Magnus 74, 139, 140, 141, 166,
280 11.1 i6
Alchemy Chapter 8 passim, 279 n.74, 102.
los, loS. log, no, in
Alcmaeoii of Croton 1 i
Aleman 272 11.57
Aldobraudini 11 'eddiu^c; 292 11.40
Alexander of Aphrodisias 3 i, 61, 96, 108.
112, 272 n.36, 273 1111.33, 4b. 283 n.138
Alexander the Great 23, 26, 36, 274
11.100, 12, iS
Alexander of Hales 279 n.92
Alexander keraunoplion 30
Alexander Mosaic 30, 41,272 11.17
Alfano da Salerno 276 11.108
Alfarabi 273 11.32
al-FarasT, Kaniiil al Din 277 11.189
Alfonso the Magnanimous 82, 83, 84, 89
Algarotti, Francesco 288 11.86
Alhazeii (Ibii al-Haythani) 64, 70, 133,
284 1111.20, 28, 30, 283 iin.yi, I 13
al-Kindi 283 n.y i
Allesch, G.J. von 208
Allori, Alessandro 290 11.14
Alma-Tadema, Sir Lawrence 11,4
al-Razi (Rhazes) 64, 143, 278 11.44
Altdorfer, Albrecht 95
al-Tiisi 166, 277 n.88
alum 13 1
Ainmiaiius Marcellinus 93
An American Place 265
Andrea del Castagno 132
INDEX
Andrea del Sarto 130, 137, 283 1111.122,
13.S
Andreas Trapezuntius 286 11.39
Andrew of St Victor 277 11.1 8 t
Aiidrieu. Pierre 1 10. 186, 1S7
Anexagoras 272 11.23
Angelico, Fra 8, 120, 129 144, As’
Anonymous Bellertiian II, 296 n. i
Anoiiymous Beriiensis 27
Anc'iuetin, Louis 293 11.91
Aiischiltz, Georg 299 11.144
Ansiaux, Antoine 36
Anthony of Novgorod, 47
Antioclius of Athens 32 ^ Barbarino, Francesco da 281 n.78
Aiitoiiello da Messina 132
Antonio da Fabriano 284 n.64
Antonio da Pisa 69, 119
Anuskiewicz, Richard 302 11.133
Apelles 13, 16, Chapter 2, piis'.tiiii, 272
11.17, 16, id
Apocalypse 63-4, 93, 94, 152, 46, 41, 49
Appia, Adolph 243
apse 45, 71. ^7'S 11.3,3.4^. D
Arabic 64, 79
Archyttis of Tarentuni 227
Arciniboldo, Giuseppe 230, 231
Aretino, Pietro 34, 137, 149-30, 287 11.30
Argaiid Lamp 243
Argenville, A.]. Dezallier d' 36
Aristides Quintilianus 227, 229
Aristotle {see also Peripatetics,
Theophrastus) ii, 12,26, 30, 43,38,
61,63, 74-5, 89, 139, 133, 165, 173,
204, 227, 230, 231, 271 11.39, 273 11.39,
286 11.42, 292 11.33,
Categories 229
On Dreams 27
On Generation and Corruption 3 i
Metaphysics 297 11.11
Meteorology 13, 14,31,93,94,93, 108,
134, 277 11.170, 278 11.33, 11.103
On Plants 13
Poetics 1 5
Problems 13, 227
On Sense and Sensible Objects 12, 15, 3 i,
43, 228, 275 11.33
On the 11 'orld 29
Aristoxenus 297 1111.3, 10
Arnian 267
Arnienini, G.B. 178, 213, 297 11.28
Arndt, Alfred 21(0
Ariiheim, Rudolf, 302 11.126
Arnolfiiii, Giovanni 142-3, lopi
Arpino, Cavaliere d’ (Giuseppe Cesari)
156, 165, 287 11.41
Art Institute of Light 246
Astrology 83, 84, 142, 104
Athanasius of Alexandria 276 11.94
Athenaeus 297 11.7
audition colors 209, 236, 293 11.122
Augurelli, Giovanni Aurelio 149
Auliis Gellius 3 1. 80
Aureol, Peter 61
Aussiter. Dr 293 11.16
Averroes (Ibii Rushd) 70, 166, 222
Avicenna (Ibii STiia) 64, 70, 89, 118, 163,
166, 288 n.53
Avisoii, C. 298 11.57
B.VBBAtth, Charles 243
Bach, lohann Sebastian 24 1, 243, 299
nil. 109, 141
Baciccio, (Giovanni Battista Gaulli) 163,
204, i I t, 121
Bacon, Roger 133, 139, 165-6, 2760.13,
279 1111.76, 8 I
Baegert, Derick 290 11.9
Baldiiiucci, Filippo 96
Balia, Giacomo 263, 264, 301 nn. 108,
109,2oy
Bandinelli, Baccio, 283 n.133
baptistries 43
Barbaro, Daniele 109, 274 n.92
Barbaro, Ermolao 33
Bardwell, Thomas 37, iSo
Barlaatii 76
Barna of Siena 284 11.64
Barocci, Federico 34, 138, 230, 93, too
Barrow, Isaac 153
Barry, James 107, 108, 271 col.2, 11.3, 296
11.38
Bartholin, C.T. 133
Bartholonieus Anglicus 279 11.74, -86
nn.25, 47
Bartholonieus of Bologna 280 11.116
Bartolo of Sassoferrato 8y, 120
Bartolommeo, Fra 133, 137, 2S3 1111.96,
122, 87
Bartolommeo di Tommaso 284 11.64
Bassano family 168
Bassaiio, Jacopo 230, iSi
Bassetti, Marcantonio 138
Bastieii-Lepage, J. 294 n.133
Bate, Heinrich, ofMecheln 273 n.42,
297 11.15
Baudri of Bourgeuil 61, 63, 77, 276 11.108
Bauhaus 209, 242, 245, 248, 259-63, 264,
267,igo
Circle of Friends of the, 262
1923 Exhibition 261, 296 11.94, 30i
n.103
Questionnaire (1923) 261,216
Bayer, Herbert 301 n.98
Baxandall, Michael lo
Bazille, Frederic 187
Beatus Commentary on the Apocalypse
63-4. 36
Beaumont, Sir George 213
Beckmann, Max 139
Bede, The Venerable 27, 72, 73
Beechey, Sir William 296 n.85
Beethoven, Ludwig van 241, 245
Belaiew-Exemplarsky, S. 294 0.123
Bellini, Giovanni 137
Bellori, Giovanni Paolo 138, 136, 163
Benedetto di Bindo 130, 8g
Benoit de Sainte-Maure 81, 84, 31
Berenson, Bernard 7, 8, 9, 10
Berkeley, Bishop George 209
Berlin, Brent, and Kay, Paul 79
Berlioz, Hector 185, 236
Bernard, Emile 210, 211,224, 293 nn.91,
97, 294011.133, 136, 148, 154
Bernardin de St Pierre, J.H. 292 11.66
Besant, A. and Leadbeater, C.W. 243,
245, 248, 299 n.135
Beuthcr, Friedrich 203
Bewick, William 185
Bezold, Wilhelm von 172, 239, 301 11.74
Bic, Cornelis de 293 ri. 1 2
Biema, Carry van 302 11.126, 204
Bieiis, C.P. 288 11.91
Bigot Roll 82
Billfrith 43
Biondo, Michelangelo 274 11.87
Bishop, Bainbndge 243, 245
Black Mountain College 264, 265,
302011.133, 139
Blake, William 38, 94, 106, 107, 108, 110,
132, 153, 169, 213, ig, in
Blanc, Charles 174, 175, 186, 205, 222,
247, 260, 291 11.20, 293 nn.75, 78, 83,
296 n.84, 134
Blanchard, Jacques 135
Blavatsky, H.P. 257, 300 11.25
blazon, heraldic 80-2, 91, 297 n.26, 30,
5^-33
Blockx, Jacques 296 n.83
Blue Rider, The 11 5, 207, 208, 236, 244,
299 n.98
Boccaccio, Giovanni 177
Boccioni, Umberto 296 11.84
Bocklin, Arnold 247
Bocour, Leonard 267
Boehme, Jacob 292 n.30
Boethius 70, 79, 108, 192, 229, 297 n.6
Boisseree, Sulpice 112
Bolognese School 38
Bonus, Petrus, of Ferrara 143, 286 n.25
Boodt, A.de 230, 274 11.97
Book of the Eparch 272 11.70
Borghini, Vincenzo 33
Bosch, Jerome 282 n.22
Boschini, Marco 34, 297 n.29
Bossi, Giuseppe, 298 n.73
Botticelli, Sandro 143-4, 273 n.45
Boucher, Francois 170-1
Boulenger, J.C. 36
Bourdon, J.H. 167-S, 222
Boutet, Claude 171, I2j
Bouts, Dieric 283 n.77
Bouvier, P.L. 214
Boyle, Robert 33, 139, 154
Bracqueniond, Felix 206, 293 n.79
Bragdon, Claude 243-6
Brass, Arnold 207
Brenner, Elias 288 11.yo
Brewster, Sir David 298 n.74
Bril, Paul 231, i8d
Brisseau de Mirbel, C.F. 215
Bronzino, Angelo 137
Browne, Sir Thomas 136
Brucioli, Antonio 93
Briicke, Die 207
Briicke, Ernst, 176, 239, 263, 292 11.33,
296 n.62
Brunelleschi, Filippo 118
Bruno, V.J. 29, 30, 3 1
Bryennius, Manuel 228, 297 n.6
Buch der heiligen Dreifaltigkeit 286 nn.44,
4y
Buckminster Fuller, Richard 265
Bugatti, Zanetto 132
Bugiardini, Giuliano 285 n. 122

Uuonaniii. Fv iSS ii.y i
lUiDiit.ik'iiti. Ik-riiardo ’v7 11.12
Burgundy. IHiki-s of 177
Burluik, I). 21X1 n.ij ?
Burnc-jonos, Sir F.dward 1X7, 2yi 11.67
Burnet. John 291 n. 1 3
Busoni. I-crriufio 24 i. 2w n. 100
Busti. Bern.irdino dc 64
Butts, riioni.is tX
Byron. Lord 10s
Byrtfcrtli of U.iinsey S4
CkMi.Mii. Benedetto 240. i>s’i
t'aluin. I'.iolo .<('(' Veronese
CXllcott. A.W. loy. 204
Ckillistr.itus 142
camera ohsciira 222
Ckinip. M.ixiniedu 174
C.imp.ignola, (liulio 149, laS
Ckiinpanella, l ommaso 94. 15s. 1 .X>
Campbell. Thomas 107. 115
Campm. Robert 2X5 11.76
candlesticks 70. 139. 27911.92
Canim. (iiovanni Angelo 17S
Caravaggio, Michelangelo Merisi d.i 136,
165. I6X. 120
Cardano. Ciirolamo 166, 230
cardinals 130, 13 i. 223 4. Sg, ijg
Carracci, Agostino 23 i
C'arracci, Annibale 156, 2X5 11.96, 290
11.14
Cams. Carl Custav 112. 291 11.4, X)
Cassagne. A.-T. 203, 291 11.10
Cassiano dal Rozzo 167
Cassiodorus 33
Castel, Louis Bertrand 107, 216. 233. 233,
236. 243. 291 11.3, 30011.4. KS’ti
Castelli, B. 291 11.3
Castiglione, Baldassare 90, 93
Caussy. FL 300 n. i
Cavallini, Pietro 276 n.123
Caxton, William 82
ceilings 13, 16.39,37, 163,21,26. 11?,
121, 12S
Celtis, Conrad 33
Cenami, Anna 142-3
Cennini. Cennino 33, 117, 118, 119, 130,
131,201,213, 214. 221, 223, 293 11.3,
296 11.69
Cesariano, Cesarc 3 3
Cezanne. Paul 110, 209- 11,222. 224.
223. 272 n.9, 296 1111,39, 78, 163
Chagall. Marc 139
Chalcidius 163
Chaldean Oracles 26
Chanson dc Roland 81
Chaptal, Count 21 3
Chardin. Jean-Sinieon 187, 192.291
11.24. >.’>7
Charlemagne 61,89, 278 11.33
Charleton, W. 288 11.91
Cheney, Sheldon 246
Chevreul, M.E. 14, 37, 173, 174. O.'i.
176, 191,211, 213, 247, 239. 260, 263,
264, 298 11.617, 12d, 1
chiaroscuro 8. 133, 168, 213, 213
Chifhet-Prinet Roll 280 n.44
CJhildf Harold's Ihlt^rnnat^e 282 11.63
Chopin. FTederic 236, 243
Chorikos of Caza 39, 40, 37
Chretien de Troyes 8t, 279 n.S6
Christine de Pisan 82
Christosophie 237
chromo-tiierapy 206, 207. 293 ti.ioo. 170
Cicero 14, 23, 29. 30, 36, 279 n. 113
circus, imperial 33. 6
Cistercians 72, 84. 279 n 109
Civis celeslis palrio 281 n.fio
Clarence. Thomas Puke ot 83
Clark. John Heaviside 103
Claude Lorrain 103, 1617, 168. 180. 288
11.69
( davilux 246. igd
( de.iver. .Miss 2 I 3
Clement ot Alexandria 227
Chchtove. J. 297 n. 1 3
Chini.ics 72
Clunv, Abbev of 72. X4. 277 11.4
COLLLCn iONS (sec also List of
Illustrations)
Aarau, Kantonale Kunstsammlung
2X2 11.64
Argos, ri h.ieologic.il .Museum 40
Athens. N.itional .Museum 272 11.16
Baltimore. Walters Art C.illerv 2X4
11.64
Basle, Kunstmuseum 2X2 1111.29,64.
290 n. 14
Beaune, 1 lospice 2X2 11.22
Berlin:
Bauhaus-Archiv 301 11.74. .02,
11.126
Nationalgalerie (East) 28X 11.41, 291
1111.67, 72, 301 11.71
Staathche Museen. Dahleni 2X2
11.39, 2X4 11.64. 290 11.20
Berne. Kunstmuseum 29011.14
Bologna. Pinacoteca 2X7 11.9
Boston, Museum ofFine Arts 17X, 291
11.67
Bottrup. Albers Museum 302 n. 138
Budapest, Museum of Fine Arts 290
11.20
Cambridge. Fitzwilliam Museum 273
11.23
Chicago Art Institute 291 1111.70. 79
Cologne. Wallrat-Richartz Museum
282 1111.22, 39, 291 11.67
Corinth. Archaeological Museum 40.
13
Edinburgh, National CLillery of
.Scotland 33'4, 283 n. 169
Florence:
Museum of S.Marco 9, 284 11.33
Urtizi 290 n. 14
Frankfurt-am-Main:
(ioethe-Haus 282 11.84
Stadel-lnstitut 284 11.60, 287 11.82
Harvard. Fogg Museum 292 11.38
Helsinki, National Museum of
Antiquities 279 11.80
Indianapolis, Museum of Art 283
n.173
Istanbul, Archaeological Museum 15
Liverpool. Walker Art Gallery 293
11.3 I Museum Moderner Kunst 2X3 n.173
London:
British Museum 60, 73, 273 11.37,
22
National Gallery 133, 136, 134.283
n. 173, 284 tin. 19. 64, 290 11.23
National Portrait Gallery 291 11.67
Sir lohii Soane’s Museum 287 11.36
Tate Gallery 283 n.173, -PS 'i-5'
Victoria and Albert Museum 70.
279 11.80
Wallace Collection 93
Ludwigshafen, Wilhehii-Hack
Museum 30011.44
Melbourne. National Gallery ot
Victoria 290 11.40
Milan:
Brera 288 11,76, 290 n. 14
Pinacoteca Ambrosiana 136
Minneapolis Institute of Arts 2X3 11.3
Montpellier, Musee Fabre 291 n.23
Moscow. Pushkin Museum 291 11.83
Munich:
Bayerische Staatsbibliothek 289
n. 110
Schack-Cialerie 223
Stadtische (Falcric im Leiibachhaus
283 11.173
Naples, Archaeological Museum 30.
41,61
Ncu Haven:
Yale Cniversns .^^t(ialler\ 2>ii-
n 41
Yale L'mversits Librars 2x911 1 lo
.New York
.Metropolitan .Museum 292 11 ix
.Museum ot .Modern Art 246, (ui
11.107
Pierpont .Morgan Librars 2X4 11414
Norfolk. Virginia, Chrs sler .Museum
290 n 43. 164
Norw ich. University olT.ast .-Kiiglia.
S.iinsbury Collection 273 11,30
Oslo. University .Museum ot N.itional
Antiquitis's 279 n.Xo
Oxford:
Ashmolean Museum 294 11,131. 293
11,3 I
Bodleian Library 78, 94
Pans:
Cluny .Museum 2S2 11.21
I. ouvrc 4 1. 276 n.123. 2X4 11.38. 2X7
n. 10. 290 n. 14. 291 n.X6. Cabinet
sie 1 )essins 289 n. 121, 291 11.38
.Musee (iustave Moreau 291 11.6)7
Musee Nationale d’Art .Moderne
302 n.123
Philadelphia, Museum of Art 302
n.123
Rome:
Capitoline Museum 2X7 11.41
Palazzo Barbenni 163. 284 11.38, 290
11.24
Vatican Library 93. 282 11.72, 284
11.64
Rouen. Musee 290 11.46
St Petersburg, Hermitage 282 11.40.
2K3 11.133
Schweinfurt. Schafer Collection 292
II. 66
Springfield !V1A, Museum ofFine Arts
291 11.77
Stockholm, National Museum of
Antiquities 279 n.8o
Stuttgart, Staatsgalerie 282 11.83, 291
11.67
Thessaloniki, Archaeological Museum
y.F
Urbiiio, Galleria Nazionale delle
Marche 283 n. 133
Vienna:
Academy 282 n.22
Kunsthistorisches Museum 29011.14
Osterreichische Nationalbibliothek
y.F
Volos. Museum 13, 26
Washington:
National Ciallcry 2S4 11.38. 283 11.124
National CLillery of American Art
302 n. 138
Zurich. Landesmuseuni 2X2 11,6)4
Color-field painting 266, 211.21 j, 214
COLOUR
-atlas 2X8 n.90
-blindness 11, i 17, 202, 292 11.34
brilliance and lustre of 12. 23. 27. 119.
133. 16)6
-change (chemical) 610 i, 139 40, 141
-change (optical): dove’sneck 14. 61.
24; peacock 14,61, 139, 140. 191.
lot ; ’shot' materials (see also textiles)
61. 272 11.88, 94
chemistry of (see also colour-change,
elements) 120, 180, 203 4, 216, 221,
239. 293 n.3
children's response to 79, 1 17. 239 60
-circle 8, 140, 166. 171, 172. 173. 176).
203. 213, 221,242, 237. 262, 2X9
nn.i2i, 133, 297 n.34. ;. 122. 12?.
114. I ig, 13 }. 138. i6i>, 161, 172. 173.
176,2ig
-constancy 192
ISDl \
-sontrast i 'O ,i/u’t lies reiil. i oiours
I. Diiiplemcntars 14. 1”. 41.''4 ii ;.
lit'. I sf). 1-3, I - s. I -r., 2 I I. ai’ .
26 1, 204 n I 11. 2o' 11 ' 1.42. i.-.'.
114. 2i’'. 'simuhaiio'U'' and
'siuscssise 2t';. 21*4. 2i’.'. 2.'4. 21 1,
■'i
aiul lorni 261 2. ai'i. 26s, 2f)('', ana
II 12s. 1"I nil Xs. M., 211. 214. 216.
21 ■
lour-soloiir prnblem 2" i 11
ti)ur-solour theors t h 2 /'.I 'nn, 2x6
n 14. '. 12. II. If
.iikI geiuier t) 1, "’‘i, i 1'. 142. i“4. 2' 4.
at'" X. 24X. aiM.'. 2t'2. ax.. II n. 2'H
nil M l, II’. ICO. ISP
gr.immar ol aofi. aa". iix' 11,4
-harmoiu lox. n.uj, 1 n^. 114, i2' . iix,
I6X. 1-2, I’l. |X,i. |Xs, H;l, 2"3.
20s. 221. 22X. 224. 2 12. 21s. 241.
2 s7. 2s‘>, 21k), 2’9 II. 1 I s. 2 X4 II 2i'.
2X9 11 109. 292 11 40. 29X nil s2, ij~.
-g. 184. /8’
loial 291 11 23
-mixture otr also optical mixture'
II 12. I 3. 30- 2. 3x, 3-, 42. 41.64.
137. 133. 134. 16X. 169. 171. I’a s,
177. 179. 183, 227, 220.2-2 1111,22.
23, 24. 2X011.1 IS. 2x3 nil 130, 1 11,
2X7 n.X. 2XX nil.’3. 76. 8, 114. I iP.
/.)7. 14'
optical mixture 42. 43.64, 171. I’l.
174, 176. 201.203. 211. 2X3 11.132.
2X8 11.98, 292 n.34. 293 n.30, 296
II. 84, 2 ). I 17, I ig
-organ (see also C.'l.ivilux, 'ocular
harpsichord') 244. 243 6, 237, 298
11.97. N3. 08, 147
oriental 10. 13.29, 61. Xo, 131, 174.
203, 206, 247- X, 293 11.83
-piano 299 nil. 136, 143
-preference 293 n. 1 19
reriections 136. 173, 201. 223, 236
-reproductions 271 col.i. 11.1
spectrum X, 93, 134, 1X0, 1X7,201,222.
232, 242. 243. 239. 2X3 n. I 16, 114.
140. I4d. I4g. 187. 2i)ii
-solid 167, 260. 292 11.38, 301.11.78,
13?. 138. 139
-spread 43, 28
-star 301 11.67, '.)8. 134. 133. 138
-symbolism 79. 82 4, 89, 120. 129.
143. 204. 216, 40: (alchemy) 139.
140, 149 30, 132,28611.49;
(astrology) 83, 2X1 11.78. 104:
(Christian) 82-4. 16)9; (Jew ish) 63,
130; (Theological Virtues) 84. 2X1
11.78, 32. 38; (Theosophy) 248
and symmetry 14
-vision I 17. 120, 239. 273 11.44. 280
n. 1. 284 1111.30, 3 1, .<8, 114, igg
colourmen 214. 216, 221,267. 2X4 nn.6)6,
68. 293 nil. 12. 13, 14. 296 n.X}
COl.GU'RS
black 7, 12, 13, 29, 30.6)0, 70. 83. 84,
X9. I iX, 149. 133 6, 203. 233. 268.
271 11.23. -7- '> 4. ■^Xi 11,74, 487
11.30. 302 n.l6>6i, 118
blue (see also pigments: ‘.Antwerp
blue', azurite. cobalt blue, indigo.
Prussian blue, ultramarine; terms:
hnanos; gems: sapphire) 1 1. 29. 30,
.14. 3."!. ,38. 70. 83. 89. 91. I iX,
129. 130, 133. 143. 206), 207. 224,
433. 437. 267, 274 11 4, 278 11.12. 4X6
n. I 3. 2X7 n. 19, 293 11.1 14. s. p, }}.
38. 192
brown (see also pigments 'brossn-
pink'. Van Dyck brown) 7. 33, 83
green (see also yellow; pigments: pen
enteraiide. terms green-purple) 12.
I 3 - 3 5- 43.8>o, 61. 82. 84. 89. 119.
143. 232. 237. 238. 280 n 47. 281
INDFX
( C')L OL-’US
nn.v.l. ';<■ -^^4 n.20. 2ijJ: n.,!4,
II. I h 2ijy n.4';. /. loy. iot>. JOI
grCN’ 11^ ‘J. I S S . ^(,'S. 40('). 4 S':’,
4\,s. 2S4 n. K', 4N.S II.SI'). 491
4'/' ii.'''4. ,V'i' n. iS. 40 I n.70,
144
<ir.iimc / ii
red (.<i'c .i/si' pigment',: |•rlIn'^on,
imuKlei, minium, .'iiiii/i/.',
vermilion; terms; pii/e.'', purple,
se.irlet, mI) i 4. 4S, 4ii, 47. 47, 40, 4 1,
4 s, 44, sN. :’S, So, S4, S4, Si;, i; I. c;s,
110. 1.10. 14s. 1.10, 140. ISO, Ifii;.
I 74. eoti, 407, 4 I S. 4 I O, 44S, 44S,
4S“. 4SS. 4-1 11.40, 474 11.7S. 477
11. I 40, 4S I 11.04, 4S4 nil.l'i I , CO. 401
11. 144, /. 14, tl. 14, 44, l.S, .S7. Si). 1)0.
1)1. lOh ISJ. I -0
\ iolet 404 O - ■ ' 'I’
white (see aliO pigments: le.ul-white)
1 4, 1 4. 40, fio, 64. 70, So, 1 I S, 110.
140, 140. 141. 101. 47 1 11.44, 474
11.St), 470 11. I 47, 1)2. Ills. lyS. tSo
yellow (.see oho green; pigments:
ehroine-vellow, (j/ii/Zdi'/iii), lemon-
\ ellow. N.iples s'ellow, .<i'/iI'lpee/) 1 I.
14, 40, .11, .IS. til. 04, S4, So. I lS
407, 444, 444, 4S7 1111.7 1, 19
■app.irent' anil 'true' i s.l, 4S4 n. 104
'.lustere' .iiul 'Horid' i s. .10
eoinplement.iry I4, yo, 174, 17.S. 176,
404, 404, 40S, 2 11, 446, 244, 44S,
4 Sy, 464, 4Sy nil. 104. 114, 404
nn.7S, 79. 204 n. 161,2ys n.2S, 2yS
n.74, 401 n.ioy, n_s, lyS, 1.19, 149
nature of 1 I 14, 149, i.s.l, 154,216,
44 1
'prini,iry' 12, 2y, 41. 44 6, 47, 64, 79,
loS, iiS, I ly, i s i, I 54, 168, i6y,
17S, I S7, 204, 215,216, 221.242,
24S. 257, 25S, 259, 274 n.51, 2S7
11.28, 2S8 1111.90, 98, 2yo 11.40, 292
nil.44, 50, 294 11.161. -9.‘i n.51, 296
11.64, 400 11.4 1,401 11.78, So. 1 i.s, 116.
161.162. ii)i). 200. 201.216. 21/:
■jelditive'and ‘subtraetive’ 154, 175,
261,289 11.144
of rhetoric 84, 271 n.47
subjective (.dr olso ‘ocular spectra’) 27,
64,90, 120, 152, 172, 174, 191,202,
20.5, 212, 245, 271 n. ly, 10), i(iy, 16S
'warin' and ‘cool’ 8, 48, 79, 187, 188,
204, 208, 27 1 col.I 11.6, 284 n. 1 16,
156
COLOUR TERMS
8. II, 16, 4 I, 45, 64. 79, 80, 169-70,
206, 271 11.49, 288 n.96. 294 nil.91,
97. .!d- ‘54< ‘55
‘basic’ 79
bissiis (/nX’iii) 1 18. 274 11.54
hloi yo, 28 I n.yS
coenilciiiii 40, 45, 165, 274 11.90
ceriihis (cenik'iis) 45, 90, 165, 274 11.yo,
288 11.71
chloron 12, 272 11.7
linvrocctis {cencrco, cencrot;uolo, cciieritio)
45, 144, 167,2841111.14, 16,28811.71
floviis 41, 80, 165. 274 n.47, 40
fiili'iis 41, 45, 80, 89, 274 11.49
i)lau(iis yo. 165, 272 11.12, 274 n.yo, 288
11.71
gitlcs 82, sti
iacitilhos 74, 297 n.57
iambimis 45
karopos 281 n.y8
kuonos (cyoniis) 40, 41, 166
hitciis 45, 80, 272 n. 12
iiiorollo 240
oikroii 12. 4 1. 271 11.20, 272 11.7
pofionoszo {pot’oitazzo) iji. 140, 167
pii//ii/i/,)'74. 288 nn.54, 71
per.If 8, 80
330
Delaunay, Robert 241, 264-4. 284 11.174, El Greco 64, 148,29011.14
plioioii 60
purple ii/.'i'piit'eiiiieci’) 12, 14, 16, 20S. 219 Empedocles 11, 12, 14, 29. 40, 44. 272
25, 2ti, 27. 44, 82, 84, 8y, ys, 140, Delaunay, Sonia 264, 2og 11.24
144. itif), 201,204, 228, 24 1, 242, Delville, jean 244 Empirical Theory ot 'Vision 20y
272 1111.72, 87. 8y. 274 11.54, -80 Democritus I 1, 12, 14, 16,25,29,41, 42, empiricism 120, 264-5
mill, 14. 45. loS: green-25 enamels 75, 76, 279 n.79. 47, 5!
/ ((), 44. 17-
scarlet 80, 84. 120, 140, 144, 228, 246, 1 fenis, Maurice 21 1 encaustic 4 i, 274 11.44
272 11.Sy, 2S4 n.ti2, j.S de Piles, Roger 46, 95, 106, 155, 178, 191. Encyclopedie 291 11.4
.0/ 29. 4 5, 46 244, 296 11.57, 497 u-47. 498 11.64, Englefield, Sir Henry 2S2 11.6y
hiioplf S 1, 82 400 11.4 Elisor, James i 87
tawny {loiiiiv) 28 1 1111.64, 72 Descamps, A.-G. 222 entomology 170, 171, 172
Comaiiiih, Cregorio 240 Descartes, Rene 95, i 54, 242, 1S4 Epiiciirus 16
Conca. Sebastiano 46 Desportes, |.-B. 180 Epiphaiiius 278 11.54
Condillac, Etienne lloimot de 294 11.128 De Stijl 242, 248, 257- y, igg. 200. 201 Equicola, Mario 1 20, 274 11.88
Condix'i, Ascanio 144, 140 Deutsche Werkbund 247, 259, 262 llscrin de Charlemagne 72, 74,45
Congres Internationale de la Psychologic’ Lhaghilev, Serge 264 Esprit Nouveau, L’ 259
PliN'siologique 200 Diderot, Denis 299 n.yS Este family 120, 281 11.78
Conrad-Martius, Hedwig 140 Didrecks 84 Isabella d' 1 ly, 284 11.47
conservation 224, 224 Digby, Sir Kenelm 154, 201 Leonello d' 84
Constable. |ohn ys. y6. 105, 112. 114, Difiines .4krites 276 n. 108 Erasmus 44-4
1 14, 214, 215, 29 11. 10, 205 11. 1 , 72. 1 )io Chrysostom 26 Eriugena, Johannes Scotus 70, 71,74. 279
I I
S2. S i Diocletian 25 11.67
Constantine. Emperor 25, 61 2, 26 Diogenes Laertius 271 11.24 Ernst, Max 299 n. 116
Constantine Manasses 48 Dionysius ofFourna 47, 60, 61 Euphranor 14, 46, 48
Constantine ot Rhodes 45 Dionysius of Halicarnassus 1 17 Expressionism (see also Blue Rider) 207,
Constructivism lyi, 225. 259, 260, 268 Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite 60, 70, 260,4000.12,401 11.67
Contile. Luca 90 71, 74, 76, 145, I 56, 278 n.27, 279 11.65, Ezekiel 94, 94
ly, contracts 129-40, 141. 144, 156. 285 11.76, y, 4‘
287 11.41, 288 11.44 disegtio Ch.7 possiin. 155, 240, 297 11.2 1, Fadrh, Franyois-Xavier 2 1 5
400 11.4, Sy Faivre, E. 292 11.75
Conversino, Giovanni 1 17
Copley, John Singleton 284 n.i 16, 295 dissonance 246, 241 Fantin-Latour, Henri 185, 210
11.7 Distiiiclio inter colores iimsicales el artiioriiin Faraday, Michael 215, 295 n.i6
Corelli, Archangelo 245 Heroiiii 297 11.26 Farmgton, Joseph 214, 294-5 n ^
Corinth, Lovis 187, 291 11.67 Divine Light, colours of 58-9, 11. J2 Fauvism 248, 401 11.115
Corippus 44, 275 11.71 Divisioiiisin see Neo-lmpressionism Faventinus 274 11.87
Corneille, J.-B. 178 Dolce, Lodovico 44, 80, i 17, 129, 142, Fazio, Bartolommeo 142
Cornelius, Peter von 274 11.28 137. 149
Fechner, G.T. 246, 29S 11.74
Corot, |ean-Baptiste-Caniille 224 Domcnichi, Lodovico 274 11.80 Feininger, Lyonel 242, 245, 299 nn. 108,
Corra, Bruno 245, 298 n.74, 30i n ioy Lhomenichino 178, 241. 287 nn.25, 41 139
Corradus de Choftu 129 Domenico Veneziano 284 11.66 Felibien, Andre 155, 242. 244, 272 11.4.
Correggio, Antonio 148, 156, 204 Doni, Anton Francesco 44, 1 ly 287 n.28, 288 11.75, 290 11.28, 296 n.57
Cosnias Indicopleustes 277 11.168 Doni, G.B. 297 n.42 Feneon, Felix 175, 176, 187
Cosmati 76, 77, 279 n. 106 Dossi, Battista 284 11.66 Fere, Charles 206, lyo
Costa ben Luca 279 n.57 Dossi, Dosso 95, 284 n.66, 290 n.14 Ferrariis, Antonio de 284 ti.2
costume see dress Dossie, Robert 216 Ferri, Ciro 274 11.95
Cosway, Richard 2 i 4 Dou. Gerrit 178, 290 n. 19 Ficmo, Marsilio 78, 145, 141, 144, 166,
Coter, Colyn de 290 n.y Douce Apocalypse 78, 49 274 11.47
Cotiiian, John Sell 105, 77 Downes, R. 204 Field, George 8, 114, 214, 215-6, 221,
Cotton Cfitesis 60 drapery painting 44, i ly, 142, 145-6, 284 222, 245, 400 11.4, sS, lyj, 175
Council of Hiereia 47, 48 11.20 Filarete (Antonio Averlino) 142
Council of Nicca 61 drawing (see also disegno) 7, 15, Ch.7 Fischinger, Oskar 245
Council ill Triillo 47 passim. 149, 155, 201, 287 n.25, 297 Flaxnian, John 271 Ch.i n.2
Courbet, Gustave 187, 291 11.8 11.21,298 n.So, 400 11.4, 4, *’7- 9^' 9s'' flesh-paititing (see also portraiture) 44, 46,
Courtois, jehan sec Sicily Herald -paper 285 11.142 274 nn.71, 72, 82, 274 n.105, gi. 141)
Coxie, Michael 284 n.66 dress 84-4, 119, 129, 140, 14 i, 147, 144,
Craig, William 292 n.67 155-6, 174, 204, 277 n.156, 287 n.40, Florem de Cisario 129
Cross, Henri-Edniond 211 292 11.66, 14. 104. 106. 118 Florentine Academy 45, 147-8
Cubism 248, 264 Duane, Matthew 245 Floreiitius 101
Cureau de la Chanibre, Marin 46, 242, Duccio 280 n. 115 Fludd, Robert, 171, 1, i y
1S4 Duchamp, Marcel 149 Fontana, Giovanni da 284 11.28
Du Fresnoy, C.A. 47, 242, 274 n.i ly Forbes, J.D. 289 n. 144
'Damighron’ 74 Diirer, Albrecht 40, 44, 142, 149, 152, no Forestier, J.B. 205
Daniel of Morley 274 11.52 Durand, Guillaume 84 Forsius, Sigtrid 166
Dante Alighieri y, 77-S, 84, 94 Duranty, Edmond 175 Forster, Thomas 288 n.y6
darkness 59-60, 6y, 71, 120, 144, 145, Durmart le Calois 280 11.45 fourth dimension 245-6
I 55-6, 284 1111.28, 40, y, 121, 12S Lhutch School 48 Francke, Meister 242
Darwin, Erasmus 284 11.142, 298 11.74 dyeing (see also pigments; indigo) 25—6, Francken, Frans 11 290 n.20
Darwin, Robert Waring 172, 298 11.74 64-4, 129, 14 I, 149, 154, 174,27211.70, Franco Bolognese 77
Dati, Carlo 274 11.75 277 11.181, 284 11.28, 287 11.40, Sg. go, gi Francolin, Johann von 280 n.46
David, J.L. 46, 47, 179, 187 Fratikenthaler, Helen 267, 210
David, King 144 Franz Sternhalds H'andeningen 141
David d'Angers, P.-J. 271 col.2 11.2 Eastlake, Charles Lock 204, 214, 294 French Academy of Painting 46, 155,
Davis, Gene 266, 214 11.75, -95 0.16 167, 179, 191,222, 242, 95
Davy, Sir Humphrey 21 5 Eaves, Arthur Osborne 207 fresco 156, 165, 224, 295 11.16, 46, 94
Dayes, Edward 294 n.ioo Edelinck, Gerard 290 11.45 Freudenberg, F. 2oy
Deal, j.-N. 292 11.74 Egeria 47, 62 Friedrich, Caspar David y6, 106, 291 11.4,
De Arte Uhtminandi 45, 274 n.40 Eggeliiig, 'Viking 241 71^
Debussy, Claude 245 ekplirasis 49, 40, 46, 47, 48, 57, 275 11.16, Frisch, Johann Christoph 172
Degas, Edgar 186, 291 n.6i, 296 n.6y 276 11.88 Fry, Roger 210, 296 11.90
Delacroix, Eugene 96, iio, 174, 175, 176, elements, the four 12, 14, 29, 4 i, 42, 64, Fuchs, W. 402 II. 127
179, 185-7, i8y, lyi, 192, 201,205, 94,95, 1 18, 120, 140, 149, 142, 144, Fuller. Lo'ie 299 11.146
214, 215, 225, 245-6, 290 nil. 56, 67, 165, 274 nn.52, 54, 54, 276 11.149, 281 furs 82, 5 4, 106
2yi 11.10, 294 11.78, 12S, 11(1. ijS, 147 n.14, -S4 n.14, 286 11.49, ‘6. 54, 101 Fuseli, Henry 295 11.40
 INDI \

Futurism, kalian ;4X Goethe.JW von s, i;s. 10". 112, |-2. Heeniskerk. .Marten can 2’)i 11 1 4 Inkhuk zt'i
Fux,JJ. 242 176. 201 s. 20”. 209. 224. 23 s. 239, 1 legel. (» W 1 2'.'2. 2os n '' 1 International (i.'thu 1 in
24 1. 257, 259, 290. 292 nil.34, 40, 293 Heinz, loseph 2iz<' n 14 Intern.itional Klein Bliu 2'i~
(Iaddi. Agnolo 1 17 n los, 300 11.IS. 301 11.74. ('-■ >''i. Helmholtz. I lerniann von 1-4. i”s, l”9, Ion ot t In.-s n si
(ladili. Fasldco 1 17, 120,1)6 lOo. l0~. It’S. I Si) 202. 20”, 209. 210. 211. 221, 222. 2s'z. Blsh 'tc ot See ille 2”, r> 1. ” >. ” I. n i. .' , '
(iarifurio, Fraiuliino 22X. 229. 297 n. 19 ’(loethe- rri.uigle' 264. 102 n. 1 29. 29-. 2fi3. 2S9 11 I 39. / )- It . 143. 1 ra,. I ” 1, 2-4 11 'zv 2- - 11 I - ;
(iainsborough, I lionias 105. 1 So 221 1 lelst. H.irtoloinens van de 291 11 21 2”s nil 44. s4. 2”n n
(lalcn 29, 30. 61 gold 14. 29. 40, 43, 57. 58. 93, I 19.
I IS, Heniessen, Katharina van 29011.14 It ten, lolianiies 2' a,. 242. 2f“ , 21,1. 2^.2
(ialik'i, Vincc-nzo 297 n.2 i '29- 1.19. 140, 141, 149. 150, 2-211.75. Hennec|nin, Emile 29f>n.S4 2”” 11 I -1. 2'/n n 141. ;■ I nil 9”. '4.
(iallo, Thomas 74. 27911/17 275 11. 19, 2(>, 58. li>2. I 15 1 lenning. 1 I) von 202
(iaiton. Sannn.'! 1 10 gold-glass 40 Henry ot Hlois. Hishopis,4'
(iargantua S9 Goldschmidt, R H. 301 n.s9 Henrv. Charles 91. 1-5, i”fi.2s9, 29, . ISM nisi IS. Roman 204 n 12 s
(lasparcolor 245 (ioldswortln , Andv 1 1 5. -s 2X9 n. 144, 301 n.109 Janieson. D D 23s
(iasquct,Joachim 210 Gombneh. Sir F.rnst, 10. 274 n.ys 1 leracluis' iFr.ulinsi 9i. 2-4 n.xs. 2”” J.iiinn. lilies 1 ”v, 222
(iaudcntios 299 n.2 Goncourt brothers 170- 1 11.149 lani'. Sullies 3, 2 n 1 s i
(lauguin, Paul 205 9. 21 i, 164 Gonzaga t’amilv 28 i 11.78 1 leracluis. Emperor 62 Jap.inese prints 2ori, 24s. 2nl n ss
ClauticT. Hubert 1 So Francesco, .MarL]uis of .Mantua 129 1 lerbin, .^uguste 293 n 102 Jaiilne! I iryin ”S. 4,'
(iauticr d'Agoty, j. 272 n.74, 299 11.sS (iiovanm Fr.nuesco. Prince ot .Mantua 1 lersler, |.G. 298 n.X4 Jazz 242 I, 2>i>i. 2')‘/11 |oS. ij/. J94
Clc-ber Qabir ibn Hayyan) 2S9 11.7 I iS Hering. Ewald 202, 207, 2s7. 292 11, 14. lewelrs'' .'t’l .i/',’(d'MS, 48.-2. 142. los
Clcrtroy. Cnistavc 294 n. 149 Lodovico 89 90 293 n. I 10 Jo.uhim ot Flora S3. 55
Cic'lclcr, Aert clc 17S, 143 Gospel Hooks 45, )(>. {7 1 lermes Tnsmegistus 141. 144 Job ot I ilessa /14
(icll. Sir William 1 1 Gi'i'pc/ ('/ I'hiiip 94, 14 I Hermetic writings 74, 141 Johannes de Bado .'\ureo s.j
HEMS (ionnod, Charles 243 1 lerodotus 30 John ot (Inba IZJ
72 3, 79, S3. 275 n.l.S, 27S 11.32, 4>. 43. Ciowing, Sir Lawrence 210 Heron. Patrick 302 n.139 John ot 1 >aniasi us 4 s, 48
(iraebeand Lieberman 221 1 lerr.id of Landsberg 74 John ot (iaza 39
amber 142, 106 (irandi, Sebastian 21 3 1 lesychasm 76 Jiilin ot S.ilisblirv ~fi
amethyst 27 (irant. Duncan 29911.106 Highmore, Joseph 290 11.40 Johnson, Lee 1 ”4
‘beryl’ 292 n.27 (irati.ni 26 1 lildebrandt, Hans 301 n.70 Jones. C )\\ en 1 1. 22 1.9
beryl, Indian 279 11.So i^i'tii'ici’iiihiilo 230 Hildegard of Bingen 74, 150 Josephus. Flas ins fij, 1 30
carbuncle 72. 74, 27S 11.47. 279 11.74. Grebe, Karl 299 11. lOS 1 linily. Karl 292 11.32 Jouvenet. J.-B |9S, 21/1 n 46
2S7n.3 Greenewalt, Mary llallock 245, 197 Hipparchus of Alexandria 44. 165 Juli.in the Chaldean 29
coral 150, 107 Gregoire. Gaspard 215. 221 1 lippocrates 29. 30 Julian the Theurgist 29
cornelian 279 n.So (iregoire. Pierre 3 5 1 lire. Philippe de la 192 Jung. Carl (iiistav .S3. 139
diamond 74, 75, S4, S9, 279 nn.S 1. S2 Gregoras, Nicephorus, 62-3 Hiroshige 206, 293 11.88 Jungfrau Falls 105
emerald 73, 42. 45 Gregory of Nyssa 3 i. 43. 48. 63 Hirschfeld-Mack, Ludwig 245, 260. 29i. Junius, Fraiiciscus 108 9. |98, 29' 11.23
garnet 27911.74 grid 258. 301 1111.67, 74. 215 264. 2991111.143, 144. 301 11.74. .?02 Justinian 29. 62
pearl 142, 42, 4s. 106 (irimaldi. F.M. 1 53 n. 129
ruby 72 Grishchenko, A. 302 11.150 Hittorrt,J.l. I 1, I) Kaa/. C.L, 292 11.41
sapphire 72-3, 74. S3, 94, 133, 27S (iropius, Walter 260. 292 Hodierna. G.B. 201 Kandinsky. Wassily 105. tis. 177. 188,
11.54. 279 nn.5S, 9o. 72, 74, 42. 4), 45 Grosseteste, Robert, 74, 83. 288 11.56 Hoelzel, Adolf 206, 259-90, 264. 301 207. 208 y. 212. 239, 241. 243. 244.
topaz 274 11.90, 2SI 11.98 Griinewald, Matthias 94. 95, 150, 152. hC. 1111.70, 74. 85, 302 n. 129 247. 2('>0 I, 292. 263. 264, 298. 283
gem-cutting 75 Hortiiiaini. |.L. 236 11.173.2931111.113, I 22. 299 1111.98, ICXl,
Gentile da Fabriano 2S4 1111.64, 99 (irunow, (iertrud 262 Hofmannsthal, Hugo von 30011.6 1 22. 301 11.93. .10- " I 27. t 7/. I 142.
(icntilcschi, Artemisia 290 n.24 Guaita, L. 301 n. 105 Hogarth. William 180, 187, 224, 140. 141. JlS. 21S
Gerard. Fraiiyois 38 Guasparre di Giovanni da Volterra 69 144 Kant. Emmanuel 210
Gerard of Tours 77 Gna id di .Miiiiihiiii (hip 76 Holbein, Ambrosius 33 Katz, 1 )avid zez
fierner, Feniiimore 300 n. 153 (iuercino 287 11.41 Holbein, Hans, the younger 288 11.78 Kauriinann. Angelika 202. 203. Sq
Clerome-Maesse 209 Ciuevara. Don Diego de 142 Fkill, FT 302 11.133 Keats, lohn 93. 107
Gerstner, Karl 293 11. i 19. 302 11.164 Guichard. E. 300 11.4 Holl. Matthias 245 Keler, Peter 261
Ciestalt psychology 258, 266, 302 n. 127 guild regulations 129, 130, 290 11.12 Holy Trinity, colours of 83, 150, 203, Kepler. Johannes 153, 156,231
Gesuati 131, 137 (iuillauniin, Arniaiid 187, 291 11.70, 294 216. 52, 5.S, So Kertsch-style 1 5. 30
Ghiberti, Lorenzo 32, 117, 120, 133, 135, 11.150 Fkniier 11. i9, 39, 57. 93, 271 n.49 Khlebnikov, Vehnnr 294 n. 125
(iiiillemin, Aniedee 175 Hoogstraten, Samuel van 153, 154 Kilwardby, Robert 274 n.ijo
Ghirlandaio, nonienico 129, 132, 143-4 Guyot. G.Ci. 235, iSS Hooke, Robert 154 King of Spain's arms 82
(iibson, John 1 1,2, 9 Hoppner.John 185 Kircher. Athanasius 1 56. 233. 288 n.91.
Gigoux, j. 293 11.78 Hadamar von ni-R Labkr 84 horse-colours 79 21)1 n.45
Chlchrist, Alexander 38 Hagedorn, C.L.voii 36. 185, 288 11.81 Hours of Jeanne d'L'rreu.y 283 11.3 Kirchner. Ernst Ludwig 207
Gillray. James 213. 174 Hall. Francis (alias Line) 287 11.8 Howard. Henry i 10, 283 tin. lit. 115, Klee, Felix 299 n. 133
(lilpin. William 105 halo 45 6, 58--9. 94, 152, 29. jo;; 289 n. I 12 Klee, Paul 1 1 5, 188. 236. 241 2. 24s. 247.
(iinna. Arnaldo 245. 298 n.74. itoi >'■ '09 (meteorological) 93, 94 Huet, Paul 105, io9 260. 292. 264, 265. 267, 291 11.85. 299
Ciiolito (publishers) 33, 34 Hals. Frans 156. 185. iiS Hugh of St Victor 71,73. 130, 278 11.27, 11.94.2991111.139. 144.301 1111.78,93.
(iiorgione 34. 95. 137. 149. 173,29611.87 Hamilton. J. 296 11.58 28t n.i2 1S4. 140. 220
Giotto 117, 274 11.123. 283 11.3. 287 11.9 Hanslick. E. 298 11.74 hunuiurs, the four 29. 228. 272 n.i2, 281 Klein. Ys-es 267
Giselmanus 57 Harington, Dr Henry 216 11.14. 292 11.74. -97 n. 13, .sj. I So Klenze. Leo von 271 col. 2 11.7
Ciladstone, W.E. 7, I 1. 271 11,9 liitrniofcii 108, 297 nn.9, 23 Hunatn ibn Ishaq 64. 272 n. 12 Kline. Franz 302 11.153
(JLASS Haro. Mine 214. 295 n. 14 Hundertpfund. Libertat 187 8 Klinkowstrdm. F A.von 203
72, 77, 90, 118 Haroun al-Raschid 278 n.55 Huninsh fashion 62 Klotz. Matthias 203
grisaille 70 1 larriot, Thomas 201.287 11.8 Hunt. William Holman 295 11.51. '77- Knight. Richard Payne 185
mosaic 40, 275 11.1 5, 278 11.40. 15 1 larris, |. 168 17S Knights of the Round Fable 8 1
prices 278 11.24 Harris. Moses9i. 172. 203. 221. 292 11.58. Hussey, Giles 235 Koch. Josef Anton ior>. 108. 113. 114
Roman 72 '.H Huszar. Vilnios 257-8, 2/5 Kolonlfeschuhic to

sand-blasted 264
stained 46, 6y 76. 119. 120, 131. 133.
137, 139, 212. 249, 278 11,33.
11.1 16, 301 n. I 12. 41.46
Glauber. Joliannes 152
\;lissando riute 229
Glisson, Francis 167. 288 11.91, <29. 1 ja
(jlossariii Ahsinisii and Aholihi 274 11,90
Gloucester Candlestick 70
(ilover. John 1 14, 283 11.136, 7/
Cilover's Roll. 82. 280 n.44
Gnostics 140, 141
Hartley, David 297 11.48 Huyghens, Christiaan 154 Kding.Johann 95
Hartmann. Ferdinand 224 Huysmans, Joris Karl 175 Konrad von .Mure 280 n 4 1
Hassenfratz. J.H. 289 11.108 Koussevitskv, S A 2<z'; 11.125
Hauer. Josef Matthias 242 IbnJob.aik 61.277 n, 185 Kroll (Ipera 244
Hausgirg. F. 302 n.133 Iconoclasm 44. 47, 62 -3, 117 Kupka, Frantisek 302 n 123. 214
FLiydon, Benjamin Robert 107. 185. 213. illumination, manuscript 77, 137 Kurfurst Friedrich August ot Saxonv 93
274 n. I 14 Impressionism 136. 175, 187. 189, 207,
Ha yet, Louis 179 209. 210, 21 I. 222, 223, 224. 225, 289 LAKiRt.ft.Jules 294 n 127
I layter. Charles 274 11.113. 289 n. 133 n. I 55. 294 n. 127. 300 II. 1. 14S. 1.S2, iSS 1 airesse. (ierard de 191. 204. 289 n 104.
Hazlitt, William 185 Incorporated Society of Artists 295 n. |9 300 11.4
Heavenly Jerusalem 72. 73. 89 Ingres. ) A.D. 11, 37. 192. 201.213. 222. Lamarck,J.-B 221
HebilT Papyrus 297 11.5 236, 274 n. 113, 291 n.23, 292 11.38, I, 10 Lamb. (lharics 107
INDi ,\

L.iiTil'ort. 111. -;Sv n. I !! Loniazzo, C.P. 13 S Leopoldo de’ 224 Murillo, Bartolome Esteban 173, 183,

I.IIllp^ p' 7, Long. Uich.ird 1 i S M.ine de’ 93, 178 290 n.25
1.. NKilIU). C'llvu>tor{i I 11. 1 >, 2v7 Longinus 37 Melancthon. Philip 33, 273 11.67 Music [see also colour-organ, jazz,

I.iiupi .ifx->14 h. 11.1, i,t4. i_U>. UV. \<'l. Lored.ni. 1 )ogc I 30 Melanthius 29, 34 modes, ocular harpsichord) 13, 14,
IlHl. |-s, l^S, iSii, iN-. li;2. 202, Lorenzetti, Anibrogio 84, Sy. 36 Melzi, Francesco 133 138, 152, 154, 171, 178, 185, 206, 208,
21-' 11,222.223 4. 2.SS n. I I 4. 702 Lorenzetti, Pietro 130 Menai;ier de fhiris, Le 80 216, 222, 223, Ch.13 passim. iSi. 1S2.
nn. (I, ~ , 204 n. 13 i'S. ,"i), fi, '2, Lorenzo di Credi 177 Menander 23 1S4. 1S4. 1S3. 1S6, 1S7, iSS. 193, 196, 197
’V Of. tot'. I4i\ I "S. Lorenzo d.i Voltolin.i 284 11. Mendelssohn, Feli.x 241,243, 243 Musscher, Michel van 179
I .iiilV.iiKo, (ill 1 Winn 1 I Os, 112 Lotto, Lorenzo 2S4 11.66 Menestrier, C.F. 82 Mussorgsky, Modest 244
L.ni^lois, I M. 3(1, 12’ Louis. Morns 263, 266, 267, 211 Mengs, Anton Raphael 233 Myron 32
l.ipuLirins :-2, 74, 274 11.140, 271411.S2 Loutherbourg, P.|.de 243 Mcriniee,J.F.L. 173, 214-3, 2961111.68,
1.. 11 i;illinri.-. Ninhol.w ilc i so, 1 So, 101, Lucas, David 1 i 4 90, I j6. 176 Napoleon Bonaparte 93, 213

2011 n.4S Lucc.i Manuscript 27, 2S6 11.4 Merlin 80 Nazarenes 107, 187, 203, 204, 273 n.28,
L.iruiiinw Mikh.iil 22s Luci.m 1 4, 29, 3 1, 32, 33, 37 Merode Cup 73, 44 288 11.41, 292 11.46, 295 n. 16
L.iszli). .■Ml'.x.hrIci 24s Lucretius 16, 23 Merrifield, M.P. 214, 221 Neo-Impressionism 42, 175-6, 201, 207,
1.. 1tini. liruiK'tto 2S 1 n.7,S Ludw ig I, King of Bavaria 106 Mersenne, Marin 133, 232, 297 11.34 211,224, 236, 248, 260, 263, 291 11.24,
L.itrcillc, P.A. 214s n.4S Lunii, Bern.irdiiio 230 Mesarites, Nicholas 39 29611.84, 146, 14S, 17S
1.. 1ni;i.-l, AngustL- 17s, 17O, 147, ijS Liinien Aniniae 279 11.143 metallis 273 11.71 Neiie Psycliolopische Studien 301 n.y8
L,i\vrL-nc(.', Sir Thoni.is 210, 74 Liiinen Lnniinnni de Cioloribiis 273 n.33 metalwork 63, 64, 72, 73, 76 New Art History to
L.C li.nl. Loins 2144 n. 1 so Liischer-Test 2143 11.1 ly, 302 11.164 Methodius of Olympus 43 Newton, Sir Isaac 94, 107, 108, 110, 112,
Lc lionun, K'li.in 1 42 lustre-w'are 64 Metochites, Theodore 47 I I 5, 140, 141, 133, 154, 168-9, 171,
Lc liloii, l.ikob Christoph 134, 169, 172. Luther. Martin 94. 132 Metrochrome (Chronionieter) 221, 174 172, 174-5, 176. 191,201,202,207,
I So, 210, 233. 2SX 11.so, 124 7 Liiti, Benedetto 2y2 11.37 Meusnier Georges ('Karl Robert’) 223 213, 231, 232, 233, 259, 289 n.ioy, 293
Lc Blond dc 1.1 Tour 300 11.4 lu.xury I 17 Meyer, Hannes 262 11.36, 302 n.123, 64. 124, 144, 143, 1S7.
Lc Brim, Clnirlcs 2S7 n.i<4 Lysaiider ot Sicyon 227 Meyer, Heinrich 202, 224 200, 2ig
Lc Brim, I’lcrrc 17S, 274 ii,<4S Michael of Thessaloniki 37 'Newtonians’ 292 11.34
Lccoc] dc Boisb,iudr.in, Hciin 210 McCdli, D.S. 2y 1 11.79 Michelangelo Buonarotti 137, 138, 165, 'Newton’s rings’ 143
Lc Corbusier (JcMinicrct) 2sy. 300 11.4 Macdonald-Wright, Stanton 241 ^41 Nicephorus Gregoras 276 11.103
Leger, Fcrn.md 63, 277 11.171 Macke, August 207 Doni Tondo 137 Nicephorus Xanthopoulos 57
Lely, Sir Peter 179 Mackeseii, Fritz 260 Sistiiie Ceiling 137, 144, 149,94 Nicias 142
Lciib,ich. Fr,niz von 247 Maclise, Daniel i 13 Mignard, Pierre 165 Niconiachus (musical theorist) 297 n.5
Leo III, Byzantine Emperor 47 Macrobius 297 11.6 Milizia, Francesco 192 Niebuhr, B.G. 287 n.41
Leo VI. Byzantine Emperor 48, 29 Magi, the Three Ci, 276 n. 139, 40, 97 Millais, Sir John Everett 114, 209, 293 Nikomachus (painter) 29, 34
Leonardo da Vinci 32, 33, 144, yO, loS, Majeslas Domini 94 11.31 Nile mosaics 40, 57, 20
131, 133 7, 141-2, 153, lOS, 172, 173, Malevich, Kasimir 294 n. 123, 302 11. i 28, Millet, Jean Franpois 236 Noah 92, 93, 94, 107, 113, 115, 204,39,
17O, 177, I So, ly I, I y2, 222, 228, 22y, I So Milner, Isaac 172-3 61, 64, 63, i6g
230. 2S0 11.126, 2S2 11.103, 2Sy n. 104, Malone, Edmond 213 miniature painting 291 11.24 Noland, Kenneth 266, 267, 214
2142 11.27, 2147 nil. 1 y, 20, 23, 2_s Maiicim, Ciirolamo 135, 136, 163 Mminialisni 266, 267, 268 Nonnos 57
AdorLitioii of the 131, 135, 137, gS maiidorla see halo modes, the musical 228, 23 i, 297 n. 10 Northcote, James 192,215
Aiiiiiiiiciiiliou 13 s Mannerism loy, 137, 130, 94 Moholy-Nagy, Laszlo 262, 264, 301 11.93 Novalis (Friedrich van Hardenberg) 108
Codex Hoiiinier 1 33 Mantegna, Andrea iiy, 129, 131,273 Moliere 163
Ciiiovra dc'BcHci 13s, 9_? 11.43, 28 I 11.78 Mondrian, Piet 242-3, 248, 257, 238, ‘Ocular harpsichord’ 233, 233
Lost Slipper 1 33, 137 Manuel. Niklaus 177, 282 11.29, n.8i, 239, 300 nn.44, 46, igi, 201 'ocular spectra’ 172
Modoiiihi and Child with St Anne Monet, Claude 187, 209, 210, 222, 223, Oderisi da Gubbio 77
(cartoon) 133 Mappae Clainciila 27, 274 11.85, >1.44, 275 n.34, 283 11.173, 294 nil.130, 133, Oeser, Friedrich 36, 17
Madonna of the Pink i 36 286 11.4 149, 296 1111.55, 93. 166 oil-painting 119, 13 1-2, 137, 165, 177,
Madonna of the Rooks 135, 1 36 Marat, Jean-Paul 202 Monge, Gaspard 192, 222, 291 n.20 I 80, 284-3 n.73, 285 nn.76, 77, 94
Mona Lisa 136 Maratta, Carlo 133, 286 n.64, 287 11.25 monochrome painting 271 n.39 Olivier, Ferdinand 107
St Jerome 133, 137 marbles, coloured 13, 16, 39, 57, 276 Monte, Francesco Maria del 156 Onatas, son ot Mikon 276 n.93
St john the Baptist (Leonardo 11.108 Guidobaldo del 156 Op Art 263, 264, 266
workshop) 136 translucent 278 11.33 Montjosieu, Louis de (Deniontiosius) 34, Ordene de Chevalerie 84
Treatise on Paintin'^ io8, 133, 135, 167, Marbode of Rennes 27, 72-3, 274 11.90, 3.S Oribasius 80
285 n. 133, 2yi 11.4 281 11.98 Mor, Antonis 290 n.14 Orsini, Baldassare 291 n.24
Leslie, C.R. 103 Marc, Franz 115, 207-8, 236, 241, 263, Morato, Fulvio Pellegrino 90, 120, 274 Ostwald, Wilhelm 221, 241, 245, 247,
Leyden Papyrus 13(4 283 n. 173, 301 11.1 14, 86 n.88 257, 238, 259-60, 262, 263, 263, 299
Leyster, (udith 17S March, Esteban 290 11.24 More, Sir Thomas 69 tin. 106, 139, 301 n.96, 201,203, 213
Liher de Colorihns (?i4th century French) Marci, Marcus 133 Moreau, Gustave 187,211 Oudry,J.-B. 179, 180, 191, 13S
274 ii-i'.S Marcolim (publishers) 33 Moretto da Brescia i 56 Overbeck, Friedrich, 107, 204
Liber Plioenicis 286 11.42 Marcucci, L. 295 11.16 MOSAIC overtones 233, 235
Lieber, C. 282 n.50 Marcus Aemilius Scaurus 275 n.15 48, 61, 64, 69, 72, 93 Ovid 75, 93, 95, 109, 142, 143
LlCiHT Manus 273 1111,32, 34 glass 40, 273 n.71, 278 n.40, 13 Ozenfant, Amedee 290 n.37, 296 n.84,
13, 14, 16, 26, 27, 40, 43, 38, 6y, 70, 71, Martianus Capella 297 11.6 gold 40, 41,43, 76, 26,4g 300 n,4
73-4,76-7. 120, 133, 133, 169, 174, Martin, John 108 'Greek style’ 41,42
222, 300 n. ly, 23, 49. 169 Masaccio 284 11.20 pavements 16, 40, 41, 44, 57, 276 n.g8, Pacioli, Luca 32, 33, 229
lux and hnnen 70, 77, 153, 156 Mascardi, A. 290 11.44 13, 20, 24, 24,4s Paduan Manuscript 168
and matter 286 11.23 Master of S.Francesco 113 pebble- 40 Pagani, Gregorio 290 n.14
metaphysic of 70 materials and style 8-9, 133. 138, 156, ■Roman style’ 41, 42, 43 Paganini, Niccolo 235
relation to colour 38, 70, 73, 118, 120, 185, 213, 221,223, 225, 267-8, 288 silver 40, 41, 58 Paillot de Montabert, J.N. 37, 187,221,
171. 174. 221 11.81, 117,210,211.212,214. 222 vaults 23, 2$, 41,49 291 n.13
Lindistarne Cospels 43 Matisse, Henri 10, 187, 188, 211-2, 223, wall- 13, 40-6, 118, 27, 29, 40,44, 43 Palace of Alcinous 25, 57
Linnaeus (Karl von Linne) 170 236, 247, 266, 296 1111.54, 1^,3. Moscow Psychological Institute 294 palette 31, 36, 37, 154, 168, Ch 10 passim,
Liniiell, John 293 11. i i Dance 192, 212, 294 n. 161 n. 125 191, 224, 235, 236, 273 n.36, 274
Lippi. Filippino 131, 132,27311.44 Red Studio 212, 167 Moses 143, 144, 204 tin. 113, 125, 288 11,81, 294 11,134, ^99
Lippi, Filippo 129, 132 Vence, Chapel of the Rosary 212, 16S Mottez, Henri 223 n.y8, 140, 141, 142, 144, 144, 143,
liturgical colours fio, 84, 277 n.140, 281 Mauro Crenionese dalla Vitiola 230 Mottez, Victor 201,223, 296 n.68 146,147. 148, I4g, 130. ISI, 132, 1S8
11.73 Ma.xw'ell, Janies Clerk 42, 134, 174, 176, Mowbray's French Treatise 2S1 n.66 palette anthologies 290 11.37
liturgy 46-7, 275 11.67 221,260, 263, 294 11.161, 301 11. loy Mozarabic art 63 palette-knife 179, 290 n.28
Lii'ro de oonio se fazan as Cores 274 11.83, Mayerne. Theodore Turc]uet de 167, 178 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus 241 Palladium (statue) 26
286 11.27 Mazois, C.F. 14 Muche, Georg 260, 301 1111.71,74 Palladius 79
Lochner, .Stefan 282 n.22 Medici family I20, 141, 281 11.78 Miiller, Johannes 202 Palma Giovane 290 n. 14
Locke, john 8, 133, 236, 271 col. 1 11.3 Catherine de’ 95 Miinnerstadt Altar 133 Palmaroli, P. 273 n.71, 295 11.16
Loef, Carl 2yS n.33 Cosimo de’, il Vecchio 141 Munsell, A.H. 79, 241, 247 Palmer, Samuel 96, 103, 107
Lohse, Richard Paul 268 Ferdinando de’ 297 n.12 Miinter, Gabrielle 105 Palomino, Antonio 288 n.44

.332
 INDl \

I'.intokr.itor 45. 4X, 70. 276 n. 103 272 11.66 Florence; P.il.nv Bourbon I'l, nti. j'l- n s"
l’anzR‘r.i. Ugo 117 lapis-lazuli .'cc ultram.irine Clrs.inmichele 28ti n 2t. Palais du 1 uxembourg I'l 4
papier de C '.aiii’iiiii 205 lead-white 134. 1 3-. 99, 19; SC(roce9. 120. 156. 2~9 11 loi.zsi S.iillte-t hapeile 2' I 11 is
Paracelsus 140 lemon-yellow 295 11 35 n .s Saint-1 )eni' du Saiiit-S.i, remeni 1' i
Paradise, rivers ot 40, 74. 2H madder-lake 137. 169, 21s. 221. 291 S Lorenzo 8* Sorbonne. 1 aborators of the
para(;aiic 22S n.71. 295 1111.35. 47. 496 11.64 Sta .Maria del Carmine. Braiuam Pllvsiologs ol Seiisalions m;
I’arameni oj Sarhoiine 1 17 millos (red ochre) 30 ((li.ipel 284 11.20 \'al-sle-{ ir.u e K>s
parlielia 93, 105. -<i, 77 minium (red lead) 30, 77. 172 Sta .Maria .Novella, Strozzi t hapel Pergamoii it., u;
Pans, Matthew S2, K3, loK. 274 11.90. 43, Naples yellow 188, 223, 224, 29s n.47. 1.1' Pia//.i .•\rnierina 4 s*. fi2
?(' 296 1111.64, 68, 69 S .Miniato al .Monte I 32 Poitiers, t athedral , 2-8 11 t I
PariiiigianuKi 149, 2X4 11.66. i<i7, loi) Prussian blue 169. 2 1 3. 216, 221. 29s Gaza: Pompeii Is. 16. 2t.. to. II, 4,,, 41. 41.
Passav.int.J.I). 203 nn.2. 14. 296 11.83 St Sergius 40 2~1 11 28. 14
pastels 135, 13S. 29611.69, 100 riihriea 30 St Stephen 39 Ponte .^ven 2i't., 2.it n ol
Pasteur. Louis 214 seliiii;eel 167, 169 70 Gerasa, St John the Baptist 40 Pores 4 1. 4 s. 2- s n ti I
patronage 15. 129. 131. 144, 156. 2S7 siiiopis 29. 30. 35. 82 (iermigny-des-Pres 275 n 41 Prsiusa 2~ti n 123
11.41,2XS 11.44 synthetic and industrial 9, 134, 137, Ghumdan (Yemen). Palace, 2—’ n iss Ra\ eniia
I'aul tlie Sileiitiary 39. 46, 47, 4,S, 275 139. I 50. 152, 206. 2 14, 2 I s. 2 16. (ir.ido. Sta F.ufemia 57. )8 .•\rian Bapiisirs 4 . 4s
11.45 22 1, 222 4, 267- 8, 274 n.87, 286 Halicarnassus, .Mausoleum 1 1 Basihea Ursi.uia 48
I'aulinus of Nola 57. 69 11.2. 287 n.Xo. 295 11.1 5.178, Jio, Ji I, Harvani University, Rothko murals 'M.iussileuin' ol (.alia Plaeisla 4 I,
Pausaiiius 271 11.45, -7f> n.P.l 21 i, JJJ 267 46. a-ti 11 108, (i>
Peale. Cdiarles Willson 1X7 ultramarine 9, 35.73, 82. 129. 130. Hawara 3 1, 273 11.30 .Moii.isters ot St .Undress the
Pechani, Joliii 133, 2S2 11.103. -^4 " -7 131, 141, 144, 149. 166. 167. 168, Her.ulea Lyncestis (Bitola) 40. 42 .^postle 46
Peiresc. Nicholas Cilaude Hahn de 95 178, 2 I 5. 216, 22 1, 278 11,4 I. 280 Herculaneum 16, 36. 40. 4 1. 272 n 9. S .^polhnare 111 Classe at., 2~s ti 2fs
I’cleriiiaijr de Charle>na_<;iie 27X 11.41 11.34, 284 11.66, 288 1111.4 ' • 44. 495 273 11.28. 274 n. 105 S .^polhnare Nuovo 43, 48. t.i, 2~s
Pepusch, J.CL 232 1111.35. 47. 49611.64. 89, IIS, 117, Hosuis Loukas45. 58, 275 11.27 11 3-. 2'6 n I 3i>. 411
Peraldus 52 French 291 11.71, 302 11.158 Istanbul (see also Constantiiioplel S Vitale 4 s. 46, 48. 6|. '3
Peripatetics (see also Theophrastus) 3 i, Van Dyke brown 291 11.87 Pera Palace Hotel 46 Rheims, C (athedral -8
lOS, 227 vermilion 30, 31, 129, 130, 131, 139, Jarrow 278 11.33 Rome:
(hi Aiidihle Tliini^s 296 11.3 150. 152. 168. 169, 216, 223. 273. Jerusalem: ( (hapel ol John Vll 48
Perkin, Sir William, 221 11.40, 286 nn.2, 3, 287 11.80, 101, I IS Church of the Holy Sepulchre 57. Farnesina 288 n 4 s
Pernety, A.-J. 292 n.74 I'm emeraiidc (viridian) 223, 224 (iesii 165, III, 121
Perrot, Ciatherine 291 n.24 zinc yellow 224, 178 Church of the Resurrection 57 Lupercal Cdiapel 45
Persian fashion 61-2, 277 11.156 Pino, Paolo 131. 132. 137. 230, 273 11.80 1 f ome of the Rock 64 S .^gostino. ((hapel ofSS .^gostino
perspective, single-point 5S, i iS. 119, Pinturicchio, Bernardino 94. 131. 144. Karahurun 272 n. i 5 and (iiighelmo, 165
22S 201, 282 11.72 Kastoria. Mom Mavriotissa 61 S.AiisIrea liella Valle, I6s. 178. 112
Perugino. Pietro 143 4 Piper, John 9 Kazanlak 29 SS.Cosmas and Damian 40. 4 s. 46,
Peter of Poitiers 83 Pissarro, Camille 176, 187, 21 1. 224, 283 Kiev, Sta Sophia 45, 48, 276 11.1 17 .12
Peter of St Omer (Audeniar) 280 n.45 n. 173, 291 11,71, 494 II. I 54, 296 n.66. Kizilbel 30 S.Clemente 45
Peter the Venerable 84 148 Knossos II, 15, 30 Sta Costanza 40. 41, 284 11.18, 28
Petra-Saiicta, P. Silvestre de 91 PLACES AND MONUMENTS LefTsadia 29 Sta Francesca Roinana 45
Petrini, Pietro 191 Aegina, Temple of Aphaia 26 Le Mans, Cathedral 278 11.33 S.lgnazio 165
Petronius 15. 30 Albenga. Baptistry 45, 25 Lincoln. Cathedral 74 St John Lateral] 276 n 86, 2''8 11.3 3
Petty, Sir William i 54 Amsterdam, Moderne Kunstkring London: S.Lorenzo tuori le .Vlura 4 1
Pfannenschmidt. A.L. 216, 221 248 The British School 215 S.Luigi del Francesi, Coiitarelh
Pforr, Franz 204 Aquilea, (Lithedral 40, 57 Crystal Palace 221 Chapel 156. 165
Pheidias 271 col.3 11.5, 4 Arezzo, S.Francesco 120 Society of Arts 213 Sta Maria .Maggiore 43, 48, 73, 275
Philander. Georges 35, 274 n.92 Arta, Paragoritissa 45, 275 11.38 Milan: nil.37. 41. 276 11.76. 42
Phillips. Thomas 274 n. 1 14 Assisi. S.Francesco 7, 61,76-7, 46 Ambrosian Basilica 41 Sta Maria del Popolo, Cerasi Chapel
Philo of Alexandria 14,63 Athens: S.Lorenzo. Chapel of S.Aquilino 156
Philostratus 15, 25, 26, 48, 117 Kerameikos 26 27.1 n-37 Sta .Maria 111 Trastevere 276 n. 1 23.
Photius 44, 48, 276 nn. I 15,136 Parthenon 11,4 Mistra, Church of the Hodegetria 276 27X 11.33
photography, black and white 9, 117, Temple of llissus 271 col.2 n.3 11.123 S.Pancrazio 275 11.61
291 n.6i Augsburg. Cathedral 70 Monboso, Mount 133 St Peter's 62
photometer 222 Baia, Temple of Diana 275 n.57 Monkvvearmouth 278 n.33 .Mausoleum of the |uhi 40
Picasso. Pablo 63, 268, 277 n. 171 Berlin, jahrhundertsausstellung 208 Moiireale, Cathedral 41,46 Sta Prassede, (diapel of S.Zeno 42.
Piccolpasso, Cipriano 285 11.13 1 Boscotrecase 16 Morgantina 16 275 tt.37. 28
Picturesque movement 105 Bottrup 264 Murnau 105. 2S3 n.173 Sta Pudeiiziana 41
Piero di Cosimo 143 Budakshan (Afghanistan) 13 i Mycenae 11, 30 Sta Sabina 39
Pietro ila Gortona 149 COaeti, St Nicholas 278 11.33 Naples, Baptistry 45 S.Stefano Rotondo 276 n. 107
Pietro della Francesca 120. 129 Cambridge, King's College Chapel 81 Nerezi 60 VLitican, Sistine Chapel 143 4. 149.
PlCiMF.NTS (see also colours) Chartres 69, 278 n. 12 Nola, Basilica of St Felix 69 94 ■ 102
4y. 30, 31. 35. 129, 131. 133. Gfi. '37. Chios, Nea Moni 41, 58, 59. 60. 61 C^rvieto, Cathedral 284 11.64 St Denis. Abbey Church 6t; 73. 278
139, 150. 167, 168, 178. 187, 188, Chiusi 25 Olympia. Temple of Zeus 271 11.45 11.23. 4;. 45
Ch.i2 passim, 213, 214. 215, 221-4. Constantinople; Padua. Scrovegni Chapel 283 1111.3, 7 Saqq.'ira 30. 7
271 nn.44, 49. 273 n.70. 284 nn.65, Christ in Chora (Karije Djanii) 27. Paestum, Tomb of the Diver 30, 5 SchalTliauseii. Rhine Falls 105
66. 68, 70, 285 nn. I 30, I 3 I. 286 n.2. 42, 47. 48, 60. 27,55 Palermo 61, 129 Sehiiuiite. Temple of Empedocles
287 nn.71,21,291 1111.71.7*^. 302 Great Palace 48. 57 Palatine Cihapel 39^ 40. 41. 276 11,76. II
n.154. 101. IIS, 117, HQ, ISO, IS'. Ijf Holy Apostles 59 21 Sens, Cathedral of St Etienne 78. 48
‘Antwerp blue' 295 11.2 Pantmacaristos (Fetiye Djami) 45 Stanza del Re Ruggero 44 Serra drlando 16
alrameiiliim 29, 30, 35, 167 Sta Eirene 41,43, 48 Palestrina, Temple of Fortune 40, 57. Sfax, Museum 276 n.86
azurite35, 129, 131, 167, 168 St George of Mangana 57 20 Siena:
hice 288 n.6o Sta Sophia 39, 41, 43, 44. 45. 46. 47, Pans: ((athedral 6(4
brown-pink 216 57, 130. 275 1111.41.87. 276 n.79. Bernheim Jeune 189 Piccolomiiii Librarv 131,201
cadmiums 223, 224. 293 11.98 -’P Church of St Vincent 57 Sinai, Monastery of St ((atherine 31.
chrome-yellow 296 n.66 Virgin of Pharos (Palatine Chapel) Delacroix Museum, Place 41,43, 60. )i
clirysocolla 273 11.41 44, 276 n.l 15 Furstenberg 174, 186 La Skhirra. Baptistrv 27611.86
cinnabar see vermilion Damascus. Great Mosque 64 Ecolc lies Beaux-Arts 1X7. 210. 211. Soganli. Sta Barbara 276 n 12 3
cobalt blue 38. 215. 224. 291 11.71 Daphni 45. 58, 60. 275 n.27,49 214, 221 Soissons, Cathedral 278 n 24
cobalt glass 278 1111.39. 40 Delos, House of the Masks 4 1 Ecole Polytechnique 21 5 Staro Nagoriiaiie 48, 58
copper-green 172. 28611,80 Delphi, Siphnian Treasury 16 Exposition des Arts Dccoratifs 246 Strasbourg. Cafe .^ubette 100 11 a”
crimson 26, 129. 130, 284 n.62 el-Fayuin 31.8 Galerie Georges Petit 1 89 Sluppach. Parish Chunh t>0
X’lalloriiio 35. 167, 223, 284 n.70 Epidauros, Asclepion 16 Louvre, Salle d’Apolloii 174. 189. Tarquinia 1 s
indigo 12. 73. <;o, 167, 216, 232, 259. Euganean Hills 149 128 I eriii, falls at los

.^33
INDI \

IM A( I S AND MONb'MEN I S Priestles’, loseph, 93, 1 10 Ristoro d’Arezzo 133, 134 Sandivogius ofCzechel 120
I lu'ss.tKlIllkl. 1 loMtIS I ).l\u) II.2^) pnntm.iking 33. 91, 140 52, 1119.291 ‘Robert, Karl’ see Meusiner, Georges Sandrart, |oachim von 36, 167, 168
St I )cniLtiui' 1,4!. -17 11.1 3, 495 1111.39 40. uu). 110. Ill, 124 ■- Robertson, Andrew 495 11.16 Sano di Pietro 129
St (u'iH4;t‘ 411, 41. 44, 4~S 11.37 Proclus 474 11,84 Rochard, S. 495 11.49 Satiudo. Mann 1 30
Sl.i Soplll.l 4S fi, 4S Procopius 39, 46. 57 Rodchenko, Alexander 302 n. 1 50 Sargent, John Singer 187
rllltiTs (' I Prometheans, T he 245 Rolewinck, Werner 281 11.5 Sarrazin, Jean 74, 279 n.67
Tiv iili. i l.nin.tii''- \'ill.i 40. 44, -’4 propLuiiiiis 477 11.152 Roller, Alfred 299 11. i 34 Sarton, George 139
w .irci t.ilE .It III! Propylaeii 204, 205 Roman tie Perceforcsl 69 Sassetta (Stefano di Giovanni) 129. 284
riiri.clKt 4S. 4<'i. si; I’roio-lifaiipelitini of jaines 130. 272 n.89 Roman de la Rose i 50 11.64, 485 11.76, go
I rcbi/nmi. St.i Sitphi.t 47" 11.1 s 1 Protogenes 49, 32, 38, 271 11.27, 274 Romney, George 180, 185, 141 Sail veur, Joseph 233
Utn.'i.lit. Sthnulcr 1 louse 451) 1111.93. 123 Rood, Ogden 42, 175, 176, 192,207,211, Savoldo, Girolamo 156
\.illoii d ilute. I OS Prenis, Ann leinmia 213, i~4 259, 260, 263, 272 11.21.289 11.155, -94 Savonarola, Girolamo 135
Veliito, I ,ikc (krtlK ot I’lediluee) i;4, lOS Prud'lion, Pierre Paul 215 11.161, 1 (i; Savot, Louis 274 11.97, 288 11.91
Veiie e, C .’h.ipel of the Ros.iry 414, It’S Psellus, Michael 57, 279 11.82 Rosa, Salvator 105 scales, colour- 13, 26, 3 1, 60, 64, 70, 90,
V'eiiieei .li, ijt S, 4,S4 ii.t'ii'i, 4Ss 11. i 44 Pseudo-Kodinus 274 11.89, 277 11.1 56 rose 140. 150, /(IS, 107 1 19, 135, 154, 165-8, 178, 185, 1S7,
SMireo 4 1, 4ti, vS. so, tio, 471'! psvchology (see also (lestalt psychology, Rosex, Nicoletto, of Modena 32, 33. 16 210-11,216, 222, 228, 229, 230, 23 1,
It. loS, 477 It. 140, u liuniours, the four) 292 11.74, 27 Rosselli, Cosimo 143-4, '49, <<’4 242, 274 n.94, 287 n.l 1, 288 nn.56, 58,
V'erpiii.t (d'hess.ily) 4_s. 30 Ptolemy 44, 43, 60, 108, ifys, 227, 429, Rossetti, l.Dante Gabriel 8, 107, 295 11.5 1 60, 294 n. 148, 297 1111.33, 31^- 498 11.63,
V'leiiii.i, Roy.il Ae.ideiiis' itn; 276 11.136, 48 1 11.1 5, 2 i Rossini, Gioacchino 23 5 2991111.10, 113, 139, 30T n.78, i2g, ijo.
Weiiiiar; I. ife ofzyC) 11.1 36 Rosso Fiorentino 137 155, 175, 1.85, 1S4
{loethe-haus 460 Puckler-Muskati. Ilerniann 204 Rothko, Mark 265, 267 musical- 227, 23 1,232, 235, 1S2. 1S4
1 loeliM hule fiir bildeiide Kuiist 4C1O Purists 300 11.4 Rottmann, Carl 105, 106, 107 Scahger. J.C. 274 11.94
Kiiiistgewerbeseliule 460 Purkin)e, |.E. 192, 20 1,202. 211, 294 11.46 Rousseau, |ean-|acques 236 Scarmilioiiitis, V.A. 153, 154, 230, 274
Wieskirehe 4S4 11.44 Puy de Cirez, Bernard 179 Rousseau, Philippe i 87 11-97
York. Miiieter Ch; Ps'iie, lames Baker 292 11.63 Rousseau, Theodore 296 11.79 scene-painting 201,243, 302 n. 1 54
Pl.tiier, Louis de 4i;o 11.57 Pythagoras 429. 230, 448, 497 11.34 Royal Gold Cup 75 Schactman, B. 204
I’kiiit.tttJiiet, (’Teoflrey S 1,54 P\’tliagorcans 44, 230, iiS’2, 183 Rubens, P.P. 34, 37, 38, 95, 107, 108, 109, Schadow, Wilhelm von 187
I’niiee Heiirv .S i 110, 154, 155, 168, 173, 178, 179, 180, Schaftiier, Martin 141-2, 104
IM.ite.iit, |.A.F. 435 Qli.vdrivium 228, 430 155, 215, 222, 259, 273 11.82, 287 11.36, Schapiro, Meyer 63, 175
I’l.ito 14, 14, I'i4, I 43, 447 fv Schcdel, Hartmann 94, 61
Cidlylui 30 R.vb.vnl's M.vl’rl's 278 11.33 Ainiiincialion 287 n.22 Scheffler, Karl 2oy, 247
I. iUi's 497 11.4 Rabelais, Franyois 89, 120 Descent from the Cross 287 11.2 1 Schelling, F.W.J.von 202
Mviio 14. 47 I 11.47 Radulphus Phisicus 478 11.36 Gerbier Family 287 11.21,296 11.90 Scheper, Hinnerk 262
Pliilchiis 14, 27 Rainbow 13, 14, 31, 36, 74, Cli 6passim, liino and Argus tjs, 154, 114 Scheuchzer, J.J. 169, 6?
Republic 14. 44.S 139, 140, 153, 180. 187,229.231,459, Medici Cycle 95, 178 Schiffermuller, Ignaz 170, 27411.96, 288
Sidlesiihui I s, 476 11.96 277 11.189, 278 11.33, 287 11.88, 288 Raiiiboii’ Landscape 95, 67 11.98, 296 11.58, Frontispiece
T'i'iiiiicii.i 14, 14, 31, 34. 165, 22S, 473 II. 53, 292 11.40, 6(1, 61, 62, 6_!, 64, 65, 66. Samson and Delilah 154 Schiller, Friedrich 204, 160
1111.37, 49 67. 6S, 6q. 70, 71, 72. 7J-4, 75. 8(1, 81,82, Shipwreck of St Paul 95 Schinkel, K.F. 11, 1 13, S4 «i
Rlatoiiist.s (ice also Plato, Plotinus) 14, 31, 83, 84, 86, 114. i6g, Tractatus de Lumine et Colorc 287 n.24 Schlegel, A.W.von 209
44- lbs tog-bow 85 Rublev, Andrei 76 Schlemtner, Oskar 244, 260, 261, 262,
I’licllio 2S7 11.30 lunar bow 105, 1 1 5. 78 Rticcellai, Giovanni 284 n.i8 267, 301 11.96
I’liiiy the elder 14, i s, 25, 27. 29. 30, 3 i, Ramdohr, C.F.von 282 11.50 Rudolph II, Emperor 153, 230, 274 11.97 Schlosser, C.F. 292 11.46
32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 94, loS, 1 17, I4y, Rameau, Jean-Philippe 233, 235 Rudolph of St Trond 228, 230 Schmidt, Joost 262
133, 142,227,2741111.90, 100, 105. 27S Raphael 108, 109, 1 10, 156, 282 11.91, 2S4 Ruisdael, Jacob 96 Schmidt, Kurt 262
II. 54, 479 nil.So, iSi. 2S4 11.83, -97 ii-d n.66, 2S8 11.45, 292 11.39 Rumford, Count, see Thompson, Schoenberg, Arnold 236, 241, 245, 299
Plotinus 14, 46, 47 59, 64 Rayleigh’s law i 54 Benjamin 11.122
Plutarch 1 5, 29, 30, 31, 428 Rccouvreur, A. 222 Rtinge, Philipp Otto 96, 107, 1 10, 203, Schoenmaekers, M.H.j. 257
Poda, N. 288 n.yS Redon, Odilon 185, 213 204, 205, 208, 222, 247, 260, 262, So. Schopenhauer, Arthur 202, 301 11.74
Pointillism see Neo-Impressionisni refraction 75, 292 11.27 156, 15(8, 159, 162 Schreyer, Lothar 301 n.96
■poiiitillisme' and ‘divisionnisnie' 301 11.1 1 1 Reginald of Durham 63 Ruskiii, John 7, 8, 95, 107, 209, 210, 294 Schumann. F. 25S
Pollock, Jackson 302 11.1 55 Rcgnier, l.-D. 289 11.1 12, 296 11.64 11,130 Schurii’, Edouard 245, 248
Pollux, Julius 16, 30, 3 1 regular solids, the five 32 Russell, Morgan 241, igp Scliwertfeger, Kurt 245
Poluiiin, Vladimir 302 11.154 Reiclienbach, K.L. 248 Rustici, Giovanfrancesco 141 Scopas 11
Polyclitus 33. 48 Rembrandt 30, 3 1, 153. 156, 168. 170, Rysselberghe, Theo van 291 n.77 Scopoli. G.A. 171
Pontormo, facopo 137 178, 185, 201,2 I 5, 222, 288 1111.70, 73, sculpture, painted 11, 120, 131-2,2,4,9
POPES 75, 'O- Rfi Sachahoff, Alexander 299 11.126 Scriabin, Alexander 243-4, 245, 246, 299
Alexander VI 84 Reniigius ot Auxerre 297 n.6 SAINTS 11.122, 195, 196
Benedict 111 278 11.33 Renoir, Pierre Auguste 136, 223, 224, 291 Antoninus, Archbishop of Florence 81 seasons, the four 33, 142, 205, 281 n.14,
Oregory IV 62 n.79 Augustine ot Hippo 83 16, 54, 104
Innocent III 60, 84 Repton. Humphrey 172-3 Basil the Great, Bishop of Caesarea 27, Sebastiano del Piombo 288 n.45
Innocent IV 131 'resultant tones’ 235 61,70 Sedulitis of Liege, 279 11.58
Julius 11 144. 149 Reusner, Hieronymus 140, 105 Benedict 84 Seebeck, Thomas 292 11.32
Leo II 27S n.33 Reuterswilrd, Patrik 58 Bernard ot Clairvaux 71,75, 77, 84 Segal, Arthur 293 n.102
Leo III 62 Reynolds, Sir [oshiia 37, 95, 106. 156, Bernward ot Hildesheim 139 segmenta 277 11.156
Leo X 141, 149 172, 213, 214, 271 col. I 11.6, 298 11.80, Bonaventure 77, 66 Segni, Fabio 273 11.45
Nicholas IV 76 302 11.129, 174 Bridget of Sweden 94, 66 Seidlitz, Waldemar von 247
Paul I 131 rhetoric 15, 271 11.37 Cuthbert, relics of 63 Semper, G. 11
Pius II 94- 5 Ribera, Jusepe 156 Eloy, Cross of 72, 75 Seneca 15,30
Pius VI 105 ILichard of St Victor 278 11.27 Francis of Assisi 129, go. 95 Sennelier, Gustave 296 n.83
Sixtus IV 144, 149 Richelieu, Due de 95 Gregory the Great 93, 94, 285 11.96, 61, Serusier, Paul 188, 298 11.94
Popova. Liubov 261-2 Richter, Gerliard 302 11.159 96 Servius 276 n.137
Portal, Frederic, Baron 90 Rickart, Charles E. 302 11.1 33 Gregory Nazianzus 48 Seurat, Georges 43, yi, 175—6, 187, 205,
portraiture {see also flesh-painting) 29, 30. Ridolfi, Carlo 34, 36 Jerome 46, 93, 94, 130, 131,(89 224, 247, 248, 275 11.34, 283 n.173, 296
31, 34, 47, 48, 136, 178, 179, 180. 277 Riemenschneidcr, Tilman 132-3 John the Evangelist 143 11.83, L89. >4^, 17S
n. 143, 8, I /8, i 19. 141 Rictveld, Gerrit 258-9, 199 Luke 177, 178, 290 11.9, 142 Severini, Gino 212, 296 11.84, 30i n. 109
Potter. Paulus 290 n.20 Rigaud, F.H. 124- 7 Martha 286 11.35 Sextus Amarcus 72-3, 281 n.y8
Poussin, (laspard (Dugliet) 105, 106, 108 Rigaud, J.F. 294 11.2 Paul 60, 7 I s/iiMidti) (smoke) 108, 118, 133, 134, 135,
Poussin, Nicholas 96, 105, 153. 154, 155, Rigaud, Stephen 294 11.2 Peter 60 138, 202, 229
167. 168, 222, 223, 287 nil. 10, 28, 116 Rimbaud, Arthur 209 Thomas Aquinas 74, 139, 173,279 shadow see darkness, sfumato
Pozzo. Andrea 165 Rimington, A.W. 244, 245, 299 n. 127 n. 1 1 5, 286 11.40 shadows, colours of 172, 175
Pre-Raphaelites 221.295 11.5 1, 177 Rinuccini, Alenianno 117 Salimbene 280 n.i 19 Shaw, Peter 289 n.yS
Pre-Socratics 29 Ripa, Cesare 94, 60 Sand, George no, 192 Sheldrake, Timothy 213
Previati, CLietaiio 263, 264 Ripley, Sir George 139 Sandby, Paul 180, 213 shells 170, 288 n.91, 141. 142

334
 isni \

Shevchenko, A 21X1 n v? handling touch 135, 137,210,211, Trevisam, 1 rancesco k'khuimas 3 2 n I so

'Shield ot l-aith' X3. s2 212, 224, 225, 8, I rinity . l/’i'i.i/yp-i' 280 n 1 24 \'iberi. 1-G is-. 189, 221 2.221 4 -vi
Siccjrdusot (.'renion.! X4 scumbhitg and glazing 1 5, 30, 3 1,75, rrunibull.John 180. 18', 144 II -s. 149. 1 -9
Sicily I ler.ild S’, S3, S4, Sy, <30, lio, I43, 131. i.TR I.14- ijl7. 15,1. i<4. 178, Tschudi. Hugo von 208 k'lcentiiii'. \ndrea 2Si n s
2S4 11.20 203. 224, 263, 273 11.33, 285 11.76, Tnchlein 131 \ ueiiiiiu' Niiol.i ."'j-n i2
Sidonuis Apolhnans 271') ti. ir/i 119 Tudor-1 lart, Percvval 24 1 I lennj (.1 in >i> <> 1. P4
Signac, I’aul 1S7, 21 1, 224, 2K3 11.173, -'-»4 Telemann, (I P 233 1 urnbull. George 169 \ iiHclit ot Be.HIS ais -4. Ititi. 2^s
11.133, 21X' nn.H3, S4, 301 n. 11 I TI'lulaiKcs Wmi'illfs, I.i's 301 n 1 10 Turner.J..M VL. 8.95 6, lOO. 107. 108. \'irgil 92. 9 l. 143. 2-4 11 I, so
silver-stain 73 tenebrism 156, iig. jzi' 110.114 5,192,203 4, 209. 24ri, 283 \'irgin Mars 2-. 4s, t.. . s t. ';4, 129, 1 l".
Simeon of Chilogne 140 Teniers, David 185 11.1 1 1. 302 n. 129, ihi 131, 1 49. 2-2 II 89, 2Si n 12s. 284 n sS.
Sisley, Alfred 225 Tertulhan 33, 272 11.75 . ieneas relating his story to Dido 1 1 s 28fi n 38. 288 n 44. 2'4< i 11 9. t.s. 4>. sf.
sky, colour of the 73, 133, 134 Testa, Pietro 96, 1 55, 297 11.34. Biittermere Lake I 14. 85 6f>. .',8. ,'9. 91, 10-. tio. 14J
Smart, C diristopher loS Testehn. 11. 289 11.104 Durham Oathedral 1 14, 75 4 \'iiru\ lus 1 s. ir>. 30. 3 s, 1 29. I 3 3. 2-4
smiling Ot, 77 s TEXTll ES V'/ic f'oimtain of f allacy 1 1 5 n s-
Smith, |. (;6 90, 276 11.108. 287 11.3 1 I. iqht and dolour lOoethe’s I'heoryi x, \'ollard. .Ainbroise 1 88, 21.
Smith, Kobert 2yS n.53 '.Alhambra' silks 76, 46 110. 115. 204. i('9 1 orlehre Bauli.ito 2r«', 2ri2, 204. n o
Sodoma ((hovanni Antonio liazzi) 2S2 n.2S huL\ila»iuii 61 Shade and Darkness the lireninc; of the 11,-8. 218
Soest, (lerard 1717 Frisian felts 73, 278 11.55 Deluge 8 X'ossiu', I 28.8 n s8
Solimis 2717 n.57 monochrome silks 64 Staffa: pingal's (Dre 106 \'uKon de la ( ailombiere. .Marc de 91
Solomon, King 143, ’Sfi n.42 /nirpimi 27. 80. 272 11.88. 34, 35 The Il rciL Buoy 1 1 5
Sorte, Oistoforo 175, 2S5 n. i 30 'shot'61. 109, 129, 132, 140.244 tsitsakion 277 n. 1 56 U .M 11, W ilhelm 292 11 4fi
Souriaii, Paul 171 wool-tapestry 4 1. 46 agner. Richard 185. ajfi. 243, 24s. 2ii< ■
Sowerhy, James 221 texture [fahiira) 225, 267. 302 11.150, i8<> Uccii 10, Paolo. 113. 132 nil 52. 53. 299 II. 135
Stael, Nicholas ile 235 Theiiard. Louis-Jacques 2 1 5 Ugohiio (Painter) 284 11.64 \X'alden. Heruath zfo
stage-lighting 243, 24s, 2917 nn. 1 34, I tf) rhenot,J.-P 187 Ulpian 26 W allord's Roll 82
standardization of colours .«v Latreille, Theodora, Empress 25, 61, 14 Ulpian the Roman 4' \X aller, Richard Kiy
CXtwald, Pfannenschmidt, Waller Theodoric of Freiberg 118, 166, 27311.53, Upton, Nicholas 281 11.82 U alhs. G.A 107
stars, colour of the 2S 1 n.fi 274 11.90, 281 11.5, 61 uroscopy 80, 171,27411.97. 122. 133 U'arburg Institute 10
Statius 3 1, 39, 276 n.ioS Theodosius 26 Urso of Salerno 61. 13 1. 165, 2S4 11.7 3 watercolour I 15, 2 10. 2 1 1. 2 16
Statutes of Narboniie 77 Theon of Smyrna 32, 33 Uta tiodex 37 VLatteau. Jean .^ntolne lOs
Steen, Jan 2SS 11.73 Theophilus 61.70, 72. 73, 77, 213. 215, XX'ebb. Francis 235. if-
Steffens, Henrich 203, 292 11.60 275 11.41.276 II.115, 278 1111.40. 41. 51. I’liir 82, 5 3 Weber. Vincent 301 11.74
Steiner, Rudolph 207, 245, 293 1111.106, 479 n.93. 2S6 11.2, 288 11.53 Valenciennes. Pierre Henri de 106. 300 VX'eber-Fechner law 265. >jo
108, 299 11.123 Theophrastus 12, 25, 29, 30, 172 II. 4 Vl'eberii. .Anton von 236
Stella, Frank 267 8, 302 11.142, 222 On (Colours (attr. to T.) 13 14, 27. 29, Valeiitinian 26 Weimar I irawiiig School 202
Stevens, Alfred 187 32, 228, 274 11.97 raleurs 187 Weimar Prize (iotiipetitions 202 3
Stieglitz, Alfred 265 On Music 296 11.3 Valla, Giorgio 95, 297 11.19 VLest. Benjaniiii 106. 109 110. 1-2. 213,
StillingHeet, li. 297 11.57 Theosophy 207, 242, 243, 245, 248, 293 Valla, Lorenzo 89. 120 79. '74
Sljoru 281 11.5 n. 1 14, 299 11.122 Vallee. L.L. 192. 2960.59 West.ill, Richard 213
Stobaeus 12, 29, 44 rheotocopuli, Jorge Manuel 290 n. 14 Vanderpoel, E.C.N. joj U'histler. Janies McNeill 1S5, 210
Stockholm Papyrus 27, 139 Tliirtle. John 283 11.119 van Doesburg, Nelly 299 11.116 X^’iltred. riiomas 245 6, 198
Stoics 14, 271 11.23 rhonias of Ciaiitimprc 74 van Doesburg. Eheo 241, 243, 258, 259, U'llkie, Sir David 185
Stokes, Adrian 8 Thompson. Benjamin. Count Rumford 296 11.94. 300 1111.38, 47. 194 William of Auvergne 82
Storey, C;.A, 185 172, 289 1111.109, ' '2, 298 11.74 van Dyck, Sir Anthony 153, 185, 224 N^'ilhani of .Malmsbury 77
Strauss, Ernst 210, 294 n.149 Thomson. James 107. 114-5, 169,85 van Eyck, Jan 131, 132, 142 3. 149,214. William of St Denis 72
Stravinsky, Igor 263 thorough-bass 241 284 11.60. 285 11.78, 91, 106 William of St Thierry 71
Strozzi, Alessandra Macinghi I2>7 Thylesius. Antonius 34, 35, 274 11.92 van Gogh. Vincent 156. 174, 185. 189, Williams, Solomon 213. 215
Stuart,J, and Revett, N. 271 col.2 11.3 Ticozzi. Stefatio 213 205-6, 211,214, 424, 236, 242. 291 Williams. William 170
Stiick, Franz 291 11.85 Tieck, Ludwig 141 n. 10. 151. 152, 163 Wilson, Richard 180, 221
Sturm, Her 260 Tiepolo, Ciiovatiiii Battista 36, 12 van Gogh. Theo 189. 206, 224. 293 ti.97 Winckelmann. J.J. 36. 271 Cili 1.11.2.
Suchenwirt, Peter 83 Timaeus of Locris 273 11.51 van der Leek, Bart 257 17
Suda 6>o, 271 11.27, 476 n. 136 Timanthes 36. /; van Mander, Karel 109, 274 11.99 Wind. Edgar to
Suger, Abbot 69 73, 75, 41 timbre 236, 241,29611.2, 192 van de Passe, Crispyn 169-70 windows (iff also CJLASSI 46, 246, 263.
sunlight, colour of 289 11.148 Timoii the Jew 283 n. 103 van Rappard, Anton 205 301 n. 108. 44
Superville, D.P.CI. Humbert de 91,204, 57 Tintoretto, Jacopo 156, 230, 288 11.73, van der Rohe, Mies 262 Witelo 120, 133. 281 11.95. 484 11.20
Sutter, Havid 175-6, 29011.47, 2173 11.75 Titian 30, 33-4. 35. 37, .18, 95, 129, 134, Vantongerloo, Georges 258, 259, 2(i(i Wittgenstein. Ludwig 8, 79
Symbolist niovement 206, 207, 211,236, >37. >49. ■.lb. >b5, 173, 185.215,222, van de Velde, Henry 260 W'olf, Ciaspar 105
247, 248 224, 230, 233, 289 11,112, 295 11.2. 296 van de Velde, Willem the elder 179 Wood. Henry 244
Sytiies, P. 288 11.96 11.90. 174, /8i van der Weyden. Rogier 132, 282 11.22, W'ordsworth. \X'ilhani 107. 1 10
Symonels, Richard 178 .dsSHiitii 285 11.96 285 11.76 Wright. Willard Huntington 246
synaesthesia (sec also atidiiioii coloree) 207, Bacchus and Ariadne 273 11.71 Varro 30 Wright. W.D. 268
208 9, 228, 230, 236, 243 4, 2178 11.91 /)cii(/i oj Actaeon 273 11.71 Vasari, Giorgio 132, 137. 141. 143. 144. Wtewael. Joachim 290 n. 14
Synchroniists 241, lij i Death of St Peter Martyr 110 149. >77, 283 11.8, 285 n.78 Wundt. Wilhelm 207
Synod of Ciologne 90 Diana and Callisto 95 vase-painting 30
Synod of l.iege 90 Tarqnin and Lncretia 1 34 Veit Stoss 133 Yoi ng, Matthess 110
systems painting 266, 268 ‘Titian shade' 213 Velasquez, Diego 156, 178. 288 11.44 Young, Thomas 174, 202. 294 11.161
I'rihute Money 273 11.71 Venantius Fortunatus 57, 286 11.38
laolir 21 o I 'enns and Adonis 95 Vendramin. Andrea 34 Z.\( coi INI. Matteo 167, 168, 231.287
Tadd, l iberty 265 I Vniis Anadyomene 33-4. / ? Venetian School (iff also Giorgione, 11.24
Tame, Hippolytc 210 tituli 45. 46. 69, 71 Titian. Veronese) 38, 137 8, 213 Zalin,J. 288 11.60. 2X911.104
Tanguy, Juhen ‘Pere’ 214, 296 11.83 toning varnish 224. 296 ti.90 ‘Venetian Secret' 213. 214, 215. 174 Zakharin-Unkowskv, A 2w 11.122
Tarabukin. Nikolai 225, 267 Toorop. Jan 248 Venturi, G.B. 289 11.109 Zarlino, Gioseffo 229. 230. 233. 297
T'artini, (iiuseppe 235 Tournament of Antichrist 82 I 'ergilius Romamis 93 nil.2 1. 34, 298 n.S4. 182
Tasset and l.'Hbte 214. 296 11.83 tournaments 81.50 Vermeer, Johannes 154, 168, 1/7 Zeus 14. 26
taxonomy, colour in 170, 288 1111.91,92 Traclatus de Oolorihus (German, 15th c.) Vernet. Cdaude-Joseph 106, 167, 192 Zeuxis 48, 177, 145
Tavlor. llrook 169, 232 274 n.85 Veriiet, Horace 173 Ziegler.J.C;. 37, 206, 293 11.98, tss
TECTINIQUE Transfiqnralion 58, 59, 60, ?? Veron, Eugene 175 Zimmermann. I B 282 n.22
media 131, 137, 213, 21 5. 222, 223, transparency 74-5, 110, 133, 203. 264 5, Veronese, Paolo 109, 179. 224. 230, 233. Zosimus 140
267, 284 n.73, 285 1111.76, 77, 78, 296 267. 2791111.76, 78, 301 11.112 235, 274 11.92. 296 11.87. iSi Ziiccari. Fcileruo 28S 11.48
11.83 rraversari. Ambrogio 135 Verrocchio. Andrea del 136. 177 Zurbaran, Francisco de i 56. 28X n 44

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