A Cultural History of Color: Volumes 1-6 (The Cultural Histories Series, 11) 9781474273732, 9781474273343, 1474273734

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A CULTURAL HISTORY OF COLOR VOLUME 3

A Cultural History of Color General Editors: Carole P. Biggam and Kirsten Wolf Volume 1 A Cultural History of Color in Antiquity Edited by David Wharton Volume 2 A Cultural History of Color in the Medieval Age Edited by Carole P. Biggam and Kirsten Wolf Volume 3 A Cultural History of Color in the Renaissance Edited by Amy Buono and Sven Dupré Volume 4 A Cultural History of Color in the Age of Enlightenment Edited by Carole P. Biggam and Kirsten Wolf Volume 5 A Cultural History of Color in the Age of Industry Edited by Alexandra Loske Volume 6 A Cultural History of Color in the Modern Age Edited by Anders Steinvall and Sarah Street

A CULTURAL HISTORY OF COLOR

IN THE RENAISSANCE VOLUME 3 Edited by Amy Buono and Sven Dupré

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2021 Copyright © Amy Buono and Sven Dupré, 2021 Amy Buono and Sven Dupré have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Authors of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgments on p. xii constitute an extension of this copyright page. Series cover design by Raven Design Cover image: The Sense of Sight, Jan Brueghel, 1617, The Prado © Bridgeman Images All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: Pack: 978-1-4742-7373-2 Volume: 978-1-4742-7334-3 Typeset by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

CONTENTS

L ist

of

I llustrations 

vii

S eries P reface 

xi

E ditors ’ A cknowledgments 

xii

Introduction Amy Buono and Sven Dupré

1

1 Philosophy and Science Tawrin Baker

17

2 Technology and Trade Jo Kirby

35

3 Power and Identity Peter C. Mancall

53

4 Religion and Ritual Lisa Pon

71

5 Body and Clothing Carole Frick

89

6 Language and Psychology Doris Oltrogge

109

7 Literature and the Performing Arts Bruce R. Smith

129

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CONTENTS

  8 Art Marcia Hall

149

  9 Architecture and Interiors Cammy Brothers

167

10 Artifacts Leah R. Clark

187

N otes 

204

B ibliography 

210

N otes

242

I ndex 

on

C ontributors 

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ILLUSTRATIONS

PLATES 1.1 Hand-colored uroscopic color wheel. From Ulrich Binder, Epiphaniae medicorum, 1506 1.2 Crystalline humor (or lens) of a cow 1.3 Peter Paul Rubens, Juno and Argus, c. 1610 2.1 Pigments used during the Renaissance 2.2 Dyes used during the Renaissance and examples of the colors obtained using an alum mordant (except for indigo, where no mordant is necessary) 2.3 Circle of Joachim Patinir, Portuguese Carracks off a Rocky Coast, c. 1540 3.1 Jan van Kessel, Americque, 1666 3.2 Coral and gilt spoon, c. 1530–40 4.1 Italian silk velvet, c. 1470–1530 4.2 Carpet with triple-arch design, probably Istanbul, c. 1575–90 4.3 Sammelband (separate items bound in one volume) with St. Isidore of Seville, De summo bono, and St. John Chrysostom, De compunctione cordis, c. 1490–3 5.1 Botticelli, detail of workshop, Venus, c. 1486 5.2 Lavinia Fontana, Portrait of a Noblewoman, c. 1580

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ILLUSTRATIONS

  5.3 Anton Van Dyke, Lord John Stuart and his Brother, Lord Bernard Stuart, c. 1638   5.4 Alonso Sanchez Coello, full-length portrait of Don Carlos of Spain, 1564   7.1 Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, 1542, Venice   7.2 Dosso Dossi, The Sorceress Melissa, 1518   7.3 Dosso Dossi, Allegory of Music, 1522   7.4 Inigo Jones, A Fiery Spirit, for Thomas Campion’s The Lord’s Masque, performed alongside The Tempest, 1613   8.1 Francesco Laurana, Isabella of Aragon, 1487–8   8.2 Michelangelo, Libyan Sibyl, 1508–12   8.3 Raphael, Transfiguration, 1520   8.4 Poussin, Holy Family with Saint John the Baptist and Saint Elizabeth, c. 1509–11   8.5 Peter Paul Rubens, The Consequences of War, 1638–9   9.1 Peruzzi, Sala di Prospettiva, Villa Farnesina   9.2 Ca’ D’Oro, Venice   9.3 Cardinal of Portugal Chapel 10.1 Domenico Ghirlandaio, St. Jerome in his Study, 1480 10.2 Petrus Christus, A Goldsmith in his Shop, 1449 10.3 Hans Mielech, Jewel Book of the Duchess of Bavaria, 1550s 10.4 Attributed to Dasavanta and Mithra, Misbah the Grocer Brings the Spy Parran to his House, folio from a Hamzanama (The Adventures of Hamza), Mughal miniature, c. 1570 10.5 Albarelli (drug jars), Italian, possibly Pesaro, maiolica (tin-glazed earthenware), 1475–1500

FIGURES   1.1 Descartes’s explanation of the colors of the prism arising from white sunlight modified by shadow, 1637

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ILLUSTRATIONS

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  1.2 Painter’s primaries, after the illustration in François d’Aguilon’s Optica

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  1.3 Christoph Scheiner was among the first to adopt the retinal theory of vision from Kepler, and the first to show the theory using diagrams of the eye. Here an experiment is illustrated, 1619

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  2.1 Georg Balthasar Probst (possibly), View of the Amstel between the Blauwbrug and the Hogesluis, Amsterdam, 1742–1801

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  2.2 “Three men and a boy painting pottery in a workshop,” in Cipriano Piccolpasso, I tre libri dell’arte del vasaio, 1556–9

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  2.3 Port Book for the Port of London, Easter to Michaelmas 1588 (detail), duty paid on eleven barrels of cochenelio— cochineal (entry 19), imported by Hugh Offley, freeman of the Leathersellers’ Company

50

  3.1 Portumna Castle

54

  3.2 Antonio Tempesta (after), Seamen Diving for Coral, 1602

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  3.3 Featherworking from the Florentine Codex, 1577

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  4.1 Holy Thorn Reliquary of Jean, duc de Berry, c. 1400

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  4.2 Raphael, Gregory IX Approving the Decretals of Canon Law, 1511

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  4.3 Jan and Hubert van Eyck, Adoration of the Mystic Lamb (The Ghent Altapiece), 1432

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  4.4 Devotional Book with verses from the Rosary. Manuscript, handcoloring, with woodcuts. English, c. 1490

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  5.1 Titian, La Bella, c. 1536

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  5.2 Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger (attrib.), The Rainbow Portrait of Elizabeth of England, c. 1600

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  5.3 Lucas Cranach the Elder, double portrait of Duke Heinrichs des Frommen and his wife Katharina von Mecklenburg, 1514

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  5.4 Titian, Portrait of Charles V, 1548

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  7.1 Matteo Seelos (attrib.), Archilute. Veneto, 1635

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  7.2 Historia von D[oktor] Johannes Fausten (title page), 1587

139

  7.3 Miguel de Cervantes, El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha (part one, chapter one), 1605

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ILLUSTRATIONS

  8.1 Fra Angelico, Coronation of the Virgin, c. 1432

151

  8.2 Titian, Martyrdom of St. Lawrence, 1567

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  9.1 Cancelleria, Rome, façade

178

  9.2 Casa de Pilatos

180

  9.3 Palazzo di Savona

181

  9.4 Pietr Saenredam, Interior of the New Church in Haarlem, 1628

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10.1 Italian, Bust of a Roman emperor, mid to late sixteenth century

192

10.2 “De Lapidus” from Jacob Meydenbach’s Hortus sanitatis, Mainz, fifteenth century

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10.3 Jar, Chinese porcelain, made in Jingdezhen, 1500–50, Ming dynasty

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TABLES   6.1 Color Categories and Color Terms in Early Modern Painting Treatises (German)

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  6.2 Color Categories and Color Terms in Early Modern Painting Treatises (Italian and English)

112

  6.3 Color, Metaphor, and Emotion

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SERIES PREFACE

A Cultural History of Color is a six-volume series examining the changing cultural understandings, interpretations, and utilizations of color throughout history. Each volume has the same structure and begins with a general overview of the major attitudes toward and uses of color in the historical period examined. The introduction is followed by contributions from experts, who investigate color under ten chapter headings that are identical in each of the volumes: philosophy and science; technology and trade; power and identity; religion and ritual; body and clothing; language and psychology; literature and the performing arts; art; architecture and interiors; and artifacts. Accordingly, the reader has the option of taking either a synchronic or a diachronic approach to the information provided. One volume can be read to gain a broad knowledge of color in a specific period or, alternatively, a theme or topic can be followed throughout history by reading the appropriate chapter in several volumes. The six volumes divide the history of color as follows: Volume 1: A Cultural History of Color in Antiquity (c. 3000 bce–500 ce) Volume 2: A Cultural History of Color in the Medieval Age (500–1400) Volume 3: A Cultural History of Color in the Renaissance (1400–1650) Volume 4: A Cultural History of Color in the Age of Enlightenment (1650–1800) Volume 5: A Cultural History of Color in the Age of Industry (1800–1920) Volume 6: A Cultural History of Color in the Modern Age (1920–the present) The General Editors wish to dedicate the Cultural History of Color to the memory of their husbands who provided so much love and support: William Biggam (1944–2016) and Phillip Pulsiano (1955–2000). General Editors, Carole P. Biggam and Kirsten Wolf

EDITORS’ ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The editors’ principal acknowledgments and gratitude go, of course, to the chapter authors: Tawrin Baker, Cammy Brothers, Leah R. Clark, Carole Collier Frick, Marcia Hall, Jo Kirby, Peter C. Mancall, Doris Oltrogge, Lisa Pon, and Bruce R. Smith. Their expert knowledge has made this volume a fascinating, informative, and highly readable work. Both chapter authors and others kindly donated images, free of charge, and the editors would like to thank them wholeheartedly. They are properly acknowledged in the appropriate chapters: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München; Bibliothèque Nationale de France; Bridwell Library, Dallas; Harvard Art Museums; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Newberry Library; Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; The Yorck Project, Zenodot Verlagsgesellschaft mbH; Wellcome Collection; Wikimedia Commons. The editors also wish to thank Jill Briggeman and Marleen Schans, who as editorial assistants have provided us with invaluable support with texts and images. The gratitude of the editors also goes to the Department of History of Art and Architecture at the University of California at Santa Barbara, and especially Chair Mark A. Meadow, who hosted Sven Dupré and Amy Buono during a crucial phase of this book project. Finally, Sven Dupré’s research received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement no. 648718).

Introduction AMY BUONO AND SVEN DUPRÉ

In 1617, Jan Brueghel the Elder and Peter Paul Rubens collaborated to create the painting The Sense of Sight (cover image), which explores vision as manifested in myriad artifacts and paintings. Brueghel and Rubens’s work visualizes different ways of seeing and knowing across the domains of science, culture, and religion: from the monkey wearing spectacles and the newly invented telescope to the representation of the Madonna and the painting showing Christ healing the blind. The Sense of Sight demands that its viewers engage in a series of perceptual games that (among many other things) reveal crucial aspects of early modern color central to this volume, which contends with color and its wider implications in early modern Europe between 1400 and 1650. Throughout the entire image, viewers are struck by the myriad materialities of color—including stone, metal, dyed cloth, painting pigments, glass, shells, skin—and their physical and optical properties. Color in these material forms offers an index to a wider range of interconnected discourses and disciplines that are explored in the chapters of this volume: the history of science (telescopes, globes, and astrolabes), art and architectural history (paintings, sun-strewn interiors, arches, and exterior façades), material culture studies (textiles, costumes, plumes, porcelain, and turned vessels), literary and cultural studies (references and referents associated with race, religion, history, theater, mythology, governance, and many more). Viewing The Sense of Sight with close attention to color, it becomes clear that the artists over and over again depended upon their viewers’ ability to discriminate both carefully and playfully among hues as a means of discerning meaning. Along the back wall of the painting’s main room, for example, three shelves of ancient busts are prominently displayed. At first glance, especially in contrast to the vivid colors seen elsewhere in the space, these sculptures might seem uniformly monochromatic. Upon closer inspection, subtle gradations of color (white, cream, gray, pink, and red) reveal the different kinds of stone used to carve these busts (various marbles, alabaster, travertine, and porphyry).

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For knowledgeable and discriminating viewers, such as the Archdukes Albert and Isabella, who are the presumed patrons of the painting, these provide vital clues about the provenance, age, and value of different pieces and the comprehensiveness of the collection. Distinguishing variations in color is also required by Rubens’s own painting of the Drunken Silenus, included in the right foreground, which displays a virtual catalog of skin tones. Artists had grappled with the practical aspects of rendering naturalistic flesh long before the early modern period, but during the Renaissance northern painters developed a particular fascination for making distinctions in skin tone with new debates surrounding terminology, as flesh color was not just any color but one tied to its very object: the body (Lehmann 2008: 88–9). Elsewhere in the image, it is similarity of color rather than its variations that serves to establish meaningful, or playful, relations. At the far right, we find a parrot perched atop a painting of the Madonna and Child in a garland of flowers—another collaborative work by Brueghel and Rubens. The deeply saturated blue and red of the parrot’s head matches Mary’s garments, its black cap her hair, and the whiteness of its beak her face. Parrots have a long history in Marian iconography, witnessed in works by Jan van Eyck and Albrecht Dürer among others. But this pairing also speaks to the delight of Renaissance artists in juxtaposing the colors of nature with the colors of artifice. More playfully, at the far left, we can see displayed a set of extraordinary turned vessels made out of precious agate, their hardness, variety in coloration, and high polish making them marvels to behold and treasures to collect. The taller of the two vessels is turned from a largely black stone with rounded intrusions of white near its neck, which teasingly echoes the black-and-white clothing worn by the Archduke Albert and his wife Isabella, seen in double portrait to the right of the vessels. Perhaps this ever so subtly calls the viewers’ attention to the austerity of the Spanish costumes worn by the archducal couple, in contrast to the brightly colored clothing seen in other paintings, such as the scene of Christ Healing the Blind that Dame Sight examines just to the right. Color can also in and of itself signal materiality and value: directly before the painting of Albert and Isabella, the particular shades of lustrous pale blue and faintly bluish white identify a magnificent piece of Wanli Chinese porcelain, known as “Kraak ware” in the seventeenth-century Lowlands. Its presence makes evident the movements of material goods and colors across the globe (Weststeijn 2014). While this volume is concerned with the history of color in Renaissance Europe, many of the chapters within it, like the subjects, objects, and referents within Brueghel and Rubens’s work, extend into a much wider world. They show relationships, implicit or explicit, between these subjects and the mechanisms of early modern colonialism in which Europe was simultaneously a driving force and a receiver of vast amounts of foreign material culture, which

INTRODUCTION

3

brought exposure to new knowledge systems that reshaped its own identity. Through Brueghel and Rubens’s painting, we see a glimpse of the Renaissance as a time of change, crises, and conflict as well as material and epistemic transformations. Color was integral to this transformation across the domains of science, technology, religion, and material culture. Many of the key sites of, discourses on, and objects of color in the Renaissance depicted in the playful artistry of Brueghel and Rubens’s The Sense of Sight reappear in various forms in the ten chapters in this volume. Collectively, they address the key historical issues, figures, and objects central to understanding color in various European spaces between 1400 and 1650.

PAINTING WITH COLORS The visual arts—painting, sculpture, architecture, and material culture—provide a useful point of entry into Renaissance color, not only in that these are some of the most strikingly colored objects that have survived from the period but that they, like The Sense of Sight, are some of our most important primary sources concerning the significance and reception of color in many other spheres. Artists, architects, and theoreticians engaged with color in new experimental ways. In fact, art and architectural history have recently seen a florescence of scholarship exploring “color,” both symbolically and as indices of social, political, and gendered histories, including colonialism, trade, and technology. No doubt, this speaks to larger trends in the field in terms of moving away from studies of individual artists to understanding materials, values, processes, workshop practices, and the entire range of media in which Renaissance and Baroque artists and artisans, as well as their patrons and viewers, engaged. Originating with Giorgio Vasari and received into art-historical discourse into the twentieth century, the disegno (drawing and design) versus colore (color and painting) debate has long privileged line over color. More recently, in response to the rich tonalities of artists such as Jan van Eyck or Rogier van der Weyden in the Netherlands, or Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione, and Titian in Venice, scholars have reappraised the aesthetic qualities of colore, referring both to color and the materiality of paint, especially with regard to its abilities to enliven and animate images (Krieger 2006; Busch 2009). One of the most recent developments in art-historical scholarship on color has been the broadening of the scope beyond the merely iconographic or symbolic understandings of color: the religious significance of blue in reference to the Virgin Mary, for example. Color has become a notable feature of the landscape of cultural studies in general. There has been a recent spate of both scholarly and popular histories of particular colors and dyestuffs, as well as more comprehensive reference works and encyclopedic studies of pigments and other color-related material.1

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The study of color in Renaissance painting has been a persistent thread in arthistorical writings, from Marcia Hall’s foundational works on color in Renaissance painting to Patricia Reilly’s landmark study of color and gender in Renaissance theory (Hall 1992, 2019; Reilly 1992). Marcia Hall’s chapter in this volume examines new techniques of coloring in the Renaissance, arguing that such techniques aided painters in achieving new levels of naturalism in the period. In the context of France, Rebecca Zorach’s work has brought the issue of color and its materiality in early modern French art into realms of fertility, eroticism, and abundance, further linking it to political and economic ideas of French sovereignty (Zorach 2005). This conceptually rich work has done much to bring colors’ liquidity and vivacity to bear on the function and meaning of art. Though techniques of Renaissance painting have long been a subject of fascination within the history of art, it has only been since the 1960s—with the rise of conservation studies and new technologies for examining paintings, such as the chemical analysis of paint cross-sections—that historians of art have been able to understand Renaissance processes of paint application to surfaces with far greater precision (Kirby 2019). These studies have led to new discoveries concerning painting techniques in both northern Europe and Italy, and have been fundamental in new understandings of the practices of artists, such as Jan van Eyck, Petrus Christus, Rogier van der Weyden, Hans Memling, and Rembrandt, among many others. There has been intense scholarship on artistic exchange between northern Europe and Italy during the Renaissance, especially with a focus on technical practices (Dunkerton 2000). In addition, studies of the social contexts of Renaissance color have helped elucidate networks of exchange and especially the conditions of trade that enabled technical advancements in painting (Baxandall [1972] 1988; Kirby et al. 2010).

THE COMMERCE OF COLOR We have seen an explosion of studies on pigments as an aspect of the social, economic, and informational results of global—often but not always colonial—enterprises and trade. These studies show that trade in colorants has a long history stretching back to antiquity. Already before 1400, colored ingots and glass rods were exchanged between China, India, the Middle East, and the Eastern Mediterranean (Boulogne 2012). Itinerant craftsmen included colors originating in Chinese and Indian glass in their finished products sold in Ottoman markets. European merchants also participated in this trade. For example, fourteenth-century French monastic workshops, producing small jewelry and glass imitations of precious stones, relied upon this exchange and trade in colors between Europe and West and Central Asia (including India and the Arabian Peninsula). Colorful objects, as well as the raw materials to produce them, had been traded over vast distances for centuries. Yet, the Renaissance saw important changes due to the global circulation of colors.

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Especially after 1500, Europeans entered the flourishing trade in the Indian Ocean and began to trade actively in the Americas. One consequence of global trade was the importation of new dyestuffs and pigments, especially cochineal and indigo, into Europe (Phipps 2012). Next to gold and silver, and even above spices, the color trade was the most significant for the Spanish Empire. The cultivation of these dyestuffs and pigments in colonial territories began in earnest after the mid-sixteenth century and the growing demand for them in Europe. It came at a considerable environmental and human cost. The Portuguese slave trade, which brought high numbers of enslaved black Africans to the Americas, was in part a response to the labor requirements for dyestuff harvesting and color production in the New World. The European application of these foreign dyestuffs and pigments to the production of luxury goods was dependent not only on slave labor but also on indigenous knowledge (Balaram 2012). To give an instance, Europeans had to rely on Indian manufacturers to extract the blue dye from the indigo plant. Cochineal and indigo also generated serious competition for local European colorants, especially madder and woad. Indian indigo, which was formed into concentrated cakes, was easier to ship than woad and it was also understood to be of superior quality, European traders and manufacturers started to substitute indigo for woad. Consequently, from the end of the sixteenth century, woad merchants and manufacturers tried to cast a negative light on indigo, emphasizing its vulnerability, and until the mid-eighteenth century, laws were issued that prohibited the use of indigo to protect the local woad industries. The trade with India was not, however, limited to this dyestuff. Colorful cotton textiles, known as “chintz,” were highly sought after in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Phipps 2012). This led to the creation of new color technologies in Europe. The quest to understand the making of chintz led to the search for local substitute materials (with the exception of indigo) and the development of new textile-printing techniques.

COLOR TECHNOLOGIES AND ARTISTIC PRACTICES New technological knowledge for creating colors was also important to European mining and pigment production. Demand for cobalt, mined in the Saxonian Erzgebirge mountains, increased when the European imitation porcelain production, requiring cobalt-blue paints, took off in the seventeenth century. More generally, from the sixteenth century, painters used pigments, such as naphtha and antimony, adopted from the crafts of glassmaking and ceramics (Berrie 2016). Indeed, while the history of art has traditionally focused on painting technologies and materials, it seems that the then new color technologies such as porcelain-making, textile-printing, and dyeing played a role in the production of color materials and knowledge in the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries that would be hard to overestimate.

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Another new color technology of the period was paper and book printing. In the history of graphic art, most attention has been paid to Jacob Christoph Le Blon’s invention of a color printing technique, associated with Newton’s color theory, in the first decade of the eighteenth century. It has more recently become clear that the early modern printed image was hardly the exclusive black-and-white affair that it has been made out to be (Stijnman and Savage 2015). Quite to the contrary, color printing was pervasive from the fifteenth century and had a major impact on early modern visual culture. Printers used a wide variety of techniques, from á la poupée printing (using a wad of fabric to apply color to a copper plate) to printing in register (correlating overlapping colors on a single image). Color prints took various forms, of which the best known is probably the chiaroscuro woodcut (Takahatake 2018). In addition, scholars have also turned their attention to early modern practices of painting prints, especially in Germany and the Netherlands, and have studied the techniques of their hand-coloring (Dackerman 2002). The multimedia aspects of grisaille painting in Renaissance and Baroque Europe perhaps make it one of the most spectacular artistic techniques relating to early modern color in the arts, as a form of painting that visually and conceptually bridges painting, sculpture, architecture, and the book arts. An artistic phenomenon since the late Middle Ages in Europe, grisaille (the term grisaille is of later origin; “stone-colored” [color lapidum] was used in the period) was a term applied to paintings executed almost entirely in shades of gray (though monochromatic images in shades of brown, green, and red are also referred to as grisaille), often but not always with the intent of creating the appearance of sculpture or sculptural relief. This monochromatic technique flourished in medieval illuminated manuscripts, stained glass, and especially on the exterior panels of winged altarpieces, where it may have served either to emulate more costly sculpture, or to provide an acceptably modest display during the season of Lent. Grisaille flourished in both northern Europe and Italy (Schoell-Glass 1999: 197). Two of the essential studies of grisaille are Rudolf Preimesberger’s examination of Jan van Eyck’s Thyssen Annunciation diptych and Aby Warburg’s study of the testament of the Florentine banker Francesco Sassetti (Preimesberger 1991; Warburg 1999). Diana Bullen Presciutti’s most recent study examines the devotional function of grisaille frescoes by Girolamo da Treviso, discussing the intermedial relationship of grisaille to marble sculpture and polychrome paint. She notes that historians of art have interpreted grisaille in a variety of ways, predominantly as an act of artistic virtuosity and a visual form of pictorial and temporal distancing (Presciutti 2019: 865–6). In her chapter, Lisa Pon notes the importance of color in mediating the religious experience of liturgical paintings and the choreography of religious ritual. In the sixteenth century, grisaille painting was globally disseminated within missionary contexts, with one of the more spectacular large-scale manifestations appearing in the mendicant mural cycles of sixteenth-century Mexican convents (Frassani 2017).

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If grisaille was often employed to mimic sculptural works in raw stone, thus presenting a paragone (comparison) between two- and three-dimensional artifice, polychrome sculpture in Renaissance and Baroque Europe, especially when lifesized, could offer a simulacrum of an embodied experience in “living” color, blurring the distinction between art and life. The polychroming of sculpture had a long tradition dating back to antiquity, but within western Catholicism in the medieval and Renaissance periods, the practice of covering sacred images carved in wood with precious metal (gilding) gave way to statuary covered with polychrome paint with a resulting heightened naturalism (Collareta 2008: 65). Polychrome figural sculpture flourished across early modern Europe, with works produced not just in wood but also in stone, terra-cotta, and other materials, with attention increasingly paid to the illusion of living presence increasing the emotional impact of life-size figures. Such works as the Well of Moses (1395–1403) by the Netherlandish sculptor Claus Sluter in the Burgundian capital of Dijon used polychrome to create a heightened naturalism on a par with the works of northern Renaissance painters. At sites such as Sacro Monte di Varallo in the Piedmont region, constructed from the late fifteenth through the sixteenth century, scenes from Christ’s life and Passion were recreated with life-sized, polychrome tableaux to create an immersive environment. Varallo provided visitors with a virtual pilgrimage that allowed them to witness the lived experience of biblical events and to physically “tread” in Christ’s footsteps in the Holy Land. These lifelike sculptures in terra-cotta were given real hair, glass eyes, and period costumes to heighten the illusion of living presences, achieving what Allie Terry-Fritsch has called a “somaesthetics”: the cultivating of the mind and body in a sensory experience (Göttler 2013; Terry-Fritsch 2014–15: 112). Polychroming, the adding of veristic color, was one of many artistic practices that aided in the heightened sensory experience of devotion for pilgrims and elite patrons and audiences alike. In the glazed terra-cotta works of Italian sculptors Luca della Robbia and his nephew Andrea della Robbia, polychrome sculpture takes a different form with the emphasis less on naturalism than on creating vibrant, easily read, and durable architectural ornaments and free-standing sculptures (Cambareri 2016). In seventeenth-century Spain and across the Spanish Americas, polychrome sculpture became a powerful force in Counter-Reformation ideologies of suffering, pain, and emotion, as art was created to produce intense devotional responses. Spanish conventions of art making in the period emphasized the eroticized violence against Christ’s body and was made all the more palpable by the strategic use of color techniques. Baroque sculptors such as Juan Martínez Montañés and Gregorio Fernández depicted life-sized figures of Cristo Yacente, or the “Dead Christ,” which received their encarnación (incarnation, the transformation of spirit into flesh) through the painted  application of naturalistic colors to flesh, wounds, and blood (Hunt 2018: 384–5). In terms

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of practice, sculptors and painters of religious imagery carved, dried, varnished, painted, and sanded wood in repeated cycles to achieve a lifelike glow that would mimic the appearance of Christ’s bruised body, and the veins in the hands and feet. Paint is used to show the flowing of blood from suppurating wounds, adding to the carnal qualities, the vividness of flesh, making palpably present the suffering and pain of Christ’s body (McKim-Smith 1993).

COLOR IN ARCHITECTURE AND BUILDING PRACTICES Within the scholarship on Renaissance and Baroque architecture, the topic of color sensu strictu has seldom been the focus of large-scale studies, thereby overlooking the importance of color in building practices and in the experience of the built environment across Europe and the globe in the early modern period. The lack of attention within the field notwithstanding, Renaissance architects and artists—from Alberti and Filarete to Palladio—expressed keen interest in color and decoration (Samalavičius 2011). Cammy Brothers’s chapter in this volume makes clear the rich source material available for understanding color in Renaissance architecture, as well as its intricate ties to ornamentation. Renaissance Venice was famed for its use of multicolored stone and rich architectural ornamentation: Paul Hills has examined Venetian architecture in dialogue with broader visual and material culture, including works in marble, mosaic, painting, and glass (Hills 1999). Alina Payne examined the practice in Renaissance Florence of embellishing the “skins” of buildings in the urban environment with colored fabrics, especially with sgraffito ornamentation in imitation of these fabrics (Payne 2016). Color has received more interest within studies of Baroque architecture in Catholic Europe and the Americas as part of larger phenomenological sense-scapes.2 Christopher Heuer has discussed the purging of church interiors of artworks and ornament during the Protestant iconoclasm, including the whitewashing of walls, bringing the issue of color into the realm of religious culture and ideology (Heuer 2016).3 Studies of ornamentation, including color, have flourished as part of a renewed interdisciplinary interest in the surfaces and interiors of buildings, no doubt connecting with the larger scholarly trend towards the examination of the materiality of Renaissance art (Cole 2011). Such studies may reflect an anthropological approach by attending to the experiential qualities of buildings. Recent scholarly works provide more expansive reimaginings of architectural space, lived experience, and affect, inserting such thematic topics as ornamentation into a very welcome history of art and architecture that contends with local and global phenomena (Necipoğlu and Payne 2016).

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COLOR IN MATERIAL CULTURE Since the 1980s, scholars from a wide range of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences have explored material culture to better understand the sociocultural worlds in which objects are embedded and the geographies in which they circulate. Within Renaissance studies, the “material culture turn” has employed methods from archaeology, anthropology, economics, art history, and museum studies (among others) to examine how “things” mattered in the early modern world. Increased attention has been paid not only to the importance of understanding the history and social circulation of material objects in the Renaissance, but also to their materiality, manufacture, scientific and devotional utility, and their agency.4 Although color has not always been explicitly addressed in these studies, it often features as an important undercurrent. Color, however, has come to the fore in a more straightforward manner in case studies of particular materials: costume and feathers, pietre dure (inlay of colored stones) and gemstones, metalworking, porcelain and ceramics, and enameling and glass. Renaissance costume history continues to be an important arena for studies of materials (and dyes) used in the making of cloth and innovative techniques of fashion in the early modern period, such as sewing, tailoring, and adornment. The social coding of costume, the various cultural geographies of such innovations are captured in a recently edited volume by Evelyn Welch (Welch 2017). The study of Renaissance sumptuary laws, which restricted who could wear certain colors and fabrics—and thereby the social constructions of status, gender, and sexuality—is crucial to understanding the making and unmaking of Renaissance identities (Jones and Stallybrass 2000; Rublack 2010; Currie 2018). Carole Collier Frick has produced an important study of the cloth industry and guild system in Renaissance Florence, while Paula Hohti Erichsen’s research on the materiality of Renaissance fashion brings vital issues of social class to the table, with examinations of fashion innovations among artisans, shopkeepers, and traders in early modern Italy at large (Frick 2002; Hohti Erichsen 2020). Ulinka Rublack, Maria Hayward, and Jenny Tiramani have produced a sumptuously illustrated critical edition of two sixteenth-century manuscripts from Augsburg: one of accountant Matthäus Schwartz, the other of his son Veit Konrad Schwarz (Rublack et al. 2015). While the dye trade has a separate but connected history, as discussed above, it is worth mentioning the ways certain colors were favored in different cultural contexts across early modern Europe. Sophie Jolivet has explored the political fashioning of the color black in the mid-fifteenth-century Burgundian court (Jolivet 2015), which is more broadly laid out in a recent collaborative exhibition and volume, “Burgundian Black,” with special attention to the materiality of the black-dyed textiles made fashionable at the Burgundian court (Boulboullé and Dupré 2020).

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The economic imperatives for favoring black in early modern Spain, and the suppressing of color or the valuing of red in the Norman textile industry as an issue of regional sovereignty, signals how colors had significations that were not only cultural and religious but also concerned with the markets and values of the dye trade (Buono 2016; Casado Alonso 2017). Scholars have also paid significant attention to feathers and their vibrant colors as media in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century sacred contexts, especially in reference to art making and collecting between Europe and the Americas (Magaloni Kerpel 2006, 2014; Buono 2012). Feathers and birds have been associated with divinity in Christian symbolism with precedents extending back to the ancient Mediterranean. Birds and their feathers similarly figured as divine in the ancient Americas. As harbingers of divinity, as material manifestation of “live” color, and radiant indices of flight, sacred objects made of feathers, in particular feathered liturgical vestments and feathered mosaics, were embodiments of luminosity and color and prime vehicles of cross-cultural evangelization and colonization (Russo et al. 2015). Collectors across Europe highly valued colorful birds, feathers, and feathered garments as important components of early modern collections, acting as tangible evidence of the fauna populating various parts of the globe and as material knowledge in expanding systems of avian classification. As Peter Mancall discusses in his chapter, this extends to representations of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century collections themselves, which featured flora and fauna carefully placed along cabinet floors and ceilings. Like feathers, stones presented many possibilities as a colored medium in Renaissance Europe, from which portable objects could be crafted, with which surfaces of buildings could be inlayed, and upon which images could be painted. Gems and jewels were collected, carved, and worn. As the cultures of courtly collecting flourished in early modern Europe, gems were an important component of aristocratic display and exchange, both in material form and in visual imagery (Clark 2018: 90). Medieval and Renaissance lapidaries described the healing properties of stones and gems. Gold and gems were thought to endow their wearers with power, as these materials were themselves endowed with “divine luminosity” (Belozerskaya 2005: 52). Early modern accounts confirm how the color of gems carried powerful associations and medicinal functions (Buettner 2014). In this volume, Leah Clark examines how gems were valued and described in Renaissance Italy: for their visual and magical properties, their names, their hardness or softness, their luminosity and color, their links to faraway places and histories, and their astral and medicinal powers. New studies on gems emphasize both the global trade networks through which they traveled and the local knowledge systems of which they were a part (Bycroft and Dupré 2019). Knowledge of gems related to a wide variety of properties, of which color was arguably the most important one until the seventeenth century.

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Pietre dure, in which cut, finished, and polished stones—such as colored marbles, coral, garnet, jasper, and lapis lazuli—are inlaid and composed into brilliantly colored images, are a spectacular example of how colored stones were used to make magnificent luxury objects. Pietre dure flourished in Renaissance Italy, especially Florence, where in the late sixteenth century a workshop was established by the Medici. Pietre dure workshops and techniques spread throughout Europe, notably to the courts of Rudolph II in Prague and Louis XIV in France, during the following centuries (Giusti 2006). New scholarship focuses on the seventeenth-century Eurasian trade networks of stone and pietre dure as a material and an art form linking the Medici court’s workshop with Livorno, Lisbon, Goa, and the Mughal court (Freddolini 2020). More generally, practices of material mimesis, crafted mostly by imitating the colors of nature or other material objects, such as the colors of gemstones or porcelain in glass, were a driving force behind the creation of new forms of art, types of material objects, and processes of globalization (Ajmar-Wollheim 2016; Augart et al. 2018).

COLOR IN THE HISTORY OF KNOWLEDGE Delving into the world of Renaissance material culture reveals the importance of placing material culture studies alongside the history of knowledge. The case of color printing, discussed above, shows how a plurality of color knowledge and techniques comes in place of technology and the application of a dominant Newtonian color science. This is part of a broader historiographical revision in the history of science and technology. So much attention has been paid to the development of Newton’s theory of light and color in the final decades of the seventeenth century (Shapiro 1993) that it has virtually eclipsed all other prior engagements with color in the histories of optics and vision. The only exception is the rainbow as an object of color knowledge, but its discussion in the history of science has been confined to the boundaries of geometrical optics without impact for the wider field (Boyer 1987). Only in the most recent years have historians of science come to recognize the intensity and diversity of discussions of color and its role in vision and perception by sixteenth-century Aristotelian natural philosophers and anatomists (Baker 2015). The idea of Newtonian color science as the culmination of the development of color knowledge has made room for the recognition of a plurality of “color worlds,” each consisting of objects, concepts, and practices based on materials and productions (Baker et al. 2016). It seems that until the nineteenth century and the “color revolution” following the industrial production of synthetic dyes and pigments (Blaszczyck 2012), there was no systematization and standardization across these different color worlds. This is not to say that these were worlds apart. The period around 1600 witnessed the intensification

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of attempts at communication between these color worlds. Newton’s debt to artists, who redefined the role of black and white in the color order, for the development of his color theory is precisely an example of such cross-world communication (Shapiro 1994). Another landmark publication on color in the mid-seventeenth century is Robert Boyle’s Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours: The Beginning of an Expermental History of Colours (1664). Celebrated as a milestone in the history of the chemistry of color, it is the outcome of communication across color worlds just like Newton’s Opticks (1704). Boyle discovered color indicators, that is, he developed the idea of using color and color change as a tool for the indication of the presence of substances (Eamon 1980). However, Boyle came to the development of this tool by inquiries and observations in artisanal workshops, especially of dyers and painters who had acquired substantial knowledge of color change as an indicator of material transformation over generations and centuries. Color was key to artisanal epistemologies and to their understandings of the processes of nature and materials. A famous example is the sixteenth-century French potter Bernard Palissy, who trained as an alchemist (and a glassmaker) before he turned to pottery, as he himself tells the reader in his Discours admirables (1580). Color transformation was key to Palissy’s glazed ceramics (Shell 2004). He stressed that growth changes color in the natural world, such as in plants, reptiles, and rocks. Imitating the earth’s techniques in his “art of the earth,” his ceramic imitations of the colors of animals and plants helped him to understand the causes of color change in nature. Fundamentally, chromatic transformation was essential to alchemy and to the imitation by “tincture” of luxury goods (precious metals and gemstones) from the very beginnings of the alchemical tradition in antiquity, as found in the recipes of the Papyri (Newman 2004). For Palissy, his success in color transformation was also his point of challenge to the alchemists. Whereas nature succeeds in making and changing the most beautiful colors, artisans (alchemists, painters) fail, with Palissy’s own glazed ceramics as the only exception. Color change had been essential to alchemists and craftsmen alike throughout history. Color was already a key indicator of specific metals and their composition, for metalworkers in early Bronze Age Europe (Kuijpers 2019), and the color imitation of precious stones and metals was the organizing concept of the arts and alchemy since antiquity, as we have just seen. In fact, precisely because of the importance of color imitation, early modern author-practitioners, such as Vannoccio Biringuccio and Antonio Neri, attributed the invention of glass to alchemists’ attempts to imitate the colors of gemstones (Dupré 2018). What is new in the early modern period is that this artisanal knowledge pervades the color world of a chymist and natural philosopher like Boyle. Equally new in the period, and likely connected to the emergent communication across color worlds, is the proliferation of color recipes. As we have just mentioned, the

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Leiden and Stockholm Papyri already contained recipes on color transformation and imitation across several arts, and there was no shortage of recipes in medieval Europe. Theophilus’s De diversis artibus (On Diverse Arts), written in the early twelfth century, is presumably the most famous example. However, as part of an explosion of artisanal writings in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, manuscripts containing color recipes became ubiquitous (Clarke 2001). One example is the fifteenth-century Strasbourg manuscript, which brings together a collection of recipes of oil paints and their application to northern European panel painting (Neven 2016). In the same period, books of secrets, flooding the print market and often compiled from recipes circulating in manuscript, became important vehicles of color knowledge.

THE LANGUAGE OF COLOR Color recipes form an important source for the study of color vocabulary. The historical semantics of color is based on the availability of a more or less rich corpus of texts. The explosion of artisanal writings in the early modern period significantly enriches the textual source materials for the historical study of color terminology in the period. The interdisciplinary field of the study of color language—from linguistics to anthropology to cognitive science—has been dominated by the publication in 1969 of Brent Berlin and Paul Kay’s Basic Color Terms (1969). The diachronic part of the Berlin and Kay hypothesis came to be known later as the “universals and evolution” (UE) model. Against the then widely accepted relativism on the basis of anthropological studies, it proclaimed aspects of color language and cognition as universals. It entailed a model of evolutionary development, which makes it impossible for scholars of historical semantics of color to ignore Berlin and Kay’s work. Subsequently revised and refined, as well as heavily criticized, there are three aspects of the Berlin and Kay thesis that have remained widely accepted until today (Hardin and Maffi 1997; Biggam 2012). Firstly, there is a total number of eleven basic color categories (BCCs): six primary BCCs (white, black, red, yellow, green, and blue) and five secondary BCCs (brown, purple, pink, orange, and gray).5 BCCs are named by basic color terms (BCTs), which are much less stable than categories as they vary over time and differ across various historical languages. A second universal aspect of color cognition concerns the evolution or temporal order. While the number of BCCs might vary across time and place, they are acquired in a relatively fixed order. Thirdly and finally, Berlin and Kay claim that there is a correlation between the cultural or technological complexity of a society and the complexity of color vocabulary in that society. Although much depends upon the definition of complexity of culture or technology, it has been recently argued that:

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a society which lives in a predominantly natural environment, and manufactures artifacts from natural materials, has much less need to develop several abstract color terms than a society which manufactures large quantities of items, including ranges of color products like paints and dyes, and many items for which color may be the only distinguishing feature, as with cars or clothes […] [and] that societies which have to classify a wide variety of artifacts find color-coding an indispensable tool, and this naturally encourages an abstract concept of color categorization. (Biggam 2012: 92) The Berlin and Kay hypothesis thus brings together color language and color technology, and indeed, it seems to be the case that in the Renaissance we can see this correlation between color semantics and technologies. As Doris Oltrogge shows in her chapter in this volume, the textile industry was the source of the invention of new color terms that made it into the more widely adopted color language of the period. Visual and verbal representations were closely allied in Renaissance literature and theatrical performances. Bruce Smith’s chapter in this volume illuminates how color was equally important to the literary and poetic arts, as it was to the visual arts. In fact, Smith’s larger body of work on the color green in the literature, arts, and popular culture of early modern England argues how the color green was an unbounded sensation and emotion that linked material culture with music, theater, literature, philosophy, and sense perception (Smith 2008). Smith demonstrates the interdisciplinary nature of color itself in the Renaissance, emphasizing the rhetorical and thus poetic and imaginal nature of color.

RACE, COLOR AND DIFFERENCE Race is undoubtedly one of the most consequential areas of inquiry in early modern studies at large. As Cassander L. Smith, Nicholas R. Jones, and Miles P. Grier have noted, scholars of early modern Europe have mostly eschewed the social category of race as anachronistic to early modern categories of thought and the legal, social, and scientific frameworks of the period (Smith et al. 2018: 1). Understanding skin color, including racial codification and difference in the Renaissance, was ultimately bound to a range of cultural, social, and scientific debates. For example, Robert Boyle’s investigations into color, discussed above, connect the nature of skin color to optics, chemistry, and what he terms “seminal impressions,” an early attempt to explain genetic inheritance (Boyle 2010: 74). Recently, cultural studies frameworks—black studies, diaspora studies, and critical race studies—have sought to explore the complex, interrelated categories of identification and codification that signaled

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“race” and difference in the early modern world.6 In relation to Renaissance Europe specifically, studies exploring black African, Jewish, Muslim, and Native American identities in the literature, theater, history, and art history of England, Italy, and Iberia have been prominent (Patton 2016). These studies highlight early modern European spaces as deeply cross-cultural and inter-ethnic. T.F. Earle and Kate Lowe’s anthology on the black African presence in Renaissance Europe has been crucial in laying out a broad interdisciplinary framework for understanding the formation and establishment of the social and legal systems that constructed “blackness” and “whiteness” across early modern Europe (Earle and Lowe 2005). Investigations of gender, race, and colonialism within Renaissance drama and visual culture are extensive (Loomba 1992; Erickson and Hulse 2000). Studies on Shakespeare and race and postcolonial approaches more generally, account for a formidable body of literature (Singh 2019).7 In fact, blackness had a long tradition on the English stage, dating back to the medieval period, as tied to concepts of evil and damnation, giving fuller dimensions to the origins of racial stereotypes (Vaughn 2005). Studies of blackness in drama have also flourished in the context of early modern Spain in relation to both representations on the Spanish stage (Fra-Molinero 1995) as well as in audience reception (Beusterien 2006). Early modern Luso-Hispanic literature has also been explored in relation to race to highlight the way various discursive forms (philosophical and scientific treatises, travel writing, novels, poetry, and drama) went into the process of “race making” within the context of the colonial enterprise (Branche 2006).

MAKING SENSE OF COLOR The Sense of Sight by Brueghel and Rubens, with which we began this introduction, offers a pictorial entrée into color in Renaissance Europe. Color permeates the entirety of the painting, composed from the myriad combinations of paints mixed on the artists’ palettes. Color enlivens the human figures in both the scene and in the paintings depicted within it; color distinguishes the materialities of the objects acquired both locally and gathered from across the globe, including the vibrant birds and flowers, the sculptures (whether polychromed or not), the porcelain dishes and vases, the gemstones and shells, the richly dyed cloth, and elaborate carpets and tapestries. The painting’s naturalism relies upon the perceptual qualities of color, not least in the atmospheric perspective used to create the distant landscape beyond the room, and that within the landscape and seascapes rendered in the paintings within the painting. Thinking about The Sense of Sight through its use of color this introduction opens up the Renaissance worlds of color, which the chapters in this volume will help to elucidate further.

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CHAPTER ONE

Philosophy and Science TAWRIN BAKER

INTRODUCTION At present, our historical studies of Renaissance color philosophy and science resemble the pieces of a mosaic, only some of which have been assembled to form a larger picture. The task is difficult: the sixteenth century saw an explosion in Aristotelian commentaries and textbooks, most of which have not been carefully examined by modern scholars. The medical tradition saw a similar deluge in printed works, including new commentaries on Avicenna, the revival of Hippocratic and Galenic medicine and philosophy, the ascendency of the discipline of anatomy, and new challenges to traditional medicine—all of which provided opportunities for reexamining the importance of color in health, disease, theories of complexion and the four humors, anatomy, and natural processes generally. New philosophical systems came to the fore, notably the alchemical philosophies inspired by Paracelsus; the Neoplatonic, Hermetic, and magical directions inspired by Marsilio Ficino and others; the revival of ancient skepticism; the Christianized Epicureanism of figures such as Pierre Gassendi; and eclectic philosophies that combined Aristotelian, Stoic, Platonic, and Hermetic ideas with Renaissance animism—often, as in Bernardino Telesio or Francis Bacon, cast as anti-Aristotelian philosophy. For Europeans, whose conception of the natural world was being affected by the projects of exploration and colonization, devising new methods of getting a handle on this wealth of new information became paramount. The science of mechanics developed dramatically, and during the first half of the seventeenth century, mechanical philosophy was in the ascendant, effecting radical changes

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to the notions of density, rarity, transparency, and opacity—concepts that were fundamental to how color was theorized. The status of painters and painting rose significantly. Intellectual reflections on painting, including color, became common, both because training in drawing and painting became widespread among the learned, and also because painters themselves entered the orbit of the litterati. Mining and minerology was increasingly important in Europe, and works (such as Georg Agricola’s De re metallica) on metals, stones, and gems were written that combined the philosophical and the practical (see Clark, this volume). The increasing popularity of Kunstkammer, or cabinets of curiosity, offered a new locus for knowledge transfer among different groups. The science of optics was, moreover, transformed by advances in ocular anatomy together with the quest to mathematically comprehend devices such as the telescope and camera obscura; alongside this, philosophers began to rethink what the act of seeing entails. For all of the above, particularly with relevance to color, our current knowledge is incomplete. One way to make sense of these myriad changes is to focus on the fact that the color worlds—consisting of practices, concepts (including language), and objects—of various artisans and intellectuals began to overlap during this period, with major consequences for philosophical and scientific reflections about color (Baker et al. 2016). Social and disciplinary boundaries became increasingly porous, even while many disciplines themselves underwent transformations. The intersection of the color worlds of various color practitioners becomes apparent around 1600, but there does not appear to be a single, well-defined cause for this. This chapter has two main sections. The first, covering roughly 1400 up to the second half of the sixteenth century, describes some of the domains in which an intellectual interest in color was present, and it sketches the theories and concerns about color among natural philosophers and physicians, in particular. This provides a baseline for the transformations outlined in the second section, covering roughly the late sixteenth century to around 1650, in which we see the rise of new philosophies, new exemplars and instruments related to color phenomena, and a new dynamic between theories of light and color.

TRADITIONS IN ISOLATION There is little evidence that, in the period around 1400, those involved in the myriad color practices interacted and shared their color knowledge across professional or disciplinary lines. The structure of both guilds and universities hardly encouraged this. Painters, artisans, philosophers, mathematicians, physicians, and others were not under much pressure to respond to external challenges to their intellectual and/or practical understanding of color. Mineralogy—which would bring together some concerns and color knowledge

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from disparate groups—was also not yet developed as a distinct discipline, and sites of interaction, or boundary zones between color worlds, were limited. Evidence of this can be seen in the conceptual compartmentalization of Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472), who was well versed in the domains of philosophy, mathematics, and painting. He received philosophical training at the Universities of Bologna and Padua, and was a key early figure working to elevate the status of painting above that of a mere manual craft (see Hall, this volume). In his seminal treatise on painting (likely composed in 1435) he keeps the domains of the philosopher and the painter separate: Let us leave aside the famous dispute of philosophers where the first origins of colors are investigated. What use is it, in fact, to the painter to have learned on what condition a color results from the mixtures of a rare one and a dense one, or of a warm one and a dry one, [or] of a cold one and of a humid one? (Alberti 2011: 45) After this he says that other philosophical debates are not to be rejected, including the notion that there are seven species of color, or that black and white are the extremes of color, but he himself does not engage with them. Rather, he says that, speaking as a painter, there are four true colors corresponding to the four elements: red (Italian rosso; Latin rubeum), blue (eleste, o vero azurro/ celestis seu caesius), green (verde/viridis), and ash colored (cenere/cinereum), corresponding to fire, air, water, and earth, respectively; the other colors arise from their combination. But does the color knowledge or practice of painters provide a challenge to philosophers, and could a natural-philosophical understanding of color improve the practice of painting? Rather than address these questions, or in any way engage with potential conflicts between the color worlds of philosophers versus painters, Alberti avoids the issue. Because it is a treatise on painting, he need only speak as a painter, with any epistemic claims restricted to that domain. Between 1400 and about 1600 a more or less Aristotelian framework was the basis for philosophical questions about color. Few, it seems, doubted the notion that light/white and dark/black were the two extreme color contraries, and that all other colors arose from a mixture of these two. In general, we can also say that colored bodies, rather than radiant colors, were the focus of attention. Questions and controversies were usually addressed within one of many of the scholastic genres—the Aristotelian commentary, the quaestio or disputed question, or emerging around 1500 and growing in prominence until the end of our period in 1650, the natural philosophy textbook (Schmitt 1988). Within these genres and the varieties of Aristotelianism of the period, there was considerable room for disagreement, and ideas and attitudes during the period were far from static. Explicitly anti-Aristotelian philosophies also began to emerge, although on the whole they addressed traditional questions and often

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took for granted the same scholastic framework for color as their Peripatetic opponents. Prior to about 1600, most writers assumed that light and color were distinct qualities, and that light in some way (the manner was disputed) caused colors to affect our visual faculty. There were two main opinions on this. One was that light turned the dark, intransparent medium to a transparent one, and in this way removed the barrier hindering color’s innate power to alter the medium and propagate an effect to our eyes. Another was that light supplied colors themselves with the power to propagate through transparent media. The issue was whether transparent media or colored surfaces (or both) needed activating. In either case, the rays of colors sent out were often called by the technical term “species” of color. The scholastic concept of spiritual or intentional species arose from the need to resolve several seemingly incompatible assertions about vision in the Aristotelian corpus, and was heavily influenced by the thirteenthcentury philosopher Roger Bacon (Tachau 1988; Simmons 1994). The notion of “modification theories” of color, often used to describe all pre-Newtonian accounts, requires some discussion. This notion “characterizes all theories that attribute color to some kind of modification or change of simple white light” (Sepper 1988: 108). Most scholastic accounts, however, were concerned with the physical mixtures that produce colors, such as the ratio of black and white in bodies themselves, or the mixture of colored rays or species in the air. Light was usually considered to be a property distinct from color, and light was incidental to color in many philosophical discussions among scholastics. In philosophical discussions the term “color” chiefly referred to the colors of bodies, and not projected colors or the perceptual content of our visual experience. Calling scholastic Aristotelian accounts of color “modification theories” is somewhat misleading, because most did not consider color to be modified light. It is perhaps better to label them mixture theories, which emphasizes the centrality of theories of colored bodies. Although it was generally held that bright light could alter the colors we perceive, this was said to be a case of light modifying our perception of colors, not the colors themselves. Some of the philosophical questions about color most frequently posed by philosophers included the following. What is the definition of color? What is the relationship between color and illumination? What are intentional or spiritual species? What is the origin, or underlying cause, of color in bodies? Does color exist only at the surface of a body, or also in its depths? What is the distinction between real and apparent colors? How many fundamental kinds of color are there? How exactly are the middle colors formed from light/white and dark/black? In all of this, we should keep in mind that scholastics made the distinction between colors in bodies, colors in the medium, and our perception of colors, and did so in a way rather differently than we would today.

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The definition of color was of fundamental importance, and it was at this time that some writers began to argue that the pseudo-Aristotelian On Colors was not genuine, precisely because it did not contain a definition of color (Scaliger 1557: 434v; Zabarella 1590: 601). One candidate for a definition of color in the Aristotelian corpus is found in book 2, chapter 7 of On the Soul, where Aristotle writes, “Every color has in it the power to set in movement what is actually transparent; that power constitutes its very nature” (Aristotle 1984: 1:418a27–418b3).1 Another candidate for a definition of color is found in On Sense and Sensible Objects: “we may define color as the limit of the transparent in a determinately bounded body” (Aristotle 1984: 1:439b1–439b14). Some Renaissance scholastics recognized a tension between these two statements. If the former were a true definition of color, then the ability of color to alter transparent media would be essential to its nature. Yet such an alteration, it seems, can ultimately only affect animals with functioning eyes. Is color, then, merely relational? As a way to make Aristotle’s statements in On the Soul compatible with his statements elsewhere, scholastics sometimes call this power of color to affect the faculty of vision the visibility of color. Such authors made a distinction between visibility, that is, color considered as an object of vision, and color considered absolutely. The latter was said to exist independently of perception and was the ground for the former, something that Aristotle seems to imply in Metaphysics IV (Γ) (Aristotle 1984: 2:1010b30–1011a2). Color considered absolutely was said to exist as much in the dark or in the depths of a body as in the illuminated, visible surface of things. Most authors in the Renaissance followed the lux/lumen distinction: lux was a property of a shining body, while lumen was the effect of that quality on transparent bodies. Since all colored bodies, with the possible exception of black bodies, were thought to be transparent to some degree, this meant that lumen might also affect the surfaces of colored bodies. A common debate among philosophers, drawing on Avicenna and Averroes, revolved around the precise relationship between lux, lumen, and color. Was lumen simply required to activate the transparency of the medium so that color could issue forth to our eyes, as, for example, Averroes tells us Avempace believed? Or did lumen merely activate the color at the surface of the body, allowing color to propagate through illuminated and un-illuminated media alike? Or were both necessary, as the perspectivae (that is, the writers on mathematical optics following Alhacen) seemed to say? Moreover, what was this interaction between lumen and color? Did lumen provide the formal component to the matter of color, whose unity led to colored rays? Or did rays (or species) of light and color propagate together conjointly, as distinct entities? There were several main opinions as to the origin of color. The tradition stemming from Averroes, which had many followers, held to the condensation account. According to Averroes, rare substances, including the celestial aether

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as well as (to lesser degrees) elemental fire, air, and water, were naturally transparent; condensing these bodies caused them to become white, and subsequent mixture with earth—which was thus naturally black due to its lack of transparency—produced the rest of the intermediate colors (Baker 2015). The motivation for this was ultimately cosmological: we see the heavens, and color is the proper object of vision; therefore, heavenly bodies are colored. But the heavenly realm is made from an incorruptible aether, not the earth, water, air, and fire whose cyclical transformations are the source of all generation and corruption in our sublunar realm. While the elements are, in this way, ruled out as a universal cause for color, the properties of density and rarity do exist in both realms, and are thus appropriate candidates to ground a theory of the origin of color (Averroes 1986: 91–3). Color considered absolutely, in this scheme, was said to be the ratio of density (or thickness) and rarity (or subtlety) of a body. The thickening of portions of the celestial body produced shining white stars. Condensation also created the white upper portion of the flame in a candle, where the relatively pure elemental fire was condensed by the surrounding cold; the lower blue and yellow parts of the flame were due to a mixture of pure fire with dark, earthy candle fumes, which had not yet converted completely into fire (Baker 2015). Other accounts, influenced by the Pseudo-Aristotelian De coloribus, held that colors did arise from the elemental bodies. In that treatise we read that fire is yellow and the rest of the elements are white, while black is “the proper color of elements in the process of transmutation” (Aristotle 1984: 1:791a1–791a12). The Pseudo-Aristotelian On Plants, while positing a different elemental color scheme, also has statements along similar lines, for example, that green in plants is a combination of earth, which is black, and water, which is white. The elemental colors were not thought to be primary in the more modern sense (that is, either additive or subtractive primaries). Rather, in this tradition a heterogeneous collection of observations was appealed to, observations that were partially explained by a few general rules of thumb, with little overarching theory of how an artisan, or nature herself, might mix colors to produce new ones. This strand of Aristotelianism was connected with medical theory and practice, and we see an example of this in the sixteenth century in Girolamo Cardano’s (1501–1576) On Subtlety, first published in 1550. He says that there are four principal colors—white, red, green, and dark (albus, rubeus, viridis, obscurus)—to which he adds Aristotle’s seven colors of the rainbow. He then proceeds to address the causes of these colors. The observable colors of things arise from a combination of their substrate color, the color or influence of illumination, and the effect of the medium between it and ourselves. The substrate color was severely underdetermined, and, for example, Cardano writes, “Matt white occurs when wet things such as leaves dry out, or if they undergo degeneration, like bread and the hair in old age, and in disease, and

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generally in the weak” (Cardano [1550] 2013: 262). Pores and corpuscles are also occasionally appealed to, but Cardano never suggests that a systematic theory exists by which all color phenomena can be reduced to microscopic arrangements of matter. Compounded with this is the effect of illumination: some surface colors retain a great deal of illumination and so are affected by lighting conditions, but he provides no general explanation for this. Finally, the intermedium might also affect the color we see. How intermediate colors arise from a mixture of light/white and dark/black, and how this mixing ought to be understood, was another standard topic. It was acknowledged that accounting for the fact that red, green, and gray were all somehow intermediate between light and dark was a problem, a worry that goes back at least as far as the Arabic commentators (Kirchner and Bagheri 2013). Up through the sixteenth century, color exemplars were still largely either organic or meteorological—the colors of ripening fruit and decomposing plants and animals, the rainbow, the colors seen in clouds at sunset—but the influence of color mixture in art, especially painting, can perhaps be gleaned in sixteenth-century texts (Leonhard 2015).2 The influential Jesuit author Benedict Pereira provides an extended discussion of color generation and mixture. Is green analogous to the tepid water that results from the mixture of hot and cold water, which differs from the two extremes only with respect to more and less? Pereira disagrees: only the color gray is analogous to tepid water, while what we might call chromatic colors, such as green, differ in kind from the extreme colors; the latter arise from special causes beyond mere qualitative mixture (Perera 1588: 717–19). Perera’s conclusion was not uncommon, and the “special causes” that authors might appeal to ranged from the substantial form of the resulting thing, to specific laws of nature that determine how colors mutate in each instance. The relationship between physicians and philosophers was complicated, because physicians received lengthy training in natural philosophy before and during their medical studies. But even here disciplinary divides within the universities, and the authorities relied upon by each (Galen versus Aristotle, for example), meant that the two disciplines addressed specialized problems in relatively isolated textual genres. The notion of complexion, or the ratio of the four elements that made each individual’s constitution, was key to medical theory and the diagnosis of disease, and was combined with the theory of the four humors (sometimes called the vehicle of complexion), which stretched back to Hippocrates and was influenced heavily by Galen and Avicenna. On this theory blood was red, phlegm was white or clear, and bile came in two colors: black and yellow. Discussions of colors in the medical tradition drew upon experiences with both normal and diseased bodies, often only partly informed by the theoretical ideas about color discussed above. For example, in his discussion of the humors in

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his Liber canonis, Avicenna wrote that heat produces blackness in a moist body, and whiteness in a dry; cold produces the reverse (Avicenna 1556: 13) (note that Renaissance physicians often held that white in animal bodies is a sign of cold predominating, such as in the brain or in bones, although in the case of the brain this seems to contradict Avicenna’s dictum above). These general principles are occasionally deployed later in the Liber canonis, notably in discussions of the colors of hair and urine, but there were many complicating factors at play (such as the distinction between innate and external heat), and more often than not the connection between the observed color of a normal or diseased body part and more fundamental theories of color was tenuous or ad hoc. For the most part, the role of color in medicine seems to have been grounded more in empirical observation or tradition, rather than a theory of the elements or the humors. Color was a crucial sign for medical diagnosis. Effort was made to create color standards for urine analysis and for medicinal plants and other ingredients of compound drugs. Uroscopic color charts, showing shades of urine matched to the changes in the body that they signified, were common in both manuscript and print. There is evidence that these charts were actually used in treating patients; however, while the color terms seem to have been standardized, the colors themselves vary greatly from chart to chart, indicating that they were often hand-colored for sale by nonexperts. Written descriptions of the colors, particularly their relationship to color charts and one’s own experience, required interpretation (Stolberg 2016: 33–9) (see Plate 1.1). Physicians in the Renaissance also devised and used color indicators to test for the components in mineral waters, prescribed by physicians for bathing or ingestion. This early development of color indicators was an important grounding for seventeenthcentury developments in chemistry (Eamon 1980). In anatomical works, the colors and other visible properties of the parts of the bodies were of great importance. Related to these accounts of the structure, fabric, or history (historia) of the parts of the body were histories of plants. Natural histories, including botanical histories, developed significantly in the sixteenth century, and the first botanical gardens attached to universities were created in the middle of the sixteenth century. The recovery of ancient knowledge of medicinal plants was well underway, and traditional knowledge of plants and their medicinal uses was also challenged by discoveries in the New World. Ascribing the correct colors to plants was crucial, and making sense of ancient color terms used to describe plants (for example, in the works of Dioscorides and Pliny) was a major task. Those working towards this goal combined the roles of naturalist, physician, philosopher, and philologist (Pugliano 2015; see also Oltrogge, this volume). Colored copies of famous botanical works, such as Leonhard Fuchs’s De historia stirpium, were common, but similar to uroscopic charts, the colors

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were not standardized. Color appears to have been used as a decorative element in order to increase the value of such books; for the sixteenthcentury physician or naturalist, there was clear epistemic value in using and communicating the correct Latin and Greek color terms for plants and animals, while the epistemic value of colored images was more ambiguous (Kusukawa 2012: 59–61, 69–81).

INTERMINGLING OF COLOR WORLDS The color worlds of philosophers, physicians, mathematicians, alchemists, mineralogists, painters, dyers—among others—began to intersect towards the end of the Renaissance, and the effect of this on philosophy and science became more and more apparent around the turn of the seventeenth century. If Alberti is our exemplar for a period in which authors did not feel compelled to integrate the color worlds that they had access to, the painter and lay brother of the Theatine order Matteo Zaccolini (1547–1630) might be used to exemplify the late Renaissance shift (see also Hall, this volume). Between 1618 and 1622 he wrote an extensive treatise on painting in four parts, the first of which was dedicated to color itself and the second to color perspective in painting. At the beginning he says his purpose is: to explain miscellaneous visual phenomena, so that the learned painter, practiced in the peculiarities and in the observation of the variety of Nature, and drawing upon the most rigorous scrutiny of scientific considerations, will be able to imitate the surface appearance of things. (Kemp 1990: 279) Although available only in manuscript, his treatise was influential. Zaccolini incorporates many ideas and debates found in the Peripatetic tradition, the mathematical tradition, as well as treatises on painting. He combined this with practical knowledge as well as the trained observations of someone with a keen seventeenth-century painter’s eye. His sources include (among many others) Aristotle’s De sensu, Meteorology, Problems, and De coloribus, the optics of Euclid, Pecham, Witelo, and Kepler, and Leonardo’s manuscripts on painting. In his first volume on color, Zaccolini arrives at his own conclusions on philosophical controversies, and he references this philosophical understanding of color in his second volume on color perspective, using philosophical ideas to organize and justify his artistic practice and empirical approach to color. While arguably the continuation of a trend found in Leonardo and others, compared to efforts a century earlier, Zaccolini is comprehensive, more systematic, and rigorous in his treatment of the ideas on color found in the philosophical and mathematical traditions (Bell 1983). This sort of intermingling of color worlds forms the background for each of the shifts discussed below.

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Theories about colors in bodies underwent an important transformation. One of the hallmarks of the seventeenth century is the rise of mechanical and corpuscular philosophies (Garber 2006). “Mechanical philosophy” refers to accounts of nature in which only the so-called mechanical affections of matter—often identified as shape, size, motion, rest, figure, number, and impenetrability—are admitted as elementary. “Corpuscular philosophy” is a somewhat looser category and refers to the extensive use of microscopic corpuscles as an explanans (explanation) for phenomena in nature. Corpuscular philosophies, then, are less strict about their fundamental ontological entities, and unlike mechanical philosophies they were not necessarily anti-Aristotelian in nature—as, for example, in the case of the physician and chymist (chemist) Daniel Sennert, who was also a self-styled adherent to both Democritus and Aristotle. He relied on the aggregation and dissolution of semi-permanent corpuscles to account for many processes, including color change, in both nature and the laboratory, but held that scholastic substantial forms are also needed to explain (among other things) the identity and fundamental properties of these corpuscles (Newman 2006: 85–100). The influences on the rise of mechanical and corpuscular philosophies are many. These include an influential strand of atomism stemming from the medieval alchemical tradition (Newman 2006), syncretic corpuscular strands arising in Italy with figures such as Santorio Santorio and Galileo Galilei, and the revival of ancient atomism by figures such as Pierre Gassendi (LoLordo 2007). The recovery of Archimedes and subsequent developments in the science of mechanics also affected the emerging mechanical and corpuscular philosophies (Bertoloni Meli 2006: 135–40). Early attempts to mechanize color, however, proved difficult. One of the first mechanical or corpuscular philosophers, Isaac Beeckman, integrated craft knowledge, alchemy, mathematical optics, and philosophy, but the resulting complexity of this project overwhelmed him (Dijksterhuis 2015). Since antiquity there had been, even within orthodox Aristotelianism, an explanation for the color white that appealed to microstructures such as bubbles. Aristotle writes in On Sense and Sensible Objects that one way of accounting for color is by the juxtaposition of small particles. Even though it wouldn’t be a true mixture (a true Aristotelian mixture is homogenous all the way down), Aristotle seems to say that the alteration of insensibly small black and white particles, in specific ratios, would appear to us as a color other than gray. We also find a structural account of whiteness in On the Generation of Animals (Aristotle 1984: 1:735b8–735b37), during a discussion on the nature of semen. Semen, Aristotle says, is composed of a watery part and an airy part, and all such bodies arising from juxtaposed watery and airy matter are white: other examples are foam, oxide of lead mixed with water or oil (that is, lead white), snow, and oil (which for Aristotle contained a good deal of air) mixed

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with water. Aristotle specifically says that foam is white because it is composed of numerous tiny bubbles, which is supposed to account for why semen is white at first (a mixture of pneuma and a watery substance) but clear when it dries. He even writes that “Whiteness is caused in all things by the vaporous air imprisoned in them” (Aristotle 1984: 1:786a3–786a20). But he does not generalize from his examples to give a common account. We also do not find any followers of Aristotle holding that the color white can only be explained by such a simple microscopic structure. Finally, Aristotle does not provide a deeper explanation for why such combinations of substances give rise to the color white and not some other color. Aristotle’s examples were common in antiquity, and occur notably in Lucretius, the ancient Latin poet and Epicurean. Yet even in Lucretius we do not get an account of which textures give rise to specific colors or why (Bradley 2009). It seems that the preoccupation with finding a mechanical explanation for the production of all colors (not just white) emerges only in the seventeenth century. Authors began to adhere consistently to a generalized rule drawn from examples such as foam and ground glass, namely that whiteness arises from the combination of any two bodies that are transparent, but of different density (here meaning refractive power), juxtaposed in a regular fashion. The Paduan physician Santorio Santorio (1561–1633) and the philosopher, jurist, and statesman Francis Bacon (1561–1626) are clear, influential proponents of this theory (Santorio 1603: 111v–113r; Bacon [1620] 2004). This textural account soon became, for many, the only explanation of whiteness in bodies. Corpuscular explanations for the other colors extended this notion: all colors were said to arise from a texture of matter, albeit more complex textures than the bubbles that produce white, and discovering those textures became a desideratum for natural philosophers. Francis Bacon, for example, used his new inductive method to show that whiteness arises from a simple juxtaposition or alternation of any two bodies of a different transparency. He used the analogy of different panels or tables. Whiteness, he said, is analogous to a checkerboard, and he posited (although did not experimentally demonstrate) that other colors arise from more complicated patterns, such as a panel with fretwork designs. Finally, blackness he proposed, arises from a wholly disordered—or as he says, motley—pattern. In the seventeenth century, the texture required for whiteness was demonstrated using many experiments and examples, but in the first half of the seventeenth century the quest to discover which other textures give rise to chromatic colors proved fruitless. Ironically, the quest to arrive at textural accounts of color only succeeded to explain what had been taken for granted since Aristotle; nevertheless, mechanical and corpuscular philosophers used this fact to attempt to disprove scholastic theories of color. As we saw, in the Peripatetic tradition density and rarity were often connected to color. Density was also supposed to account for differences in refractive

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power; it was implicated in the gravity or levity of bodies; it accounted for properties of matter investigated in the science of mechanics (including the study of collision); and finally for the solidity or fluidity of bodies. Perhaps because the concepts were required to do so much work, during the Renaissance the notion of density and rarity attracted a great deal of interest. Around the seventeenth century, we see some clear distinctions being made, apparently for the first time, but in surprising contexts. In his De visione (first published in 1600) Fabricius ab Aquapendente, breaking from Aristotle and Galen, writes that the primary reason why the eye is composed of a watery substance is that water (unlike air) can be condensed in several distinct ways. One kind of condensation affects refraction, necessary because the watery parts of the eye require different refractive powers. Another, distinct form of condensation causes a clear body to lose its transparency by degrees, so that it becomes cloudy and then opaque. The crystalline humor, according to Fabricius, was condensed in both ways, for specific reasons: the first type of condensation serves to unite the light into a cone in the vitreous humor, dissipating it so that it does not reflect back from our retinas, and the second type serves to delay and fix the light and color passing through the crystalline, so that colored light, instead of passing right through, might show up in the humor and be judged by the visual faculty (Baker 2016) (see Plate 1.2). Fabricius was also among those who attempted to elevate the epistemic importance of color in anatomical illustrations. He famously had artists create over two hundred distinct colored panels, in oils, depicting various dissections of humans and animals. This was a part of his Aristotelian philosophical project of investigating the natural world via dissection, and he advertised in his published works that, with these colored panels, he had achieved representations in anatomy that surpassed Vesalius (Bonati and Tomás 2004; Ekholm 2010). Here we have a case of the fruitfulness of the overlapping of color worlds: a physician, anatomist, and philosopher had helped to raise the epistemic value of color in anatomical representations, and also to develop distinctions among the uses of the term “density,” which would prove crucial for later developments in optics. During the first decades of the seventeenth century, the strong distinction between light and color collapsed, a process that was intimately connected to the rise of textural or corpuscular accounts of color in bodies. In John Gage’s estimation, “the seventeenth century was, for students of optics, the century of light par excellence, when color had finally been relegated to a derivative, subordinate position” (1993: 155). During this time, the cause of our perceptions of color was increasingly attributed to modified light rather than rays of color propagated through transparent media. This shift was widespread, encompassing authors who understood light as an intentional species, those who took light to be a mechanical motion such as a wave or impulse in a subtle matter, and those who held light to be a particle. There was, in a sense, a shift in

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the primary referent of the term color, from a property of bodies, to a property of light, and ultimately to a sensation caused (or occasioned) by light rays. As Alan Shapiro writes, In this view color is a sensation excited by light in the brain, and different colors arise from different properties of light. It was only of secondary consequence that light of a particular color arrived from a colored body or a rainbow. (1993: 6; emphasis in the original) This shift in the primary referent for the term “color” occurred alongside the notion that colors do not, properly speaking, exist or perhaps exist only as powers to cause colored sensations. The rise in textural accounts and the collapse of the light-color distinction were symbiotic. Prior to the seventeenth century, we read that foam was white because the bubbles produced a multitude of tiny images of their source but, because each reflection was too small to be seen, the light source (the sun, a candle, and so on) was not itself seen, only its color. This follows Aristotle’s explanation of the rainbow. Images of the sun (or our visual rays) are reflected; but because the drops are small, only the color of the sun, darkened by reflection, is preserved—the multitude of tiny images of the sun are each too small to be discerned. In contrast, in the seventeenth century we read that the color of white bodies is caused by the diffuse reflection of white light, not our inability to see the image of a reflected object. The color of the rainbow becomes not the darkening of a white image due to reflection but the modification of white light due to refraction. Exemplars for color phenomena and color change shifted from predominantly biological or meteorological ones to that of pigment mixture (Leonhard 2015). Projected colors from prisms and the like also became a key tool for investigators. While the generation of colors from refraction and reflection, in hexagonal crystals or water-filled urinal flasks, had been noticed by writers prior to the sixteenth century, the investigation of projected colors began in earnest with the manufacture of glass prisms. This appears to have been first described by Giralomo Cardano and Giambattista Della Porta (1535?–1614), with investigations becoming common in the seventeenth century. As these experiments increased, prismatic colors ceased being a special case of color (Gage 1999: 121–33). There was a shift in the scope of optics from the first decade of the seventeenth century. Prior to Kepler, the science of optics was preoccupied with direct vision and problems of images appearing in plane, concave, and convex mirrors (Smith 2015). Discussions of refraction in this context did not concern color. Instead, refraction was addressed in order to make sense of optical illusions, such as the apparently bent stick in water, and especially for understanding

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the effects of atmospheric refraction on astronomical observations. Kepler’s Dioptrique of 1611 was the first published attempt to rigorously understand and improve upon the telescope that Galileo was using to radically transform the understanding of the heavens. Afterwards, optics increasingly focused on problems of dioptrics and the propagation of light. Chromatic aberration was an issue for early users of telescopes, but the problem was only precisely articulated by Isaac Newton (Rudd 2007), and the first articulations of the sine law of refraction, a major triumph of mathematical natural philosophy in general, and optics in particular, ignored color. Investigations of the prism, then, did not first arise in the context of mathematical optics, but rather in connection with either meteorology or natural magic and the new forms of natural philosophy connected with it. Descartes, for example, addressed the prism in his Meteorology (Descartes [1637] 2001: 332– 45). For Descartes, to understand the phenomenon of projected colors from a prism was to comprehend how an invisible micro-world of spherical corpuscles gave rise to our experiences of color, and in this sense his prism experiments were supposed to provide the basis for all color phenomena. In Descartes’s view, light itself was a tendency towards both translational and rotational motion of small, uniformly sized, spherical corpuscles—that is, the aether— which filled the interstitial spaces of all bodies. Darkness, in turn, consists in those same corpuscles when they have no tendency for motion. When these tiny spherical particles of the aether equally have the tendencies of translational and rotational motion (that is, if the particles were actually moving they would be rolling without slippage), and when this impulse is transmitted to our retinas, the perception of whiteness is produced. If the rotational tendency of the aether is faster than the translational tendency, then this modified light appears as red; if it is slower, we perceive blue. Alteration of the translational/rotational ratio requires both refraction and an interaction at the boundary between light and darkness. Through a series of careful experiments and clever mathematical and physical reasoning, Descartes used the bands of color produced when a narrow slit of light is refracted by a prism and subsequently projected onto a screen at a close distance, to then explain the angles of the colors of primary and secondary rainbows (Buchwald 2010) (Figure 1.1). This, in turn, was supposed to have provided a model for all explanations of color phenomena. Another significant change occurred when the painters’ primaries—yellow, red, and blue (usually flavus, rubeus, and caeruleus) along with white and black as modifiers—became the primary exemplars for color mixture, a scheme that found its way into print just after 1600. This system was first expressed (seemingly independently) by Guido Antonio Scarmiglioni in 1601, by Anselm de Boodt in 1609, Louis Savot in the same year, and François d’Aguilon in 1613 (Parkhurst 1971; Shapiro 1994). Notably, the first three were physicians (Parkhurst 1973), while d’Aguilon was an architect and mathematician. Savot

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FIGURE 1.1  Descartes’s explanation of the colors of the prism arising from white sunlight modified by shadow (Descartes [1637] 2001: 255). © Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris.

also makes many references to dyers’ practices. All had some connection to painting and would have been aware of the Renaissance practice, especially common with oil painting, of mixing colors on a palette (Gage 1993). De Boodt was himself a painter, and d’Aguilon likely knew Peter Paul Rubens, who supplied the magnificent frontispieces to each of the six books of his Optica (Parkhurst 1961). Common to these works is that they do not focus on material colors, such as minium, cinnabar, or indigo, but on the visible qualities that belong to them. For example, d’Aguilon writes that colors are not called elementary because they are associated with the elementary bodies or qualities, but because the rest of the colors can be generated from their mixture (Aguilon 1613: 38). D’Aguilon also included a diagram showing the relationship between these three primaries and the colors generated from their mixture (Figure 1.2). Arguably, the color space began to transition away from linear scales (Kuehni and Schwarz 2008) (see Plate 1.3). All of these changes to the understanding of color by natural philosophers took place while increasing attention was paid to the anatomy and physiology of the eye. The shift to a retinal theory of vision would have consequences for

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FIGURE 1.2  Painter’s primaries, after the illustration in François d’Aguilon’s Optica. Photograph by and © Tawrin Baker.

the philosophy and science of color over the next several centuries, although its immediate impact for the understanding of color is debatable. In the thirteenth century, Al-Hasan Ibn al-Haytham’s (Latinized as “Alhacen”) theory of vision was adopted in the West with enormous consequences. Latin writers such as Roger Bacon, Witelo, and John Peckham found in Alhacen’s De aspectibus a brilliant synthesis of the intromission account of vision held by Aristotelian natural philosophers, with the extramitted visual cone that was central to works in mathematics such as those of Euclid and Ptolemy. Alhacen took both light and color to be the proper objects of vision, and followed tradition in locating the reception (at least in the first stage of vision) of light and color in the crystalline humor—for this reason, as we have seen, the crystalline humor needed to have just the right balance of rarity and density, or transparency and intransparency, to delay and fix the species of light and color in its substance. This impression of the light and color in the crystalline humor was then ushered back, intact and upright, by the visual spirits through a supposed hole in the optic nerve into the common sense in the brain. In the sixteenth century the explosion of anatomical research led many to question this theory-driven account of the anatomy of the eye. Kepler’s Ad vitellionem paralipomena in 1604 was the first to provide a mathematical account that took the retina as the site of sensation: the eye was understood by Kepler as a camera obscura, with the crystalline humor as a focusing lens and the retina as a screen upon which light and color are projected. But

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Kepler’s Neoplatonic conception of light and color had few takers, and the retinal theory took perhaps half a century to be generally accepted. It appears that the first adopters of Kepler’s theory accommodated his mathematics within a more conservative Aristotelian framework, notably as by the Jesuit mathematician Christoph Scheiner (1619) and the Dutch physician Vopiscus Fortunatus Plempius (1632). These figures aristotelized the retinal theory by giving the retina the precise balance of density and rarity that Alhacen and the perspectivae gave the crystalline humor, but they also employed the distinction that Fabricius made regarding the concept of density and rarity (Figure 1.3).

FIGURE 1.3  Christoph Scheiner was among the first to adopt the retinal theory of vision from Kepler, and the first to show the theory using diagrams of the eye. Here an experiment is illustrated (Scheiner 1619: 112). © Newberry Library, Chicago.

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Thus the crystalline humor was said to be condensed in the sense of having the power to refract light, while the retina was condensed in the sense of delaying and fixing species of light and color.

CONCLUSION The history of color in any period is inherently messy, and the many profound and subtle shifts in color science and philosophy makes accounts of this period especially tricky. Many of the color concerns of Renaissance philosophers are difficult to translate, linguistically and conceptually, into modern terminology. One sign of the conceptual shift that occurred during this period is that, today, philosophers of color often refer to Aristotle and Descartes, who are still used to draw, and contest, the line between modern philosophical positions. Renaissance authors are rarely mentioned, and philosophical categories developed in the twentieth century, such as realism, eliminativism, relationalism, and so on, are difficult to map onto Renaissance thinkers. Nevertheless, some general conclusions can be drawn. Perhaps most important is the increasing interaction, around 1600, of the various Renaissance color worlds—philosophers, physicians, naturalists, alchemists, mathematicians, mineralogists, humanists, painters, dyers, glassmakers, and goldsmiths, among others. Many developments mentioned in section two are connected with this. Most conspicuously, the painters’ primaries scheme was proposed, seemingly independently, by three physicians and a mathematician, all with ties to painting and/or dyeing, all well versed in natural philosophy; we can also detect many other influences, such as minerology. The increasing importance of optical technologies such as the prism helped to transform thinking about colors, and this was tied to philosophical shifts such as the collapse of the strong distinction between light and color, the rise of the mechanical and corpuscular philosophies, the increasing tendency to think of physical colors as textures, and the separating out of the many connotations of density and rarity within optics and natural philosophy. Finally, developments in the anatomy and physiology of the eye were driven by interdisciplinary concerns that emerged in the second half of the sixteenth century and continued well into the seventeenth. These developments were related to the above in key ways, and would prove to have major ramifications for the philosophical and scientific understanding of color from the seventeenth century onwards.

CHAPTER TWO

Technology and Trade JO KIRBY

INTRODUCTION The years between 1400 and 1650 represent a time of discovery of new countries, new sources of color and, in painting, the development of a mature understanding of how to manipulate the materials available to give a lively and realistic depiction of the real world. The discovery and early colonization of the Americas by Spanish and Portuguese explorers at the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries opened up new and important sources of colorant for textile dyers, which were very rapidly exploited.

PIGMENTS AND PAINTING In the fifteenth century, painters increasingly aimed to represent reality naturalistically, using the painting techniques in which they had been trained (see Hall, this volume). Oil paint enabled the representation of light and shade and color saturation using the relationships between the optical properties of the pigments and of the oil, and thus the translucency or opacity of the paint. For painters used to working with egg tempera, the technological challenges involved in using oil paint—the different amounts of oil required by each pigment to make a paint of the desired consistency, the variations in drying time—were considerable (see Plate 2.1). By the end of the Renaissance period, however, painters were exploiting the full potential of oil paint: the rheological properties permitting translucent, mirror-like surfaces or flamboyant impasto to convey the effects desired (Kirby 2011: 63–84).

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The fresco technique, whereby the pigment mixed with water was applied to fresh plaster and became permanently fixed as the plaster set, was still in use for wall painting, notably in Italy. The alkalinity of the plaster meant that alkali-sensitive pigments, such as azurite, verdigris, lake pigments, orpiment, red lead, or lead white, had to be applied to the dried plaster in another binding medium. Blue The natural mineral pigments ultramarine and azurite and the blue dye indigo had all been used in earlier centuries (see Plate 2.1). A pure blue, ultramarine was extracted from the rare igneous silicate rock lapis lazuli. At that time, the only source exploited was at Badakhshan, northeastern Afghanistan. By the fourteenth century, the principal center for supply of the pigment in Europe was Venice, and this was still the case during the Renaissance. Because of its rarity, as well as the long supply chain, ultramarine was always the most expensive pigment. Azurite, a copper carbonate mineral, was mined in Europe, sources including mountainous regions of Germany, Austria, Bohemia, France, and Slovakia, then part of Hungary (Delamare 2013: 130–3). At its best, azurite was almost as pure a blue as ultramarine, thus the best grades were almost as expensive. A study of late fifteenth- and sixteenth-century paintings suggests that the finest grades of azurite were used primarily within Germany itself; ultramarine seems rarely to have been available there (Burmester and Krekel 1998). Unlike ultramarine, the strength of color of azurite depends on how finely it is ground. Indigo is a deep-blue dye. Unlike most other naturally occurring dyes, it is insoluble once extracted from its plant source so could be used directly as a pigment. In the fifteenth century, the principal source was woad, which was grown commercially in parts of France, Germany, and northern Italy. The pigment was a byproduct of the dyeing process, collecting as a deep-blue scum on the surface of the vat, which could be skimmed off, washed, and dried. Indigo derived from the indigo plant (Indigofera tinctoria L.) which had been imported for several centuries. Initially, in fact, its use as a pigment was more important than in dyeing (Hommes 2004: 98–103). During the later sixteenth century, the invasion of southern Hungary by the Ottoman Turks disrupted the supply of azurite from that region. At the same time, copper and silver mines in the Tyrol, the Harz Mountains, and Saarland were gradually becoming exhausted. This was later compounded by the disruptive effects of the Thirty Years War (1618–48), which also affected the mining of cobalt and other ores and devastated much of Europe. Over the same period, improved mining techniques by blasting with gunpowder did eventually relieve this situation (Bartels 2010: 77–82). However, the use of azurite and ultramarine decreased, and interruptions in supply, which thus increased cost,

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are likely to have been responsible. Indigo was a reasonable substitute when of good quality, although it faded, particularly when mixed with white (Hommes 2004: 125–37). Shortages and high cost were a long-standing problem with blue pigments, and recipes for manufactured substitutes had existed for centuries. All were copper salts: basic copper acetates and carbonates or darker blue cuprammonium compounds, depending on the ingredients. By the seventeenth century, the most important were blue and green basic copper carbonate pigments, the verditers. These were produced by pouring copper nitrate solution remaining from silver refining onto chalk and leaving the mixture to stand, with occasional stirring, until the pigment formed. The manufacture of the pigment was for many years carried out by silver refiners as a byproduct of their trade (Harley 1982: 49– 51). The green was already known quite early in the sixteenth century; the more desirable and expensive blue was later. The manufacturing method using copper plates, aqua fortis (nitric acid), and chalk was briefly described by the English physician and scientist Christopher Merrett, who also mentioned how very unpredictable the process was (Neri 2006: 350). In fact, apart from the concentration of the copper-containing solution, the significant factors are the temperature and how much the mixture is stirred (Mactaggart and Mactaggart 1980). Blue verditer is formed at a lower temperature (no more than 12°C), and the fact that it was regarded as an English specialty was no doubt due to the relatively cool climate there for much of the year. The other blue pigment widely used from the mid-sixteenth century onwards was the blue glass pigment smalt, the blue color being due to the presence of cobalt. In Europe, cobalt ores were mined in the Erzgebirge in Saxony and Bohemia; important mines were in Schneeberg and Freiberg (Saxony). Smalt has very occasionally been identified in fifteenth-century Flemish and German paintings and earlier Byzantine illuminated manuscripts, but its large-scale use coincided with the development of a substantial smaltmanufacturing and distribution industry in the Netherlands in the sixteenth century. The cobalt ore was roasted, ground to a powder, and mixed with a quartz sand to give grayish zaffre. This was then exported to Middelburg, a center for glassmaking, and other towns in the Netherlands. Here, more quartz was added, together with potassium-containing plant ash as a flux, and the mixture was heated in a furnace to make a hard, blue-black glass. After grinding between stone millstones, blue smalt pigment was obtained, in colors varying from a violet blue, rivalling ultramarine, to a pale gray blue (Delamare 2013: 46–68). The Dutch initially had a monopoly on the pigment and its sale, although attempts were made to set up smalt factories in Schneeberg and in London (Costaras 2010). Unfortunately, smalt was liable to lose its color due to leaching of potassium into the paint film, degrading to a brownish gray (Spring et al. 2005).

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Green Apart from green copper-containing minerals, green earth was the most widely occurring green mineral and a useful, stable pigment (see Plate 2.1). It gains its color, which varies from blue gray to olive green, from either glauconite or celadonite, both iron-containing clay minerals. The bluer-green celadonite is an alteration product of basaltic igneous rocks; glauconite is dispersed in sandstones and clays resulting from marine deposition. A particularly good, celadonite-rich variety came from Monte Baldo near Verona (Grissom 1986: 143, 149). The best known of the copper-containing green minerals is malachite, a basic copper carbonate. However, others, including basic copper chloride minerals (atacamite, paratacamite), and basic copper sulfate minerals (brochantite, posnjakite), could have been used, particularly if there was a local site where ore was mined. Posnjakite has been identified in a group of sixteenth-century Flemish (early Netherlandish) paintings, suggesting a specific local source (Spring 2017). Synthetic basic copper carbonate pigments were also produced, the green verditers. Like the blue verditers discussed above, these have a characteristic spherulitic particle shape. However, naturally formed spherulitic malachite was also available, a well-known source being the Neusohl region of the Carpathian Mountains in present-day Slovakia, from where copper was supplied to European trading centers including Venice, Antwerp, Leipzig, Frankfurt, and in the seventeenth century, Amsterdam. The particles are formed by natural precipitation from flowing water from a copper mine: if acidic mine drainage flows over calcium carbonate or other alkaline rocks such as dolomite, basic copper carbonate in the form of malachite precipitates. Unlike synthetic green verditer, natural spherulitic malachite often contains traces of other minerals (Heydenreich et al. 2005: 480–9). Verdigris (blue-green basic copper acetates) was prepared by the action of fumes of vinegar, wine lees, or similar substances on copper plates. As in medieval times, Montpellier in southern France was a significant source (Benhamou 1984). Verdigris reacts slowly and naturally with an oil (or oleoresinous) binding medium to give a translucent, bright green glaze, commonly seen in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century paintings; the pigment became less popular later (Kühn 1993b). Green varnishes were also made for decorative purposes, such as colored metal leaf and foils. Red Red lead (lead tetroxide) was a product of the smelting of lead ore and could be prepared by heating lead white (basic lead carbonate) in air. In addition to its use as an orange-red pigment, it was often used when processing linseed and other oils to improve their drying properties. The red earth pigments were cheap and completely stable and so were widely used for all purposes, from exterior decoration and ephemeral art to fine painting. Sources of the pigments, which contain hematite, were found all

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over Europe. They varied in color from orange to brown, and also in opacity, so could be effective and subtle pigments to employ in mixtures for landscapes. The color of the reddest varieties could be brightened with a trace of a more expensive red lake pigment or vermilion (Roy and Kirby 2006: 40–1). Vermilion, red mercuric sulfide, was available in mineral form as cinnabar, the principal ore of the metal mercury, its most important source being Almadén, Spain. Its synthesis from mercury and sulfur by sublimation was, however, well known, and it is probable that by the Renaissance period the synthetic form was most commonly used. By the sixteenth century, vermilion was manufactured on a large scale, Antwerp being an important center; from here, the pigment was exported to cities in other parts of Europe (Vermeylen 2010: 361–3). A century later, the principal northern European center was Amsterdam. The workshop notebook of the colorman Willem Pekstok (probably transcribed by his son Pieter in 1691) describes the manufacture of the pigment. A notable feature was the importance of ventilation and the height of the chimney—about thirty-five or forty feet—to avoid the effects of smoke, both outside and within the workshop, as it was known to be dangerous to health (Schendel 1972). As Pekstok’s workshop was in the center of Amsterdam, near the Dam itself, this would have been a significant risk to the public, and of course, his was not the only factory (Figure 2.1).

FIGURE 2.1  Georg Balthasar Probst (possibly), View of the Amstel between the Blauwbrug and the Hogesluis, Amsterdam; in the center of the image on the horizon there is a particularly high chimney with billowing smoke. Etching on paper with watercolor, 275 × 402 mm; printed in Augsburg, 1742–1801 (RP-P-1946-183). Gift of J. Helwig, Antwerpen. © Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

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Translucent reds were provided by the red lake pigments, prepared from natural dyes (see Plate 2.1). As these are soluble, solid pigments were made by precipitating or adsorbing the dye onto a suitable solid substrate: the addition of potash alum to a solution of the dye in aqueous alkali precipitated the dye attached to a substrate of hydrated alumina. In the late fourteenth century an economical method was devised whereby dye was extracted from dyed fabric rather than from the raw materials directly. This method seems to have been used well into the seventeenth century for pigments containing the expensive scale insect dyes (other than lac) and madder (Kirby et al. 2014: 82–3). In the fifteenth century, the most expensive crimson lake pigments were made from the scale insect dye, kermes (Kermes vermilio Planchon, 1864), parasitic on the kermes oak and harvested in Spain, southern France, and Greece, and lac (Kerria lacca (Kerr, 1782)), imported from India. The lac insect forms dense colonies on twigs of the trees upon which it is parasitic, and the protective cases secreted by each insect coalesce to cover the twig in a hard, brownish resin-like material (Cardon 2007: 611–13, 656–9). The most expensive dyes, extracted from other Old World crimson-dyeing scale insects, such as so-called Polish “cochineal” (Porphyrophora polonica (Linnaeus, 1758)), were only rarely used for pigment making. The more orange-red madder lakes were made from dye extracted from the root of the madder plant (Rubia tinctorum L.), cultivated in northern and southern France, northern Italy, Flanders, and especially the Netherlands (Cardon 2007: 120). Sappanwood (Biancaea sappan (L.) Tod.), imported from Southeast Asia, gave a range of red and pink pigments, depending on the method of making, and was also used to make red inks (Kirby et al. 2014: 84–5). The discovery of the Americas introduced two significant new red dyes into Europe in the first decades of the sixteenth century: cochineal (Dactylopius coccus Costa, 1829), imported by the Spanish from Mexico (New Spain), and brazilwood (Paubrasilia echinata (Lam. 1785) E. Gagnon, H.C. Lima & G.P. Lewis 2016, and other species), imported by the Portuguese from Brazil. The impact of these dyes is discussed below, but once cochineal had been accepted by European dyers, it appeared in lake pigments very soon afterwards. In Venice, for example, its use by dyers was permitted from 1543, and it has been identified in lake pigments used by Venetian artists a few years later (Kirby 2015). In Spain it was in use by the 1570s; it was apparently known earlier but viewed with suspicion (Bruquetas and Gómez 2015). With the arrival of cochineal, the use of kermes and lac lakes gradually decreased. Experiments on the use of the cochineal dye alone as a pigment (possible because about 20 percent of the weight of the insect is dyestuff) took place in the late sixteenth- and first half of the seventeenth century, but it was only late in the seventeenth century that these pigments, the carmines, became available for use in watercolor (Kirby 2015).

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Yellow Like the red earths, yellow ochres were stable, cheap pigments, widely available throughout Europe and ranging in color from a warm yellow to light brown (see Plate 2.1). The best yellows, found in Italy and France, were exported to other parts of Europe. The color is given by iron oxide hydroxides (Helwig 2007). Golden-yellow orpiment and orange realgar are the best known, and probably most frequently used, of several arsenic sulfide pigments. Both occur in mountainous or volcanic regions of Europe and also Turkey and Asia Minor, from where they were imported into Europe (FitzHugh 1997). Arsenic sulfide pigments were also synthesized by melting and subliming a mixture of arsenic oxide and sulfur and/or mineral orpiment and realgar themselves. This production was carried out in parts of eastern Germany and in the eastern Austrian Alps: an arsenic sulfide pigment smelter has been excavated at Strassegg near Graz (Austria). This probably dates back to the sixteenth century, a period during which synthetic yellow and red arsenic sulfide pigments were exported from this region to Venice in large amounts (Grundmann et al. 2011). There were two forms of pale yellow, opaque lead-tin yellow. The earlier of the two, lead-tin yellow type II, was already used in the fourteenth century, particularly in Florence and Bohemia. It developed from the use of fused lead and tin oxides (lead stannate) as an opacifier for glass and contains some silicon. It was rarely used in the fifteenth century, but reappeared in Venetian painting in the sixteenth century, probably linked to its use in the Murano glass industry. Lead-tin yellow type I, which does not contain silicon, appears to be related to ceramic glazes and is described in contemporary sources as coming from northern Europe (Kühn 1993a; Roy and Berrie 1998: 160). The darker yellow lead antimonate is mentioned as a yellow colorant for maiolica and glass in the mid-sixteenth century. Its earliest confirmed use as a pigment is in sixteenth-century Venetian works (Roy and Berrie 1998: 161), but it was not used regularly until the seventeenth century (Wainwright et al. 1986). A leadtin-antimony pigment, closely related to both lead-tin yellow type II and lead antimonate yellow, has also been identified in works by seventeenth-century painters working in Rome (Roy and Berrie 1998). The use of yellow lake pigments, made from plant dyes, increased through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. They provided the translucent yellows needed for subtle mixed greens and browns, particularly useful for landscape painting. They were usually made by boiling the plant material in water, adding alum to the filtered solution and then chalk or a similar material. Probably the most widely used dye was weld (Reseda luteola L.), grown all over Europe and a dye of great economic importance. Its pigment is a cool ochre yellow in oil, lemon yellow in watercolor. Dyer’s broom (Genista tinctoria L.), which gives a similar color, also grew widely on heaths and in dry woodland, but was used

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particularly in England. Towards the mid-seventeenth century, golden-yellow pigments prepared from unripe buckthorn berries (Rhamnus cathartica L. and related species) became popular (Roy and Kirby 2006: 42–3; Cardon 2007: 97, 99–100, 169, 175–6, 179–81). White and black Although chalk and similar white materials might be used in aqueous binding media, the only opaque white pigment was lead white, basic lead carbonate. It was manufactured by placing plates or thin sheets of lead into clay pots partially filled with vinegar, balancing the lead above the liquid. The pots were covered and buried in horse manure, which maintained an even, warm temperature as it fermented and also generated carbon dioxide. The pots were left undisturbed for several weeks while white lead acetate formed, to be converted to the carbonate on exposure to air or carbon dioxide. The lead white pigment was then knocked off the lead sheets and could be left in flakes or ground with water to give different grades. Venice was the source of high-grade lead white by the sixteenth century and continued to have a high reputation for its production, although the Dutch made improvements in the efficiency of production by stacking the pots, using thinly rolled sheets of lead and increasing fermentation times (Berrie and Matthew 2011; Stols-Witlox 2011). Black pigments such as charcoal, lamp black, and bone black were based on carbon and were obtained by burning: willow or vine twigs in the case of charcoal, bones in the case of bone black. Lamp black was soot derived from burning candles, wood, or paper (Winter and FitzHugh 2007). Other black or gray materials were also used, depending on local availability. These included coal, the mineral pyrolusite (manganese dioxide), stibnite or antimonite (antimony trisulfide), and finely ground bismuth metal (Spring et al. 2003).

DYES AND TEXTILE TECHNOLOGIES The technology of dyeing was well developed by the beginning of the Renaissance period; dyes were obtained from a range of plants and, for reds, scale insects, and the methods of dyeing—direct, mordant, and vat, depending on the dye— were well understood. A range of colors, often given specific names, could be obtained by manipulating the conditions (see Oltrogge, this volume). The important changes that took place were the introduction of new sources of dye from the Americas after 1500, including cochineal and brazilwood (red), old fustic (brown), and logwood (black, grays, lilacs), and during the seventeenth century, the introduction of tin salts as a mordant for cochineal. Dyes fall into three categories depending on how they must be treated in order to color the textile: direct, mordant, and vat. In all cases, the dye is in solution. Textile fibers themselves may be of two types: proteinaceous,

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including wool and silk, and cellulosic, including linen and cotton. There is no great difference in the treatment of the two categories of fiber during direct or vat dyeing; cellulosic fibers need a more intensive treatment with mordant solutions before mordant dyeing. All textiles could be dyed either as yarn or in the piece. Yarn dyeing allowed particular effects to be achieved in the finished cloth, such as stripes or checks, or for silk the sheen of “shot” silk obtained by using a different color for the warp threads (the longitudinal threads stretched on the loom) and the weft (the threads woven through the warp threads by means of a shuttle). Piece dyeing was often used for plain silk taffeta; for wool it showed off the quality of the fabric and was more economical in the use of mordant and dye. Wool could also be dyed in the fleece, giving very saturated colors and the possibility of interesting color effects: for example, by mixing differently colored fibers before spinning.

TECHNIQUES OF DYEING Direct dyeing, whereby the textile was immersed in a solution of dye and the dye bonded directly to the fibers without any particular preparation of either textile or dye solution, was by far the simplest method, although the results were not fast to light or washing. Most dyes used during the Renaissance needed the aid of a mordant to enable them to bond to the fiber; this is a chemical compound that attaches to both the fiber and the dye molecule so forming a bridge between the two (Kirby et al. 2014: 25–6). The most widely used was alum—aluminum potassium sulfate or potash alum. The principal source was the mineral alunite, which was calcined, then weathered (exposed to air and water) until it crumbled. The paste-like mass was extracted with boiling water, the liquor decanted off and the pure potash alum allowed to crystallize out. Until the 1450s, most of Europe’s alunite came from Phocæa (present-day Foça) on the Anatolian coast, which was under Genoese control until the Turkish conquest in 1455. In 1462, a substantial deposit was discovered at La Tolfa near Civitavecchia, north of Rome, which supplied Europe until the nineteenth century. A method of obtaining alum from pyritic shales was also discovered: sulfuric acid, formed by oxidation of the pyrite due to weathering, reacted with aluminum minerals in the shale to give aluminum sulfate in solution. Iron and calcium salts separated out on standing; the aluminum sulfate solution was decanted off and the addition of urine or a potassium salt in solution produced ammonium or potash alum. Used first in the Austrian Tyrol in the late sixteenth century, this method gradually spread to other regions where shale deposits were present (Cardon 2007: 24–7). Unlike aluminum, both iron and tin mordants affect the color of the dye on the textile fiber. Tin, which only came into use in the seventeenth century

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and only with cochineal, brightens the color. Iron makes dyes darker or duller: purplish or brownish colors can be obtained from reds; browns from yellows. With tannin dyes, iron mordants give grays and blacks. The principal iron mordant was ferrous sulfate (copperas or green vitriol), obtained by the weathering of marcasite; iron rust, turnings, or other waste dissolved in vinegar was also used (Cardon 2007: 40–2, 47–8). The only vat dye used during the Renaissance was indigo, also the only significant blue dye; the shellfish purple dyes used in early times were no longer used commercially. The indigo dye itself is insoluble; it is present in the leaves of the plant source as precursors that are extracted by enzymatic and bacterial fermentation. Two molecules of indoxyl, the soluble precursor molecule finally formed, combine by air oxidation to give one insoluble molecule of indigotin, the dark-blue constituent of the indigo dye. For dyeing, during which indigotin is converted back into a soluble form, again by bacterial fermentation and reduction, processed plant material or dried indigo is usually used. Dyeing takes place in a vat maintained at a constant temperature of about 50°C under alkaline conditions. When the solution is greenish yellow, the textile is immersed and allowed to take up the solution into the fibers. When the textile is removed, air oxidation causes the blue color to develop (Cardon 2007: 338–40). Blue Indigo was used for all blue dyeing, apart from home dyeing for which bilberries or similar berries might be used. In the fifteenth and earlier sixteenth centuries, the main source of the dye was woad, grown on a commercial scale in parts of France, Germany, and Italy. It was a very valuable crop, traded across Europe; although indigo from the indigo plant (Indigofera species) had for several centuries been imported from India in the form of dark-blue lumps of dried indigo paste, the powerful woad industry prevented its use in dyeing. Woad was processed by crushing the leaves to a paste, which was molded into balls and allowed to dry. In this form the woad was easily transported. For use, the balls were broken up, spread out in a layer, watered and left to ferment, while turning and watering the paste regularly. When the paste had a granular texture it was ready for use. During the sixteenth century, the growth of trade with Central and South America, the Caribbean, India, and Southeast Asia greatly increased the amount of imported indigo available (Cardon 2007: 358–77). Woad-dyeing regions tried in vain to prevent its use in dyeing by legislation and protective measures. In practice, from the seventeenth century, indigo was added to the woad vat, the proportion gradually being increased as time went on (Balfour-Paul 2000: 54–8). However it was carried out, vat dyeing with indigo was a different technology to dyeing with other dyes and was probably carried out in separate workshops (30–7, 119–20) (see Plate 2.2).

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As there was no naturally occurring green dye, green was obtained by dyeing blue with indigo, then mordanting the textile with alum and dyeing with a yellow dye. The depth of color of the blue determined the final green shade obtained. Red The importance of madder, the most widely used and commercially significant red dye, lay in the fact that it gave a wide range of reds, oranges, pinks, browns, and purples, used alone or with other dyes, and these had good fastness to light and washing. The power of its dye lay in its complexity and the possibility of altering the color obtained by varying the dyeing conditions. Madder was plentiful because it was cultivated widely, although wars in Europe from the mid-sixteenth century onwards resulted in a shift in the balance of its cultivation from France to the Netherlands, a country that grew in prosperity as the seventeenth century progressed. The dye was obtained from the roots, which were dried, crushed, and graded for quality. It could be used on any textile, but most importantly on wool (Cardon 2007: 108–20). The most expensive red dyes, used for the highest-quality textiles, were extracted from scale insects. Until the first decades of the sixteenth century, the most important and most widely used was kermes. A significant and profitable item of trade, kermes was only used on the finest grades of wool and on silk, to which it gave a scarlet dye. To add to the overall expense, an equal weight of kermes to that of the wool might be used to give the required depth of color (Cardon 2007: 610–18). The most expensive of all were the crimson-dyeing scale insects incorrectly called Old World “cochineals”—incorrect as they are from a different family. These were only used for silk dyeing; silk takes up less dye than wool, but even so these insects had to be used in huge quantities to give the required depth of color, a prohibitive expense for wool dyeing. Polish “cochineal” (more correctly Polish carmine scale insect), a small insect parasitic on the roots of the perennial knawel and other herbaceous plants, occurs in central and eastern Europe and through much of Russia. Armenian or Ararat “cochineal” (Porphyrophora hamelii Brandt in Brandt & Ratzeburg, 1833) occurs on the roots and rhizomes of certain grasses in saline semi-desert regions from the Caspian Sea across central Asia. As it has a high fat content it is less efficient in dyeing than the Polish insect, even though it is larger (Cardon 2007: 637–52). The similarity of the dye obtained from the Mexican cochineal insect to that of the European crimson-dyeing insects was noticed by Spanish conquistadors traveling through Mexico and Peru around 1520. In Mexico, and primarily the Mixteca region of Oaxaca, the insect was already cultivated on nopal cactus species in pre-Columbian times, a procedure later described by Spanish commentators (Sanz 1979: 560–3; Cardon 2007: 621–4). Cochineal was known in Spain by 1523, and the first shipments arrived in 1526. It was used for

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silk dyeing in Florence and Venice from the early 1540s, after initial suspicion, and was traded widely in Europe by the 1560s (Kirby 2015). The dye contains the same main component as that of the Polish and Armenian insects, but in much greater quantity; it was therefore far more efficient in use and could also be used on wool. It gradually supplanted the use of the Old World crimsondyeing insects; its replacement of kermes, which was still in use during the seventeenth century, was slower. A significant development was the discovery, made by Cornelis Drebbel in the early seventeenth century, that a solution of tin dissolved in aqua regia (one part concentrated nitric acid to three parts concentrated hydrochloric acid) gave a scarlet color to cochineal. His sons-inlaw, the Kuffler brothers, used the discovery in dyeing and the method was in use in England, France, and Holland in the 1640s (Cardon 2007: 47–8, 624–31). Brazilwood and its dye was recognized as similar to the familiar sappanwood by both Spanish and Portuguese explorers on the Caribbean coast of South America in the 1490s, Spain declaring a monopoly of brazilwood from Haiti, and Portugal exploiting the wood from Brazil from 1502. It was exported as logs and reduced to powder when it reached its final destination in Europe. In Amsterdam in 1597, a rasphuis (rasping house) was set up in the prison for prisoners to rasp the wood to powder, a task later performed by mills. Sappanwood was also still imported from India and Southeast Asia. The bright crimson dye was known to fade, so it was not permitted to be used alone, only over other dyes, including madder and indigo (Cardon 2007: 274–88) (see Plate 2.2). Purple Purples could be obtained using lichen dyes such as orchil (Roccella tinctoria DC), found on western and Mediterranean coasts and, from the fifteenth century, imported from the Canary Islands and Azores (Cardon 2007: 489–91, 497–502). Purples could also be obtained by dyeing with kermes or another red dye over an indigo-dyed textile. Yellow The most important yellow dye was weld, grown widely and of great commercial importance. It was used for yellows from lemon to bright saffron yellow, and also greens with indigo (Cardon 2007: 169–77) (see Plate 2.2). Many plants contain the flavonoid coloring matters present in weld, most importantly luteolin, so in many parts of Europe locally available dyes might also be used. These included dyer’s broom, used in England, France, and Italy, and sawwort (Serratula tinctoria L.), used in Italy and France. More golden yellows, oranges, tans, and olive colors were given by the heartwood of the shrub young fustic or Venetian sumac (Cotinus coggygria

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Scop.), which grew in southern and central Europe. A dyewood with similar properties was imported from Mexico and other parts of Central and tropical South America: dyer’s mulberry (Maclura tinctoria (L.) D.Don ex Steud.) and this resemblance caused it to be given a similar name in English and Spanish: old fustic and pala fustete respectively. Like brazilwood, the wood was imported as logs and chipped or reduced to shavings for use. Annatto (Bixa orellana L.) was imported by the Portuguese from Brazil and other parts of tropical America from the sixteenth century. The orange dye, a direct dye which does not need a mordant, was obtained from the seeds (Cardon 2007: 312–17). Black, gray, and brown Tannins, which are complex polyphenols found in the bark and wood of many trees and shrubs, were used to give browns with an alum mordant and blacks and grays with an iron mordant. In Europe, the principal sources for black dyeing were the bark of sticky alder (Alnus glutinosa (L.) Gaertn.) and oak galls, particularly those from the Aleppo or gall oak (Quercus infectoria Oliv.), found in eastern Mediterranean countries. Black was also obtained by dyeing wool dark blue with woad, then mordanting with alum and dyeing with madder, but this was extremely expensive (Cardon 2007: 115, 410–18, 423–7). Mexico was the source of logwood (Haematoxylum campechianum L.) giving blacks and grays, also blues, lilacs, and violets. The wood was imported by the Spanish from the second half of the sixteenth century and shortly afterwards by the English (Cardon 2007: 263–8, 273–4).

THE COLORING OF GLASS AND CERAMICS Color in glass and ceramic glazes results from the presence of traces of certain metals: copper gives green, turquoise, or red, depending on the conditions; iron gives yellow or green; cobalt gives blue; manganese gives purple. Some of these metals might be present in the raw materials used in glassmaking, so contributing color inadvertently. Iron, for example, might be present in sand used as a source of silica; manganese, which could be used to decolorize glass that had an unwanted greenish tinge from iron, was often present in wood ash used to make the alkali necessary as a flux. In practice, conditions have a significant effect; for example, manganese can also give yellow depending on how long the glass is heated, a longer heating time being necessary for purple. The cobalt ore contributing the blue color to glass was mined in the Erzgebirge between Saxony and Bohemia. Until the early sixteenth century, it was probably mined in the Freiberg region; after this it is likely to have been mined near Schneeberg, a region that has links with the manufacture of smalt (Gratuze et al. 1995).

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Opaque lead antimonate and lead-tin-antimonate yellows were used by Venetian glassmakers by the late 1490s, as well as the lead-tin yellow used earlier (Thornton et al. 2014). References to lead antimonate (which also had a very early history as a glass opacifier) as a yellow colorant for glass appear in the midsixteenth century, notably in Vannoccio Biringuccio’s Pirotechnia (Venice, 1540) and the seventeenth-century Darduin workshop notebooks (Zecchin 1986). Unlike other colors, red glass requires reducing conditions in the furnace for its production, as the color is produced by the presence of nanoparticles of metallic copper. From around 1400, a method known as flashing came into use (still in use today): a small amount of a batch of red glass, made by oxidizing and dissolving copper into a batch of white (colorless) glass, was taken up in a blowpipe then dipped into colorless glass and blown into a cylinder. The layers of red and white glass thus became very thin. The cylinder was cut and flattened while hot to produce a flat sheet, consisting of two or three layers (one red, one white, or red sandwiched between two white layers). The required nanoparticles of reduced copper (a reduction due to the presence of ferrous iron ions in the glass), and thus the red color, were probably produced during subsequent heat treatment of the flashed glass. This method had the advantage that the results were relatively predictable and the process was fairly easy to manage from a technological point of view (Kunicki-Goldfinger et al. 2014). The reputation of Murano glass was at its highest during the Renaissance. A completely clear colorless crystal glass, cristallo, was developed, based on careful choice, control, and purification of materials. This had uses in the scientific field for lenses as well as for beautiful glassware (Verità 2013–14). Venetian glassmaking also benefited from the arrival of craftsmen fleeing from the siege of Damascus in 1400 and the fall of Constantinople in 1453. One imported skill was the ability to apply gilding and enamel to glass. The opaque white glass (lattimo) needed to make the enamel was obtained by the addition of a lead-tin oxide, the white color being due to the presence of tin (stannic) oxide. This glass was then mixed with cristallo glass and the necessary colorant oxide (cobalt for blue and so on) to make the colored enamel. Colored glass was also used to make imitation jewels and Chalcedony glass, a multicolored, striped, layered glass imitating agate with silver as a coloring agent (Verità 2013–14). The same white opacifier was used for lead-tin-glazed earthenware, an Islamic specialty in thirteenth-century Andalucia. Before the white glaze was fired it could be painted, without the colors sinking in. The technique of producing this earthenware—maiolica—spread round the Mediterranean, reaching its greatest levels of achievement in Italy. The method of manufacture was described by Cipriano Piccolpasso in Li tre libri dell’arte del vasaio (written in 1556–9) (Figure 2.2): the glaze, made from burnt wine lees (potash), sand, and oxides of tin and lead was applied, allowed to dry and painted with the glaze colors. There is a marked similarity with the materials used for glass: cobalt for blue,

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FIGURE 2.2  “Three men and a boy painting pottery in a workshop,” in Cipriano Piccolpasso, I tre libri dell’arte del vasaio, 1556–9, fol. 57v. Manuscript with pen drawings, 28 × 21.5 cm, no. 38041800153579. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

copper for green, manganese for purple and brown, iron for orange, and ocher and antimony for yellow. A final lead glaze was applied before firing. Sometimes a final metallic luster glaze, made using oxides of copper or silver and fired in a reducing atmosphere was applied (Wilson 2016: 7–9). The production of lead-tin-glazed earthenware spread to the Netherlands in the sixteenth century, first to Antwerp and then north, the finest work being made in Delft. It was also made in England, France, and Spain.

THE SUPPLY OF MATERIALS The Renaissance color industries were transformed by developments in the production of materials, building on the work of previous centuries, and the discovery of new sources of dyes and pigments, particularly in Central and South America. For Spain, local sources of azurite meant they were less dependent on the central European mines, but the discovery of sources of azurite in their new dominions in the Caribbean greatly improved their access to the pigment (Véliz 2010). The same applied to indigo: not only were local

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species available from which the dye could be obtained but also seeds from the known Indigofera species were planted in suitable terrains. Indigo and the dyewoods formed a valuable, if fluctuating, component of Spanish imports; the same applied to Portuguese imports of brazilwood from Brazil (Sanz 1979: 545–601; Phillips 1993). However, by far the most valuable commodity was cochineal, which by the late sixteenth century probably accounted in value for about 42 percent of all Spanish imports from the region (Sanz 1979: 575–82; Phillips 1993: 79–81). Unlike commodities such as dyewoods or sugar, but like pepper or silks, cochineal was a commodity with a low weight but a very high value, which led to attempts by Spanish and Italian merchants and merchant bankers to manipulate the market (Marichal 2015: 57–64). Cochineal was imported into Seville and from there exported to Antwerp, Rouen, Florence, and Venice (Sanz 1979: 582–8) (Figure 2.3). Exports of cochineal from the Spanish colonies decreased markedly in the early seventeenth century, increasing again from 1616 to 1620; indigo exports rose until 1620, but then declined (Phillips 1993: 88). Long-distance land trade from China and the Far East by the medieval Silk Road routes declined through the Renaissance period. The new sea route east was opened up by Vasco da Gama’s voyage around the Cape of Good Hope to India in 1498, which facilitated Portuguese trade in spices and other items, probably including indigo, through the following century (see Plate 2.3). In the seventeenth century this trade was maintained by the Dutch through the Dutch East Indies Company (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, VOC), bringing indigo, sappanwood, and other goods into Amsterdam from the 1620s, and later, the English East India Company (Steensgaard 1993). The Dutch and English also took over part of the American trade in the seventeenth century.

FIGURE 2.3  Port Book for the Port of London, Easter to Michaelmas 1588 (detail), duty paid on eleven barrels of cochenelio—cochineal (entry 19, 11 July 1588), imported by Hugh Offley, freeman of the Leathersellers’ Company. The ships recorded here had sailed from Rouen. TNA E 190/8/1, fol. 28r. Photograph by Jo Kirby. © The National Archives, Kew.

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Most of the materials used for medicine, painting, and dyeing were traded as “spices” and were sold at grocers’ or apothecaries’ shops. Many did play a medical role: for example, kermes was an ingredient in the confectio alchermes heart medicine, and lead white was used in plasters. Materials could also be bought at the regular markets and trade fairs, some of which, such as those at Antwerp, Frankfurt, and Leipzig, were very important trading centers. Those who imported the goods might be members of the same guild as those who sold them—the London Grocers Guild, for example, to which both grocers and apothecaries belonged. Goods imported into London or Antwerp or other centers were then distributed to other parts of the country or to other merchants. Inventories of the property of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century grocers and apothecaries show that some carried a selection of pigments: from an inventory made in 1544–5, the London grocer William Watkyns stocked sappan- or brazilwood; verdigris; red, yellow, and brown earth pigments; woad indigo; a brazilwood or sappanwood lake; orpiment; red lead; lead white and chalk, together with more conventional grocers’ stock (Kirby 2010). In 1427 the stock of the Paduan apothecary Giovanni Solimani included vermilion, verdigris, indigo, a blue (possibly azurite), a variety of lead-tin yellow, orpiment, and realgar, as well as the expected syrups and pills (Molli et al. 2013: 219–55). It is not surprising that specialist color merchants developed in cities in which the trades of painting, dyeing, or ceramics and glass were well established. Vendecolori, shops specializing in the sale of materials used in the color industries, seem to have existed in Venice by the 1490s. Significantly, Venice was already famous as a commercial center for the supply of dyes and pigments: as well as its long-standing links with the East, Venice was also the center for goods coming south from Germany, Bohemia, Hungary, and Flanders. In the sixteenth century, this commercial activity was well established, with vendecolori working as wholesalers and retailers. They supplied materials to dyers and glassworkers as well as to painters (Matthew and Berrie 2010). The profession of color merchant developed later in other European cities. Antwerp is another example of a city with an active import and export trade and a market dealing in paintings. Color merchants could be found here in the second half of the sixteenth century: four are recorded in the 1580s, and the profession was well established in the seventeenth century (Kirby 1999: 33–5; Vermeylen 2010: 358–9). Color merchants also began to trade in Amsterdam and other parts of the Netherlands during the seventeenth century, as well as in London, Paris, and other cities. Outside these major centers, though, the grocers and apothecaries still played a role in the color trade. The fifteenth to the seventeenth century was a turbulent period in European history from every point of view: political, religious, social, and economic. Yet against this background, great geographical and intellectual discoveries were made; the world was in every sense a much bigger, more challenging, and

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more thought-provoking place by the 1650s. Exploration of new lands and the opening up of new sea routes led to new sources of color for the dyers. Venice’s position as a center for the color trades was emphasized by its technological achievements in the glass industry, while parallel innovations in the glazing of ceramics spread across Europe from Italy and Spain. The cochineal lake, blue smalt, and lead antimonate yellow used by painters had their genesis in other color industries; as in earlier centuries, there was an interrelationship between the color trades.

CHAPTER THREE

Power and Identity PETER C. MANCALL

Early modern Europeans lived in a world awash with the symbols of power, often in dazzling color. The signs came in various forms: the possession of a library, often with illuminated manuscripts; a substantial house, usually with formal gardens; privileged positions in religious processions and churches; and connections to the wealthiest or most powerful individuals in a village, region, or state. Those who were literate but not at the apex of a local social order occupied a middle ground. They too had access to books, especially as a result of the spread of the printing press (Eisenstein 1979; Johns 1998), but their houses were humbler, and their political connections did not reach as far. Even poorer people fared worse. They inhabited a world that was quite often devoid of much color, especially if they lived in crowded cities or marched livestock along dirt roads where each step produced dust. In some ways, the visual universe that unfolded before the eyes of wealthy Europeans was not at first that different from what their elite forbears had seen. Sumptuous still-life paintings and portraits adorned their abodes. They possessed painted or hand-colored maps revealing details about the world beyond the boundaries of their communities, emphasizing the rich texture of the world. They owned manuscripts, often religious texts, with intricate paintings in the margins. They used the apparatus of the state—royal titles and legal privileges— to solidify their control over others, evident in the continued construction of castles. Even new buildings, such as Portumna Castle in County Galway in the west of Ireland, built at the start of the seventeenth century, represented more continuity than change (Figure 3.1). Hundreds of miles from the center of the greatest artistic achievements of the age, this grand house surrounded by walls

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FIGURE 3.1  Portumna Castle. Photograph by Liam Hughes, 2007. © Wikimedia Commons.

had a colorful and carefully tended rose garden out front as well as architectural features from continental houses. It also possessed slits in the thick walls so that the inhabitants could shoot arrows at unwelcome intruders. Such architecture signaled one’s class and authority, the manifestation of wealth often built up over generations, and an awareness that one’s standing might be precarious if based on extracting rents from nearby tenants or from running afoul of a more powerful rival. Elite members of European societies had long sought to brighten the otherwise drab interior and plain surroundings of their dwellings. The most powerful commissioned vast canvases or tapestries, often depicting heroic battles or mythic events, while churches employed leading architects, sculptors, and painters to display the glory of their god’s creation. Elites read manuals about how to create Italian-style gardens and travelers brought home firsthand stories of the wonders of such creations (Jellicoe 1953; Hunt 1986; Lazzaro 1990). The era’s art reached its apogee in Venice, Florence, and Rome. Paris Bordone’s 1534 painting of a fisherman presenting a ring to Doge Gradenigo presents a tableau of a miracle: a poor man returns the golden ring that a doge had tossed into the sea as part of a ritual to protect the city from the power of nature.1 The doge, in a brocaded silk golden and white cape over a blue embroidered gown, reaches his pale, white hand towards the humble man, who

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rises from his knees to make the offering. The others on the dais sit in splendor on tapestry-draped benches set upon ornate tiles and a carved marble platform. The fisherman, the dramatic center of the narrative, is humbly clad, his tanned arms and legs bare to the viewer. The story reflects a mingling of disparate social groups but with a clear sense of the hierarchy of the moment. Bordone’s ability to depict natural light illuminating much of the scene conjures a world in which the texture, pattern, and substance of clothing sent clear messages about who held power in Renaissance Europe. The external world always had colors. Master artists working for wealthy patrons eager to establish their mark in their communities and on posterity brought those colors to enormous paintings such as Gentile Bellini’s Processione in piazza San Marco of 1496.2 Such efforts continued practices of patronage that existed for centuries. But those continuities masked the fact that in 1492 it all changed. During the long sixteenth century that marked the height of the Renaissance, many Europeans came to possess new tools and techniques to demonstrate their political and cultural authority. They did so by harvesting the material resources of the Western Hemisphere, which began to appear in ever larger quantities in Europe in the decades following the first historic voyage of Christopher Columbus. The earliest reports from the Americas spoke about the great resources to be harvested, including gold. Over the decades that followed, the extraction of substances from the bounty of American nature changed the ways that elite Europeans displayed their status and power. Further, Europeans’ encounters with Indigenous Americans and more extensive contacts with Africans and the residents of South and East Asia made them ever more conscious that it was not the colors on a canvas but instead the color of one’s skin that played a decisive role in determining one’s power and identity. There were many ways to display one’s status in Renaissance Europe. One was to demonstrate command of ancient wisdom and to fashion it for an era of artistic and financial exuberance. As the art historian Ingrid Rowling has put it: “Italy’s jolt into the modern era began with a long, penetrating look into the past.” That effort emerged, as she wrote, in “a world of rapidly developing commerce, commerce that depended absolutely on modern inventions, modern navigation, and modern mathematics” but “the shapers of that modern world also felt the need to have it incorporate the best elements of their forbears’ existence” (Rowland 1998: 1). Hence, one of the stunning tensions embedded in the pursuit of power in the Renaissance: a desire to flout one’s current expertise and wealth in ways that cemented one’s bonds to antiquity. The church emerged as an institution that shaped the distribution of wealth and power far from Rome, especially under the leadership of Pope Julius II, who ruled from 1503 to 1513. He had ambitious foreign policies and made dramatic displays of his power domestically, notably in the rebuilding of St. Peter’s Basilica and the commissions he offered to Michelangelo, including for the

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ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (Rowland 1998: 141–92; King 2003).3 Artists’ achievements refashioned the habitations of the elites in ways that drew on widely imitated techniques, such as the villas and churches designed by the sixteenth-century Venetian architect Andrea Palladio. But the origins of these similar veneers were different: Romans, creating new monuments to artistic genius, mastered their city’s past and understood their debt to master architects such as Vitruvius; Venetians, lacking direct ties to antiquity, invented a past based on the more complex history of the Adriatic and connections between the peoples who ringed its shores (Brown 1996; Vitruvius 1999). Wealthy Europeans had for centuries filled their residences with one kind of treasure or another, and they enhanced their status by supporting local churches and artists. In some sense, the act of patronage was a kind of gift giving that was similar to rituals that took place across much of the world. Those who offered gifts then, as in many civilizations, as the anthropologist Marcel Mauss explained almost a century ago, did so with expectations for reciprocity, including loyalty and appreciation (Mauss 1925; Davis 2000). Displays of wealth could come in many forms. Pope Leo X, the successor to Julius II, served as pontiff from 1513 to 1521. The son of the Florentine ruler Lorenzo de’ Medici (also known as Lorenzo the Magnificent), Leo became a cardinal in 1489. Upon succeeding to the Holy See, Leo understood that he sat at the center of a vast religious aristocracy that drew wealth from across Europe. Eight years before he assumed the papal throne the Vatican had received a gift from King Manuel I of Portugal containing remarkable creatures from Brazil, only recently encountered by Amerigo Vespucci and quickly claimed by Portugal under the terms of the Treaty of Tordesillas. (Eventually the Portuguese would push their claims far inland, but at the time of the encounter it was the coast that they came to know best.) That gift, as one diplomatic witness wrote, included “large beasts never before seen in Italy, parrots, mandrills, leopards, monkeys of various species which we have not been accustomed to see” (Bedini 2000: 19). Leo decided to bring an elephant named Hanno into his zoo, an addition that required remarkable coordination of those subordinate to him, from his envoys in South Asia to those who shipped, at great risk, the pachyderm to Italy. Once the ship unloaded Hanno, crowds gathered to watch his movement to Rome. When he entered the Vatican, he joined a colorful assemblage of creatures, each one more brilliant than the next. Like the sumptuous paintings in St. Peter’s with its glistening dome, the animals’ presence testified to the status of the pope, perhaps especially those whose coloring, size, and shape differentiated them from the more humdrum livestock common on streets across Europe. Romans integrated Hanno into their culture, naming a street for him (the Via dell’Elefante), a section of a piazza (Borgo dell’Ellefante), and a tavern (Hostaria del Leonfanti) (Bedini 2000: 152).

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Leo’s desire to exhibit what he possessed was far from unique. Local and city authorities, guilds, and other civic associations periodically displayed their power by parading in grand processions. They carried ornate flags and sculptures, which bore witness to their ability to harness resources and glory in the extensive personal associations they had created that stretched across generations. Adherents of particular religious orders shuffled bright banners and gilt-painted statues through streets on feast days, providing an opportunity for the members of particular congregations to cheer and sing about their relics in ways that could not be matched in the more sedate interiors of ancient churches. Public processions were perhaps most important in Venice. As the historian Edward Muir has put it, the ducal procession was crucial in “producing the Renaissance myth of Venice” because it “suggested both a broad social participation in the government and a general acceptance of it, an appearance that contrasted with the princely and courtly image of most other states.” Here the power of the doge was reinforced by the pageantry of processions that “created a paradigmatic arrangement of the Venetian constitution and social structure,” as Muir phrased it. “More than merely reinforcing the ideology of Venice, the ducal processions helped create that ideology by serving as a conscious, visible synthesis of the parts of society: each symbol or person in the procession corresponded to a specific principle or institution; placed together and set in motion, they were the narrative outline for the myth of Venetian republicanism.” Some ceremonial processions were known for their duration. The parade for Corpus Christi, to take a notable example, took five hours to wend its way through the Piazza San Marco, in front of crowds drawn from the city and the terraferma. In this “republic of processions,” to use Muir’s apt phrase, that public place “stood ever ready to be transformed into a great theater for political drama”—for a display of power simultaneously sumptuous and intimate (Muir 1981: 198, 211, 224, 241; Kim 2014). Among its many treasures, the Doge’s Palace in Venice housed a remarkable map room, painted under the supervision of the geographer and civil servant Giovanni Battista Ramusio, the most learned authority in La Serenissima (the serene republic) about the resources and peoples of the wider world.4 Ramusio and others understood that depictions of distant places would be most effective if they were done in color. Such ideas encouraged the work of artists, who added color to books that came off presses, transforming instructive images into luxury commodities. Surviving copies of books from the collections of elite members of society reveal the skills of these colorists and mark those books as the treasured property of those with power just as surely as the paintings on their walls and the carpets and tapestries that could be found draped around their houses (see Dackerman 2002). Many had maps hanging on their walls or bound in atlases. Wealthy Europeans tended to have them hand-colored after they had been printed (Schmidt 2015: 231–3).

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Elites displayed their authority in private as well, notably in cabinets of curiosity that spread across Europe in the sixteenth century. These private collections displayed an individual’s taste and acquisitive talents. Smaller collections could be contained in bureaus that were themselves elaborately decorated. Grander collections would take up entire rooms, or perhaps adjacent rooms in a lavish urban residence, or perhaps a country villa. Objects of natural beauty—large sea shells, perhaps, or intricate sections of bright coral—shared shelf-space with rare or unusual examples of human crafts (Findlen 1994; Mauries 2002). Walter Cope, a member of the Elizabethan Society of Antiquaries in late sixteenthcentury London, gave tours of his private collection. According to one German visitor, Cope had “an apartment, stuffed with queer foreign objects in every corner.” Those included a mummy of a child, an “African charm made of teeth,” a “Madonna made of Indian feathers,” monkey teeth linked together into a chain, a pelican’s beak, the purported tail of a unicorn, “all kinds of corals and sea-plants in abundance,” a “handsome cap made out of goosefoots from China,” and weapons, instruments, and clothing imported from India, Java, Arabia, and China (Platter 1937: 171–3). Paintings of the interiors of cabinets reveal them to contain a riot of color. Jan van Kessel the Elder’s The Four Continents from the mid-seventeenth century depicts collections run amok. In each central panel, he depicted a female representation of “Europe,” “Asie,” “Africque,” and “Americque,” along with attendants, and then surrounded each with sixteen smaller panels (see Plate 3.1). Each of these pictures, as the historian Benjamin Schmidt has written, “might best be described as a hybrid ensemble, meticulously painted and framed objects—oil paintings on copper panels, encased in wooded frames and inscribed with fastidious calligraphy” (Schmidt 2015). Van Kessel drew on an idea of Rome for the setting of Europe and Jerusalem for Asia, which he also illustrated with a hodge-podge of religious items including a Koran, a figure of the Buddha, and smaller depictions of a Chinese pagoda and the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. This sense of respectable religions broke down in the other two paintings. The allegorical figure of Africa sits in the “Temple of Idols,” while the figure of America is a Tupinambá woman inhabiting a room where there is a depiction of another Indigenous woman holding a human arm and a scene of cannibalism, signs not of civilized religion but instead of savagery. Van Kessel did not see much of the naturalia that dominates the smaller panels but instead adapted images from geographical works circulating among wealthy Europeans, map makers, and printers (Schmidt 2015: 258–77; Baadj 2016). There is a randomness or indeterminacy in Van Kessel’s paintings, with creatures crawling or flying out of the smaller depictions to occupy the central panel with the allegorical figures. He places objects on the wrong continents— Ming porcelain on the painting of Africa, Japanese armor on America (Schmidt 2015: 269). By doing so, he mimicked actual cabinets, which often blended

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objects from different parts of the world in a single room, even if he undermined the notion that he knew what belonged where. But however imprecise, the paintings speak to the passion of the act of collecting and the notion that nature’s wonders could be contained and displayed. Birds, mammals, and fish seem to have flown, crawled, or slithered from the sideshows to the main attraction. There the viewer observes them in close association with the allegorical figures, the entire assemblage underneath paintings of insects, actual dried and mounted insects, and masks alongside statues tucked into shelves depicting stiff versions of living creatures, who seem to have escaped the confines of their original representation and become part of the room itself. There they walk or sit and converse, the collector’s collection come to life. Van Kessel’s painting is an allegory and a fantasy, an artist’s dreamlike vision of physical objects come to life. But what was his message? Was the artist satirizing the consumption habits of a wealthy patron? Was he perhaps celebrating the spirit of acquisition that had brought so much wealth to Europe, that the era was a golden age for principalities where elites could make extraordinary profits from buying and selling commodities? There was an “embarrassment of riches,” as the historian Simon Schama has written for the Dutch, but it extended well beyond the Low Countries (Schama 1987). The obsession for wealth fueled speculation as well, perhaps most visibly in the economic episode known as tulipmania (Goldgar 1997). Van Kessel’s continents epitomize this sense of bounty. As the historian Schmidt commented, the paintings depict “sumptuous displays of material arts, embracing global ceramics and textiles, richly decorated gold and silver vessels, glassware and carved wood, statuary of various size and form, decorated chests and boxes brimming with valuables, exotic shells, and other miscellaneous collectibles” (Schmidt 2015: 261). Yet even Van Kessel, with his access to new books detailing the wonders of locales far from Europe, might never have imagined the extraordinary collections that the wealthiest Europeans might possess. A 1589 inventory of Catherine de Medici’s chambers at the Hôtel de la Reine in Paris reveals the extent and range of one passionate collector (and her acolytes). Born in Italy in 1519, she never returned after marrying Henry, Duc d’Orléans, in Marseilles in 1553. He would later become King Henri II of France while she became one of the most powerful women in sixteenth-century Europe. The inventory detailed the objects found in sixteen store rooms. At the time of her death she owned dozens of carpets, many Persian, along with tapestries and manuscript maps, some of which portrayed territories as far away as Canada, Ethiopia, the Cape of Good Hope, and East Asia. She possessed a large collection of enamels, likely many from Limoges. One of the storerooms contained the objects of a cabinet. It included seashells at times put together to make other shapes, coral, the body of a chameleon, a beast’s snout with a silver buckle, an ivory sundial, a representation of the Nativity carved from

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ivory and ebony, a “model mountain made from marcasite embellished with branches of coral where there is represented the Passion,” a bronze figure of Cleopatra, a coconut, and the skins of seven crocodiles stuffed with hay. Other rooms included furniture, canopies, trunks, embroidered and embossed cushions. Another cabinet above her aviary included portraits of monarchs, including members of royal families in other European nations. Those who inventoried her possessions took careful note of bowls, saucers, candlesticks, plates, vases, and cloths, often noting the use of marble, gold, and silver (Michahelles 2002). Much of Catherine’s collection could have been amassed by earlier generations, but some of the objects here, especially those made of coral and shell, reflected one of the passions of sixteenth-century European collectors. Jacopo Zucchi’s The Treasures of the Sea (Coral Fishers) of 1560 testified to the fascination with the annual coral hunts launched from Sardinia, Corsica, Genoa, and Naples, which sailed as far as Tunis and Algeria to gather coral for collectors (Kelley 2014). So did Antonio Tempesta’s 1602 engraving of a coral hunt, which depicted the elaborate branch-like structures harvested from the seas (see Figure 3.2). Wealthy Europeans attached pieces of coral to silver to make utensils or sculptures, blending colorful bits of nature with the artifice of skilled artisans (see Plate 3.2).

FIGURE 3.2  Antonio Tempesta (after), Seamen Diving for Coral, 1602. Gift of Eric A. von Raits in memory of Helen van C. de Peyster von Raits. © President and Fellows of Harvard College; Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, MA.

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Most scholarly work describing affluence in the age of the Renaissance focuses on Europeans. But collecting and displaying rare items were signs of power, and hence identity, far from Europe’s shores as well. In Siam (presentday Thailand), for which the documentary evidence is scarce because of the destruction of the city by the Burmese in 1767, late seventeenth-century records reveal practices of acquisition and display similar to those in Europe. Elites there had cabinets of curiosity as well, which at times included colorful birds that had been captured in Indonesia and stuffed by agents of the Dutch Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, known as the VOC or, more commonly in English, as the Dutch East India Company. The company, founded in 1602, played a major role in bringing the wealth of the southwest Pacific to Europe. Powerful agents of states had the capacity to haul material objects in any direction. When Ok-Phra Wisut Sunthon, known as Kosa Pan, returned to Siam from a stint as ambassador to France from 1686 to 1687, he soon decorated his house with maps and scientific instruments produced in Europe as well as portraits of France’s royal family (Benson 2011). Elites displayed their power and identity in Europe, Asia, and Africa in ways that made sense for each particular culture. A valued good in one place, for example, might be something to be collected or displayed in another, or perhaps worthless. Cowrie shells, harvested across the Indian Ocean, traded as currency in India, China, Thailand, and across much of Africa, a practice that Europeans disdained—but they still put such shells in their cabinets, where they remained not as money but as yet another object of nature’s wonders (Cribb 1986). Silks from East Asia and spices from islands in the southwest Pacific had enormous value for Europeans, because they could not produce them, or not as well, so they paid to bring them to Europe. The fresher the spice, the more threads to the inch on a carpet, the more opulent the sheen on a bloc of silk, the better for elites to demonstrate to others the true nature of their identity. In a world in which certain colors were rare—especially red—the ability to wear red clothing or to have an artist use bright red pigments in a painting signaled one’s power. Europeans had been traveling to East and South Asia and to Africa long before Christopher Columbus set out on his journey to the east by heading west across the Atlantic. The travels back and forth had opened the peoples of what became known as the “old world” to the material culture and forms of display of disparate peoples. Travelers’ reports constituted an early and essential chapter in the emergence of the discipline we now know as ethnography (Hodgen 1964). Explorers set out for different reasons—to spread the word of their faith, for example, or to find riches, or to add to the stock of knowledge about the wider world. They came back telling tales both true and fantastic, including details about monstrous races and other not-to-be believed wonders. Often, they recirculated stories that had long been known in Europe and kept alive in the works of scholars such as Pliny, Strabo, Solinus (who created an encyclopedia in

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the third century ce), and the Etymologiae of Isidore of Seville from the seventh century (Wittkower 1942; Bynum 1997; Bartlett 2008). Well before 1400, European artists had drawn from this rich set of ideas to decorate the interiors of churches and the margins of elegantly painted bestiaries (Camille 1992; Mancall 2018). Early printed books contained woodblock representations of some of these creatures (Konrad von Megenberg 1475). In his first report, published in Barcelona in late 1493 in eight pages with no illustrations, Columbus described the Tainos as naked, timid, lacking sophisticated technology, and naïve in any dealings. But they were humans, not monsters. He captured six of them to learn Spanish and act as interpreters, though he also brought them home to show off as proof that he had found a place he thought no Europeans had seen before. There was no doubt in his mind that their lands, which he acknowledged, should now belong to Isabella and Ferdinand, the Catholic Monarchs of Spain. To establish this new ownership, he planted banners displaying royal insignia. With that act, he believed that hundreds of thousands of people in the islands he saw during 1492 became the subjects of his Castilian patrons. He also had his men begin to harvest gold from Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic) and other nearby islands, the first of many treasure hauls that would change the financial prospects of Europeans who had a financial interest in the Western Hemisphere (Obregón 1991: 65–9). Columbus’s desire for gold reflected one of the defining obsessions of countless Europeans. Tragically, Spanish material desires led Columbus and others who traveled with him to force the Tainos out of their customary economies and instead spend their energies panning and digging for gold, difficult labor that almost immediately took an enormous toll. Europeans thrilled at their golden harvest and integrated it into their displays of power— as the church did with the painting of the interior of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. But it came at an astonishing human cost for the Tainos. There were probably 100,000 to 400,000 Indigenous peoples on Hispaniola when Columbus arrived. The Spanish pursuit of gold led hundreds of Europeans to cross the ocean, many of whom soon acquired enslaved Tainos. By 1514, there were perhaps only 26,000 Tainos still alive, even though Queen Isabella objected to the slave trade and the fact that many Spanish, frustrated by the administration of the island, left for more promising opportunities, including to Cuba. Smallpox arrived in December 1518, and the epidemic lasted four months. At that point, Spanish observers realized that there would be no way to utilize Tainos as a labor force. By the early 1520s, as one demographic historian has written, “the native population, reduced to a few thousand, was heading to extinction” (Livi-Bacci 2003). It remains one of the most devastating losses of population in recorded history and a defining chapter of what became known as the “black legend” of the Spanish conquest—a story defined most prominently

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by the colonizer-turned-Dominican friar Bartolomé de Las Casas in his Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies, first published in Seville in 1552 (Keen 1969; Las Casas 1992). Other Europeans acted with cruelty in the Western Hemisphere as well, though no other produced a Las Casas to chronicle his or her own nation’s depredations.5 While the collapse of the Tainos was in full swing in the Caribbean, Spanish conquistadores reached the mainland. There they found natural vistas with colors they could often not even describe (Elliott 1970: 22) as well as the works of artisans that drew on indigenous materials such as cochineal (see Kirby, this volume). They also encountered displays of power and wealth as dramatic as any that they had witnessed in Europe. The Aztec emperor Motecuhzoma  II (also known as Montezuma) used military prowess to garner wealth from much of Mesoamerica, including jaguar skins, bundles of feathers, live birds, jade, and other rare commodities. The conquistador Hernán Cortés described Tenochtitlán with great excitement. In all of his territory, Cortés wrote, [Motecuhzoma] had fortresses garrisoned with his own people, and governors and officials to collect the tributes which each province must pay; and they kept an account of whatever each one was obliged to give in characters and drawings on the paper which they make, which is their writing. (Cortés 1986: 109) These documents revealed that “Montezuma received every sort of produce from those provinces, and he was so feared by all, both present and absent, that there could be no ruler in the world more so” (109). The city was filled with ornate residences, none more impressive than the emperor’s abode: The palace inside the city in which he lived was so marvelous that it seems to me impossible to describe its excellence and grandeur. Therefore, I shall not attempt to describe it at all, save to say that in Spain there is nothing to compare with it. (109) Subsequent grave robbing as well as archaeological investigations in territory claimed by the Spanish revealed both the availability of large supplies of gold and the skill of Indigenous artisans who crafted intricate jewelry and plates from the metal that most attracted Europeans (Pillsbury et al. 2017). Motecuhzoma’s wealth could be seen across the city. One of his buildings, “a little less magnificent” than the emperor’s primary residence, featured “a very beautiful garden with balconies over it,” including “facings and flagstones” (Cortés 1986: 110) made of jasper, a stone that was typically red but could also be brown, green, yellow, and even blue (Cortés neglected to describe the color). That house had within it ten pools, including fresh-water pools for birds that lived along rivers and salt-water pools for those acclimated to the ocean. Workers

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hauled in 250 pounds of fish each day to satisfy the birds, along with maize and worms for birds accustomed to eating from the land. Motecuhzoma could watch over the flocks in his aviary by standing on balconies overlooking his possessions, which were tended by three hundred men, including some who specialized in healing ill birds. A nearby house contained birds of prey, which fed every day on chickens brought in by yet other workers. That house also contained wooden cages housing tigers, lions, foxes, and wolves, a menagerie that required another three hundred human minders. Motecuhzoma had other chambers in that house where he kept his collection of “deformed men and women, among which were dwarfs and hunchbacks” (Cortés 1986: 109–11; Restall 2018). Beyond his physical possessions, Motecuhzoma presided over daily processions and feasts that might have been the envy of any European monarch. Cortés claimed that he “dressed each day in four different garments and never dressed again in the same ones.” Each day, he reported, six hundred “chiefs and principal persons” arrived at the palace, and they each brought servants. Each meal was an endless feast, carried in by three hundred to four hundred boys who brought Motecuhzoma fish and meat, fruit and vegetables, with hot coals arranged beneath bowls to keep the food hot. Any towel that he used to clean up was tossed out, apparently (so Cortés claimed) with the bowls and the plates that Motecuhzoma had used. Still other servants carried him about the city on a litter. One elite man would always go in advance of the procession to announce Motecuhzoma’s arrival and hence prevent anyone from looking at him directly, which would have been taken as a sign of disrespect—an accusation leveled at the Spaniards who dared to look him in the eye. Cortés concluded: The forms and ceremonies with which this lord was attended are so many and so varied that I would need more space than that which I have at present to recount them, and a better memory with which to recall them, for I do not think that the sultans nor any of the infidel lords of whom we have heard until now are attended with such ceremony. (Cortés 1986: 111–12) Awed by what he had seen, and no doubt eager to be believed and celebrated in Europe, Cortés sent a lavish gift to Charles V, the Spanish king who was also the Holy Roman Emperor. The engraver Albrecht Dürer witnessed the arrival of some of the goods in Brussels in August 1520. “I have seen these things, which have been brought to the King from the new golden land,” the artist exclaimed (translated and quoted in Johnson 2011: 83). Dürer continued, They are so splendid, that one would treasure them at a hundred thousand guldens’ worth. And I have not seen anything, in all my living days, that delights my heart as these objects do. I have seen marvelously artistic things and I am amazed at the subtle craftsmanship of the people in the foreign land. (Johnson 2011: 83)

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Unfortunately, Dürer’s aesthetic appreciation was not widely held. In 1535, Charles ordered that the silver and gold that had come from the Indies in sculptures or jewelry be melted down. The objects had become the victims of shifting religious sensibilities. “Even as the sacred garments, feather crowns, and instruments of sacrifice arrived in the Holy Roman Empire,” the historian Carina Johnson wrote, “the early Reformation’s attack on material display in sacral contexts as insidious idolatry began to shatter commonly held valuations of treasure and treasuries.” In this fevered moment, she added, “sacral and inalienable objects were transformed into desacralized and alienable items through the actions of many in the Holy Roman Empire.” Artwork made of stone or feathers could survive in cabinets as “exemplars of Mexican craftsmanship,” but such a fate eluded objects made of precious metals (Johnson 2011: 83, 97). In the decades that followed, Spanish colonizers and bureaucrats extended their claims to an ever-greater share of Mexico, Central America, and northern and western South America, primarily the territory controlled by the Incan ruler Atahualpa. The conquistador Francisco Pizarro quickly took him prisoner and ransomed him, a sign (as if one was needed) that enterprising Spanish conquerors pursued wealth as soon as possible. According to Pedro Cieza de León, a chronicler of the Spanish conquest of Peru whose narrative was published in Seville in 1553, Atahualpa promised Pizarro “ten thousand ingots of gold and so many silver vessels that it would be enough to fill a large house that was there,” and if they did not injure him “he would deposit into it, aside from the ingots, a quantity of gold pieces and jewelry.” The Incas possessed so much gold, he continued, that they could pay the ransom and “much more than that without removing anything from the service of the Incas, their fathers, or their tombs, but only from the temple” and one other source. The wealth of the Incas produced “grandeur never seen or heard or known by people in any previous century.” Cieza de León, watching as the invaders peeled gold off the walls of a temple, believed there was more gold there “than in any other [place] that existed in the world” (Cieza de León 1998: 223–30).6 Despite paying the ransom, the Spanish executed Atahualpa, facilitating the conquistadores’ victory over the most powerful Indigenous population in the Andes. Pizarro, for his part, opposed the death sentence, and King Charles I, when he heard about it, was also unhappy about the Incan’s death, since a monarch should not have received such treatment in the name of justice. Three months after murdering Atahualpa, the Spanish took control of Cuzco, the wealthiest city in the Andes. When the conquerors entered some dwellings there, Cieza de León reported, “they found heaps of very heavy and splendid gold pieces, in others large silver vessels. It irritated them to see so much gold.” They also found “beads, feathers, gold ingots, and silver in bullion; indeed, the city was full of treasures” (Cieza de León 1998: 317–19). The fate of Atahualpa soon became known in Europe through a series of images depicting Cuzco and Pizarro’s conquest (Armitage 1990).

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Once in control of a swath of territory that stretched from the southwest of the modern United States to the Straits of Magellan, Spanish and Portuguese colonizers began to extract resources that enhanced their authority abroad and at home. By doing so, they took part in a much larger European push to establish connections with, and extract resources from, places distant from the continent (Wills 2011: 24–77). During the conquest of Mexico, the Spanish had Motecuhzoma take them to the storehouses of Teocalco where they gathered, in the words of the Florentine Codex, one of the best-known collections of Nahuatl information about early Spanish America, “all the brilliant things; the quetzal feather head fan, the devices, the shields, the golden discs, the devils’ necklaces, the golden nose crescents, the golden leg bands, the golden arm bands, the golden forehead bands.” The Spanish then took all of the gold out of their settings, melted it down, and formed it into bars for export. They took the green stone too. “And the Spaniards walked everywhere,” the account noted; “they went everywhere taking to pieces the hiding places, storehouses, storage places. They took all, all that they saw which they saw to be good” (Sahagún 1955: 47–8). The desire to possess emeralds helped drive the Spanish conquest of Colombia, the source of the hemisphere’s best green stones (Lane 2010: 24–124). But there was more in Mexico than gold and green stone. In addition, Europeans found two new sources of wealth: feathers, which Indigenous Americans had used to make remarkable art and that Europeans soon integrated into their artistic repertoire, and cochineal, a small insect that the Aztecs and others had learned could be crushed and turned into red dye. Feathers were the more dramatic at first. Brilliantly colored and gathered in the hundreds of thousands from the kinds of birds that Motecuhzoma had in his aviary, they soon traveled to Europe as well, often retained in works by Indigenous artisans that have survived to the present day. At first, the Spanish had little appreciation of them, since feathers were inferior in their minds to gold. But the logic changed during the sixteenth century (Fane 2015). First, a growing number of Europeans came to recognize the artistry of Indigenous feather work. Eleven Tupinambá feather capes from coastal Brazil survive from the early modern era in European museums, primarily made of plumes from the scarlet ibis. In 1599, some aristocrats in Stuttgart created an elaborate procession to honor a mythical “Queen of America,” a demonstration of elite ownership of rare commodities (Buono 2015). Second, European artists began to create their own objects with American feathers. Among those who became enamored with feather work were clerics and their patrons, who drew on indigenous techniques and aesthetics to create Christian iconography out of feathers (Alcalá 2015). Creating artwork out of feathers took great skill. “The good featherworker [is] imaginative, diligent; meritorious of confidence, of trust,” the Spanish chronicler Bernardino de Sahagún wrote in his monumental General History of the Things of New Spain. “He practices the featherworkers’ art; he glues, he arranges [the feathers]. He arranges different colors, takes measurements,

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matches [feathers].” There were differences between those who gathered and sold feathers. The best seller, as Sahagún wrote, conveyed “precious feathers; he sells fine green feathers, chili-green feathers, those curved at the tip, the feathers of young birds.” This seller offered clean and new feathers, unlike the “bad feather worker” who “sells old, worn feathers, damaged feathers.” This untrusted purveyor even dyed feathers that were “faded, dirty, yellow, darkened, smoked.” Feather work was not a business for the amateur but instead an arena for professionals (Sahagún 1959: 25, 61) (Figure 3.3). Feathers dazzled the eye, but it was cochineal that had the greater impact on Europeans’ economies. European clothing makers and painters alike had spent generations seeking a regular supply of red pigment. In medieval times, they managed to find various sources to produce red dye (see Frick, this volume). But they could do far more with the abundant supply of cochineal, the dominant substance used by Indigenous peoples to make red pigments (Doenici et al. 2017). Brazilwood trees, illustrated in stunning sixteenthcentury European manuscripts like the Atlas Miller of 1516 and the Vallard Atlas of 1547, similarly promised great benefits to the producers of red dyes and pigments (Holland 1916; Donkin 1977; Magaloni Kerpel 2014).7 Obtaining a regular source material to make red was invaluable but not singular. The Florentine Codex also described how Europeans could use plants to produce yet other pigments (Sahagún 1963: 240–5). Over time, Europeans would learn to harvest a wider variety of American plants, including pineapples, potatoes, tomatoes, and tobacco, which many Europeans believed was the greatest addition ever to their materia medica (McNeill 1991; Mancall 2004; Bleichmar 2017). Spanish and Portuguese explorers initiated the large-scale harvesting of gold, green stone, feathers, cochineal, and brazilwood. Soon other European conquerors, colonizers, and missionaries followed and engaged in the same practices. The spread of Christianity and European painting techniques altered the ways that Indigenous American artists decorated both texts and buildings, adapting European styles in images ranging from sacred portraits to medicinal plants (Bleichmar 2012; Douglas 2014; Okada 2014). More importantly, Europeans changed the hemisphere by enslaving Indigenous Americans—first the Tainos and then others. When the native population collapsed as a result of forced work, casualties in war, displacement, famine, and the unwitting introduction of infectious diseases, Europeans turned to importing captive Africans. Before 1641, European slavers shipped approximately 834,000 Africans to the Western Hemisphere; from 1642 to 1807, the number reached 8,482,000, one of the best-documented crimes against humanity (Eltis and Richardson 2010: 25–6). The movement from one form of slavery to another did not start with Iberians in the Americas; forced labor had been known since ancient times and had various precedents across

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FIGURE 3.3  Featherworking from the Florentine Codex, 1577. © Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence.

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Europe (Guasco 2014). But if the process of enslavement was understood by Europeans, its practice and horrors accelerated in the sixteenth century. The transition prompted extensive discussion among Europeans about color— not the red in their clothing or the luminescence of hummingbird feathers or even gold, but of human skin, specifically about who could be enslaved (Réséndez 2016: 13–45). Over the course of the next several generations, Europeans used colorful images and printed texts to define nonwhite peoples as inferior and to equate whiteness with authority and civilization (Jordan 1968; Katzew 2004).

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CHAPTER FOUR

Religion and Ritual LISA PON

INTRODUCTION This chapter explores the material culture of religious color in the Renaissance through a variety of media: religious paintings and sculptures, devotional books in print and manuscript, and domestic and ecclesiastical textiles. These artifacts bring to light a number of performative practices from highly ritualized masses that took place in exclusive spaces, such as the Alcázar’s Capilla Real in Madrid, to baptism ceremonies carried out by Jesuit missionaries in Brazil, and the daily prayers of Andalusian Muslims. The garments and furnishings for these events will be discussed, along with the Duc de Berry’s Holy Thorn Reliquary; Verrocchio’s tomb for Cosimo il Vecchio de’ Medici; the Van Eycks’s Ghent Altarpiece, Raphael’s painted portraits of Pope Julius II; a fifteenth-century English devotional manuscript, painstakingly marked with red ink by an anonymous viewer; and a mid-sixteenth-century Jewish calendrical manuscript. By attending to these and other material objects and the spaces and practices framing them, the chapter elucidates several uses of color: as symbols of abstract theological concepts; markers of changing liturgical seasons; catalysts for pious agency; and indicators of change in religious identity.

SIGNIFICATION: COLORS AND MEANINGS Color symbolism was both well developed and openly disputed in Europe during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Colors had definite, often longstanding connotations—but these codes and conventions were many and at times overlapping or even conflicting (Barasch 1987; Baxandall [1972] 1988;

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Pastoureau 2014: 125–6). This section examines some religious significations of individual colors, such as blue, and also the trio of white, green, and red, through a selection of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century sculpted, woven, and painted objects—as well as a prophet’s vision and a pope’s beard. The sumptuous Holy Thorn Reliquary of Jean, Duc de Berry (see Figure 4.1), made within the early fifteenth-century culture of gift exchange in the Valois court and recorded in the collections of the sixteenth-century Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, is an especially outstanding example of the religious

FIGURE 4.1  Holy Thorn Reliquary of Jean, duc de Berry, c. 1400. Gold, enamel, rubies, pearls, sapphires. British Museum, no. WB.67. © Trustees of the British Museum, London.

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significance of white, green, red, and blue (Buettner 2001; Hahn 2015). More than thirty centimeters tall, the luster of this gold, polychrome-enameled, gemencrusted reliquary is such that the earliest surviving inventory reference, a note of its being given as a gift before 1413, calls it the “thorn […] in a large golden jewel” (British Museum n.d.). The Latin word used, jocale, literally means “jewel,” but could refer to a gleaming reliquary, and so is an appropriate term for the Duc de Berry’s Holy Thorn Reliquary, which used the then new and highly prized technique of émail en rond bosse, in which opaque and translucent enamels of various colors are applied to a sculptural surface of gold (Hahn 2015: 212; British Museum n.d.). The golden base, bearing Jean’s gold fleurde-lis arms on blue and red fields of translucent enamel, is shaped like a fortress, with a trumpeting angel with golden wings, dressed in white robes with blue fleur-de-lis, emerging from each of the four crenellated turrets. Responding to the sounding trumpets, white-enameled corpses rise from gold tombs strewn across a green enamel mound. The brilliant green mound is surmounted by the round-headed reliquary case itself, which contains a blessing Christ with his five wounds displayed, seated on a red, gold, and black rainbow springing from two blue clouds. Below Christ, Mary and John the Baptist kneel, both in white enamel robes like those of Christ, lined in red or green; John’s longsleeved hair-shirt is rendered in minutely worked gold. Above, two flying angels in white-and-blue robes hold a green-enameled crown of thorns over Christ’s head. The case’s arching golden frame is studded with rubies and pearls; beyond the bejeweled frame, the twelve apostles appear, each bust-length figure individualized in terms of pose, hairstyle, facial features, and attributes. While the apostles and the figure of God the Father seated in a golden sunburst at the top of the reliquary all have white-enameled faces and golden hair, their white robes are custom decorated with details in red, green, and/or gold. The Duc de Berry’s Holy Thorn Reliquary called attention to itself and the relic it contains through ostentatiously luxurious materials and manufacture. The reliquary’s most eye-catching colors come from the mass of green enamel at the base; the many white enamel figures and lustrous white pearls; the touches of translucent red enamel known as rouge cler; and fourteen large red rubies framing the reliquary case and sunburst. The form of the Holy Thorn itself—as “an object of such slender form and dull coloring that it almost disappears from sight”—is emphasized by two large cabochon sapphires (British Museum n.d.). One is found at the thorn’s base and the other at the very top of the reliquary. These two gleaming blue gems thus magnify the Holy Thorn’s vertical axis, enhancing the relic’s visibility. The colorful emphasis on the pale thorn from Christ’s crown effected through the reliquary’s bright enameling and brilliant jewels was necessary, as the relic and its magnificent case became a gift of the highest order used to demonstrate royal prestige and favor. The reliquary was likely given as a gift to Jean’s brother, the Duke of Burgundy, or another

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member of their elite circle by 1413, eventually entering Holy Roman Emperor Charles V’s treasury chapel in Vienna before 1544. The reliquary’s palette—predominately white, green, and red, enriched with only occasional highlights of blue—was not dictated by technical factors and is not shared by the contemporaneous masterwork of émail en bosse made for the same Valois court elites, the famous Goldenes Rössl, its name referring to the figure of a horse included in the sculpture (Eikelmann 1995: 108–9). By the time the Holy Thorn Reliquary was made around 1400, master enamelists were adept at working in a variety of opaque and translucent colors including mulberry, yellow, and orange, none of which appear in Jean’s magnificent reliquary (Distelberger et al. 1993: 141). By the twelfth century, the famed Limoges craftsmen exploited a full spectrum of light and dark blues as the dominant color in their enamels (Gauthier 1996: 41, 54–5, 83). In contrast, the Holy Thorn Reliquary uses blue enamel in a targeted fashion: aside from the two small clouds supporting Christ’s rainbow, blue enamel appears only in conjunction with the Duc de Berry’s heraldic fleur-de-lis. Likewise, the number of sapphires was clearly intentionally limited to two, used with the aim of visually accenting the Holy Thorn: the similarly extravagant Goldenes Rössl features three times as many sapphires and many fewer rubies. The reliquary’s limited touches of blue have a purpose: its shared use for both relic and coat-of-arms links the numinous power of the Holy Thorn to the noble magnanimity of the Duc de Berry. White, green, and red were also special colors when brought together. The traditional association of these colors with the Theological Virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity respectively, common since Dante’s Divine Comedy, underlies their use in various religious contexts (Alighieri 2019: Purgatorio, Canto 29, lines 121–6). In a 1495 sermon given by Florentine firebrand preacher Girolamo Savonarola, he spoke of a vision in which a crown with green, white, and red gems represented stages of spiritual ascent, from being still “in the greenness of their faith” to being inflamed with love of God (Weinstein 2011: 148–9). Savonarola was using colors that by his time were also closely associated with the Medici, the most powerful family in Florence. White, red, and green began to be important in works commissioned by Piero de’ Medici around the 1460s, nowhere more explicitly than in the tomb slab of Piero’s father, Cosimo il Vecchio de’ Medici (d.1464) designed by Andrea del Verrocchio and placed in the floor in front of the high altar of Filippo Brunelleschi’s church of San Lorenzo (Gelli 1916: 545–6; Ames-Lewis 1979: 136). Given the title of “Pater Patriae” with which the Florentines would honor Cosimo just after his death, the floor marker, installed in 1467, might seem rather modest (Clearfield 1981; Adorno 1989). Verrocchio’s tomb recalled Cosimo’s many contributions to the fifteenthcentury rebuilding of the church and was a vital component of a coordinated plan that cast San Lorenzo as a reflection of early Christian basilicas, in which a

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Christian martyr’s tomb would be positioned under the main altar, as Cosimo’s was (Lavin 1983: 3–8; Elam 1992: 157–80; Butterfield 1997: 42). Without any figural symbolism or three-dimensional form, the floor slab for Cosimo’s tomb relied upon color for its meaning (Lavin 1983: 17–21; Williams 1996: 193–205). The heart of the tomb slab is a large, red porphyry circle, banded in white marble, which also outlines within the confines of the outermost circle a central red porphyry rectangle as well as small circles, elongated semicircles, and mandorle (almond shapes) in green porphyry. These rare red and green porphyries, imported in ancient times from Egyptian quarries that by the Renaissance had closed, recalled earlier tombs for emperors, popes, bishops, and saints (Gnoli 1971: 100–9; Butterfield 1997: 43). Futhermore, the white, green, and red of these stones marking Cosimo’s burial site attributed the Theological Virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity to Cosimo himself. These Virtues are referenced through their colors in the diamond, emerald, and ruby rings that Pope Julius II is shown wearing on his prominently displayed right hand in the 1511–12 portrait by Raphael (Partridge and Starn 1980: 60–1). This canonical painting of Julius II has been a potent model for papal portraiture, so it bears remembering both how much it broke with earlier traditions and how much it changed while it was being painted. Perhaps closest in the subject’s dress and seating is Melozzo da Forli’s fresco, Sixtus IV Appointing Platina Prefect of the Vatican Library (1476–7), in which that fifteenth-century pope, casually dressed in a short, red mozzetta over a white camauro rather than full pontifical garb, sits in a tasseled, finial-topped armchair (Benati et al. 2011: 218–21). Melozzo’s fresco celebrates one of Sixtus IV’s signal achievements: the establishment of an official papal library with humanist Bartolomeo Platina appointed its prefect in 1475. Melozzo’s fresco shows Platina kneeling before the pope to receive his appointment, flanked by two cardinals and two laymen, all five men’s clothing creating a rhythmic cadence of color from cool purple, blue, and gray at the left to red and bright white at the right. Raphael’s portrait instead focuses all visual attention on the solitary figure of Julius II, rotating its position some hundred degrees counterclockwise from the left-facing profile pose in Melozzo’s fresco, so that Raphael’s Julius II sits facing the viewer at an oblique angle. But Melozzo’s fresco is an important predecessor for the portrait by Raphael, and not only because of this formal adaptation, which transforms the viewer into the pope’s audience. Rather, it is because the cardinal standing before the pope in Sixtus IV Appointing Platina is none other than Giuliano della Rovere, who became Pope Julius II some thirtyfive years after Melozzo’s fresco was done. In Raphael’s painting, the cardinal has now taken his papal uncle’s seat; the viewer’s slightly downwards gaze upon the seated pope is the same taken from the Cardinal Giuliano’s stance in Melozzo’s fresco.

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Melozzo shows the young Giuliano della Rovere clean shaven, but Julius II’s long white beard in the Raphael portrait is not due to the more than three decades that had passed: around 1509, Raphael himself included a portrait of Julius II without facial hair in the figure of Gregory the Great in the Disputa fresco in the Stanza della Segnatura. Julius II first grew his beard during a severe illness in the fall of 1510, while in Romagna leading his military campaigns there. The warrior pope kept his beard as a penitential gesture to acknowledge the disastrous defeats he had recently suffered, vowing (as a contemporary source reports) not to shave “until he drove King Louis [XII] of France out of Italy” (Zucker 1977: 526). Given a long-standing censure of beards, and the exclamations Julius’s own beard brought—witnesses described the pope as a bear and a hermit—it is remarkable that Raphael repeatedly portrayed Julius II wearing his penitential beard, and that to my knowledge no existing paintings show Julius after he, confident of coming military triumphs in the wake of the formation of the Holy League against the French, shaved it off in early March 1512 (Zucker 1977: 530; Frommel 2014: 202). Raphael’s London Portrait of Julius II was one of a number of paintings of the white-bearded pope. Like Gregory IX Approving the Decretals of Canon Law frescoed in the Stanza della Segnatura (see Figure 4.2), it was painted soon after the defeated pope returned to Rome on June 26, 1511, and completed by midAugust 1511 (Shearman 2004: 1:148–9). The subject matter of this painting and others in the Stanza arose as a result of the military losses in Romagna that also prompted Julius II’s beard. The original plan was for the south wall to show the theme of jurisprudence through apocalyptic scenes that, after the disastrous defeats papal forces had suffered, no longer seemed appropriate (Shearman 1965: 158–80; Cornini 1993: 243–4). The revised program was painted with the aid of the Venetian-trained painter Lorenzo Lotto, known for his skilled use of color. As Arnold Nesselrath has argued, Lotto was responsible in particular for painting the Justinian scene (Nesselrath 2000, 2004). The blue of Justinian’s robe is balanced by the sky behind the Virtues above and on the other side of the window by the luxurious blue-and-white patterned cope worn by Gregory IX—who in life detested facial hair on clergymen but was here represented with the bearded features of Julius II. Lotto was partial to blue, which covers expanses of the Stanza d’Eliodoro (the Vatican) ceiling attributed to him as well as his 1523–4 frescoes of the lives of saints Barbara and Brigid in the Suardi Oratorio in Trescore Balneario, Bergamo. In his 1546 will, he made special provision for his ultramarine pigments, to be made up and stored “with the prices written on them,” as well as the ground lapis lazuli mineral from which such pigments were made (Humfrey 1997: 181; Nesselrath 2004: 737). Renaissance painters generally found blue an important color for depicting the dress of their most important religious figures (see Kirby, Mancall, and Frick,

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FIGURE 4.2  Raphael, Gregory IX Approving the Decretals of Canon Law, 1511. Fresco. Stanza della Segnatura, Vatican Museums. Photograph by Marie-Lan Nguyen. © Wikimedia Commons.

this volume)—above all the Virgin Mary. By the late fourteenth century, the color blue was so closely associated with the Madonna that Cennino Cennini’s handbook instructs painters “to make a mantle for Our Lady […] solid blue” (Cennini 1960: 55). Mosche Barasch has suggested that one reason for Mary’s association with blue, despite the absence of any reason based in period liturgy or religious text, was a Renaissance humanist convention, articulated in the late sixteenth-century writings of Coronato Occolti and others, that connected that

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color with the elevation of mind and faithfulness (Barasch 1987: 137–50, 144). Another reason was material: lapis lazuli, the semi-precious stone from which the richest blue was made, was itself expensive, mined in far-off Afghanistan or Turkey, and labor-intensive to prepare for painting (Ruscelli 1555; Plesters 1993: 66; Ballirano and Maras 2006). As Michael Baxandall signaled in a classic essay, paintings materially registered the deep religious devotion to the Madonna by using the most expensive pigment to paint her (Baxandall [1972] 1988: 82). One- or two-florin blues were different grades of ultramarine blue (which, as we have seen, Lorenzo Lotto stored separately), produced through the first two successive extractions from the precious lapis lazuli; the third and final extraction produced an even cheaper—but still expensive—pale glazing pigment (Ruscelli 1555: 270). Thus the highest possible quality of the blue pigment Cennino Cennini had called “illustrious, beautiful, and most perfect, beyond all other colors” was used by Starnina and many other Renaissance painters to depict the Virgin Mary (Cennini 1960: 36). Papal projects in the Vatican Palace also featured ultramarine blue. Fra Angelico’s Chapel of Nicholas V (c. 1450) used blue pigment made from lapis lazuli in addition to the more common azurite blue (Giantomassi and Zari 1999: 100). In the Sistine Chapel’s vast Last Judgment (completed 1541)— though not on the earlier ceiling frescoes for which the painter was responsible for providing the pigments—Michelangelo painted in ultramarine blue both in the traditional buon fresco technique and also a secco once the plaster had dried (Colalucci 1997: 193–4; Mancinelli 1997: 166; Ballirano and Maras 2006). It is thus no surprise that Raphael also used lapis lazuli in his frescoes for Julius II in the Stanza della Segnatura, the young painter’s first papal commission (Guidi 1996: 28–31; Nesselrath 1996: 19–20; Hoeniger 2010: 86). On the Jurisprudence wall of that room, the bearded figure of Julius II as Gregory IX accepting the decretals is not only painted in a rich blue color but is depicted wearing a green-lined, blue-and-white pluvial of the highest luxury. This long cape-like garment is painted to have a rich gold-and-white orphrey (piece of detailed embroidery), patterned with papal insignia, as well as the della Rovere family oak tree stemma on a blue shield (Mayer-Thurman 1975: 30; Noonan 2012: 190; Miller 2014: 249). The pluvial’s semi-circular body appears to be made from voided and brocaded velvet, pile-on-pile cut with silk and gold-wrapped threads, similar to late fifteenth-century textiles now in various collections (see Plate 4.1) (Johnstone 2002: 61, 157; Monnas 2008: 26). As Rembrandt Duits has noted, Renaissance painted depictions of gold brocades were more often “fictive fabric” rather than exact documentation of extant textiles (Duits 2008: 17). Nonetheless, Raphael unerringly calls to mind the gorgeous textiles decorated with gold pomegranate patterns often used in Renaissance ecclesiastical vestments, such as Pope Nicholas V’s cope now in the National Museum of the Bargello, Florence (Monnas 2008: 10),

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and he embellished the gold lobular design of his painted velvet with golden acorns, symbols of the della Rovere family. The pluvial Raphael painted in Gregory IX Accepting the Decretals, like the well-documented vestments Pope Sixtus IV gave to the Basilica di Sant’Antonio, Padua, in the mid-1480s, thus features della Rovere symbols woven into the garment’s very fabric (Monnas 1983; 2008: 18, 55). Raphael’s Portrait of Julius II, now in London, originally included blue-andgold fabric quite similar in color scheme and insignia to the pluvial painted just before in orphrey, as a cloth of honor hanging behind the seated figure of the pope. Technical analyses demonstrate that an unfinished state of the painting included a background with pale blue teardrops containing three repeating motifs on a darker blue background: gold crossed keys, gold papal tiaras, and possibly, golden oak trees referring to Julius’s family, the della Rovere (Dunkerton and Roy 2004: 759). The more coherent aesthetic effect of the painting with the green background is undeniable. It is also possible to argue further that the dramatic change in Julius II’s portrait had another motivation: a large-scale change in the picture to reflect the pope’s recent military and health setbacks. In the case of the London portrait, Raphael’s new background covered the unfinished blue and gold, one that triumphantly celebrated the papacy and the pope’s family. This decision changed the tone of the portrait, just as the contemporaneous decision to redesign the south wall of the Stanza della Segnatura from the planned apocalyptic theme to one featuring, on either side of the window, canonical and civil jurisprudence, and in the lunette, the cardinal and the Theological Virtues (Shearman 1965). Rather than appearing against luxurious blue marked with gleaming gold symbols of papal and familial majesty, the completed London portrait envelopes the penitent white-bearded pope in green, the color of the Theological Virtue of Hope. Thus the portrait shows Julius II clothed and framed by the same symbolic colors as Raphael’s allegorical figure of Theology on the ceiling of the Stanza della Segnatura: white, green, and red.

CELEBRATION: FESTIVE COLOR This section focuses on how color is festive, a vital means of marking and celebrating special times in the Renaissance liturgical calendar across Catholic Europe and beyond. A sophisticated example is Jan and Hubert van Eyck’s Ghent Altarpiece of 1432 (see Figure 4.3), whose internal scenes, including the central Adoration of the Lamb and figure of God the Father, have long been lauded as virtuoso displays of the brilliant color made possible by pigments suspended in translucent oils. When the altarpiece is closed, these deep, rich hues are unseen, covered by external scenes that demonstrate the subtle but rich possibilities of a restricted palette. The top register has four round-topped

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FIGURE 4.3  Jan and Hubert van Eyck, Adoration of the Mystic Lamb (The Ghent Altapiece), 1432. Closed state. Oil on panel. © Wikimedia Commons.

panels depicting prophets and sibyls; the bottom register presents portraits of the donors, Ghent’s mayor Joos Vijd and his wife Elisabeth Borluut, flanking fictive stone sculptures of Ghent’s patron St. John the Baptist, and John the Evangelist, all in stone niches. In the middle register, four panels show the angel of the Annunciation at the extreme left and Mary receiving the Holy Ghost at the extreme right, with scenes of an arcade window near Gabriel and an interior Gothic niche hung with a bronze lavabo (a bowl for the ritual

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washing of hands) and a towel closer to Mary. Only the two central panels at the bottom with the two St. Johns could truly be called grisaille—or, to use the period term, “stone-colored” (color lapidum) (Borchert 2009–2010: 239–53). The painter clearly intends these two figures to be understood as illusions of sculpture: they stand on (painted) hexagonal pedestals, cast (painted) shadows, and fill their (painted) stone niches as sculptures would. In contrast, the human patrons in the niches beside them are painted in a partial grisaille with Vijd dressed in muted red, green, and brown. The donors’ heads and clasped hands are given warm flesh tones that contrast distinctly with the cooler stone shades of the two St. Johns, the colonnettes, trefoils, and spandrels of all four niches in the bottom register. Similarly, the prophets and sibyls in the top register are not depicted as representations in pure stone, though they are painted in an even more restrained “partial polychromy” dominated by white, brown, and green (Chapius 2009–2010: 261–6). The Annunciation scene in the middle register shows both Gabriel and Mary in voluminous ivory drapery, and even if the angel’s wings feature gorgeous hues from pale rose to spring green, they likewise eschew brilliant color. The painter’s skill at painting details, including gleaming pearls and sapphires, soft fur, and human flesh, is revealed in details throughout the exterior panels but without the extraordinarily vivid palette—glowing golds, greens, reds, blues, and more—that characterize the interior. The experience of color mediated by the winged altarpieces (of which the Ghent Altarpiece is a supreme exemplar) being opened or closed was therefore part of the rich choreography of religious ritual, both liturgical and para-liturgical (Williamson 2004: 380–1) (see Figure 4.3). The liturgical seasons that dictated the opening of such winged altarpieces to celebrate various festive holy days also prescribed the colors of the church’s paramenta, or set of liturgical textiles including hangings for the altar and vestments for the celebrants (Shearman 1972: 5) Traditional conventions about seasonal colors for these textiles had been set in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries by Innocent III and Durandus, whose writings were widely disseminated through many Renaissance printed editions and expanded in the sixteenth century.1 Generally, a color was associated with a particular festive season, with white textiles for Christmas or Easter seasons and Marian feasts; red for Palm Sunday, Good Friday, and Pentecost Sunday as well as feasts of the apostles, angels, and martyrs; black or violet for Lent and Advent; and green for ordinary days and seasons (Mayer-Thurman 1975: 13–14; Suntrup 1992, 2009). But there were many interpretive nuances as well as various local customs (Cancellieri 1788: 14). Pope Pius V’s 1570 bull Quo primum sought to establish a unified Catholic rite based on liturgical practices in Rome. The Roman Missal published that year put forth white as the liturgical color for holidays, including Trinity

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Sunday, feasts related to the Virgin Mary, and the birthday of John the Baptist; red was for Pentecost, the finding of the Holy Cross, feasts of the Apostles, and so forth; green for the period between Epiphany and the Sunday before Easter, and between Trinity Sunday and Advent; violet for Advent, the period between the Sunday before Easter and Maundy Thursday; and black for requiem masses and Good Friday mass, among other occasions (Braun 1907: 728–9; Sodi and Triacca 1998). But even this important Tridentine effort at standardization permitted long-standing local customs that diverged from Roman rites, and some Tridentine reforms of ecclesiastical garb in this period had nothing to do with color (Johnstone 2002: 10–11).2 New traditions related to liturgical color were being developed outside of the Catholic Church. In Protestant England, King Henry VIII attended Anglican mass on “days of estate” wearing purple robes—a royal color but without a crown—on Easter, Whitsunday, All Saints or All Hallows, and Christmas Day; he wore crimson robes and a cap of estate on the feast of the Circumcision, Candlemas, the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, the Assumption, and Holy Rood Day (Hayward 2007a: 140–1; Monnas 2008: 325–6). Even in Catholic Europe, local customs could be complex. The Capilla Real in Madrid’s Alcázar was consecrated in 1434, but rebuilt in the 1540s by Alonso de Covarrubias (1488–1570) in the very center of the palace, the “true heart” (verdadero corazón) of the court’s devotional rituals (Gérard 1983, 1984; Checa 1994; Nelson 2000; Castaño Perea 2013; Alonso Ruiz 2014). Liturgy in the Capilla Real had followed Burgundian rites as part of the Franco-Flemish heritage, but under Philip II the palace household expanded to include a layer of administration guided by Castilian traditions, and in 1546 rites in the Capilla Real were changed to follow the use of Rome (Gérard 1983: 277–8; Martínez Millán 2000; Alonso Ruiz 2014: 337). By the end of the sixteenth century, a Roman visitor to the Spanish court would note that the Capilla Real was “adorned with the most beautiful tapestries […] which were changed according to the season”—that is, according to the seasonal liturgical colors set by Rome (Morel-Fatio 1878: 189). A remarkable document written in 1561, during the Council of Trent, gives us a snapshot of the practical aspects of dressing a church in seasonal colors and the dominance of local prerogatives (Guidotti 1983: 131–56). A Camaldolese monk (belonging to a branch of the Benedictine order) named Francesco da Perugia wrote a much-used manual for how and when to hang the paramenta in the Florentine church of Santa Maria degli Angeli. Much more detailed than the sixteenth-century list of colors and feast days for Kloster Eberbach in Rheingau (Braun 1907: 738–9), this manuscript, made so the sacristan could know when to hang what and find it “without too much effort,” replaced a similar book that had been damaged in a flood four years earlier (Guidotti 1983: 131). The 34-leaf manual gave practical tips as to how to keep the inevitable dust from the

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tapestries from coating reliquaries and other textiles nearby, and is eminently pragmatic, at one point addressing a debate by stating: “Some want one color and some another; I say this,” before giving a precise prescription (148). The manuscript also used marginal (and now much abraded) capital letters to key a list of textiles with specific feast days, so that the correct textiles, described by color, fabric type, decorative motif, and at times age (“new” or, once, “old”), would be hung on each occasion. Looking at the text, it is striking that Francesco chose to annotate five colors with letters: white or gold (A), red (E), blue (O), green (I), and black (V). Even if we take azzurro (blue) as the local alternative to the violet (violaceo) that had been canonical since Innocent III’s time, the correspondence between textile color and holiday indicated by Francesco’s manual does not conform to general guidelines, including those used at Kloster Eberbach. Instead, for example, the Assumption of the Virgin is given blue hangings rather than white—perhaps an indication of how the ubiquitous use of blue for painting the Madonna’s cloak spread in Florence to the color of liturgical hangings for Marian feasts.

ACTIVATION: COLOR AND AGENCY A small carpet now in New York (see Plate 4.3) gives a sense of the appearance of Spanish prayer rugs made for the Islamic communities there before the expulsion of Muslims by the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, Isabella and Ferdinand, in 1492. Like Islamic prayer rugs in general, this one is colorful, non-figural, and asymmetrical in design so as to be able to point towards Mecca during prayer (Spurr 2003). This pile-woven rug is made using lac-dyed red silk warps and wefts with knots in white cotton and variously colored wools (Denny 2014: 45–7). Its central design is an exquisite rendering of three arches, the outer two pointed at the top and filled with red pile, and the middle one round-headed, enclosing a green-pile background. This middle arch seems to be supported by two pairs of slim double columns, and from its apex a colored-glass oil lamp, a symbol of the divine, seems suspended from three thin chains, orange flames visible above the lamp’s neck. The extensive floral decoration—from the sprays of tulips and carnations at the foot of each arch to the stylized rosettes and palmettes, interspersed with smaller leaves and white flowers, in the pale-blue border—may be an especially rich example of a common motif in Islamic art, flowers providing a visual reference to Paradise (Mount Holyoke College Art Museum 1980; Boyar and Fleet 2010: 222). However, the coupled colonnettes, with their closely observed details of faceted bases and leafy Corinthian capitals, point quite specifically to the Andalusian architecture of southern Spain. While the rug seems to have been designed in the court of Ottoman sultan Murad II (r.1542–95) in Istanbul, it was woven by master craftsmen who, like the Egyptian weavers ordered to come to Murad’s court in the 1580s, were trained

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to use dyes, wools, and techniques from Cairo (Denny 2014: 45–7). Spanish Jews, who together with Spanish Muslims were forced to leave Spain in 1492, likely brought an understanding of Andalusian architectural motifs, such as the coupled colonnettes, to Murad’s court, making the creation of the rug a transMediterranean, cosmopolitan effort. Muslims in Spain before 1492, like their later Ottoman counterparts, would use prayer rugs to make special—and richly colored—places to pray. While communal prayer in a mosque was important, daily prayer in any purified place elevated by “some cultural artefact” such as (but not necessarily) a prayer rug was widespread.3 As Minoo Moallem notes, “The prayer rug territorializes prayer by creating a material boundary between the sacred and the profane” (Moallem 2014). Even more, by simultaneously orienting their colorful rugs on the ground facing towards Mecca, Muslims became active agents in the production of a social ritual space, perhaps discontinuous and dispersed in comparison to the shared mosque space, but just as important. This section explores how color activates religious practice, allowing not only Muslims but also Jews and Christians to engage actively with religious rituals, texts, and images during the Renaissance. Just as colorful rugs marked off special places for prayer from the profane world for Muslims, the colorful embellishment of a black-on-white text itself could be an act of devotion. Jewish communities had specific times to work, rest, feast, fast, or pray that were different from those of the Christians who largely surrounded them in Europe (Carlebach 2011: 1). Sifre evronot (books of intercalation) are Jewish manuals used to calculate the Jewish calendar that were widely disseminated during the Renaissance. These books were important in indicating Christian holidays that impacted Jewish life, such as days on which Christians could do no business. The opening words of the Sifre evronot speak to the sacred nature of the calculation of time: “The Holy One, blessed by He, has commanded [us to study] the reckoning of seasons, constellations, and conjunctions” (72). The very first word in the Hebrew sentence, tziva (He commanded) speaks of a directive from God, and is the most commonly ornamented opening word of sifre evronot. A 1552 exemplar shows how that word is ornamented with floral swashes and carefully colored in red, orange, and green, using size, form, and color to contrast it with the rest of the text presented in small, black letters (New York, Jewish Theological Seminary of America, MS 9487). This colorful embellishment enhanced the fulfillment of the command given in the word tziva. German Jew Pinhas ben Abraham Sega of Halberstadt described illustrating a sefer evronot “in pleasing color as beautifying God.” The act of using “pleasing color” was thus a devotional act, in Pinhas’s words, like “build[ing] a beautiful sukkah [temporary tabernacle]” (Carlebach 2011: 80).

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Color marked special words in Christian books as well, and the name for such marking, rubrication from rubrica, a Latin word for a red pigment, indicates its most usual color (Saenger 1997: 170; Smith 2010: 197).4 Rubrication had long been used in medieval manuscripts to indicate the word of God, to set off holy “red letter days,” as well as to highlight the paratextual titles and chapter headings known as “rubrics.” The emergence of printing in Europe in the second half of the fifteenth century led to a period in which the functions of rubrication were first explored and finally replaced by black printed elements, so that sixteenth-century books “became monochrome and fully functional in black and white” (Smith 1990, 2010: 188; British Library n.d.). A late fifteenth-century volume made before the fully monochrome book became widespread, in which three manuscripts and two printed texts were bound together to form “a concise curriculum [of the Doctors of the Church] for the fifteenth-century theologian or priest,” demonstrates the various uses of rubrication (Bridwell Library n.d.). On the pre-1493 manuscript leaf on the left side of this opening (see Plate 4.4), the end of the Exhortatio poenitendi, a text often attributed to St. Isidore of Seville, the rubricator has used nine vertical strokes and one horizontal one to mark through initial letters. These ten words are embedded in a text block with minimal spaces or breaks between words, implying an expectation of vocalized rather than silent reading (Saenger 1997: 6–51). These red initial strikethroughs indicate the first words of what are printed as distinct lines of text in Jacques-Paul Migne’s Patrologia Latina (1841–55), using color to indicate what later printed books such as Migne’s would do via spacing. The facing page, the beginning of Pseudo-Augustine’s De contritione cordis in its Basel pre-1490 printed edition, demonstrates other functions of rubrication. An eye-catching, ornate red initial “n” serves to mark the beginning of the new chapter’s first word with colorful impact. The printer had left room for this seven-line-high manuscript addition, and had indicated the proper letter to be added with a small printed “n” that is still clearly visible. A series of red scallops are drawn in to fill the black space after the printed period in the first subtitle. A red manuscript pilcrow (paragraph mark) indicates the beginning of the title, subtitles, and first chapter heading, the texts of which are all underlined by hand in red as well. In the text proper, a red pilcrow is also written in the spaces between sentences, the first letter of which also has a short vertical stroke through its initial letter, like the initial strikethroughs in the rubrication in the Exhortatio poenitendi.5 It is clear that the rubrication on these two pages performed quite different tasks, nonetheless sharing what Michael Baxandall (1985) might call a common charge: to break down the marked text to make it easier to understand, or in Margaret Smith’s words, to set up a “textual articulation […] the system within a book that signals to the reader the structure of the text and the relationships

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of parts of a text to each other” (Smith 2010: 187–8). The rubricator was also a reader, and his marking of the text with red ink indexed not only his physical engagement with the pages but also his own devotional and intellectual parsing of that text. In her study of seven rubricated copies of De morali lepra (printed by Ulrich Zel, Cologne, 1470) by the Dominican theologian and reformer Johannes Nider, Smith was able to demonstrate that rubrication occurred after the printed pages had left Zel’s printing house, and that each individual rubricator “had somewhat personal understandings of their responsibilities” as to how to mark the text (Smith 2010: 196). These “personal understandings” reveal the rubricators’ diverse and individual responses to a single printed text. A mid-fifteenth-century woodcut, now in Berlin, shows how deeply devotional a rubricator’s activity could be. The print shows a Crucifixion scene with Christ suspended on the cross at center, with the Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene, and John the Evangelist to the left of the cross and Nicodemus on the right. The woodcut, printed in black ink, was colored by hand, which was not unusual for Renaissance prints (Dackerman 2002). What is unusual is the close visual attention given to Christ’s blood, applied first as orange-red pigment streaming from Christ’s side wound and nail-pierced hands and feet, and then in minute strokes of brighter red repeated all across Christ’s lacerated body. These small marks, which avoid the broader strokes of orange-red and so likely were added later, each have a round dot-like body with thin, trailing tail. Perhaps this pictorial scheme is used to represent a puncture wound oozing a trail of blood. They also recall punctuation marks that would have been familiar to scribes and rubricators, such as the comma, or as John Palgrave, a priest in Henry VIII’s court, called it, the virgula (Palgrave 1530: 39). Indeed, art historian David Areford points out that these repetitive strokes of “this particular red pigment […] [is] ink of the same color […] used by a scribe for the writing of rubrics” (2010: 53). Areford convincingly links the meticulous strokes of red on this woodcut and others to meditations on the number of wounds and drops of blood shed by Christ during his Passion: some devotional formulae calculated 5,475 wounds and 547,500 drops of blood. An English devotional manuscript (Figure 4.3) makes these private meditations shockingly palpable to us even more than half a millennium after its making: five pairs of facing pages within the volume are entirely colored red edge to edge and marked with deeper red strokes. Three surviving openings are given no further text or other decoration, just the dripping red strokes against the reddened vellum pages (Parshall and Schoch 2005–2006: 185–8, cat. no. 49; Areford 2010: 76–90). One imagines this draftsman, truly a rubricator, counting off Christ’s wounds methodically, making mark after mark as his—or perhaps her—own fist, dragged across the colored vellum as s/he worked, grew red as well (Thebaut 2009: 178, 181).

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FIGURE 4.4  Devotional Book with verses from the Rosary. Manuscript, handcoloring, with woodcuts. English, c. 1490. Egerton MS 1821, fols 6v–7r. © British Library, London.

CONCLUSION: CHANGING COLORS, CHANGING IDENTITY Colors identify people, if not usually as viscerally as the English rubricator’s reddened writing hand marked her as a devout person. More usually, as other chapters in this volume demonstrate, clothes really did make the Renaissance man—and woman—after the mid-fourteenth century, when more colorfast dyes became available (see Kirby, Mancall, and Frick, this volume). This was especially true of members of the clergy, whose orders were characterized by garments of particular colors (Jones and Stallybrass 2000; Elliot 2004: 56–8; Warr 2010: 57–8). Since Durandus, the taking of sacred orders has been a literal reclothing of an individual in the colors appropriate to their new status (Elliot 2004: 58–9). A girl cast off her secular garments in the public clothing ceremony when she entered a convent; when she made her solemn vows to become a professed nun, she ritually removed her novitiate’s dress and replaced it with robes of her order’s colors (Reardon 2002: 50–2; Twomey 2013: 149– 51). A cleric on the reverse trajectory—officially leaving the church—was also ritually unclothed: an unrepentant heretical priest being “defrocked” began the ceremony fully dressed in all his distinctively colored vestments and then was stripped of them by the bishop, one by one (Elliot 2004: 60–2). Finally, while the immense issue of color and religion in the early modern transatlantic world is clearly beyond the scope of this article, it is worth noting that Jesuit efforts at converting non-Christians across the globe also called on this practice. Portuguese Jesuits in missionary complexes in the Brazilian countryside were

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struck by the spectacularly colored feathered capes made and used by the Tupi communities in indigenous rituals, and after 1500 also as a commodity for trading with Europeans (Buono 2007; Françozo 2012). In 1557, Jesuit António Blázquez described six Tupi women in one such ritual: From head to feet they were covered with red feathers. On their heads they wore carochas [Inquisition-like caps] of yellow feathers. On their backs they wore an armful of feathers that appeared like a horse’s mane. (Blázquez 1557, quoted in Buono 2015: 183) In this very ornamentation, “their backs painted and full of parrot feathers, the same ones they used to construct their capes for these ceremonies,” Blázquez and his fellow Jesuits “put them in a circle […] taught them to comprehend the baptism […] [and] baptized them” (Blázquez 1557, quoted in Buono 2015: 178–9). As Amy Buono points out, “The inhabitants […] were thus baptized while attired in their own feathered adornments, an exemplary demonstration of the accommodation of feathers in the new Jesuit Christian complex of colonial Brazil” (Buono 2015: 183). Thus, like the Catholic girl starting the ritual to become a novitiate in her own secular dress, these Tupi women began their baptism into the Renaissance Catholic Church wearing their own brilliantly colored garb.

CHAPTER FIVE

Body and Clothing CAROLE FRICK

INTRODUCTION During the period of the European Renaissance from Italy to England, color in clothing, textiles, and cosmetics differentiated heiresses from laundresses, and masons from monks, as the most commanding hues were not open to all, regulated by sumptuary law. The colors of ones’ clothes, jewelry, and even one’s face and hair visually communicated a multivalent code to all viewers, a code expressive of contemporary practices and values. As Jacques le Goff has written, such a sign system is a fundamental symbolic reference to status and situation, and in a display culture where it was said that cloth and color makes an honorable man, the transformative power of rich dress could turn a Cinderella into a princess, a pauper into a prince (Le Goff 1985). The most coveted, intensely colored clothes in the period 1450–1650 came from the textiles infused with the most expensive dyes—and as a result, crimson, red violets, blue violets, and purples carried with them an association with luxury. Clothing colors tied everyone together in the European economy of textiles and conveyed much about the wearer; textile colors set the overall tone for court and communal events. To be considered properly dressed meant covering the head, so headwear color matched the hue of cloak or mantle for those who could afford it. In Europe, clear, light-colored skin with a hint of pink color in the cheeks, red lips, fair hair, curly or braided, and well-defined dark eyebrows, was the basic color aesthetic that was thought evidence of a healthy, balanced constitution (Snook 2011: 2). A close-up detail of Botticelli’s painting of Venus shows the classic European color palette of youthful beauty

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(see Plate 5.1). Highlighting these colors of clothing and body, of course, was the color of gold, in the Botticelli, a small golden head brooch the woman’s only decoration. But most fully articulated ensembles were freighted with inherited jewelry (pearls, brooches, necklaces, chains, belts, and paternosters prominent among ruling families) and the elaborate accoutrements of office for high prelates of the church. The portraits of the period demonstrate the power of the combination of textile hue and gold decoration (with pearls added for women) on the central figure, while ancillary attending figures fade into a homogeneous background of relative visual insignificance.

SYMBOLIC COLOR IN CLOTHING By the mid-fifteenth century, any overall symbolism that had been associated with specific colors in secular clothing had been overshadowed by marketplace considerations—the cost of dyestuffs trumping abstract meaning (Levi-Pizetsky 1978: 64–5; see also Pon, this volume). In the period from 1450–1650, only in uniforms—political, ecclesiastical, or social—was color frozen in a symbolic way, uniforms being the end-stop of style. Dressing as part of a group ossified color into visually identifiable cohorts; lawyers in their black cloaks, ecclesiastical colors for various positions and orders, members of lay religious confraternities moving as one in matching hooded robes of symbolic color (white sackcloth denoting humble flagellants, or black those serving in burial groups) (Weissman 1982: 82–4). Group identification was important for widows as well, and so in general widows wore a rude, plain-black wool uniform, the frozen “widows weeds,” for as long as the latest sumptuary legislation dictated, as well as an unbleached (gray) linen veil with the “widow’s mark” of one horizontal black stripe. But a widow’s cloak could also be fashioned of monachino, a dull hue of dark brown red. Yardage distributed for funerary wear was often simply designated as “dark” and could include deep shades of brown along with the black (Luzio and Renier 1896: 459–60).1

TEXTILES Before 1500, almost all washable clothing, including undergarments and sleepwear, were made of pale linen. For royals and nobles white silk could also be worn. The most expensive linen, produced in the northern French city of Rheims, was considered the finest, as evidenced by the veils, collars, ruffs, cuffs, and chemises seen in the ensembles displayed by those sitting for the portraits of the time. Already in the mid-fourteenth century in trade with the Levant— French, German, or Italian linen fetched 8–12 ducats per hundred pieces, while the finely worked white linen from Rheims sold for an impressive 30–40 ducats (Ashtor 2014: 155).

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FIGURE 5.1  Titian, La Bella, c. 1536. © Galleria Palatina, Palazzo Pitti, Florence; Scala/Art Resource, New York.

Titian painted these linens to be visible as part of La Bella’s rich velvet ensemble from 1536 (Figure 5.1). Here we can see the sitter’s chemise of fine white linen at the neckline, cuffs, and coyly puffing out from the slashed blue velvet sleeves. However, beginning in the time of Elizabeth I and continuing forward, the linens that made the new starched ruffs could also be tinted pinkish, yellowish, or bluish, enhancing the overall ensemble. For the highest grades of wool, the preferred colors for the rich were black and red, the dominant colors of power. For silk and silk-based textiles, dyers eventually were to produce an enormous array of colors, especially pastels, during this internationalizing period, many of which had evocative, fanciful names. The most expensive silk, satin, velvet, and brocaded fabrics, such as cloth-of-gold, had metallic threads of silver or gold woven into or brocaded onto them. Rich public display ensembles were often of crimson silk or multipile velvet, brocaded over with gold. At the court of Henry VIII, as seen in the portraits of the time, gold and red was the color combination for the most luxurious costumes. European society became more strictly hierarchical in the

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late sixteenth century as marriage alliances were made between countries, and cloth-of-gold became dominant for sovereigns, male and female alike.

COLORS OF THE RULING RANKS In the constantly competitive, appearance-conscious society that was Renaissance Europe, people of rank looked to distinguish themselves by means of their calculated statements of dress. Machiavelli had written on what could be seen as the basis for this sartorial anxiety when he wrote, “Strip us totally nude and you would see us as equal; re-dress us in your clothes and you in ours, and we would without a doubt, seem noble and you base; because only poverty or riches makes us unequal” (Machiavelli 1965: 182). Ambitious men (and a few exceptional women) were concerned to eschew the limitations of undifferentiated clothing and the tacit agreement to act in accordance with the rules of the group (Langner 1959: 132). On the street, men in political positions wore plain woolen cloaks or mantles of fine crimson or black. These were overgarments that concealed more individualized ensembles beneath. Once indoors, details of tailoring and color of hose revealed one’s fashion sense. This allowed important personae to be visually part of the group while out in public but to display their own personal flair in more private settings. Europeans took the opportunity to border, face, and line their ensembles with strikingly contrasting colors; gold with turquoise, black and gold with white, orange with white, yellow with red, green with crimson, tawny yellow with red violet, and scarlet with ashen gray, achieving varied combinations of gowns and linings. For the period c. 1510–80, the “display” codpiece for men offered a further bold juxtaposition with the main outfit, for example, a white satin codpiece with a black velvet doublet (Frick 2011: 158–62). The bodices of women’s gowns could also contrast wildly with attached sleeves; for example, an orange bodice worn with red-and-green striped sleeves. Again, however, one must keep in mind that the colors that would have been visible on the street, at private family gatherings, or on a quotidian basis, were not necessarily what has been preserved visually in the artwork from the period. Portraits were formal events meant to immortalize people for their lineage and therefore required extremely formal attire. One thinks of the group portrait after Holbein from c. 1545 by an unknown artist that was thought to have hung at Whitehall Palace during the reign of Henry VIII. In this state portrait, all ensembles are of a similar color palette in crimson and gold, the richest silk textiles brocaded and lined, and decorated with golden accoutrements. Everything is meant to convey the continuity of Tudor power. This is not dress, per se. It is a visual performance with a legacy in mind. However, the images that have lasted have been influential on how we assign meaning to color and have contributed to our associational memory with hue.

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WEDDING ENSEMBLES For Renaissance families of the upper ranks, it was the nubile women who were dressed the most colorfully when sitting for portraits or being on display at a family event. For example, in Lavinia Fontana’s full-length Bolognese Portrait of a Noblewoman (c. 1580) the sitter, shown in a three-quarters view, wears an elaborate wedding ensemble of figured and flowered crimson in silk brocade, which displays the most expensive kermes dyestuff (see Plate 5.2). The underdress has a ruffed and lace-edged collar of finely worked linen, while her striped sleeves are of orange and cream. Ensembles such as these were part of a woman’s trousseau or her groom’s counter-trousseau and were essentially wedding dresses. Unlike ours, however, the only white visible would have been the collar and cuffs of the chemise, or often the luxurious addition of lustrous pearls, the most popular jewelry choice of the era for women. In the 1550s, Diane de Poitier was adorned with multiple strands of pearls accenting her crimson gowns in her portraits by Clouet and others, pearls paramount even in those images in which she embodied a goddess in the nude, all for the delectation of her paramour Henry II.

HIERARCHY OF REDS In fifteenth-century Europe, crimson (kermes) was the costliest dyestuff (made from the tiny desiccated bodies of pregnant kermes shield-lice, found in the Caucasus and India), followed by grana (the less expensive Mediterranean cousin of kermes that produced a slightly less intense shade of red). Both of these required three dips in the dyers’ vats to obtain the desired saturated color. Saturated colors for the upper ranks commanded attention, as they turned heads, signifying wealth. Therefore, it has been recorded not only on men but also on young women of rich families in the profile portraits that advertised their marriage alliance availability, as we have seen. For men at the highest political level, kermes was ubiquitous as well. Il Dizionario Tommaseo notes that in an Italian embassy to the Pope, the eight ambassadors were vestiti di cremisi, that is, in clothes colored with the highest-quality, imported deep-red kermes dye, while their entourage of seventy-two other men was clothed di rosato, indicating a more rose-red hue created by grana (Frick 2002: ch. 4, n23).2 And so, reds in textiles and clothing were definitely not created equal. In diaries and family log books, now kept in archival collections across Europe, families of means were quick to specify which red they were referring to in describing their clothes. Often, textiles were identified simply by their dyestuff, so one sees a conflation of fabric and dye terms in wardrobe inventories and log books.3 The wealthy with the means to indulge in the language of fashion developed a subtle

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yet rigid visual hierarchy of strong red hues, with crimson and rose (sometimes seen as “carmine” after the active agent of carminic acid in the dyestuff) at the summit. Kermes was the pinnacle hue tending towards rich red violet. It was the most expensive coloring agent and never wasted on inferior cloth. The Coccus illicis insect of which it was composed was increasingly expensive after the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453 closed the luxury trade to the East. The prized murex, a whelk (Murex brandaris or Purpura haemastoma) that created the “royal purple” had, in its best quality, been restricted to emperors and the highest ranks of society since the Roman Empire (Herald 1981: 212, 214; Munro 2007: 57). In between the ranks of kermes and grana reds was a third red, called “Lucca red,” another richly saturated hue. The town of Lucca, as early as the mid-fourteenth century, became the first silk-manufacturing center in Europe after it imported the mulberry trees upon which silk worms feed. The boiled cocoons provide silk strands that are then woven into luxury cloth (Mola 2000: 3, 14, 16). A less-prized red tending towards orange was vermilion, a dyestuff extracted from the wood of the sappanwood trees indigenous to India and Brazil and known in Europe as “brazilwood.” Also available was the red from the plantbased dyestuff called “orchil,” obtained from certain lichens. These colors were still pricey, about twice as expensive as neutral hues for dyeing silk, but were not worn in public as a rule by the most powerful men, as these hues signified an exuberance that undercut the gravitas in clothing that upper-class males thought was appropriate to display. This is evidenced in paintings from the period, family log books, and household wardrobe inventories. Rather, we see these orange reds used in the silk gowns of young noblewomen combined with darker reds, gold, cream, or white. Here, eye-catching orange red announces passionate female youth, and is therefore prevalent on gowns for Queen Elizabeth I of England even in her old age (Figure 5.2). Assigning a blanket designation to the color red, however, would be to ignore the complexities of European society. Context was critical. Red was the color of luxury in clothing but was also associated with usury and, of course, with the shedding of blood. Certain reds could mark prostitutes and, in some places, had identified Jews (Hughes 1986: 16).4 What one would notice to distinguish the deep crimson red of the outer clothing of the elites from these other reds was a modulation in hue along with the quality of the fabric so dyed. Whereas the bright red color of blood, marking usurer, prostitute, or the Jewish “outsider” has often been associated with aggressive passions (such as avarice, sex, anger, and love), the saturated crimson color created by kermes in contrast seems (at least to one color theorist) “to suggest a capacity for passion that, though deep and strong, is currently satisfied or dormant” (Lurie 1981: 196). This red would be appropriate for those securely ensconced in a position of power.

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FIGURE 5.2  Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger (attrib.), The Rainbow Portrait of Elizabeth of England, c. 1600. © Hatfield House, Hertfordshire; Bridgeman Images, New York.

OTHER PRIZED COLORS Another color associated with wealth and that was, therefore, desirable was deep purple blue (known as alessandrino in Italy) due to the costliness of the number of dyestuffs needed to make it (orchil, indigo, woad, and madder). Other hues were more elusive, especially the color pavonazzo that appears frequently in account books and inventories, but on which there is still no consensus among costume specialists. Pavonazzo has been identified alternately as peacock blue, peahen brown, red violet, blue violet, purple, and even “between blue and black” (Newton 1988: appendix C). For a discussion of the range of possibilities of this hue, see Oltrogge’s chapter in this volume. The author of this chapter reads pavonazzo as dark blue violet, evidenced by the fact that gowns of this hue listed in family log books are normally expensive formal overgowns, for which overly bright, dull, or homely hues would not have been appropriate; it was certainly not “peahen brown.” Indeed, Oltrogge writes that for four centuries, pavonazzo was the “color of luxury textiles.”

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POLYCHROMES And then there were the polychromes seen in creative attempts to describe fabrics and other materials of multiple hues and in-between colors in family log books and diaries. Renaissance high society specifically showed a penchant for changeable subtlety and differentiated between many combinations of hues, with dark golden-yellow “mustard,” a color called “speckled,” another named “marble,” and a smoky gray-blue color noted as sbiadato (Frick 2002: 176). In Italy, weavers developed cangiante (shot silk) made from silk strands of two contrasting colors for warp and weft on the loom, the most popular combinations being red and green, and blue and yellow, resulting in striking textiles in silk, satin, and taffeta. This shot silk can still be seen in the taffeta clothes favored in the paintings of Van Dyke for the court of Charles I, some two hundred years later (see Hall, this volume).

FIGURE 5.3  Lucas Cranach the Elder, double portrait of Duke Heinrichs des Frommen and his wife Katharina von Mecklenburg, 1514. Photograph by Hans Peter Klut. © Gemaeldegalerie Alte Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden; Art Resource, New York.

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SLASHING At the beginning of the sixteenth century, the many internecine wars of the era provided one bright spot for color. This was the fashion for slashing on garments. Originating among mercenaries whose clothing had been rent in battle, these exciting new possibilities for sartorial display were adopted in civilian dress. During and after the conflicts of the early 1500s, courtiers copied this look, as it gave them an opportunity to make visually available multiple layers of garments of different colors. In Cranach’s double portrait of Duke Heinrichs des Frommen and his wife, Katharina von Mecklenburg, from 1514, the taste for the dramatic possibilities of intricate color combinations of black, red, gold, and white can be seen (Figure 5.3). Proving the durability of this fashion, a slashed gold and cream ensemble is seen in an early portrait of James I of England by Adrian Vanson from 1585.

THE ASCENDANCY OF BLACK The societal status of the color red began to wane sometime after the conquest of the New World, when cheaper sources of the red dye traditionally used by indigenous Mesoamerican civilization entered the global early modern marketplace. This unexpected development brought an entirely new ecosystem of flora and fauna into the European realm and with it dyes, such as logwood and cochineal obtained from scale insects that had been used by the Aztec and Maya. These were less expensive dyes that would compete with the established European dyeing traditions, and their introduction provoked initial resistance from the silk guilds. Mexican cochineal, from one of Spain’s colonies in the New World, was deemed the most offensive, as it went head to head with kermes to produce the coveted crimson color, upsetting the existing hierarchy of colors by its low cost (Newton 1988: 120–8).5 Whereas kermes had been valued due to its high price, now one had essentially the same color on the cheap. In the mid-fifteenth century, black garments had made up the habits of clerics and the wardrobes of widows. Little girls shunted into convents carried black cloth with them to make their habits. Until the adoption of black as elegant by the Spanish court, very few overgarments (outside of some ecclesiastical garb) had been fashioned of black cloth. The one well-known secular exception was Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy (1396–1467), whose cultured court patronized artists, goldsmiths, and musicians. Rogier van der Weyden painted a miniature of the Duke, wearing all black, in c. 1447; however, other members of his court sport alessandrino blue, green, and purple. The most expensive, dense black dye used for both wool and silk, that is, the morello di grana, was only about half as expensive as kermes, thereby robbing it of any special cachet. Less expensive blacks were made from woad, a dyestuff known for its colorfast quality. As it had been (ironically) deemed an absence of color before 1450, in Venice, black was thought so inappropriate for a communal official that special permission had to be obtained to wear it while in office.6

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However, when Leonora of Aragon married Ercole d’Este of Ferrara in 1473, followed by the wedding of Isabella of Aragon to Gian Galeazzo Sforza of Milan, wearing the color black became more widespread, and associated with wealth and refinement. Lucrezia Borgia married into the house of Este in 1502, bringing with her some thirty black gowns (eleven of which were velvet), and the color black would become the standard by which court elites were judged (Beltrami 1903: 49–57). The practice of royalty and men of the uppermost ranks to wear black became de rigueur with the election of Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain Charles V in 1519 and was finally complete when Charles proclaimed himself King of Italy in the city of Bologna in 1530, after his German mercenary troops successfully sacked Rome in 1527. In Titian’s portrait of Charles V from 1548 (Figure 5.4), black had become

FIGURE 5.4  Titian, Portrait of Charles V, 1548. Photograph by Erich Lessing. © Alte Pinakothek, Munich; Art Resource, New York.

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the color of emperors and those of noble rank for their formal capi maschili, or portraits of state. Under the powerful Spaniards, the color black became bifurcated in dressing practices, reading as the height of secular elegance and power while also retaining its association with penitent clergy, mourning, and death. Perhaps this multivalent meaning lent gravitas, but it should also remind us of the mutability of color. For the clothing for the Spanish court in the sixteenth century, use of the finest wool, dyed with nero finissimo (the finest black) became the sine qua non of the era. As Italian noble families secured propitious marriage alliances with the hegemonic power of Spain in the sixteenth century, Spanish color choices were also favored for those at the highest ranks of power. Even though the famously arrogant Henry VIII deigned to wear the current fashion for black in clothing that had originated in Spain, his black was of silk velvet (with abundant gold trim), not wool, for formal ensembles. Even given the sobering effect of the Catholic Reformation following the Council of Trent, which began to reform the church after 1563, it is probably no accident that the color red lost pride of place for many at the apex of power in the sixteenth century, to be replaced by black as the most desirable hue. The now less expensive crimson could not keep up with the ascendancy of black, which would also be deemed appropriate for the outwardly pious. After all, Charles V was, as Holy Roman Emperor, considered Defender of the Faith in the Roman Church. Once in place, black achieved a certain international status in clothing that has little diminished over time.

CLERICAL HUES Thus, courtly and clerical modes of dress became intertwined. Clergy, of course, wore the distinctive habits of their particular order. Some orders spent more on clothes than others and, in fact, could come under sumptuary criticism from their own church administration. St. Antoninus voiced concern with the trend towards relatively luxurious black clothing among Dominican friars in his episcopal constitution of 1455. He reminded clergy that all elements of their vestments were to be humble; not be open in front, too short, nor trailing on the ground, and that jewelry, fur, silk, and fashionable doublets should have no place in their wardrobe (Rainey 1985: 547–8, 595). From the domestic records of Santissima Annunziata in Florence, it would seem that Antoninus’s dicta notwithstanding, some friars still dressed well; records show purchases of woad-dyed vestments of nero finissimo and nightshirts of fine linen, wool, and fur.7 Meanwhile, the humble Franciscans garbed themselves in the mean fabric of undyed (“gray”)

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linens and rough brown wool, going unshod in imitation of St. Francis and his symbolic renunciation of the world, or wearing humble brown sandals (Weissman 1982: 45). High church prelates at the northern courts, of course, sported the colors of their office; their ecclesiastical authority allowed them to wear the most expensive crimson, the same as nobility. Cardinal Wolsey in England was a large visual presence at the court of Henry VIII in a bright red mantle with golden accoutrements and matching cardinal’s cap with a large gold badge (Hayward 2007b: 19–21, 27). During the reign of Philip II of Spain, Cardinal Granvelle, in a mid-sixteenth-century portrait by Willem Key, can be seen seated and dressed in his ecclesiastical garb, the cardinal’s long red cape with center opening set off at his neck and sleeves by the thick white silk of his undergown (Trevor-Roper 1976: 112). Later in France, during the reign of Louis XIII, the powerful Cardinal Richelieu was known as “the Red Eminence” (l’Éminence rouge) for his luxurious, powerful crimson presence. For all three cardinals, the red in their dress was tempered by white silk satin, the color of white appropriately associated with purity (Phillips 1997: 113–14).

GROUP COLOR CODING Across Europe, sumptuary legislation regulated just what clothing, textile, and color was considered proper for various members of society, and for certain professions and stations in life. Liza Picard writes of the Proclamation of 1597 in Elizabethan England that: Only earls could wear cloth of gold, or purple silk. No one under the degree of knight was allowed silk “netherstocks” (long stockings) or velvet outer garments. A knight’s eldest son could wear velvet doublets and hose, but his younger brothers couldn’t. A baron’s eldest son’s wife could wear gold or silver lace, forbidden to women below her in the pecking order. (Picard 2016) Dressing as a group included kin groups displaying the colors of their lineage, while their servants and slaves acted as walking billboards for their masters, sporting the colors of family crests and shields on geometrically patterned hose (Laver 1966: 24).8 At court, young men and their mounts in the service of a patron wore his colors, as well as at family gatherings, during religious holidays, at weddings, and communal feast days. Families favored the colors associated with their lineage, and kinsmen and women, on public occasions, could dress “of a piece.” Legal records of a court case from a merchants’ court in 1456 mention eight “family” garments all of crimson taffeta, identified as grana, fringed and lined, for which a silk dealer was attempting to get

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paid.9 In family log books, we see cloth purchases for mother, father, and son, who would all have ensembles in dark golden yellow; a father and son in matching crimson; and a mother and two daughters in blue violet.10 One kin group ordered at least twelve gowns and overgowns of blue and white, the shades of blues recorded as azure and blue violet. Needless to say, these color combinations would not have been serendipitous, and logically could even visually pave the way back to family colors from maternal or paternal family stock. However, family colors did not adhere to any traditional symbolic message in clothing, save as a living embodiment of a family device: green and gold for one group, black and yellow for another, red and green for a third (Klapisch-Zuber 1984: 11–12, 21).

BLUES The aforementioned women dressed in blue and white, however, could have in this case displayed a duality in meaning, not simply family identification but also a more overt color symbolism; blue, traditionally signifying loyalty and the Virgin Mary, and white, purity (Gelli 1928: 378–9; Marchi 1992: 283, 311, 315). Here again—as we saw in the case of red, yellow, and black—blue, to be fully understood, depended upon context. Blue as a color in silk dress usually appeared in the attire of young women and pubescent boys (rarely adult males), becoming most popular in the early seventeenth century. But, as in Titian’s portrait of La Bella, this hue had one of the most salient of meanings: fidelity, appropriate for a young professional beauty, a dutiful son, or an obedient servant. In Van Dyke’s Lord John Stuart and his Brother, Lord Bernard Stuart of 1638, for example, luxuriously large capes and waistcoats, one of blue-andsilver taffeta and the other of black, lined with gold, highlighted with thick silk collars and slap-boots, communicated the tender age and relative natural mien of youth for the brothers, who were the youngest sons of the Duke of Lennox (see Plate 5.3). Beautiful hues of blue were made from the inexpensive and durable dyestuff woad, which made sky blue, a gray blue, a clear azure blue, and a mossy gray green.

COLORS OF THE WORKING RANKS Light blue, like brown, was often associated with the mean attire of the working ranks, a group composed of some 90 percent of the European population. Artisans and shopkeepers dressed themselves in belted tunics of undyed linen and rough woolen hose, with a soft cap on their heads. The gray of undyed wool or linen dominated their garb, and bright color was not part of their sartorial vocabulary (Frick 2002: 149). Therefore, they only appear briefly in this overview of clothing color. It was said that an entrepreneurial

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lecher could lure a pubescent girl into a life of prostitution with the promise of one red dress. For the poor, the color of red was faded in its potency as was the power of its wearers. Middling folk and people of the artisan ranks wore less expensive, lighter reds for their best clothes until they were worn out and patched. The names given to these still relatively expensive colors was usually written in the diminutive, as scarlattino or rosino, as though to note their lack of seriousness or intensity (Hoshino 1980: 290). Everyday garb was of rough woolen cloth (rash or serge), colored with an inexpensive, plant-based dye, which created relatively monochromatic neutrals; the colors of tan, light blue, faded red, and gray green. The color name of russet appears first in seventeenth-century England and is associated with the working ranks. In a 1643 letter to Sir William Spring, Oliver Cromwell wrote that he would “rather have a plain, russet-coated captain that knows what he fights for, and loves what he knows, [than a gentleman]” (Oxford Dictionary of Quotations 2014). Browns across the spectrum, from the dark-reddish russet to the lighter tawny, were associated with hard work, reliability, and also a resigned hopelessness (Snook 2011: 70).11

CHILDREN Young children’s clothes in general tended towards pastels in the washable fabrics of linen, cotton, and thin wool, especially for babies and toddlers, who wore long, collared gowns open in front until they were about two years of age. Children were deemed to have sinful natures similar to adults, St. Augustine writing that “evil establishes its dominion over the growing child” and that the innocence associated with childhood only comes from the “helplessness of their bodies, rather than any quality of soul” (quoted in Herlihy 1985: 27; see also Frick 2011: 1601–62). The color white, associated with purity, was most certainly appropriate for children, as clothing was thought to influence a child’s development. Parents could be hoping to inculcate a sense of innocence. However, a child’s expected role in adult life determined how she or he was outfitted for posterity. Children from families of note were dressed up for formal portraits in the family colors much like their parents and adult kinsmen. White as the dominant color of a formal female ensemble appeared rarely, and then only on very young girls from the upper ranks. One thinks of the 1542 posthumous portrait of little Bia Medici, natural daughter of Duke Cosimo I, at about the age of five. In her portrait by Bronzino, she wears a dress of heavy white satin with ruching at the top of her sleeves, a white pearl necklace, pearl drop earrings, and a longer gold necklace with pendant, displaying the image of her father (on Bia’s short life, see Eisenbichler 2004: 49).

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The color green was associated with the freedom (and wildness) of nature and was therefore popular for clothing designed to be worn under more proper colors, so we see green in doublets, waistcoats, and stockings for young adults, and in the ensembles of children. Yellow also had connotations of youth, and so was considered appropriate for children’s dress. But, as we have seen, similar to red, yellow was also used to mark prostitutes in some cities with a bright flash of color, while at the same time it was considered appropriate for the outfit worn by the unfortunate young Don Carlos of Spain, in a formal portrait by Alonzo Sancho Coello. Cultural context somewhat determined the multivalent message of a hue, adding a critical dimension to the meaning of color (see Plate 5.4). The outfit of this young nobleman, with prominent codpiece projecting from his short paned breeches (breeches with strips of fabric over an inner lining), is of bright yellow quilted velvet, with which he jauntily wears a black beret festooned with gold ornaments and two yellow feathers, a short black cape with silver buttons, a tight black belt with gold fittings, and a sword with gold hilt pushed back and hanging from his left side. To complete the ensemble, Don Carlos wears yellow hose and matching yellow-soled shoes. Here, the color yellow is strikingly bright and rich, due to the quality of the thick velvet and the total coordination of the outfit, which includes the pendant of the Order of the Golden Fleece hanging from a golden chain around his neck. As yellow is traditionally associated with youthful enthusiasm and hopefulness, children’s clothing and even the garb of toddlers could be fashioned of this fresh hue. For adults, however, the addition of brown to the yellow dye created a tawnier shade, the color of mustard or curry, which toned the look down to convey a more appropriate image of adult composure (Lurie 1981: 197–8). Lionato was one such dulled hue used for expensive clothing in Renaissance Italy.

COLORS OF SILK The knowledge needed by sixteenth- and seventeenth-century dyers of the chemistry and interactivity of various dyestuffs in order to create and recreate subtle shades and hues increased exponentially with the discovery of the New World. By the 1540s, long-held traditions in manufacturing were challenged by political events that no one could have foreseen, and silk production faced a series of crises in which manufacturers were forced to relinquish ultimate control of this traditional product. Cloth merchants and their widely increasing customer base would demand new competitive practices and products more congenial to extraordinary times. Between 1540 and 1600, the powerful merchants, who dominated the production of silk

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under the guild system, lost control of the manufacturing and merchandising of this luxury commodity, which then came to be redefined by the demands of a growing consumer elite and the practice of mixing the dyes by the dyers themselves. This was a dramatic change in practices from the prior production and merchandising of silk. The new colors for silk reflected an international associative realm that exploded traditional dyeing and naming practices. Historians have uncovered over two hundred color names for this time from the records of silk dyers. Now, exotic flora and fauna names evoked sensual memories, and New World plants showed up in color naming. Introduced for browns were the colors of roasted coffee, cocoa, and even tobacco, all with exotic overtones. Vicuna (of South American origin) was a new off-white; bird of paradise a new shade of yellow (Gargiolli 1868: 150, 152, 156–7).12 Instead of orange, red, pink, violet, or green, an elite clientele could now choose from pomegranate flower or apricot for the oranges; from fruit of the wild cherry or dry poppy for reds; from incarnato, hydrangea, or angel wing, for pinks; and from fig or flax flower for shades of violet; even emerald or seawater for greens (Gargiolli 1868: 150–3, 156–7).13 Roland Barthes has written about the associative realm in which fashion resides. He argues persuasively that the largest arena for fashion is not the garment itself, nor even the images made of it, but rather the written realm in which they are verbalized (Barthes 1983: 3). This is what sticks to the brain. What is written about the clothing creates an imagined link between the garment or in this case the garment color, and the referential memories to it an individual or group may have. By linking color to a mood triggered by a foreign locale or to a sense of anticipated or nostalgic excitement conjured up from travel, this color can be discussed and relayed only among a group of the few international players who have had or will have similar experiences.14 It was especially from this realm that newly exotic neutral colors took their names, such as Egyptian earth, sands of gold, earth shadow, and horizon (Gargiolli 1868: 156–7).15 Gray color names evoke the je ne sais quoi of the growing early European cities: shadow of the umbrella, smoke and soot, dead leaf, patience, and ashen.16 All are moody colors for an increasingly urbane European populace. For example, Lavinia Fontana painted a SelfPortrait in a Studio in 1579 that showed the subtle neutrals of the silk sleeves of her gown that belonged to this more sophisticated palette of color choices. Included in this group of sophisticates would be, of course, those elites who had formed marriage alliances across Europe: French Isabelle of Valois, wed to Philip II of Spain; Catherine de Medici of Florence, wed to Henri II of France, and the like. Only they would be privy to exactly what their clothing and its colors conveyed, and to which associative realm it

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belonged. Accordingly, we cannot successfully identify these subtleties of shades and hues in paintings, unless we have collaborative written records for the occasion.

COSMETICS AND MEDICINE The optimal color for faces, necks, décolletage, and hands was clear white with a touch of red. This overarching desirability of whiteness had its expected impact on those with darker skin all along the spectrum of dermis shades, especially as fair skin was associated with optimal health. And so, women and men both used white powder or a scrub of alum to even out any dark patches. Snook writes that when the four humors of black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, and blood were in balance, one’s face was clear and even. As each humor was associated with a color (black, yellow, white, and red), an imbalance in one’s health would be apparent on one’s face (Snook 2011: 74). The practice of using mercury and lead in skin treatments was to cool and dry the inflammation of blemishes, as a red face was visual evidence of an imbalance in the humors (27–30).17 From the Medici court of the seventeenth century, recipes detail just what went into the process of whitening: Take litharge of silver … rock alum … rose water … and set aside, and … take a drop and add three drops of water, and straightaway, it will look like scented milk which you should rub on the face, neck, hands and chest and it will become gently scented and white … and it is called virgin’s milk. (Fornaciai 2007: 88–92) If this did not suffice, then cosmetic painting could be applied. A recipe for white face paint from Hugh Platt’s Delightes for Ladies (1600) called for binding mercury with white poppy seed oil to stabilize the mixture (Platt 1651: 14). During her long reign, Elizabeth I’s pale complexion and high forehead prompted women to emulate her look by wearing even whiter powder/paste on their faces than before, and also to pluck their foreheads and eyebrows. It has been postulated that Elizabeth was actually poisoned by the lead in the white makeup she used to cover scars from a girlhood bout of smallpox.18 This thick makeup created what was known as “the Mask of Youth.” An obsession with clear skin and a youthful glow had been seen throughout European history from Ovid’s Metamorphosis onwards. That same glowing skin as an indication of physical health in the early modern period is seen in Italy as early as Firenzuola’s 1548 On the Beauty of Women, where he writes, “health produces a bright and lively complexion that outwardly reveals its presence within the body” ([1548] 1992: 47). Almost

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fifty years later, Haydocke’s 1598 A Tracte Containing the Artes of Curious Paintings appeared in England. This treatise was based on his translation of Lomazzo’s mid-sixteenth-century book on color (Trattato dell’arte della pittura), to which the physician Haydocke added a chapter that included face painting (Sammern 2015). Here, he fully articulates the relationship between painting and medicine, differentiating between ars comptoria (painting one’s face) and cosmetica medicamenta (applying medicine to the face). Although recognizing the difference between dangerous and benign ingredients, he nonetheless still includes recipes for white skin that contain corrosive and toxic substances, as the demand for such potions was great. Sammern writes that Haydocke’s treatise referred to “a classical tradition of recipes ranging from Dioscorides’ Materia medica, Pliny’s Naturalis historiae and Ovid’s Medicamina Faciei Femineae to … Dello specchio di scientia universale (Mirror of Universal Science)” by Leonardo Fioravanti in 1564 (Sammern 2015: 416). There were many recipes then to achieve the desired appearance of health, for both men and women. Eyebrows would darken with the application of walnut-tree bark, teeth whiten with a paste made of burned and ground coral and rock alum, and cheeks become rosy with vermilion pigment, sandalwood, or coral. The preferred color of hair for women was blonde or auburn, and so many women lightened their hair with lemon juice and sat out in the sun in broad-brimmed straw hats with open crowns. They used henna dye for red. Men darkened their hair, beard, and mustaches with ashes, boiled walnut shells, and earthworms—another recipe combined the walnut shells with charred eggs, leeks, and leeches (Sherrow 2006: 154). The desire to reach the vaulted ideal of beauty, enshrined in white skin, black eyes, facial hair for men, and a redness on the checks, produced a culture of beauty products that had begun well before the early modern era and continued unabated between 1450 and 1650 in European society.

CONCLUSION On the face and body, the attainment of whiteness, accentuated with black and red, was the enduring summit of beauty. In clothing, saturated black and red denoted elegant and fearsome power; gray and brown, no power at all. Light neutral colors were for those who could afford no better and for children who needed their clothing laundered often. Sumptuary law regulated the wearing of certain colors, and therefore the assumptions made about colors were widely known throughout Europe. Bright colors sang money and were noticeable to all on the streets of the city. European society was tied together

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by the limits and strictures of its technological and economic development; no one had access to the colors of magenta or cyan as yet. This visual homogeneity provided a consistent field of vestimentary communication from city to town and country to country across the continent. It gave its inhabitants a visually comprehensible lens through which to understand the society in which they lived, and therefore to successfully negotiate their lives, whoever they may be.

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CHAPTER SIX

Language and Psychology DORIS OLTROGGE

INTRODUCTION Color terminology is strongly related to color perception and also to the role that different colors have in their respective communities. In color semantics, a distinction is made between terms for abstract cognitive categories, defined as basic color terms (BCTs) and more specific non-basic color terms. Modern English red or green are BCTs while cherry red is a non-basic color term, subordinated to the BCT red, which names the basic color category (BCC) red.1 Cherry red is an example of a hyponym (subordinate term) of the English BCT red. The “universals and evolution” (UE) model of BCC acquisition in languages involves the six primary BCCs: white, black, red, yellow, green, and blue (Kay et al. 2009: 11). An earlier evolutionary sequence included five further, less salient, BCCs: brown, purple, pink, orange, and gray (Berlin and Kay 1969: 4). It is assumed that the BCCs developed gradually, often over centuries, as abstract cognitive categories, emerging at different times in different societies.2 For example, orange is considered a BCT in Modern English but was attributed to yellow, red, or to both in Old English (a phase of English dated from the seventh century to c. 1100 bce). The color terms used in a given modern (living) speech community that can be defined as BCTs can be assessed by field experiments with native speakers. In historical languages, BCTs need to be determined by the analysis of the semantics of color words in texts.3 These studies also provide information on non-basic color terms and thus offer insights into the varieties of color cognition of certain periods and societies.

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This chapter will discuss in its first part basic and non-basic color terms and their underlying chromatic concepts in early Modern German and Italian with comparisons to English, Latin, and French. Since the six primary BCCs were generally distinguished in the Germanic and Romance languages of the time, the focus will be on more ambiguous and transitional color categories: the question of two BCTs for blue in Italian, the gradual differentiation of the macro-color category brown-pink-purple, and the first indications of a changing perception of orange and gray. Color played an important role in Renaissance culture, in the visual arts, in fashion, in society, and in science. New color lexemes were coined that allowed for a more and more subtle distinction of shades. The major role of the textile technologies in the formation and distribution of color terms will be another topic of this chapter. Color perception has strong emotional components reflected by metaphors, metonyms, and sayings. The second part of this chapter will discuss some of these psychological aspects.

EARLY MODERN BASIC AND NON-BASIC COLOR TERMS: TEXTUAL BASE Color terms occur in a number of different contexts in the Renaissance: involving scientific, technical, literary, philosophical, economic, and private documents. The international trade of pigments and colorants, dyed textiles, or other colored objects influenced the color naming across different speech communities and languages. Texts on the colors of artists and dyers are particularly instructive for the question of color lexemes and the related chromatic values. Recipes labeled with non-basic color terms give insight into naming processes and the specialized nomenclature of these color professionals (see also Kirby, this volume). Valuable information on BCCs can be gathered if color categories are used as a framework for the discussion of material pigments and of coloristic theories. This is the case in some German recipe collections concerned mostly with illuminators’ pigments: the Etliche Künste, first printed in 1531; the Illuminierbuch of Valentin Boltz, published in 1549; and the German and Latin Kunstbücher of the Benedictine monk Wolfgang Seidel, written between about 1530 and 1560 (Oltrogge et al. 2017), as well as the manuscript of the illuminator Friedrich Brentel from 1649 (Laaser 2017). An English example is the manuscript of Nicholas Hilliard from about 1600 (Hilliard 1983); an Italian example is the Paduan Manuscript from the early seventeenth century (Merrifield 1967: 2:648–51). Other Renaissance authors linked painting practice more explicitly to theoretical color concepts. In 1435, the Florentine humanist Leon Battista Alberti wrote an influential treatise on painting theory (De pictura), which he reedited in Italian one year later (Bätschmann and Gianfreda: 2010; see also Baker, this volume). A major sixteenth-century work was the Trattato della Pittura by the painter Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo, first published in 1584 (Tramelli 2016). In 1598, it was translated into English by the physician

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Richard Haydocke. Lodovico Dolce and Raffaelo Borghini discussed material and symbolic properties of colors in the form of dialogues, printed in 1565 and 1584 respectively. These texts will be used as a base for the discussion of early modern color categories and terms in German, English, and Italian.4 Basic color categories Usually, early modern texts on artists’ colors include the six primary BCCs: black, white, red, green, yellow, and blue (see Tables 6.1 and 6.2).5 Most of them also differentiate at least a seventh color class that can be less clearly assigned to one of the basic categories of the UE model but that oscillates in a macrocolor area of brown, purple, pink, and violet. Terms for orange and gray appear only as an exception in this period. TABLE 6.1  Color Categories and Color Terms in Early Modern Painting Treatises (German). Text

Color Categories

Color Names

Etliche Künste (1531) (and later sixteenthcentury editions)

red

roth gel grün blaw weyss

yellow green blue white

Boltz (1549)

red

violet-purplepink-brown yellow green blue black white

Sedelius (c. 1530–60)

red

violet-purplepink-brown blue green yellow white black

Brentel (1642)

6

black white yellow red blue green brown

Source: Table created by Doris Oltrogge.

Root / Rot Violet Brun / Braun Gäl / Gelb Grien / Grün Plouw / Blaw Endich Schwartz Wyß / Weiß rotte farb praunne farb plaue farb griene / grunne farb gelbe farb weisse farb schwartze farb Schwarz Weiß Gelb Roth Blau Grün Braun

Comments

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TABLE 6.2  Color Categories and Color Terms in Early Modern Painting Treatises (Italian and English). Text

Color Categories

Color Names

Comments

Leone Battista Alberti: De Pictura (1435)/Della pittura (1436)

red

Lat: rubeum It: rosso Lat: celestis / caesius It: celestrino Lat: viride It: verde Lat: cinereum It: bigia / cenericcia

element fire

bianco giallo turchino / azurro verde pauonazzo (morello) rosso nero ombra delle carni

white yeallow blue green morello

blue

green gray

Lomazzo (1585, 1598, trans. Haydocke)

white yellow blue green

violet-purplepink red black brown

Borghini (1584)

giallo bianco rosso red azzurro blue nero black verde green violet-purple-pink porpora yellow white

Paduan manuscript (early seventeenth century)

white

Hilliard (c. 1600)

white

bianco giallo turchino blue verde green violet-purple-pink morello rosso red ranzetto orange negro black umbra delle carni brown yellow

whits blackes violet-purple-pink murrey redd red blewe blue greene green yellow yellow black

Source: Table created by Doris Oltrogge.

element air element water element earth

redd black shadows of carnation intermediate colors: verdegiallo pallido turchino mauì incarnato pagonazzo tanè fior di pesco bigio

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The lexemes for the first six categories are consistent in German and English, and they represent the BCTs still valid in modern speech: schwarz7 (black), weiß (white), rot (red), grün (green), gelb (yellow), and blau (blue) in German; and blacke, whit, redd, greene, yellow, and blewe in English. In Italian treatises as well, the lexemes mostly correspond to Modern Italian BCTs: nero (black), bianco (white), rosso (red), verde (green), and giallo (yellow).8 An important exception is blue where three alternatives are found: azzurro, turchino, and celestrino (see Table 6.2). An exception: Two Italian basic color terms for blue? Celestrino, literally “celestial,” was the term Alberti chose for the blue category in the Italian translation of his treatise on painting, a term cognate with celestis used in the original Latin version. In Classical Latin coelestis only meant “heavenly”; color terms for blue were caeruleum and caesius. In medieval Italy, a semantic shift broadened the meaning of celestis towards the notion of the color of the sky, in parallel with the adoption of the word into Old Italian (Grossmann and D’Achille 2016: 32). The semantics of the sky fitted perfectly with Alberti’s color-element theory which linked the blue color to the element air (see also Baker, this volume). However, this was no common Italian or Florentine concept of blue. In Old Italian, celeste or celestrino was mainly used to describe the color of textiles or gems, later also of eyes, water, or air; but even though it was widespread in Italian speech, it never became a BCT (32, 43). In early Modern Italian celeste indicated a light-blue shade (Lomazzo 1585: 194). In the fourteenth century, cilestra wool was cheaper than the more intensely dyed azurina quality (Guarducci 1979: 372). Only in the seventeenth century did the term celeste become fashionable, as an allusion to “heavenly” pleasures, so that it could be applied as a trading name to a broader chromatic range of blue-dyed textiles. However, textile merchants still carefully distinguished between light-blue celeste silks dyed only with woad and the warmer blue of azzuro qualities, which had been additionally tinted with orchil dye (Buss 2017: 176). Thus, celeste can be excluded as a BCT. But there still remain two competitors to be common BCTs for blue in the Italian Renaissance: azzurro and turchino. And it is interesting to note that, even in Modern Italian, the blue category is defined by two different words, azzurro and blu (Grossmann and D’Achille 2016). However, a closer look at the semantics of azzurro and turchino in the early modern period leaves some doubt as to the assumption that two BCTs for blue were common in Renaissance High Italian. Azzurro derives from the Persian/Arabic lexeme for the blue mineral pigment ultramarine (lāžward) via the intermediate Latin lazurium.9 Already in the eighth century, the meaning of lazurium was transferred to blue pigments and colorants in general, and in the high Middle Ages, lazurium generated vernacular

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names first for blue pigments, then for proper color terms such as Middle High German lasur/lasurbla, Old Italian azzurro, or Old French azur (Ploss 1955; Grossmann and D’Achille 2016: 30). The Old Italian noun azzurro denoted different blue pigments as well as the abstract category blue. The adjective azzurro described shades of textiles, of the sky, or uses in heraldry (Grossmann and D’Achille 2016: 30). In early modern Italian artists’ treatises, azzurro is the prevalent term for the blue category, but also the common denomination of mineral blue pigments such as azurite or ultramarine (azzurro della magna, azzurro oltramarino). Turchino, literally “Turkish,” is attested as a technical term for textiles in the fourteenth century, occasionally also as the name of the turquoise stone. It is supposed that the lexeme firstly denoted the provenance of both the textile and the stone (Grossmann and D’Achille 2016: 32). Nevertheless, the earliest sources deal with the domestic Italian production of dyed wool and silk. In fourteenth-century price lists, turchino featured as the cheapest, and presumably palest, quality of blue wool after sbiadata, cilestra, azurina, and the most expensive persiero (Guarducci 1979: 372; Franceschi 2016). Other documents and dyeing recipes describe different types of turchino textiles, which perhaps produced more saturated blue shades (Rebora 1970: 96; Busatta 2014: 342). In a sixteenth-century dyeing manual, an indigo bath is recommended for dyeing turchino, whereas for azzurro a first bath with indigo and a second with orchil dye was necessary (Edelstein 1969: 67). The red-violet orchil dye would have produced a warmer blue than indigo alone (see Kirby, this volume). However, the abstract turchino was not necessarily understood as a different hue from azzurro; the Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca (1612: see azzurro) uses both words as synonyms. The semantic shift of turchino from a technical term related to the specialist language of the textile industry to a proper color name must have come about before the sixteenth century. Tommaso Garzoni (1585: 624, 680) associates turchino and azzurro, as heraldic colors, with jealousy; and he describes a mixture of indigo and lead white to produce the painters’ color turchino. The slightly later Paduan manuscript suggests either indigo or blue mineral pigments (azzurri) mixed with lead white for the same purpose (Merrifield 1967: 2:651). Depending on the proportion of lead white, the shade of this turchino paint would have been more or less light blue, like the textiles labeled turchino. Borghini describes turchino vaguely as a “medium color” (color mezzano), situated between water and air, with some resemblance to the sky (Borghini 1584: 241).10 Lodovico Dolce compares turchino more precisely to the color of the sky, that of the turquoise stone (pietra Ciane, cioè Turchina), or to that of the blossoms of flax (Dolce 1565: 33v–34r). Both the turquoise and flax blossoms have a light sky-blue shade, which explains why in contemporary dictionaries turchino was translated into the German liechtblaw, “light blue”

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(Jones 2013a: 626). Contrary to that, in Modern Italian turchino is associated with dark blue shades (Glanemann 2003: 406). Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo seems to have been the first to introduce turchino as the core term for the blue category into the genre of artists’ treatises (for example, Lomazzo 1585: 191–2). In his chapters on painting practice, he differentiates clearly between material blue (azzurri and smalti) and blue as a color category (turchino), covering a rather broad range of blue shades except dark indigo, which is assigned to the morello area. However, Lomazzo is not consistent in this separation between material and abstract color. In his chapter on color symbolism, which draws heavily upon Dolce, he adds azzurro as a possible synonym of turchino (208). The color chapter of the Paduan manuscript follows Lomazzo in the differentiation between turchino as the core term for blue and azurro as a technical term for blue mineral pigments (Merrifield 1967: 2:649). The early testimonies and the chromatic value of turchino in the medieval and early modern period suggest that the color term was coined in the specialized language of dyers and textile merchants to differentiate shades of blue-dyed cloths for the market. The allusion to the light blue color of oriental turquoise probably indicates the prestige of the product, as did other textile names such as the “heavenly” (cilestra). At least in the sixteenth century, the lexeme turchino had been transferred not only to color mixtures in painting but had also developed into a generic color adjective that was either confined to sky blue or applied to a broader, but not necessarily dark, range of blue shades. According to Andres Kristol, turchino would have been common rather early in the spoken language since it is present in Italian dialects, whereas he supposes that the absence of azzurro in dialects is an indication that this word was initially restricted to the written language (Kristol 1978: 251). The presence of turchino in spoken Italian might have been related to its role as the trading name of an important product of the Italian textile industry—which indeed was also true for azzurino. The reevaluation of turchino as the most appreciated celestial color in art theory was, however, not associated with the textile market but with its resemblance to the color of the precious turquoise (Dolce 1565: 33v). This was perhaps the reason for its sporadic adoption as the core term for blue, but the prevalent term in this literary genre remained azzurro, and the frequency of azzurro in Old and Modern Italian is an indication that this was the BCT for blue for a long time (Grossmann and D’Achille 2016: 30). From macro-category to single-hue category: The scope of German braun As mentioned before, most of the artists’ color texts list seven color categories, and some even eight or nine. Usually the additional category covers the macrocolor area of brown-pink-purple-violet but this is not identical with any of the BCCs of the UE model. However, in the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the abstract concepts of brown or purple were slowly separated out,

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although the terminology still remained ambiguous. The gradual transition of a macro-color term to a narrower single-hue and BCT can be observed most clearly in the case of German braun. The polysemic Old and Middle High German brûn had two distinct senses, either “shining, sparkling” or a hue in the range between brown, purple, and violet (Jones 2013a: 309, 319–20). The chromatic value associated with early New High German braun was still rather broad (331–2). In art technological sources from early modern Germany, the term documents the hesitancy on the boundaries between red, brown, crimson, pink, purple, violet, dark blue, and occasionally even orange. In the Etliche Künste, braun does not denote a proper category for the systematization of recipes but is subordinated to the red category; the corresponding prescriptions for a brazilwood lake and a mixture of red lead and black would produce brown or red-brown shades. In other German art technological texts of the period, braun forms a proper color category, which, however, covers shades not exclusively belonging to the modern brown category but overlapping with purple and violet. Under the rubric praunne(r) farb, Wolfgang Seidel’s Kunstbuch lists several brazilwood lakes, colorants produced from cornflowers or blueberries, and a few pigment mixtures (Seidel 1540: 230r–236r).11 Brazilwood lakes are also included in the section on red colors (Seidel 1540: 223v–229r). Depending on the procedures and ingredients described, the experimental replication of different brazilwood lake recipes results in a broad variety of light rose, pink, purple, crimson, dark red, red brown, brown, and even violet shades. The cornflower and blueberry colorants provide dark blue, purple, or violet hues. The fluid boundary between prawn (violet) and blue is indicated in a recipe for the mixture of brazilwood lake with a blue pigment that, depending on the proportions, should produce fein plau. oder prawn (subtle blue or violet) (230v). Perhaps a different violet hue could be achieved by mixing the same components to produce feyelfarb (violet color), which is classified by Seidel as a specific shade of his category named braun (235v). A more reddish-purple shade produced from poppy flowers is called feyelrot (red violet) and attributed to the red category (223v). Dark brown shades are treated under the black pigments; the hue is specified as braunschwartz (brown-black), and the color itself is called harfarb (255v). Harfarbe (hair color) is often attested as a name for dark or dull brown painters’ colors and tints of textiles; it seems that dark or reddish-brown hues were considered to be typical for human hair in late medieval and early modern Germany (Jones 2013b: 3:1442). Valentin Boltz differentiates between a violet and a brun class, the latter includes shades labeled as brun/brune farb, leberfarb (liver color), and fürfarb (fire color) (Boltz 1549: lxvi–lxix). According to the recipes,

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both the violet and the brun shades are obtained from brazilwood lakes. Red ochre and brazilwood lake are mixed to make leberfarb, the fürfarb is a mixture of yellow and red pigments or produced from iron rust. The experimental replication results in shades between a reddish brown for leberfarb, reddish brown or orange for fürfarb, and different brown or pink shades for brun and violet. The boundaries between Boltz’s brun and violet are difficult to determine; at least, we can conclude that, in contrast to the modern perception of violet, violet/feyelfarb was perceived in sixteenthcentury Germany as a transitional color between our violet and our pink. Like Wolfgang Seidel, Valentin Boltz classifies the dark brown harfarben as belonging to the black category (xcv–xcvii). Contrary to that, Friedrich Brentel the Elder lists the dark brown pigments in his category of braune farben (Laaser 2017: 77–81). The whole group comprises almost exclusively the colors of the modern brown category with the exception of the blue violet dye from the Crozophora tinctoria (L.) A. Juss. (English: turnsole; German: braun tornisal).12 This is early testimony of the semantic shift that, from the second half of the seventeenth century onwards, slowly reduced the term braun to the extent of the modern brown category, excluding violet and purple (Jones 2013a: 350–1). In nonspecialized contexts braun was a commonly used color adjective, applied to referents clearly belonging to the brown category, for example, chestnuts, hair, or animals such as bears, but also to referents belonging to the violet area (Jones 2013a: 331–2; 2013b: 2:602–8). Also, botanists had no distinct concept of braun; the term was applied to describe a variety of pink, deep blue, violet, and orange shades of plants (Seidensticker 2010: 17, 65–75). However, the numerous compounds of braun allowed for some finer distinctions, as in, for example, the comparative formations kestenbraun (chestnut brown) or weichselbraun (cherry brown). Other compounds emphasize the intermediate tones of the chromatic range, for instance, violbraun, purpurbraun, or braunrot. The last-named, however, is first attested as a pigment name in the early fifteenth century, most probably denoting red and red-brown ochre (Jones 2013b: 2:654–5). Only later did it also become a secondary abstract color lexeme. Another pigment name is Kesselbraun (kettle brown), introduced in the fifteenth century; the compound reflects the production process of this byproduct of metal working (Haller 2005: 126–33). Later, the name of this well-known pigment was also transformed into an abstract color adjective to denote red-brown shades (Jones 2013b: 3:1627–8). The homonyms, Latin brunus, Old French brun, and Italian bruno were usually associated with dark hues, including some of the brown category; as a color qualifier they indicated dark or deep shades of other colors, for instance, vert brun, verde bruno (dark/saturated green), as a color of fabrics (Monnas 2014: 41).

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From macro-category to single-hue categories: Brown and purple pink in Italian Italian painters and theorists started as early as the sixteenth century to develop a concept of brown as distinct from red and yellow, as well as from the purplepink macro-color area. However, no generally accepted BCT for brown was formed. Leonardo, Lomazzo, and the Paduan manuscript list a proper color class for brown (Lomazzo 1585: 191; Leonardo 1890: 82–3; Merrifield 1967: 2:651). Leonardo calls it leonino (lion-like) or tanè. Since he equates this group to ochre (ocra), his chromatic concept includes probably the range from yellow to dark brown. Brown and dark brown pigments are assigned by Lomazzo and the Paduan manuscript to the brown category, which they call ombra delle carni oscura (dark shadow of the flesh).13 Old Italian tanè was borrowed from Old French tannet (tanné), which is attested in the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries as a term for fabrics dyed in a tawny color, that is, the reddish-brown color of tanned leather (Französisches etymologisches Wörterbuch [FEW]: 13[1], 82–5; Monnas 2014: 37). Raffaelo Borghini defines tanè as a color between red and black; he distinguishes five shades of tanè fabrics: ordinary, dark, light yellowish, or nuances of violet or of gray (Borghini 1584: 242). Already in the fourteenth century, tanè had also become a generic color term that was applied, for example, by Francesco Pegolotti (d.1347) in his La practica della mercatura ([c. 1340] 1936) to the description of good-quality cinnamon; Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini [TLIO]). The English homonym tawny, also first used only for textiles, was applied to heraldic colors from the fifteenth century (Gage 1993: 83). Lionato (leonino) was also coined as a term for textiles. The expensive redbrown fabric was much appreciated in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and the allusion to the noble lion well suited its role in courtly fashion (Buss 2017: 195–6). On the textile market, tanè and lionato were not considered synonyms, as Leonardo suggests, but they could designate two slightly different hues. In a 1628 pattern book, the latter is somewhat redder than tané (196). The word does not seem to have been well known as a generic color term; Leonardo’s choice might have been inspired more by its courtly connotations than by common usage. In contrast, the compound ombra delle carni oscura employed by Lomazzo and the Paduan manuscript is less a term for the brown category than a description of the task the pigments listed in this rubric should achieve in painting. Richard Haydocke, who translated Lomazzo, knows no English equivalent but translates it literally as shadows of carnation (Lomazzo 1598: bk 3, 99). And Nicholas Hilliard does not even distinguish a brown category but includes the pigments in the yellow category (Hilliard 1983: 34). There was obviously a lack of a basic term for brown in sixteenth-century Italian; the lexemes for the newly developed color concept were either borrowed from the textile industry or newly coined according to painters’ practice, but neither of them was generally accepted. This was different for the purple-pink

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macro-color area, where two alternative terms were rather common, pavonazzo and morello. The Latin purpureus, on the contrary, survived as Italian porpora, mainly in metaphorical contexts, but is mentioned only exceptionally as a “principal color” by Borghini (1584: 239). Pavonazzo (modern paonazzo) and morello were said to be synonyms (Lomazzo 1585: 206), but sometimes the former was described as a slightly different, darker shade (Garzoni 1585: 681). Dyers’ manuals, too, indicate that both terms were used by professionals to distinguish slightly different shades (Monnas 2014: 56). Pavonazzo is frequently attested in documentary and literary sources in the fourteenth through seventeenth centuries as a color of luxury textiles or the vestments of cardinals, but also as an abstract color term applied to different objects. The first edition of the Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca (1612) defines the hue as between azzurro and black, and adds as Latin synonyms violaceus and ianthinus (color of violets). The hues associated with paonazzo fabric therefore included purple, violet, crimson, and dark blue (Newton 1988: 18–24, 178; Campbell et al. 2001: 34). The lexeme and its cognates, for example, Old French peonace (paonace), and Medieval Latin pavonatius, are derived from Latin pavo (peacock) (FEW: under pavo). Since violet and purple are not the predominant hues of a peacock’s feathers, the concept behind the word formation must have been different. Presumably the naming was stimulated by the iridescent effect of the peacock’s feathers that seemed comparable to that of purple silks (Monnas 2014: 49), but, also, the allusion to the proud bird and its connotations with nobility might have conferred prestige on the fabric in the market. As early as about 1400, the word was taken over from the dyers and textile merchants by the painters, who used it to label paints or to describe the coloristic effects of shades in paintings (for example, Cennino Cennini, see Broecke 2015: 66). The recipes mention mixtures of blue, red, and white, dyes produced from cornflowers or burnt ochre; the chromatic range corresponds thus with that of the textiles: violet, bluish purple, dark blue, and red brown, perhaps with a violet tinge. A similar range was covered by morello, the term Leonardo (1890: 83), Lomazzo (1585: 191), and the Paduan manuscript (Merrifield 1967: 2:651) chose as the core term for their seventh color category. The pigments recommended by Lomazzo and the Paduan manuscript for morello paints are artificial iron oxides, dark indigo, turnsole, and celestro, a dull blue made from indigo blended with lead white (Lomazzo 1585: 194). Dark indigo and turnsole would produce blackish dark blue and blue-violet shades. The production of artificial iron oxides from vitriol was invented in the fifteenth century; their hues vary between red brown and violet brown (Haller 2005: 130). Consequently, they were called morello di ferro (iron morello), morello, or pavonazzo di sale (salt morello) in Italian (Tramelli 2016: 95), and violet kesselbraun, violet braun, or Valet Farbe in German (Haller 2005: 130), all pointing to the color value of the pigment. Thus, the chromatic range of the morello of Lomazzo and

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the Paduan manuscript covers mostly violet, purple, blue violet, dark blue, and lighter dull blue shades.14 The murrey of Nicholas Hilliard, however, comprises only red-purple or crimson hues produced from lake (Hilliard 1983: 33). Old Italian morello and its cognates, Medieval Latin morelus, and Old French mor, morel, first denoted the color of black horses. In this sense, it was derived from Latin mauri, meaning the inhabitants of Mauretania and referring to the dark brown-black color of their skin (FEW: under maurus 2). The notion of dark blue or blue-violet shades was transferred from the color of mulberries (Latin morus or Old Italian mora). As color terms for textiles, Italian morello and its Old French cognate, mouree, moré, are documented from the fourteenth century. Descriptions in inventories and guild regulations, or compounds like French escarlate mouree (scarlet mouree), moré vermoille (red moré), and Italian morello di grana (kermes morello), indicate violet as well as reddish hues (Godefroy 1881–1902: under moré; Campbell et al. 2001: 34). Early modern Italian dyeing recipes recommend scale insects as colorants to obtain morello shades on silk (Campbell et al. 2001: 34). As a color term, morello was mainly used in connection with objects: substantive and adjectival for horses with the meaning of black/black-brown; adjectival for precious textiles—silks, velvets—in the sense of purple, violet, blue-violet, and red-violet. As a generic name for a hue, morello is rarely documented in artists’ treatises; indeed, in the texts discussed above, the painters’ treatise of Cennino Cennini mentions morello as a hue of tinted paper or vestments (Cennini 1960: chs. 18, 42, 76; Broecke 2015: 40, 66, 116). The pigment used for this purpose is red-brown hematite, the color of which Cennini includes in his red category. In the fifteenth or sixteenth century, the term morello was also occasionally transferred to coloring materials such as the aforesaid artificial iron oxides and perhaps earlier also to the plant Crozophora tinctoria, which was used to produce the turnesole colorant.15 Compared to German braun, it is noticeable that the Italian morello and pavonazzo obviously covered a smaller macro-color area; they denote purple, violet, pink, crimson, and red brown, but not all browns, nor shades of orange. Basic or non-basic? The problem of orange and gray The Paduan manuscript does not include ranzetto “orange” in the red category (Merrifield 1967: 2:651). Lomazzo also seems to consider ranzato as denoting a separate category (Lomazzo 1585: 191). Old Italian rancio was most probably coined in the fourteenth century for the textile market to differentiate shades between yellow and tawny (Monnas 2014: 39), but it was soon adopted as a generic color lexeme even in literary texts (Vocabolario 1612: under rancio; Monnas 2014: 39). With the import of precious textiles, the color term was adopted in English in the sixteenth century to indicate “orange color” or “tawnie orenge” (Lomazzo 1598: bk 3, 99; Monnas 2014: 41), and in French

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to indicate “orange” (Huguet 1925–67). However, there is no strong evidence that orange was a basic color concept either in Italy or in England. Shades that we would define as belonging to orange would have been denoted by terms such as tané, tawny, croceus, safrangelb (saffron yellow), goldgelb, or jaune doré (golden yellow) and included in the yellow category. The situation is somewhat different with gray. Leon Battista Alberti defines cinereum, cenericcia (ash gray), or bigia (gray) as belonging to the color category corresponding to the element earth (Bätschmann and Gianfreda 2010: 80). This choice is linked to his color-element theory and not to a focal concept (see Baker, this volume). Gray was not usually considered a proper color category in the early modern period; in German recipe collections, gray is usually subordinated to the black category. Gray was considered a mixed color (Lomazzo 1585: 195), and the Paduan manuscript discusses the color beretino under the mixtures; Borghini considers bigio as an intermediate color between black and white; and cenerognolo (ash gray) is only one of such colors that Borghini distinguishes (Borghini 1584: 242). Beretino was applied as a color term to high-quality textiles. It was produced by a complex dyeing process invented in the fifteenth century; in the sixteenth century, the fashionable beretino was recommended for gentlemen by Baldassare Castiglione (Buss 2017: 184). This reputation might be the reason why Lomazzo chose this term for a paint, and the transfer of beretino to heraldic vocabulary as beretino di cenere (ash gray) was certainly due to its connotations of nobility (184). Yet the common Italian color term for gray was bigio. It was applied to a number of referents, not only to textiles. Several comparative names to differentiate specific shades of gray were formed, such as Italian piombati or German bleifarbe (color of lead), German tubengro (dove gray), and Italian bigio argentino (silver gray). But even if a gray category was usually not distinguished in the artists’ treatises, scalar properties such as dark (oscuro, dunkel-, schwarz-) or light (heiter-, liecht-) indicate that at least a concept of focal gray started to develop in early modern times (Jones 2013a: 334). Textile technologies and color naming As has been shown, most Italian terms for macro-color areas were adopted from the textile industry. Italy was a center for the production of gorgeous luxury fabrics in the late Middle Ages and the early modern period. Merchants and customers had a vested interest in a subtle differentiation of the shades available, which allowed for explicit communication in the international trade. Dyers, too, needed clear instructions as to the hues required by their clients. Furthermore, prestigious trading names could help to promote new products. Therefore, a variety of new color terms were coined from the fourteenth century onwards. A sample book of the Milanese Weavers Guild, assembled in 1628, lists three names for different shades of pink: avinato (similar to wine), rosaseccha (dry rose), and incarnadino (flesh color); two names for red hues: cremesile

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(scarletish) and cremisi (scarlet); as well as two names for blue: celeste (sky blue) and azzurro. There are four labels for greens: verdolino (greenish), verdino (light green), verdone (dark green), and verde degli alberi (tree green); two labels for yellows: paiado (straw color) and paiadino (pale straw color); three for tawny, red-brown, and orange hues: tané, lionato, and zinzerino; one for dark brown: cavelino; and one for gray: beretino (Buss 2017). Sources from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries mention, for the pink, purple, and crimson color area, pavonazzo, morello, alessandrino, cremesi, and rosasecca (Monnas 2014). Further differentiation could be achieved by adding other color words to indicate a slight shift of the focal point, for example, carmesino pavonazzo and pavonazzi violati; however, these did not represent a standardization of shades. German sources show similar efforts to differentiate the hues of imported and domestic textiles. A merchant’s handbook, the Handelbuch of Lorenz Meder, lists liecht Negelfarb (light color of cloves), Braun, Ascherfarben (ash color), Liechtgrüen (light green), Graßgrüen (grass green), Schwefelgelb (sulfur yellow), Rosinfarb (rose color), Schimelblaw (white-horse blue), Leibfarb (flesh color), Leberfarb (liver color), Schimeltonend (similar to the white horse), Goldgilb (gold yellow), Tenet (tanè), Turginfarb (turquoise color), and Sittig grün (parakeet green) (Meder 1558: 36v, 42v, 51r). Different naming processes can be observed. Compounds formed from two basic color words such as verdegiallo (green-yellow) indicate intermediate shades; qualifiers like bruno or satt (deep) indicate dark hues (for example, verde bruno, sattgrün); and the qualifier liecht indicates lighter shades. Similarly, the Italian suffix -one refers to darker shades, while the suffix -ino refers to lighter ones. Comparative terms, including example referents, such as lionato, rosasecca, paiado, avinato, leberfarb, schwefelgelb, and sittig grün, were very popular because customers easily associated color impressions with them. Yet such terms could also carry connotations of prestige. Rosasecca, for example, was considered in early modern heraldic literature as a synonym for a purple term; textiles dyed in this hue were extremely fashionable in late fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Venice (Monnas 2014: 52). The dyestuff chremisi (kermes, from a scale insect) was the source of the color term cremisi and its cognates in French (cremosin, cramoisi), English (crimson), and German (kermesinrot, karmesinrot). The name guaranteed the application of the costly raw material and the prestige and quality associated with these expensive fabrics (Campbell et al. 2001: 34; see also Kirby, this volume). The trading name was reserved for silks (Monnas 2014: 46). Shades of crimson textiles were further differentiated as cramoisi violet, cramoisi rouge, or cramoisi brun. The French word and, to a lesser degree, its English and German cognates were also used as abstract color terms (Huguet 1925–67; Oxford English Dictionary [OED]; Jones 2013b: 3:1596–1601). The cognates for scarlet-dyed textiles, Italian scarlatto, English scarlet, and French escarlate,

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were mainly context restricted to textile referents (Vocabolario 1612; OED; Huguet 1925–67), whereas German scharlach was also applied to other referents as an abstract color word for bright red hues (Jones 2013a: 340). With the export of Italian textiles, more trade names were borrowed in other languages. Turquin (derived from turchino) is attested in late fifteenth- and sixteenth-century French referring to textiles, usually Italian silks (Dictionnaire du Moyen Français [DMF] 1330–1500; Huguet: 1925–67). Obviously, turquin did not represent a standardized hue; besides the compound bleu turquin, which might have been a clarification for the French customer, turquin violet and turquin rouge are also documented. Furthermore, the German adjective turginfarb was initially associated with Italian silks (Jones 2013a: 367). However, the German translation of Tommaso Garzoni compares liechtblaw (the equivalent of turchino in the Italian original) to the color of the turquoise stone (türkis) (Garzoni 1619: 515). This name of the stone had been introduced already in Middle High German as a loanword from French turquoise or Italian turchese. As in Italian, the chromatic value of German turginfarb, as a shade of Italian silks, or türkis as the color of the stone, represented a light blue, without any element of the green that occurs in Modern German türkis (Jones 2013b: 5:2803–4). Less prestigious, but very successful as an abstract color term, was another group of lexemes most probably coined by painters: Italian incarnato; French carnation, incarnal; English carnation; and German leibfarb. Raffaello Borghini defines incarnato as “very similar to rose, a vague and beautiful colour, like the red cheeks of a young lady” (Borghini 1584: 241). The Italian, French, and English color names refer to the incarnation and, more practically, to the painting of the human face as one of the major tasks of artists. The intermediate pink and brown-pink tones of skins needed sophisticated pigment mixtures and paint layers. Recipes for the tempering of flesh tones had therefore been written down early in the Middle Ages. In the fifteenth century, the name of the paint was adopted by dyers to denote light pink fabric hues. In the early modern period, incarnato, carnation, and leibfarb were important technical terms of textile professionals and painters. Incarnal was adopted as an abstract color term in heraldic literature (Huguet 1925–67). Adjectival leibfarb and carnation were used by naturalists to describe light pink shades in plants and minerals (Jones 2013b: 4:1763; OED).

PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF COLOR: EMOTION AND METAPHOR The use of color words in metaphor, metonyms, and sayings conveys information on psychological aspects of color in certain periods (see Table 6.3). Renaissance treatises on art theory or on heraldry associated color with properties or emotions, for example, innocence, nobility, falseness, or rage

TABLE 6.3  Color, Metaphor, and Emotion. Color Category Humors / Elements

Positive Connotations

Negative Connotations

Terms

evil, bad, melancholy, despair, calumny

Eng: black Ger: schwarz Fr: noir / brun It: nero Eng: white Ger: weiß Fr: blanc It: bianco Eng: yellow Ger: gelb Fr: jaune / flave It: giallo / verdegiallo

black

melancholy (black bile) Earth

white

phlegm (white mucus) Water

innocence,chastity, moral purity, justice

Fr / It (additional): emptiness, loss, poverty

yellow

choleric (yellow bile)

golden yellow richness, nobility, wisdom

red

sanguinic (red blood) Fire

life, health, joy, love, excellence

pale / greenish yellow vain hope, despair, illness, death, rage, envy loud yellow envy, jealousy, covetness shame, rage, sin

blue

Air

green

Water

royalty, nobility, constancy, fidelity, innocence fertility, freshness, renewal, vigor, desire, love, friendship, hope

Source: Table created by Doris Oltrogge.

Ger (additional): falsehood, fraud, ignorance youth, inexperience It (additional): poverty, despair

Eng: red / crimson / scarlet Ger: rot / blutrot / scharlach / purpurrot Fr: rouge / vermeille / chramoisi It: rosso / chremisi Eng: blue Ger: blau Fr: bleu / azur It: azzurro Eng: green Ger: grün Fr: vert It: verde

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(Gavel 1979: 138–44). Emotional and psychological connotations of color were often linked with the medieval and early modern concept of the four humors, which dates back to antiquity. The melan cholos, the “black bile,” was associated with melancholy; an abundance of yellow bile with a choleric temperament; a surplus of red blood with a sanguine temperament; and, finally, white phlegm with a phlegmatic temperament. Since antiquity, black and darkness were often seen as the negative opposite to white and light. These connotations continued through the Middle Ages to the early modern period, often with associated Christian connotations. Black was associated morally with evil and badness; the “black soule” is attested in both English since the fifteenth century (OED: under black) and in its German equivalent schwarze Seele (Jones 2013a: 403). Early modern German schwärzen (to blacken) was used in the sense of “to devalue, degrade, or slander” (402), similar to English blacken (OED). A depressive mood led to “black thoughts” or “black despair” (OED: under black 14a), melancholic people were schwarzblütig (of black blood) or they “painted things black” (schwarz malen; Jones 2013a: 403). In French, it was not the color term noir (black) but brun (dark) that expressed melancholy (esprit de brune, “sad mood”) (Huguet 1925–67). On the other hand, French blanc et noir (white and black) stood for the opposition of good luck and bad luck (Huguet 1925–67: under apparoistre). White was usually associated with innocence, chastity, moral purity, or justice (Borghini 1584: 233; Jones 2013a: 404; Anderson and Bramwell 2014: 146), connotations that date back to the Middle Ages. Comparitive terms strengthen these associations, for example, Martin Luther contrasts blutrot (blood-red) sin to the schne weis (snow-white) purity of the redeemed (Jones 2013b: 5:2491). However, in French and Italian, besides these positive connotations, white is also associated with emptiness, loss, and poverty. People mis en blanc (put into the white) are left in distress, and a person deprived of his possessions “stayed white like the snow” (Huguet 1925–67: under blanc). In Italian “hope which remained white” signifies vain hope (Vocabolario 1612: under bianco 2). Not white but a pale greenish-yellow hue (verdegiallo) is associated with vain hope by Borghini (1584: 240). Yellow was predominantly associated with negative connotations and emotions in the early modern period. It is documented as a color of envy and covetousness from the thirteenth century in German (Jones 2013b: 3:1127, 1137), and also in English, at least since the seventeenth century, when even a term such as yellow-hammer was coined for a jealous person (Anderson and Bramwell 2014: 149). Most probably, this link was inspired by the humoral theory that connected the choleric temperament to yellow bile (Jones 2013a: 391; Anderson and Bramwell 2014: 149). In French, the choleric temperament was pale yellow (colère flave; Huguet 1925–67: under vitellin).16 A pale yellowish complexion was associated with illness or death. German totengelb (death yellow) was used to describe the

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skin color of dead people and to allude more generally to death and despair (Jones 2013b: 5:2789). In Italian, people living in unhealthy environments “become green or yellow” (verdeggiano, e giallegiano; Vocabolario 1612: under giallegiare). In French, despair changes the vermeille (scarlet red) complexion of a person to pallid and jaulnisse (yellowness) (Huguet 1925–67: under jaunisse). Contrary to that, golden yellow was associated with richness, nobility, and wisdom by Borghini (1584: 231) and with hope, joy, and sovereignty by Lomazzo (1585: 207). Emotions and metaphors are thus not linked to the abstract concept of yellow but more closely related to different shades of yellow: pale greenish-yellow shades were associated with despair, illness, and death; loud yellow shades with envy and covetousness; golden hues with richness and nobility. These positive connotations, however, seem to be more closely related to the material gold than to its color value. In the case of other colors, the dependence on hue is less important for the emotional and metaphorical connotations, although non-basic color terms for shades instead of BCTs could be used to strengthen certain associations. This is especially true for red where lexemes indicating purplish or dark red shades such as vermeille (scarlet red) and blutrot (blood-red) were often used in connection with blood or complexion. As the color of blood, red was associated not only with life and health, but also with joy (Jones 2013a: 398). Accordingly, medieval and early modern humoral theory linked red with the sanguine temperament. The association of red with shame and rage was certainly inspired by the blush that colors a face red. In sixteenth-century English, people were red for shame (Shakespeare, see OED: under shame 13a), and certain verbs express blushing for shame in German (rotwerden; Jones 2013a: 398), or in French (erubescer, rougir de honte; Huguet 1925–67: under erubescer, honte). Sin is blutrot (blood-red) or rosinfarbe (rose-colored) (Luther 1534: Isaiah i. 18); the English Bible of 1560 translates the same passage with crimson and skarlet (OED: under crimson). Crimson was also used in other English sixteenth-century texts to denote the dark purplish hue of the blood spilled by murder (OED). However, the color term crimson—as well as scarlet—alludes also to prestigious textiles dyed with kermes. In the English Bible, sin is thus associated not only with murder but also with luxury. Against that, in French and Italian, the connotations of extreme richness and majesty associated with crimson fabric were usually linked with positive emotions. Cramoisi signified magnificence (prince cramoisi, “crimson prince”); excellence (si je ne rithme en cramoisi, “if I do not rhyme excellently”: Rabelais, quoted in Huguet 1925–67); or exaggeration (meschans en cramoisy, “extremely vicious”: Huguet 1925– 67). And the Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca (1612: under chermisi) defines furbo in chermisi (literally: “ingenious as chermisi”) as “extremely delicate.”

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Blue was not involved in the four-humor concept, but as a color of the air it was involved in the theory of the four elements (see Baker, this volume). As such, it is second after red as a noble color according to Borghini (1584: 235). Also in heraldry, blue was considered a royal and noble color. Medieval color symbolism associated blue with positive properties such as constancy and fidelity, and with the Virgin Mary (Jones 2013a: 389). Only in early Modern German was blue also often linked with negative connotations such as falsehood, fraud, or ignorance. Paracelsus denounced the ignorance of the “blue physician” and nonsensical “blue advice,” and in colloquial German blaue Enten (blue ducks) or blauer Dunst (blue mist) designate lies or deceit (389–90). Green as the dominant color of vegetation had been linked since antiquity with connotations of fertility, freshness, renewal, and vigor. Freshness could also be understood as being unripe or young; children are “grene of age” (OED: under green 10). Youth also meant inexperience: young people were “greene of sense and judgment” (OED: under green 8c); German grünling was a pejorative appellation of a “young, inexperienced” man (Jones 2013a: 335). Youth and vigor related green to desire (Smith 2008: 36–7), but green was also associated with a variety of other meanings (Smith 2008). According to Borghini, green signifies “serenity, love, gratitude, friendship, honor, goodness, beauty, and hope” (Borghini 1584: 238). An exception to these mostly positive connotations is Italian esser condotto al verde (to be reduced to green), which the Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca (1612: under verde) defines as “to be at the end” and explains that the lower end of candles used to be tinted green to see when they would stop burning (see also Glanemann 2003: 425–6).

CONCLUSION The emotional or metaphorical connotations of color in the early modern period continue and amplify traditions from antiquity to the Middle Ages. They are linked to Christian symbolism, as well as to the concept of the four humors, but also draw on daily experiences. Similarly, abstract color concepts were only slowly modified. The six primary BCCs in Germanic and Romance languages had already been fully developed in the late medieval period. Besides these, the abstract concepts of brown, purple, and gray gradually emerged in early modern times. The late medieval period was, on the other hand, very productive in the invention of new color lexemes, which testifies to an increasing interest in a subtle differentiation of shades. As discussed earlier, the textile industry also played a major role in this context, and a number of textile color terms became generally accepted abstract color lexemes.

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CHAPTER SEVEN

Literature and the Performing Arts BRUCE R. SMITH

INTRODUCTION “Poetry is like a picture” (ut pictura poesis), Horace says in his verse epistle known to history as his Ars Poetica (Harvey 2002). In that pronouncement he invited Renaissance writers, readers, visual artists, and viewers to think of verbal representations and visual representations as allied arts. In early modern English, as Lucy Gent has demonstrated, “picture” could refer interchangeably to representations made with words and representations made with drawing pencil and paintbrush (Gent 1981). To that list of implements we might add embroidery needles, weavers’ fingers, tailors’ scissors, and performing bodies with or without musical instruments as extensions of the body. Pictures-madewith-words had a name in classical rhetoric: ekphrasis. Involved in these artistic transactions across media were the three dimensions of color that we recognize today: not just hue (red, yellow, green, and so forth) but also saturation (intensity) and value (degrees of brightness and darkness). Writers did, of course, use words to refer to particular hues, musicians were trained to think of certain harmonic intervals and embellishments as “chromatic,” and performers in plays, masques, and operas were assigned costumes of different hues, but color in all these Renaissance art forms also involved saturation and value. Value may in fact be the most important of the three in the Renaissance. Time, speaking as Chorus in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, catches the multihued, variegated effect of value when he refers

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to “the glistering of this present” (Shakespeare 2011: 4.1.14). In the context of dramatic performance “glistering” could refer to the hues of the costumes, the afternoon light within the outdoor Globe Theatre or the candlelight within the indoor Blackfriars playhouse, the colors of rhetoric in the Chorus’s speech, and the sheer presence of the actors as “shadows,” who, in Prospero’s words in The Tempest, “are melted into air, into thin air” once the performance is ended (Shakespeare 2011: 4.1.150). Our task in this chapter is to search out these shadows wherever we may find them: on printed pages, in musical notation, in designs for dancing, and in paintings and drawings that turn verbal texts into visual images by reversing ut pictura poesis into ut poesis pictura. Five representative texts will give us starting points for our exploration, each written in a different genre, each located in a different culture, each realized in a different language: Ludovico Ariosto’s chivalric epic Orlando Furioso (Italian first edition 1516), Pierre de Ronsard’s lyric poetry (circulated and published in France, 1550s to 1580s), the anonymous German chapbook The History of Dr. Johann Faustus (written 1560–80, printed 1587), Miguel de Cervantes’s prose narrative The Ingenious Nobleman Mister Quixote of La Mancha (original Spanish edition 1605, expanded 1616), and William Shakespeare’s late play with its danced masque The Tempest (performed in London 1610–11, printed 1623). These five works provide paradigms for the ways in which color intersected with literature and the performing arts all over Renaissance Europe. Our agenda in each case will consist of five concerns: (1) fluidity among material media, (2) picture, (3) value, (4) hue, and (5) saturation.

ARIOSTO, ORLANDO FURIOSO Ut pictura poesis: Horace’s observation is extravagantly illustrated in Ludovico Ariosto’s chivalric epic poem Orlando Furioso, first published in Italian in 1516 (and in enlarged versions from 1522) and then in French in 1543, Catalan in 1549, Spanish in 1550, Scots in 1585–9, English in 1591, Dutch in 1615, and German in 1632, not to mention a translation of the first canto into Latin, the language of classical epic for Renaissance readers, in 1570 (Petrina 2006; Graheli 2016). Many of these printings featured woodblock prints and engravings of particular episodes and sometimes overviews of entire cantos. When these black-on-white images were hand-colored, they endowed the printed book with the look of an illuminated medieval manuscript. A copy of the 1542 Venetian edition in the Newberry Library, Chicago, printed on vellum, represents the apotheosis of such post-print coloring (see Plate 7.1). The brightness of the illustration for Canto One reminds us that the etymology of the verb enlumine (later illumine) is “to shine light into” (OED: under † enlumine, v., etymology).

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Examples of ekphrasis, of making pictures out of words, are rife in Orlando Furioso. Perhaps the most famous of the pictures in Orlando Furioso is the island where the evil sorceress Alcina captures knights who have strayed from battle, enchants them, takes them as lovers, and then turns them into beasts, trees, rocks, and streams. When the knight Ruggiero happens upon the island on the back of a flying griffin, he lands in a particularly luxuriant version of the poem’s green and blue landscape, as described in Sir John Harington’s 1591 English translation: Here having travailed many a hundred mile, Rogero by his bird to rest was brought, In pastures green, and hills with cool fresh air, Clear rivers, shady banks, and meadows fair. […] And arbors in the thickest places made, Where little light and heat came not at all […] (Ariosto [1591] 1962: 6.20.5–8, 6.21.5–6)1 It is the shadows in this green and blue landscape that almost prove fatal to Ruggiero. Almost. He is rescued by the good sorceress Melissa, who brings from Ruggiero’s forsaken lover Bradamante a ring that will break Alcina’s spells. The earliest painting inspired by Orlando Furioso, by Dosso Dossi, shows Melissa at work amid Alcina’s seductive landscape in Canto Eight (see Plate 7.2). Dossi, along with Ariosto, was a member of the artistic establishment at the court of Duke Alfonso I d’Este in Ferrara. In Dossi’s depiction, dating from 1518, two years after the poem’s first publication, the essential features and colors of Ariosto’s verbal picture are captured in pigments applied to canvas: a lush landscape of passionate greens and languid blues, with lolling courtiers in the middle distance, Alcina’s castle is in the far distance, and farther still is the castle of Alcina’s virtuous sister Logistilla atop a mountain “not passable without great toil and pain” (Ariosto [1591] 1962: 6.56.2). Value as well as hue lifts the pigments off the canvas. Details glister, in the distance as well as up close: the abandoned armor and the dog’s eyes to Melissa’s right (our left), the pink flowers and the lighted torch to her left, leaves tricked out with light in groves near and far, the folds in the garments of the lounging figures, the gates and towers of Alcina’s castle that catch the sun, the gleaming mass of Logistilla’s remote fortress. The passage of highest value in the painting—the sun-lit yellow gold presented by some of the trees in the middle distance—connects Melissa’s glistering eyes with effigies of Alcina’s former lovers fused into the shadowed tree trunks to her right. Above all it is the figure of Melissa that glisters. The red hue of Melissa’s bodice and rug dominates the picture. What commands attention is not just the

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hue but its intensity, its saturation, especially in contrast with the paler blue of Melissa’s gown. The glistering highlights of the gold trim and embroidery of the bodice and rug add fire to red’s associations with blood and boldness. In effect Dossi presents his viewers with a play of passions: spirit vanquishing eros, air infusing fluids, red and gold triumphing over green and blue. Movement across material media was commonplace at the Estensi court (Looney and Shemek 2005). It was under the patronage of the duke’s brother, Cardinal Ippolito d’Este, that Ariosto wrote Orlando Furioso and also provided comedies in the classical mode like Cassaria (1508) for performance at the ducal court. The production of Cassaria, according to Fabio Finotti, was the first in Italy to use perspective scenery, an innovation by one of the court painters, Pellegrino da Udine (Finotti 2010). As painter at the Esensi court after 1514, Dossi was also expected to create scenery for dramatic performances (Gibbons 1968). It took less than a year after the first publication of Orlando Furioso for another artist in Duke Alfonso’s court, Bartolomeo Tromboncino, to turn a stanza from the poem into a madrigal (Haar 1990: 101–25). By the middle of the sixteenth century, madrigals featuring stanzas and episodes from Orlando Furioso were circulating all over Europe. Many such Ariosto-inspired madrigals were “colorful” compositions in the precise senses that Renaissance composers, performers, and audiences understood musical color: (1) the persisting association of particular hues with particular musical intervals in the twelve-tone scale, (2) chromaticism (from Greek kromos, “color”) in which tones are used that do not belong to the scale in which a musical passage is written, (3) musical ekphrasis wherein upward or downward cadences, rhythm, tempo, and legato versus staccato articulation enact the sense of the words being sung, and (4) highly ornamented coloratura vocal production (Bruhn 2000; Jewanski 2001; Dunsby and Whittall 2011).2 Thomas Morley in his Plain and Easy Introduction to Practical Music (1597) has unorthodox chordal harmonies in mind when he quotes with approval Zarlino’s advice about musical color: Even as a picture painted with diverse colors doth more delight the eye to behold it than if it were done but with one color alone, so the ear is more delighted and taketh more pleasure of the consonants by the diligent musician placed in his compositions with variety than of the simple concords put together without any variety at all. (Morley [1597] 1962: 255) An Allegory of Music painted by Dossi four years after his picture of Melissa depicts music as a billowing red cloth extending out of the loins of the inventor of music, Tubal Cain (see Plate 7.3). Morley, himself a writer of madrigals, may even have had in mind settings of stanzas from Orlando Furioso, since five such madrigals were included in the English collection Musica Transalpina (1588) (Ainsworth 1931).

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A madrigal cycle of ninety-one stanzas from Orlando Furioso by Jacquet de Berchem (published 1561, composed earlier) follows a recognizable narrative in what amounts to a proto-opera (Haar 1986: 76–99).3 By embracing Ariosto’s entire narrative, Berchem points the way to the first operas to use material from Ariosto’s epic, both of them staged in Florence in the early seventeenth century: Lo sposalizio di Medoro ed Angelica by two of opera’s founding composers, Jacopo Peri and Marco da Gagliano (Palazzo Pitti, September 25, 1619), and Francesca Caccini’s La liberazione di Ruggiero dall’isola d’Alcina (Villa di Poggio Imperiale, February 3, 1625). Caccini’s opera in particular is a highly colored affair, through its distribution of sharp and flat keys according to the characters’ gender and virtue, its bright scoring favoring treble voices and treble instruments, and the tonal extravagances (saturation perhaps) granted to Alcina (Cusick 2009).

RONSARD, LYRIC POEMS In a succession of poems from the 1550s through the 1580s, Pierre de Ronsard illustrates how lyric poems change the dynamics of ut pictura poesis: instead of a third-person narrative, the writer puts into words a first-person experience. The pictured scene is not external but internal. Ronsard deploys color in quite specific, strategic ways. His lyric poems engage all of our concerns in this chapter: picture, hue, intensity, saturation, and above all fluidity among material media. A sonnet from Ronsard’s Premier livre des amours (also known as Les amours de Cassandre, 1552) can help us get our bearings within Ronsard’s color field. Here is Nature ornant la dame as translated into English by John Southern in 1584. Southern personalizes Ronsard’s unnamed “lady” as Diana: When nature made my Diana, that before All other nymphs: should force the hearts rebelliant: She gave her the mass, of beauties excellent, That she kept since long, in her coffers in store. And at her framing, Paphae came from the skies, With the sweetness, and graces, of Erycene: And swore that it should make her so fair a queen, Of beauty: that the gods should dwell in her eyes. But she hardly was come to us, from above: Though: But my soul was inflamed with her love. And I serve her in spite of the troupe celest, For tell me: why did not they likewise ordain: That in reward of my love, she should again, Esteem me only, and only, love me best. (Southern 1584: siglum B1v)

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Ronsard’s poem in its several extant variations ends more graphically than Southern’s version. In Ronsard’s original the lady’s “portrait” is “engraved” on the poet’s soul and “imprinted” on the poet’s heart: black lines on a red field. Ronsard offers up here a blazon of Cassandre’s beauty. That literary term for a catalog of a person’s beauty derives from the Old French word for a shield, particularly a heraldic shield, but by the late sixteenth century its primary meaning, in English at least, was a catalog of excellencies. An association of the word with blazing, although apparently false in terms of etymology, was inescapable (OED: under blazon, n., etymology). The lady’s beauty inspires the blazon by “inflaming” the poet’s soul. Understanding these associations helps us understand why Sir Philip Sidney in his sonnet sequence Astrophel and Stella (written in the 1580s, published 1591) would twice say that he should write out his love in red ink (Sidney 1962: 11.6, 102.12–14). Red is the hue implied in Ronsard’s sonnet, but intensity, flaming brightness, is the more prominent dimension of color. A poem celebrating a lyre given to Ronsard by his patron and friend Jean Belot displays the poet’s aureate ways with ekphrasis. Ronsard takes every opportunity to remind the reader that the lyre is the instrument of Apollo, regarded as the inventor of lyric poetry. With respect to color, intensity is more important than hue. “Of gold is the bow,” Ronsard begins his description, the ends of the tuning pegs, too, are of gold, the top of the angular neck is of gold, and all round many an ivory panel is engraved either with a true story or with pleasing pictures of fables, which the belly of this Lyre proudly displays. (Ronsard 2002: 191–2) Among the episodes engraved on the lyre’s neck and painted on its belly are several involving musical instruments: first a feast of the gods with “Apollo, who unites his voice with the trilling of the bow and the fingers” (Ronsard 2002: 192), then Apollo gloating over Marsyas, flayed alive for boasting that his flute was superior to Apollo’s lyre, then the three Graces, then Bacchus with a vase overflowing with fruits, then Mercury’s invention of stringed instruments by stretching dried gut-strings over the hollow of a tortoise shell. Lyres resembling what Ronsard describes seem not to have survived in major museums of musical instruments, but several collections include other seventeenth-century stringed instruments featuring inlays of ivory or bone with engraved designs. An archilute attributed to Matteo Seelos in the Veneto from 1638 includes pictorial scenes on the guitar’s neck, just where Ronsard places them on his lyre (see Figure 7.1).4 In an ode A sa guitarre (To his guitar) Ronsard sings thanks to his instrument, taking it as a metaphor—or perhaps as synecdoche (in which the part represents the whole) if he in fact did perform on the guitar— for his verse making. He associates the guitar specifically with love poetry:

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Ma guiterre, je te chante, Par qui seule je deçoy, Je deçoy, je romps, j’enchante Les amours que je reço. (Ronsard 1587) (I sing to you, my guitar, Through whom alone I lure, I lure, I conquer, I enchant The lovelies I meet.) (my translation)

FIGURE 7.1  Matteo Seelos (attrib.), Archilute. Veneto, 1635. © Cit. du Musique, Philarmonie du Paris.

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Painted on the guitar, Ronsard reports, are three mythological scenes: one portraying Apollo, one Orpheus, and one Ganymede. The frets that cross the inlaid scenes in Figure 7.1 suggest how such pictures could be released into sonic life by the performer’s fingers as he or she sang, perhaps about the very subjects depicted in the images. If red dominates the color field of Ronsard’s amorous poems, gold lends its brilliance to his political and polemical poems, consisting of masquerades, tournament challenges, and ceremonial entries. “Heroic” might be a term that embraces the political and the polemical at the same time that it gestures towards epic as a literary genre (Higman 1973: 241–85). The tournament challenges in particular must have been declaimed or sung amid trumpet flourishes. Take, for example, the “Challenge for a Mounted Tournament, in the Form of a Ballet,” which choreographs a dance by knights mounted on horses. In Ronsard’s “ballet,” ekphrasis of classical precedents adds to the splendor of the present occasion: In this fashion, Pyrrhus executed an armed dance over the tomb of Achilles, and Aeneas on the shores of Sicily, honoring his father with tournaments, directed the Trojans to perform the armed movements of a war dance in which young boys interlaced the windings of their warlike gallops in a hundred thousand ways. (Ronsard 2002: 115) The knights’ control of their horses is attributed to the golden bridle that Pallas gave to Bellerophon to aid him in mastering Pegasus (Ronsard 2002: 287n). Ceremonial pieces like this one serve as a reminder that dance, along with music and spectacle, was part of Ronsard’s aesthetic (Jeffrey 1973: 233– 7; Silver 1977: 155–69). Dance inevitably involves color in the form of the dancers’ costumes. In the case of Ronsard’s chivalric ballet, we need to imagine polished armor and blazons on shields as well as colorfully caparisoned horses. Likely, different hues, like different shields and different impresses (pictorial devices made for knights to carry), distinguished one knight from another. To stringed instruments in Ronsard’s love poetry and to trumpets in his heroic poetry should be added bagpipes, flutes, fifes, and tambors in his bucolic poems, which were first published as Le bocage (The Grove; 1554) (Jeffrey 1973: 219–21). One such poem is an ode to the fountain Bellerie in the landscape of his birthplace: “In Summer I sleep or rest on your grassy bank, where, concealed beneath your green willows, I write something that will spread your glory through the universe, bidding Memory to let you live on in my poetry” (Ronsard 2002: 79). The bucolic scene is suffused by green. Each of Ronsard’s major genres—amorous verse, pastoral, and heroic—can be regarded as a scene, dominated by a different hue and associated with a different family of musical instruments, each with its own distinctive timbre or tone-color. Each

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of the three scenes had its own ethos in the original Greek sense of that word as “custom, usage, disposition, character” (OED: under ethos, n.). Ronsard carefully cultivated an image of himself as a singer of his own poetry, not only in poems addressed to his guitar, lute, and lyre but in a Préface sur la musique published twice, in 1560 and 1572. Whether this self-fashioning was realized in his own performances on guitar, lute, and lyre has been called into question by Brian Jeffrey, who can find no external evidence of Ronsard’s professional credentials as a musician (Jeffrey 1973: 210–15). Be that as it may, Ronsard’s devotion to the idea of poetry as a species of music is above question. Published with the 1552 edition of Les Amours was an appendix with the scores of nine musical settings of sonnets from the collection by four major composers. Among them is Clément Janequin’s setting of Nature ornant la dame (Southern’s “When Nature Made my Diana”).5 Janequin’s setting, like all the others in the 1552 supplement, are scored for four voices—a circumstance that would seem to disperse the power of Apollo’s solo voice and the cosmic concords of his lyre. On the other hand, the polyvocal musical settings of stanzas from Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso prompt us to consider how harmonic coloring might enhance the passionate effect of Ronsard’s words. In the case of Ariosto, the fluidity of color across media is largely the result of other artists’ use of the poet’s words. In the case of Ronsard, that fluidity was one of the poet’s own aims. The synesthetic result is described in Ronsard’s 1550 ode “To his lute”: Tandis qu’en l’air je soufflerai ma vie, Sonner Phébus j’aurai toujours envie, Et ses compagnes aussi, Pour leur rendre un grand merci De m’avoir fait poète de nature, Idolâtrant la musique et peinture. (Ronsard 1550) (As long as I inbreathe the air I strive still to sound out Phoebus, And his companions as well, Giving them great thanks They have made me a poet of nature, Idolizing music and painting.) (my translation) As an element common to poetry, painting, music, and dance, color assumes central importance in Ronsard’s ambitious program of bringing classical norms to French poetry, including the alignment of poetry with music.

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THE HISTORY OF DR. JOHANN FAUSTUS In terms of influence at least, the anonymous prose narrative Historia von D[oktor] Johann Fausten (printed at Frankfurt in 1587) stands supreme in German Renaissance literature. It quickly passed from its original language into other European languages—and into visual and performative media that turned the text into something that could be seen and heard. An English version of the narrative, The History of the Damnable Life, and Deserved Death of Doctor John Faustus (likely 1588), was the main source for Christopher Marlowe’s play The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, which remained in the repertory of London’s public playhouses from as early as 1588 to as late as the 1620s. The story of Faustus’s bargaining his soul with the Devil for black-magic power takes place within a cosmos that stretches from black to white. Faustus explores the limits of this spectrum in two journeys: first to the black of Hell and then to the white of Heaven. Hell figures as the darkest of the dark. Awaking in the morning dawn after his nighttime journey to Hell, Faustus “was amazed, like a man that had been in a dark dungeon, musing with himself if it were true or not” ([Dr Faustus] [1587] 2005: 97). As well he might. In a letter to his old Wittenberg classmate Jonas Victor, found among Faustus’s papers after his death and transcribed in The History, Faustus describes his journey to the stars. “The higher that I came,” he writes to Victor, “the more the earth seemed to be darkened, so that methought I came out of a dungeon” ([Dr Faustus] [1587] 2005: 99). As to the physical status of what he saw, Faustus tells his skeptical friend that it was but a Figur acta vnnd geschicht (literally: “an enacted form/shape and event”).6 The supernatural events in the Faustbuch are all characterized by high-value, highly saturated hues. Otherwise the world of The History, replete with everyday objects, realistic sounds, and actual place names, is startlingly colorless. The supernatural events begin with the first appearance of the fiery spirit who tempts Faustus to sell his soul, an actus that takes place in a dark forest at midnight, when “a flame in manner of a lighning” falls in front of Faustus and becomes first “a fiery globe” out of which emerges “the shape of a fiery man” and then the figura of a gray-friar who presents Faustus with the fatal proposition ([Dr Faustus] [1587] 2005: 70). The spirit Mephostophiles becomes Faustus’s medium. The hue that dominates the entire supernatural scenario is red. Faustus signs the contract in his own blood, and it is blood that dominates the scene of his destruction at the end. Faustus’s friends discover the scene the morning after: “All the hall lay besprinkled with blood, his brains cleaving to the wall” (150). The title page to the 1587 first printing of The History bears witness to this bloody narrative, at the same time that it attracts potential buyers of the book. It was common in German printing at the time for lines on title pages to grab attention in red (see Pon, this volume). In the 1587 printing of The History red ink highlights Faustus’s name in large typeface and, in smaller letters, the fact

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that the volume includes some of Faustus’s own writings (Figure 7.2 ). In effect, red becomes the hue of Faustus’s physical presence and recorded voice. Two supernatural figurae in particular are glowing with color. The first is Faustus’s honoring a request from Emperor Charles V to see his inspirer,

FIGURE 7.2  Historia von D[oktor] Johannes Fausten (title page), 1587. © Wikimedia Commons.

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Alexander the Great, and his spouse. That is not possible in the flesh, Faustus explains, but spirits are able to assume the bodies of dead persons. “Wherewith,” the story continues, Doctor Faustus opened the privy-chamber door, where presently entered the great and mighty emperor Alexander Magnus, in all things to look upon as if he had been alive, in proportion a strong thickset man, of a middle stature, black hair [the German text says red], and that both thick and curled, head and beard, red cheeks and a broad face, with eyes like a basilisk. ([Dr Faustus] [1587] 2005: 134) Colorwise, the main effect is value, brightness: “He had on a complete harness, burnished and graven, exceeding rich to look upon.” Next comes his spouse, “clothed in blue velvet, wrought and embroidered with pearls and gold, she was also excellent fair like milk and blood mixed” (120). Again, the gold pieces and pearls suggest lustre as well as hue as a major part of the effect. The ekphrasis in this passage is even more emphatic when Faustus conjures Helen of Troy for the enjoyment of his fellow students at Wittenberg University—a figura that ravishes the students out of their right minds. This lady appeared before them in a most sumptuous gown of purple velvet, richly embroidered. Her hair hanged down loose as fair as the beaten gold, and of such length that it reached down to her hams; with amorous coal-black eyes, a sweet and pleasant round face, her lips red as a cherry, her cheeks of roseal color, her mouth small, her neck as white as the swan, tall and slender of personage, and in sum, there was not one imperfect part in her. (134) If all this sounds familiar, it is because the author has appropriated the standard blazon of female beauty from Petrarchan poetry. Helen’s complexion is described in the German text as “ein uberauss schön gleissend Angesicht” (an extremely beautiful, radiant countenance), insinuating once again that value is as important to the effect as hue ([Dr Faustus] [1587] 1988: 98). Ut pictura poesis, ut poesis pictura: that media switch happens within the narrative when the verbal ekphrasis of Helen’s beauty becomes a painting. The students beg Faustus to conjure Helen a second time so that they can send a painter to his house to make her portrait. He refuses, but he later does produce a portrait (by what means unspecified) that the students have copied by sending painters to his house. Christopher Marlowe’s play The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, with documented performances by the Lord Admiral’s Men at the Rose Theatre in London dating from 1594, dispenses with the original narrative’s cosmic chromatics—at least in the printed texts of 1604 and 1616—but retains blood red as the dominant hue in the spoken dialogue. Blood in the 1604

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text figures in three registers: comic, diabolical, and divine. First it is a joke made to the audience by Faustus’s servant Wagner about how the Clown he meets “would give his soul to the devil for a shoulder of mutton, though it were blood raw,” then the ink with which Faustus signs the pact, and finally Faustus’s “See, see where Christ’s blood streams in the firmament” just before he is taken away by devils amid thunder and lightning (Marlowe 2005: 369–70). Less important in stage productions than verbal allusions are costumes and visual effects. As it happens, an acting-company inventory of costumes made about 1602 by Edward Alleyn, the man who played Faustus in the Lord Admiral’s Men’s productions, includes an entry for “Faustus’s jerkin, his cloak” (Alleyn 1602). Unfortunately for us, the colors of the jerkin and the cloak are not given—an anomaly, since the hues, the material fabric, and the cut of most of the eighty-six garments in the inventory are carefully noted. Of the colors that are specified by far the most prominent are red hues (noted as “red,” “scarlet,” “crimson”—distinctions that are probably important with respect to saturation) and “black.” These are followed at some distance by yelloworange hues (noted as “gold,” “yellow,” “orange-tawny,” and “ginger”), cloth-ofgold, cloth-of-silver, blue, green, white, and purple, in that order. The glistering effect of cloth-of-gold and cloth-of-silver was enhanced on garments of other hues by the addition of gold and silver lace, embroidery, tinsel, and spangles, all specified item by item in the inventory. All in all, the inventory points towards a “glistering” effect in which value is just as important as hue—perhaps more so. Spectators at performances of Doctor Faustus at the Rose Theatre would, then, have seen startling contrasts between red and black, with accents in other hues, all projected into the air of the theater through gold and silver ornamentation. In the case of Doctor Faustus, the glistering would have been enhanced by fireworks cued to accompany some of Faustus’s conjuring tricks. Knowledge of the gilt-enhanced costumes and the fiery lighting help us to give visual presence to the most famous speech in Marlowe’s play, Faustus’s exclamation at the vision of Helen of Troy. The hues in the German Faustbuch have been replaced by celestial images of dazzling brightness: Was this the face that launched a thousand ships And burnt the topless towers of Illium? […] O, thou art fairer than the evening air, Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars; Brighter art thou than flaming Jupiter When he appeared to hapless Semele. (Marlowe 2005: lines 1357–8, 1370–3)

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CERVANTES, DON QUIXOTE Like the supernatural events in Doctor Faustus, the chivalric adventures narrated in The Ingenious Nobleman Mister Quixote of La Mancha (part one published in 1605, part two in 1616) are highly colored. The fictional site of Quixote’s adventures, by contrast, is bare, even bleak. En un lugar de La Mancha: the decorated capital E on the first page of the Madrid, 1605, first edition calls up for the reader this blank tabula rasa (Figure 7.3). The region of La Mancha in south-central Spain is an arid plain, albeit with patches of farming and herding and some stretches of red earth. Unsurprisingly, Cervantes’s narrative is full of references to dust. Outside Quixote’s fantasies the human accents in this dull landscape tend to be noted as white, black, and “tawny” with occasional touches of brown, blue, and green. The contrast between the earth tones of La Mancha and Quixote’s highly colored chivalric imaginings is like that between the colorless mundane world of Faustus and the red, gold, blue, and purple of the supernatural figurae Faustus experiences. The woodcut panel at the top of the first page of the 1605 edition of Quixote, with its floriations

FIGURE 7.3  Miguel de Cervantes, El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha (part one, chapter one), 1605. © Getty Images.

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and feathered New World natives, suggests to the reader the exotic realm of Quixote’s imagination. This intricate woodcut, like the plainer initial below, does not contain hues and values, but it implies them. One of Quixote’s earliest and most famous adventures exemplifies his flights into brightly colored realms. In part one, chapter four, Quixote imagines that he and his squire Sancho have encountered two armies about to do battle. From the top of a hillock, Quixote says, he and Sancho can survey the whole field— if, the narrator interjects, “the clouds of dust had not hindered it and blinded their sight.” Quixote, “seeing in conceit, that which really he did not see at all,” proceeds to name “knights of the one and the other squadron, even as he had imagined them, and attributed to each one his arms, his colors, impresse, and mottos, suddenly borne away by the imagination of his wonderful distraction.” Over there is the Lord of the Silver Bridge in yellow armor, there Micocolembo, Duke of Quirocia, with arms “powdered with flowers of gold,” bearing “in an azure field three crowns of silver,” on the opposite side “Timonel of Carcaiona, Prince of New Biscay, who comes armed with arms parted into blue, green, white, and yellow quarters, and bears in his shield in a field of tawny, a cat of gold,” and so forth. What Quixote is in fact seeing is two flocks of sheep (Cervantes 1652: sigla I2–I2v). Heraldry supplies one of the main ways color figures in Don Quixote. Mixed up in Quixote’s mind with heraldic colors is a second kind of color: the “complexions” of the knights he imitates. In dialogue with a skeptical priest at the very start of part two, Quixote defends the veracity of the knights he admires as well as their exploits: With these very eyes I have beheld Amadis de Gaul, who was a goodly tall man, well complexioned, had a broad beard, and black, an equal countenance betwixt mild and stern, a man of small discourse, slow to anger, and soon appeased; and just as I have delineated Amadis, I might in my judgement paint and decipher out as many knights errant, as are in all the histories of the world; for by apprehending, they were such as their histories report them, by their exploits they did, and their qualities, their features, colors and statures, may in good philosophy be guessed at. (Cervantes 1652: siglum Oo1) “Colors” in the last clause is synonymous with “complexioned” in the first clause. Quixote is talking about more than skin tone here. He is referring to Galenic physiology, in which the four basic “humors” of the human body produce not only four distinct skin tones but four distinct personalities. Thus, a preponderance of phlegm in the body’s chemistry produces a slow, phlegmatic personality and a pale skin tone; black bile, a melancholic personality and a swarthy skin tone; choler, an angry personality and a ruddy skin tone; and blood, an energetic, sanguine personality and a rosy skin tone

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(Filipczak 1997). Most of Quixote’s heroes presumably display the last of these skin tones: blood-fired ruddiness. As for Quixote himself, his nights and days devoted to nothing but reading books of chivalry have reduced him to the wasted body and dry brain of a melancholic, presumably with a melancholic’s sallow color. Cervantes’s third way with color is exemplified in an episode near the end of part one. A goatherd tells a story that captures precisely the workings of colorful illusion in Don Quixote and serves, perhaps, to ironize the way Quixote foists his illusions on everyone he meets. A boy in the goatherd’s village was kidnapped as a soldier and then returns to the village a dozen years later full of bravery. The boy, came back again attired like a soldier, and painted with a hundred colors, full of a thousand devices of crystal, five steel chains: today he would put on some gay thing, the next day some other, but all of them slight painted, and of little weight, less worth. The country bumpkins were enchanted. The returned soldier in fact had but three suits of apparel of different colors, with garters and stockings answerable to them; but he used so many disguisements, varieties, transformations and inventions, which they, as if they had not counted them all, someone would have sworn that he had made show of more than ten suits of apparel, and more than twenty plumes of feathers. (Cervantes 1652: sigla Kk4v–Ll1) The goatherd’s tale is all about heraldic, deceptive, bold-faced theatre. Don Quixote is often regarded as the first novel, but it draws on all the modes and genres that Cervantes had tried earlier in his career: romance, pastoral, lyric poetry, and perhaps most importantly theatre. In the 1580s Cervantes had been one of a group of writers who attempted—unsuccessfully—to persuade actors on Madrid’s public stages to follow the classical rules of Italian tragedies by the likes of Giraldi Cinthio (De Armas 2014: 33–58). In a preface to a collection of his plays published in 1615, a year before his death, Cervantes was still feeling the sting of failure. The Canon in part one, chapter forty-eight, of Don Quixote dismisses most plays on the Spanish stage as “notorious fopperies, and things without either head or foot,” but singles out (without naming the author) Cervantes’s tragedy Numantia among plays “made by judicious poets, which both redounded to their infinite fame and renown, and yielded unto these actors abundant gain” (Cervantes 1652: sigla Ii2v–Ii3). Numantia, not printed until the eighteenth century, is a period drama about the Romans in Spain, but with lavishly costumed allegorical set-pieces already favored on the Spanish stage. “Costume drama” may be a mid-nineteenth-century coinage, but Cervantes was already doing it, with brilliant color, in Numantia and in Quixote’s chivalric delusions (OED: under costume, n., compounds, C2). In positive and negative ways, color in Don Quixote involves deception.

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SHAKESPEARE, THE TEMPEST Set on a fantasy island that seems to be located in a colorful clime, The Tempest contains surprisingly few evocations of hue. Those present in the script gesture towards a yellow/tawny/neutral landscape—appropriate, perhaps, for “The scene, an un-inhabited island,” a place with no humans to see and name colors until the play’s Italian exiles arrive (Shakespeare 1623: siglum B4). “Come unto these yellow sands,” sings the air-spirit Ariel to some dancing fellow spirits as young prince Ferdinand, rescued from the shipwreck in the play’s first scene, comes ashore (Shakespeare 2011: 1.2.376).7 The word yellow has presumably been taught to Ariel by his human master Prospero. Where Ariel sees yellow, the earth-monster Caliban sees red, in more ways than one. “You taught me language,” Caliban tells Prospero, “and my profit on’t / Is I know how to curse.” He then offers an example: “The red plague rid you / For learning me your language” (1.2.364–6). As the editors of the Arden edition note, “red” diseases involved bloody eruptions or evacuations of blood (1.2.365, note). When the rest of the wrecked ship’s passengers enter in the next scene, they express startlingly different views of the colors they see: GONZALO How lush and lusty the grass looks! How green! ANTONIO The ground indeed is tawny. SEBASTIAN With an eye of green in’t.

(Shakespeare 2011: 2.1.55–7) “Eye” in this passage is glossed by the Oxford English Dictionary to mean “a slight tinge or shade (of color),” a usage that has been obsolete since the end of the seventeenth century (OED: under eye, n.1, II.†15). Later the jester Trinculo, seeing a black cloud, bemoans, “Here’s neither bush nor shrub to bear off any weather at all, and another storm brewing” (Shakespeare 2011: 2.2.18–19). If there is green in the landscape of The Tempest, it is located in the viewers’ eyes, not in the landscape. And the viewers are located in the audience as well as on stage: they apprehend color from what they hear as well as what they see. As with Ariosto, Ronsard, the Faustbuch, and Cervantes, the most important dimension of color in The Tempest proves to be not hue but value. Within the play’s neutral color field, hue breaks out all the more spectacularly in supernatural events and allegorical displays, just as in all the other texts we have been considering in this chapter, and the values of those colors are strong. With respect to both hue and value, the big color moment in The Tempest comes in the masque that Prospero conjures to celebrate the betrothal of his daughter Miranda to Ferdinand. Ceres’s welcome to Iris, goddess of the rainbow, conjures up the many-hued scene:

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Hail, many-coloured messenger, that ne’er Dost disobey the wife of Jupiter, Who, with thy saffron wings, upon my flowers Diffusest honey-drops, refreshing showers, And with each end of thy blue box dost crown My bosky acres and my unshrubbed down, Rich scarf to my proud earth. (Shakespeare 2011: 4.1.76–82) Beyond hue, The Tempest is a play full of lighting effects, of startling alterations in light values, some described in words, others physically realized on the stage. The script begins with a synesthetic assault on the audience’s senses: “A tempestuous noise of thunder and lightning heard,” reads the opening stage direction (Shakespeare 2011: before 1.1.1; emphasis added). Just what did the spectator/listeners hear? Just what did they see? “Noise” suggests a backstage sound effect, perhaps a cannonball being rolled back and forth in a wooden trough. Stage directions in surviving scripts from this period almost always conjoin thunder and lightning and deploy them when supernatural events are happening. It is also possible that some kind of fireworks were used in The Tempest’s opening scene as another sign of supernatural events. “Mephistophilis with fireworks,” reads a stage direction in the 1616 version of Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus (Dessen and Thomson 1999: 230–1; emphasis in the original). Perhaps fireworks accompanied Ariel’s first entry, when he reports to Prospero how he became a firebrand during the shipwreck: “I boarded the King’s ship now on the beak, / Now on the waist, the deck, in every cabin / I flamed amazement” (Shakespeare 2011: 1.2.196–8; emphasis added). “Amazement” registers how all of the play’s lighting effects were designed to be received. Some idea of Ariel’s costume may be gathered from Inigo Jones’s design for the fiery spirits’ costumes in Thomas Campion’s The Lords’ Masque, danced on February 14, 1613, to celebrate the wedding of James I’s daughter Lady Elizabeth to Frederick, Elector Palatine (see Plate 7.4). The Tempest was performed  at  court, for a second time, during the same round of festivities (Dutton 2016: 1:1003–9). Flaming red, offset by airy blue, are the two hues in Jones’s design, but the published text of Campion’s masque suggests that brightness was the primary effect: “Sixteen Pages, like fiery spirits, all their attires being alike composed of flames, with fiery wings and bases, bearing in either hand a torch of virgin wax, come forth below dancing a lively measure” (Campion [1615] 1967: 111). Financial accounts for the royal festivities suggest not only dominant hues of red, purple, white, and black but luminary brilliance, with twenty-five yards of cloth-of-silver, 318 yards of gold and silver tinsel, and one pound four ounces of gold spangles (101–2). We can only speculate about the costumes worn by Ceres and Iris in Prospero’s wedding masque in act

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four, scene one, but later in the same scene spectators actually see the “glistering apparel, etc” that Ariel uses to divert Trinculo and his coconspirator Stephano from their plan to murder Prospero (Shakespeare 2011: stage direction before 4.1.194; emphasis in the original). The gowns and jerkins that Trinculo and Stephano try on are the same wardrobe staples as the garments made with clothof-gold and adorned with spangles inventoried by the Lord Admiral’s Men a few years earlier—and likely costumes cut from the same cloth, so to speak, as the masquers’ garments. The specification of torches being carried by the fiery spirits in Campion’s masque accords with stage directions in plays such as The Tempest that contain masques-within-the-play (Dessen and Thomson 1999: 233–4). It is likely that torches, though not specified in the stage directions, accompanied Prospero’s masque in The Tempest not only in its performances at court and in the acting company’s indoor Blackfriars Theatre but also in performances at the outdoors Globe. We can understand why Prospero, in the act of dismissing the masquers, refers to melting, dissolving, and fading. High values, so vividly present in torch-light, fade into darkness when the torches are removed: These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits and Are melted into air, into thin air; And—like the baseless fabric of this vision— The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, And like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. (Shakespeare 2011: 4.1.148–56)

INSPIRATION In all the texts and performances we have considered in this chapter hue, saturation, and value come into play, but value proves to be just as important as hue—perhaps more so—particularly in representations of passion, acts of imagination, scenes of deception, and supernatural events. In Galenic psychology reports from the individual senses—seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and touching—were thought to merge in the faculty of “the common sense,” which fused reports from the five senses into a single synesthetic whole that was delivered first to the seat of passions in the heart and then to the brain for judgment and action (Park 1988: 464–84). The medium of this transfer, the aerated fluid known as spiritus, invites us to become more fluid, more inspired (literally: “in-breathed”) in our own engagements with Renaissance color.

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CHAPTER EIGHT

Art MARCIA HALL

INTRODUCTION Naturalism is the issue in this period. The fifteenth-century painter was acquiring the means to replicate the natural world plausibly—with central point perspective, for instance—but his subject more often than not called on him to situate it in relationship to the celestial realm. In the sixteenth century, painters created more personal modes of coloring—Leonardo’s sfumato, Raphael’s unione, Michelangelo’s cangiantismo, Sebastiano del Piombo and Raphael’s chiaroscuro, and Titian’s open brushwork—that enabled them to suggest the presence of the supernatural within the natural world.

COLOR IN SCULPTURE Ancient and medieval sculpture had been richly colored, and in the Renaissance wood and terra-cotta continued to be painted in both the North, particularly in Flanders and Germany, and in Italy. Bronze was usually partially gilded. The question of when pure white marble came to be preferred is a subject under investigation. It seems likely that much fifteenth-century stone sculpture was partially painted and gilded: traces of color remain on such prominent monuments as the Bruni and Marsuppini tombs in Santa Croce, Florence. It is probable that portraits were animated with painted eyes, and to judge from one example that has preserved its original coloring, Francesco Laurana’s Isabella of Aragon, also the hair, eyebrows, lips, and dress (see Plate 8.1). By the time of Michelangelo, what was believed to be the classical model of pure white marble

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was the fashionable preference. Over the centuries, as the pigmentation and gilding showed wear and damage, it was scrubbed off.

FROM TEMPERA TO OIL Those painters working in Florence, such as Don Lorenzo Monaco (meaning “monk”) and Fra Angelico (meaning “friar”), followed the precepts laid out in Cennino Cennini’s handbook Il Libro dell’arte (written around 1390–1400), which may have been commissioned as a guide by the guild.1 Pigments bound in an egg medium were used in their pure form and modeled up with white to create brilliant and sumptuous effects. Physical mixtures were considered “corrupt” and were only used where no pigment existed, as for flesh or landscape or purple. Alongside the normal system for modeling, in which white is added to the pure color to create the lights, cangiantismo (meaning “changing”) might be used, in which a second color is applied for the lights to give variety and greater ornamental effect. The pigment used for the lights must be intrinsically higher in value. This system is in violation of natural law and in fact when Cennini describes cangiante coloring, he prefaces it by saying: “If you want to do a shot [cangiante] item of clothing for an angel” signaling its supernatural quality (Broecke 2015: 117). Because it is contrary to the way we actually see color in light, it was especially well suited to indicate the supernatural. Another indicator of the supernatural in Cennini-style paintings such as Fra Angelico’s is the abundant gold leaf, where the entire sky is gilded (Figure 8.1). This still-medieval practice perfectly served the needs of the church for which these works were intended. Leon Battista Alberti proposed an alternative, more naturalistic coloring system, as part of his effort to revive classical antiquity and to incorporate it into his Christian humanism (Grayson 1972: 87–93). He understood that the two need not conflict and that antiquity and Christianity in fact converged in glorifying this world and this life, if they are understood as part of God’s creation. He explained the mathematical basis for a scientific perspective system the painters could employ. With it they could construct the space of their picture as if seen from a fixed point. To reinforce the naturalism achievable with perspective his coloring system did away with gold leaf. The painter should simulate it with yellows and browns, not just because it demonstrated the painter’s skill but also because the effect of light could be controlled. Gold leaf reflects the ambient light and therefore depends on the daylight, lamps, and candles around it, but with painted gold the painter can direct the reflections, showing, for example, a brocade turning its folds as if seen from the viewer’s perspective (Hall 1992: 47, 78). Along with simulated gold, Alberti called for a modeling system that more closely approximated natural shadow. The painter should add black (or a dark monochrome) to model down and use the pure color as the mid tone. Alberti’s down and up modeling system created problems by giving too much variety

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FIGURE 8.1  Fra Angelica, Coronation of the Virgin, c. 1432. Uffizi, Florence. Photograph by The Yorck Project. © Zenodot Verlagsgesellschaft mbH. Wikimedia Commons.

to the palette, so that the image could lose cohesion, but without any doubt it opened the door to a new naturalism. As this new modeling system gained favor cangianti effects fell out of favor. At the same time in Flanders, the medium of choice was not egg but oil, which enabled a different kind of naturalism. Oil because it is translucent can be applied in multiple layers. Jan van Eyck and his followers learned to model without either white or black, but by manipulating the thickness of the paint, so that the shadow was built up with repeated application to deepen the shade, and for the lights the white ground underneath was allowed to shine through (Neidhardt and Schölzel 2000: 33; Gifford et al. 2013: 141). As with Alberti’s system, gold is usually simulated with a range of yellow to brown tones for perfect control of reflection. The Flemish painters did not use scientific perspective, and the space of their pictures can appear oddly skewed at times, but they paid attention to the reflections. If the reflections are projected from a stationary point they can fix the viewpoint as accurately and as convincingly as Alberti’s perspective.

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The Flemish manner of using oil is what distinguished it—oil as a medium had been known and used for centuries. It found its way to Italy, and by the 1470s Giovanni Bellini was experimenting with it in Venice, as was Piero della Francesca in Urbino. In central Italy too it was taken up, but was less well understood.2 Some followers of Van Eyck had learned to add black in the shadows to shortcut the time-consuming process of layering, which required waiting for the paint to dry before another application. This flawed procedure was adopted by the Pollaiuolo brothers in Florence in the 1460s. They were able to achieve a marvelous simulation of jewels, but their draperies are heavy with murky color (Cecchi 1999: 82–3; Hall 2019). As soon as printing increased the demand and lowered the cost of paper, central Italian painters used it to make precise cartoons to prepare their paintings (Ames-Lewis 1981: 21; Bambach 1999). Drawings transferred by enlarging with a grid from preliminary studies would be reinforced with chalk or a liquid medium. A trained member of the workshop could execute such a cartoon without much supervision by the master, who might restrict his intervention to painting important figures, or only some faces and hands. In the case of an important commission he might choose to do all or most of the execution himself.3 In these last decades of the fifteenth century, Flemish hyperrealism and Albertian down modeling led central Italian paintings into a dilemma: they had honed their tools for imitating nature so well that they all but abandoned the attempt to render the supernatural. This worked well in portraits and the occasional mythological pictures, but the majority of their commissions were for altarpieces and devotional pictures, where it did not work well. It was Leonardo da Vinci who led the way out of the dilemma with a new way to use oil paint. Leonardo understood the advantage of translucency differently from the Flemish painters. It was the direction of the light, and the quality of shadow, not reflections, that he wished to capture. Combining it with central point perspective he could create a newly convincing simulacrum of appearance, and one that was more perfect than nature. Translucent oil paint was his means to imitate natural light and to move his forms towards a more beautiful version of themselves. Instead of using a reflective white gesso ground like Van Eyck, Leonardo undermodeled his composition in a brownish wash, working up the light and shade on each element. When he painted the top layers his modeling did not follow precise contours as the Flemish did. Each new layer, diluted to have only the slightest covering power, was adjusted to overlap only partially so that the outlines blurred. The effect is as if seen through thin smoke (sfumato); the image is softened and harshness eliminated (Nagel 1993: 7, 11, 15). A beauty greater than that seen normally could be realized. The natural was not denied but it was perfected. This process of idealization was understood particularly

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by Raphael as a new means to imply the presence of the supernatural in the natural. Without having to resort to the abstraction of Cennini’s coloring system Raphael found a way to bring back the supernatural (Hall 1999: 36, 40).

RAPHAEL’S UNIONE In terms of coloring however, Leonardo’s system was not entirely satisfactory. Because his brown undermodeling showed through the layers applied on top, the colors were toned down. He obtained an unprecedented unity in the tonality, but at the cost of brilliant color (Shearman 1962: 23–30). In fact, Leonardo was more interested in tonal unity than in beautiful color. The Florentine painters who followed him, such as Andrea del Sarto, Raphael, and Michelangelo, did not share these priorities, but they each learned from him. Andrea del Sarto and Raphael adapted Leonardo’s undermodeling, but reduced it to a pale beige so that the superimposed layers were less darkened and muted and retained more of their intensity. Raphael’s system aimed at both beautiful color and tonal unity: the unione mode (Hall 1992: 94). There is an element of abstraction in Raphael’s distilling process, but what we see does not violate the laws of nature. With his coloring system and Leonardo’s idealized forms, Raphael had found the means to his version of the classicism of the High Renaissance.

MICHELANGELO’S CANGIANTISMO The other principal proponent of Renaissance idealizing classicism is Michelangelo, but he chose different means to render the ideal. As a sculptor first and a reluctant painter, he seems to have found Leonardo’s softened contours weak and feminine.4 His manner of depicting the supernatural was with superhuman strength and his unique coloring system. He revived cangiantismo and used it to signify the supernatural and for legibility (see Plate 8.2). Certainly, Raphael’s color could have been made to work on the Sistine vault, but Michelangelo was not an artist who imitated his peers. The system he invented made use of artifice and ornament in order to elevate the realm of his images above the world we know. The reception of Raphael and Michelangelo by their contemporaries differed. Raphael was in constant demand with multiple simultaneous commissions, so he used his managerial skills to organize a large workshop that allowed him to oversee the designing process and delegate the execution. From preliminary sketches, through figural and compositional studies, to cartoons, the master oversaw the procedure and made corrections. The inventions were certainly his own, but with skillful training the shop was able to turn out works in Raphael’s style, to which he may have needed to do no more than a final retouching (Talvacchia 2007: 186). His pupils, especially Giulio Romano and Perino del Vaga, imitated the workshop system he invented

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when they went out on their own after his early death in 1520. Raphael’s manner became a model that never went out of style. His idealized coloring was revived by Annibale Carracci at the end of the century, and Poussin imitated it in the next century. Critics also recognized Raphael’s genius as a colorist (Roskill 1968). Michelangelo, on the other hand, was both revered and reviled. He never ran a workshop so he had no direct pupils. He outlived Raphael by forty-four years, producing a stunning body of work in sculpture and architecture as well as the inimitable Sistine Chapel. Although his style was difficult to emulate without falling into parody, his muscle-bound giants nevertheless appeared everywhere.5 But his color was controversial and imperfectly understood. In the 1520s, the Florentine eccentrics Jacopo Pontormo and Il Rosso employed Michelangelo’s mode for the coloring of some of their altarpieces, most famously Rosso’s Volterra Deposition and Pontormo’s Entombment for Santa Felicità, Florence. When Vasari remarked that Pontormo had painted this Entombment “in such level colouring that it is hard to distinguish the lights from the half-tints, and the half-tints from the shadows,” he was describing the unexpected absence of down modeling (Vasari [1550] 1963: 3:247). For fresco, with its limited palette, Michelangelo’s mode of cangiantismo was often the choice. As the taste for ornament and for fantasy grew in the middle of the century, maniera painters such as Francesco Salviati made use of it. But Vasari in his Lives, although acknowledging Michelangelo represented the pinnacle that art had yet attained, maintained silence concerning his coloring. The Venetian critic Dolce, on the contrary, called his painting “licentious,” by which he meant Michelangelo took excessive license with nature and he remarked that “Michelangelo has given little attention to coloring” (Roskill 1968: 178–9).

TITIAN’S OPEN BRUSHWORK Venice had a tradition stemming from Giovanni Bellini through Giorgione to Titian of beautiful coloring. The city, as a port, offered the painters first pick of the colorants when they arrived, and a bountiful supply of canvas for sails that could be used instead of wood as the support. The difficulty of transporting large wooden panels on the canals may have encouraged the use of canvas. At first painters were reluctant to give up the smooth gesso preparation they used for panels, but they gradually came to recognize the advantages of canvas. It could be had in a wide range of textures, from smoothest linen to rough herringbone. Depending on the size and viewing conditions, different materials were found to be the most suitable. The gesso preparation became thinner and thinner as time went by. A rolled canvas, with at most a thin coat of gesso, could be shipped with far less risk and cost than a panel.

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Late in his career Giovanni Bellini gave up the elaborate underdrawing he had been using (Dunkerton 2004: 218). Following him Giorgione and then Titian prepared to paint with only rough sketches on the support. Unlike their central Italian contemporaries, they did not use cartoons but allowed the process of painting to guide them as they developed the image. It is common to find a figure superimposed over a landscape.6 (In central Italy or in Flanders the area would have been reserved for the preplanned figure.) We also find evidence of the artist changing his mind and blocking out what he had painted with lead white, which is a pigment so opaque it can hide anything.7 With this relatively spontaneous facture (an artist’s characteristic handling of paint), their paintings take on a naturalism that is less calculated and cerebrated than in central Italian pictures. By mid-century, Titian had become so celebrated that he was shipping his paintings to heads of state all across Europe, most famously to King Philip of Spain. With so much demand he, like Raphael, required a large and wellmanaged workshop. His assistants, who in the Venetian tradition were mostly members of his family, could turn out a “Titian,” and depending on how much the client was paying, it would be entirely by assistants, or retouched by Titian, or executed by the master. He kept a replica in the workshop to facilitate production of new versions when they were commissioned (Falomir 2003: 63; Hall 2011: 153). Perhaps it was in reaction to this industrial production that Titian invented a new facture that was so personal only he could make it. Building on his experience with spontaneous execution, he applied the paint with strokes he left unblended, bearing the signature mark of his hand. The mythologies he made for Philip II violated the decorum of finish that was taken for granted by painters and patrons alike. Even though artists were successfully putting behind them the guild culture in which they were artisans whose skill was valued only slightly above the materials, the traditional expectation that a work would be “finished” prevailed. “Finished” meant without visible sign of its facture. What Titian sent to Philip, and his other works in the same style, bewildered the critics. Vasari, who recognized that Titian was a great artist, struggled with what he called his “blob painting” (pittura di macchia). Vasari recognized that what appeared to be an illegible mess at close range resolved at a distance into an image of unaccustomed energy (Vasari [1550] 1963: 4:209). Titian used the rough canvas he increasingly preferred to add texture to paint, which ranged from thick and pasty to so dilute the canvas showed through. Sometimes the paint on top allowed the layers underneath to show through, not because it was transparent but because the weave of the canvas allowed the brush to bounce across the tops of the threads. This technique of open or painterly brushwork invites the viewer to engage with the image to complete what the painter has only roughed in (Hall 1992: 228–9; 2011: 156).8 Today we call it interactive.

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Some of Titian’s late works are considered unfinished by some historians and masterpieces of open brushwork by others. What Philip thought of them we do not know. The Martyrdom of St. Lawrence (Figure 8.2), which he commissioned in 1567 for the high altar of the new church at El Escorial, near Madrid, did not please the king and was removed to the old church.9 Titian’s revolutionary technique presages a degree of personal expression that did not become the norm until the seventeenth century, and it was not until the seventeenth century that it was understood. Both Rubens and Rembrandt learned from it and imitated it, and Velazquez, who had the originals at hand in Madrid, studied it closely. A seventeenth-century Venetian critic, Marco Boschini, understood the

FIGURE 8.2  Titian, Martyrdom of St. Lawrence, 1567. © Monastery of St Lawrence, El Escorial.

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implications. Boschini wrote in 1648 that the viewer must resolve the apparent chaos of the blobs, and in doing so he becomes a participant in the act of creation along with the painter. When Titian blended the paint with his fingers it was like God creating Adam from the dust (Sohm 1991: 146). In the theoretic writing about color the superiority of drawing versus coloring is an issue that was hotly debated in the sixteenth century, and it would resurface in the seventeenth century between proponents of Poussin versus Rubens. It was frequently couched in terms of an opposition between central Italy and Venice, or Raphael and Titian. Vasari as a central Italian advocated the superior importance of disegno, by which he meant not just drawing but also design. Coloring was a procedure of secondary concern. Vasari’s impeccable source was Aristotle, who said in the Poetics, “It is much the same also in painting; if a man smeared a canvas with the loveliest colours at random, it would not give as much pleasure as an outline in black and white” (Aristotle 1932: VI.21, p. 27; Williams 1997: 32–7). Drawing, Vasari says, is an activity of the intellect acquiring knowledge of a general or universal kind from past accumulated experience of individual, particular objects (Vasari 1907: 205). Through experience, the painter learns what the idea of a thing is and can therefore discard whatever is deficient in the particular thing under study. The emphasis upon intellect stakes out the terrain: drawing is a function of a rational process, color is an accident of inferior matter (Puttfarken 1991: 79). Color records temporary, ephemeral conditions, such as weather, light, reflections, occlusions—mere appearance. The Venetian critics tended to regard light and color as interrelated, unlike the Florentines who treated them separately (Barasch 1978: 101). Titian painted flesh and the gleam of light on it, as Rubens would do, in such a way as to persuade us of its actuality. Vasari asserted the perfection of Michelangelo and Raphael, and remarked that Titian didn’t know how to draw (Vasari [1550] 1963: 4:207). His Venetian contemporary Lodovico Dolce responds that for a painter to be convincing, he/ she must be able to imitate the softness of flesh and the glint of armor as well as the sheen of fabric and the gloom of night (Roskill 1968: 154–5). But for those of a theoretical, philosophical, or classicizing bent, color ends up being only the means to verisimilitude, whereas drawing is capable of capturing the essence of things and depicting the ideal. Whereas drawing appeals to the higher capacity of reason, color appeals to the senses and the emotions. At the root of the denigration of color and the distrust it sometimes engendered in later times lies this hierarchical distinction.

CHIAROSCURO So far we have examined four modes of coloring: Leonardo’s sfumato, Raphael’s unione, Michelangelo’s cangiantismo, and Titian’s open brushwork. The availability of modal alternatives was new in the sixteenth century. Before,

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a painter learned his master’s style as an apprentice. When he went out on his own he might vary it and develop it, but he used basically the same style for every commission. The possibility of matching the coloring or the mode to the commission or the subject only gradually emerged. A fifth mode, chiaroscuro, was taken up by Raphael in the mid-teens, although it may have been invented and first introduced by Sebastiano del Piombo, who had come to Rome from Venice and the circle of Giorgione in 1511. Chiaroscuro answered the taste for dramatic narrative by exaggerating the contrast between light and shade and using brilliant hues at full intensity. It exploited the transparency of oil by covering the support with a dark color, often a reddish brown, which provided a base tone. Opaque pigment applied on top for the lights could mask the dark, but this brownish ground, or imprimatura, could serve as the mid tone and needed only to be reinforced for the darkest shadow. Raphael used the chiaroscuro mode for all his oil paintings after about 1515, except in his last painting of the Transfiguration, where for the upper zone to depict the celestial vision of Christ between Moses and Elijah he returned to unione and introduced exquisite delicate passages of cangiantismo (see Plate 8.3) (Hall 1992: 136). The lower zone where the apostles struggle to heal the epileptic boy, and fail, is dramatized with a blackish chiaroscuro. Sebastiano had used chiaroscuro to great effect in his companion piece, the Raising of Lazarus (National Gallery, London). The patron Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici, the future Pope Clement VII, had perhaps intended to spur the painters to surpass themselves by commissioning each to create a monumental altarpiece for the same church. Raphael was held by contemporaries to have won the palm with his display of contrasted modes of coloring to render the miracle and the failed miracle within one picture. Later in the century and in Venice, Jacopo Tintoretto took up the chiaroscuro mode for his enormous murals, ceilings, and chapel laterals. Tintoretto came of age in Titian’s Venice, where any high-end commission Titian wanted, he could have. Tintoretto carved a place for himself by working at great speed and for a middle-class clientele who could afford him. An advantage of dark imprimatura is that it can be very efficient: Tintoretto could save both time and materials by painting thinly on top of a dark tone that provided his mid tone. His rapid execution with dramatic skies and figures in energetic motion gives spontaneity and urgency to his scenes, made more dramatic with swooping perspective vistas and virtuoso foreshortenings. Often his pictures are nearly monochromes, with sharply contrasted lights and darks. He was doubtless emboldened to explore his bravura facture by Titian’s open brushwork, but he made it very much his own (Dunkerton 2007).10 We do not know if Tintoretto inspired Caravaggio. We do know that Caravaggio’s first teacher in the area of Milan where he lived was a pupil of Titian’s. When he came to Rome in 1593 without connections or introductions

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he made his way selling genre pictures—half-length boys with still life, or card games—on spec. Both his marketing and his genre subjects would increasingly become options in the century to come. Fortunately for Caravaggio he was rescued from this insecure life by Cardinal del Monte, who adopted him into his household and saw to it that he got commissions for altarpieces. Caravaggio’s dark imprimatura provides blackish backgrounds out of which his figures emerge in what appears to be brilliant, but is really carefully desaturated, color (Bell 1995: 144). His mysterious backgrounds allowed him to eliminate indications of setting, so that his narratives take place outside of time; they are in both the historical past and the present simultaneously. The sense of immediacy we have looking at them has to do with his procedure. We have no surviving drawings by Caravaggio; it may be that he did not make them. What we have are slight indentations in the picture surface that mark the position of the model at the end of a sitting. In other words, he appears to have worked directly on the canvas with the model before him where he would seek to capture a fleeting expression (Christiansen 1986: 424–36). The sometimes additive look results from his need to work with only one or maybe two models at a time. Caravaggio’s dark pictures, penetrated by a beam of light from an unseen source, combined with his unprecedented use of lowlife types as models for his saints, were sensationally appealing not just in Rome but across Europe. Caravaggisti (followers of Caravaggio) in Rome and particularly in northern Europe imitated his brand of extreme chiaroscuro, which became known as tenebrism. Most significant among them was Rembrandt, whose teacher Pieter Lastman had studied in Italy between about 1604 and 1607 while Caravaggio was working there. Other painters from northern Europe traveled to Rome, learned Caravaggio’s style, and brought it back home, for example, Hendrick ter Brugghen. The practice of visiting Italy, particularly Rome, to see the ancient ruins and the modern masterpieces of Raphael and Michelangelo had been going on since the first decade of the sixteenth century. In the 1580s, Paul Bril followed his brother Matthijs to Rome, bringing the Flemish tradition of landscape painting (Courtright 2003: 105). He was taken up by a series of popes to paint in the Vatican and then by the most important families in Rome and, together with the German Adam Elsheimer, helped establish landscape as a genre in Italy.

DUTCH LANDSCAPE PAINTING AND ON-SPEC PRODUCTION Landscape had been invented as a genre by Flemish painters in the sixteenth century. When Protestants and others escaping the violence of the Spanish occupation emigrated to the Dutch Republic after 1580, many artists fled and brought this Flemish landscape painting style with them, as Bril did to Rome.

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The Flemish formula for achieving the effect of depth was to divide the space into three zones, the foreground green, the middle ground brownish, and the distance receding towards the bluish horizon (Gifford 1995: 142). The prosperous Dutch Calvinists, prohibited from decorating their churches with images but encouraged to enjoy secular art by Calvin himself, developed a market and a taste for paintings to adorn their homes.11 These clients were mostly middle-class burghers living in houses that were not palatial but were well appointed. They were not sophisticated connoisseurs, but they were proud of the land they had wrested from the sea and the worldwide trading network they were building with the Dutch East India Company. A market developed for views of the fatherland or pictures of genre scenes, such as those quiet domestic scenes of Pieter de Hooch and Vermeer, that were small enough to fit their walls and not too expensive. The Dutch landscape painters who began emerging around 1620, such as those of the Haarlem school of “tonal painters,” for example, Van Goyen and Salomon van Ruysdael, emphasized the flatness of the land and the expanse of sky, which sometimes takes up two-thirds or even three-quarters of the picture’s surface. The painter sold these landscapes readymade rather than on commission, often in fairs and markets and through the new professional dealers (North 1997: 87). He needed to be a good businessman, able to judge demand and estimate his costs. He was more vulnerable to the vagaries of the marketplace than his predecessors or contemporaries who worked on commission, for instance, Claude, Poussin, and Rubens, as witnessed by the many painters who were apparently successful but died in debt, such as van Goyen and Vermeer, or Rembrandt, who declared bankruptcy (Crenshaw 2006: 17, 23). In order to meet the demand, the painter needed to work quickly and efficiently, using inexpensive materials, minimizing preparation and drying time. Canvas was preferred because it was cheaper than wood panel and could be bought already primed. Paint was often applied very thinly, letting the ground or the support show through. The pigments that suited the subject were the less expensive earths. The vast expanse of sky was usually painted with smalt, a pale blue obtained from ground glass. (Unfortunately it is prone to turn into a brownish yellow as it ages.) Until the nineteenth century, there was no green pigment that could render landscape without mixing, so in Dutch landscape, mixed, or broken, colors came to dominate. The old prohibition against “corrupt” or mixed color finally broke down.12 This was a very different kind of landscape from the type that was shaped in Italy during the same period. Two Frenchmen who took up residence in Rome, Claude Lorrain and Nicholas Poussin, picked up the ideal landscape developed there, particularly by Annibale Carracci. By the 1640s, Claude’s landscapes were much in demand with the elite in Rome. He developed the seascape seen from a port in the rising or setting sun with the embarkation

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of heroes and heroines from ancient history, such as Cleopatra Landing at Tarsus, or from literature, such as Odysseus Departing for Ithaca, or Christian history, such as the Seaport with the Embarkation of St Ursula with her troupe of virgins heading for Cologne and martyrdom. These ethereal pictures are much larger and grander than their Dutch counterparts, designed as they were for palatial settings. No one before had dared to paint the sun seen head-on. Claude’s classical buildings, ships, and small-scale figures are enveloped in a hazy atmosphere that softens contours and colors. The Baroque obsession with light and with deep space are given unique handling by Claude, who is a master of aerial perspective. He painted with multiple layers in order to achieve the effect of mist. His materials and the way he used them highlight how different his clients and their expectations were from those of the contemporary Dutch. The inexpensive smalt used by the Dutch was replaced by Claude with costly ultramarine employed quite freely in draperies and skies, but then diluted with smalt to reduce the intensity of the color and the drying time (Plesters et al. 1980: 63).

POUSSIN: THE FRENCH RAPHAEL Towards the end of the 1640s, Nicholas Poussin, who had moved from Paris to Rome in 1624, added landscape to his repertory. Like Claude’s, his landscapes are large and imposing canvases, with subjects drawn from myth, ancient history, or the Bible. Residing in Rome, he had ample opportunity to study at leisure Roman antiquity and the paintings of Raphael, whose classical style he took as his model. As a foreigner he could not hope to receive the lucrative commissions for altarpieces. His patrons were primarily a group of wealthy and learned Romans who enjoyed his erudite company. He painted pictures to adorn their residences of biblical subjects, or mythological scenes of love based on Ovid’s Metamorphoses, with symbolic meanings embedded in them. His deliberate and cerebral approach is evident in the care he lavished on preparing his composition with multiple studies. He then prepared his support with a double ground, or imprimatura, first a reddish brown, then thinly covered with a cooling gray. Unfortunately, with aging, the red sometimes shows through, particularly in faces, either because of the iron oxide or because the surface has been abraded (Foulke 2014: 92). The gray unifies the tones and serves sometimes as the mid tone. Poussin did not embrace Raphael’s late theatrical chiaroscuro mode, which would have disrupted the cool distance suitable to intellectual contemplation that his pictures engender. What Poussin learned from Raphael was what we may call his idealist coloring. The most intense pigments, centered around blue, red, and yellow or white, are used on the principal figures, placed foremost to the picture plane. The draperies on supporting figures behind are reduced in intensity and are often

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painted in secondary colors. These figures are illuminated with a strong light, unmottled by accidents of shadow or bleached by the sunlight. Like Raphael, Poussin used perspective to order his space, to which he added the scientific system of aerial perspective spelled out in the treatise of Marco Zaccolini of 1624 (Bell 1993; Cropper and Dempsey 1996; see also Baker, this volume). Zaccolini published, interpreted, and systematized Leonardo da Vinci’s writings on aerial perspective, noting not only that all colors diminish in a systematic way towards a bluish tone at the horizon but also that shadowed parts of colored objects seem to appear bluish before illuminated parts.13 Zaccolini created a color scale, based on Leonardo’s, and diagrammed at what relative distance each hue turns bluish (Bell 1993: 92, 97–8). His system was far more nuanced than the three-zone system practiced by Flemish landscapists, and with it Poussin was able to produce his marvelously convincing recessions of space with colors diminishing in intensity towards the horizon. His Raphaelesque Holy Family with Saints John the Baptist and Saint Elizabeth (1650) takes a subject that one might expect to be intimate and domestic, the bathing of the child, and formalizes it (see Plate 8.4). The upright Virgin, posed at the center and monumentalized by the architecture rising behind her and the classical basin at her feet, reaches regally for her son, unmoved by his fear as he tries to wriggle away. That the bath is a prefiguration of Christ’s later baptism accounts for the shift away from familial to ceremonial presentation (Hibbard 1974: 69–70). Poussin has no interest in making the scene lifelike or naturalistic. The procedure he has evolved by this point of his maturity enables him to tell his story clearly and suggest his concealed meaning. He adopted Raphael’s planar and symmetrical organization of space, emulating antique relief, introducing a solemnity that indicates the loftiness of meaning. He abjured Titian’s jubilant playfulness and spontaneity along with his oblique lines of recession and the Venetian open/closed composition that he had preferred in the late 1620s and 1630s. The solemn, almost ritualized compositions he invents along Raphaelesque lines have a gravity in keeping with their veiled content. Poussin has found a manner—divergent from those of his “Baroque” contemporaries such as Bernini or Guercino or Rubens—that, while expressing the emotions of the actors, avoids soliciting the emotions of the viewers and appeals instead to their intellect. Poussin wrote: “We must not judge by our senses alone but by reason” (Hibbard 1974: 33). Poussin chose his colors with deliberation. In the later 1630s and 1640s as he edged from Titian to Raphael, he moved his coloring away from luscious towards ratiocinated (the result of applying logic), just as his lighting developed from dramatizing to clarifying. In contrast to contemporary practice, he preferred not to cover his pure brilliant colors with translucent glazes (Plender and Burnstock 2014: 57). Like Raphael, he made use of a smooth and polished surface, avoiding the textured brushstroke that Titian had invented and that

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many of his contemporaries imitated. Color focuses on the Virgin: brilliant ultramarine and vermilion and white. Elizabeth and Joseph receive second tier attention with grayed touches of white, and on Elizabeth a muted blue and yellow; on Joseph brown so that he blends with the architecture. Ultramarine appears again in the sky, streaked with whitish clouds, the landscape is grayish, then tinged with blue (Foulke 2014: 95). Unlike many of his contemporaries in northern Europe, Poussin used broken color only in the background where diminished chromaticity indicates distance.

RUBENS: THE FLEMISH TITIAN Peter Paul Rubens was in many ways the antithesis of Poussin, although they both esteemed the painting of the Italian Renaissance. Rubens, like Poussin, drew upon classical antiquity for both visual and literary material. Rubens’s travels were important to his development. He traveled to Italy in 1600 for what would turn out to be an eight-year sojourn. There, like so many others, when he visited Rome he became enamored of Caravaggio. He adopted Caravaggio’s dark imprimatura and brought it back when he returned to Flanders. Because his parents were well placed in society, Rubens had received a humanist education and had access to the patronage of the elite class; indeed, he was appointed court painter to Albert and Isabella, the rulers of the Hapsburg Netherlands in Brussels, soon after his return from Italy. Rubens had considerable personal wealth as well (Büttner 2006: 70), so his reasons for seeking efficient means of production had more to do with meeting the demands for his work, which poured in, than with avoiding debt or bankruptcy. Rubens asked, and got, high prices for his work. His position and personal qualities made him a suitable emissary, and he was sent to France, Spain, England, and the northern Netherlands as ambassador, where members of the courts regularly gave him commissions. He painted the spectacular series of twenty-four canvases of the Life of Marie de’ Medici, Queen of France, originally for the Luxembourg Palace and today in the Louvre; the ceiling of the Banqueting Hall at Whitehall with the Apotheosis of James I, and numerous portraits and mythological pictures for Philip IV and members of the Spanish court. In Madrid, he was able to study at leisure the stupendous group of Titians in the royal collection. He was a friend of Velazquez and they planned to travel together to Rome, but in the event Rubens was recalled to Flanders and Velazquez made the trip alone in 1629. Rubens gradually moved away from the dark Caravaggist palette he had adopted for his early works in Genoa and Rome, and then in his first commissions in Antwerp, like the Samson and Delilah (National Gallery, London).14 He adopted a pearly gray preparation instead, which had both practical and aesthetic advantages. Rubens’s method of preparing a picture was more like Titian’s than like Poussin’s. Whereas Poussin prepared with drawings

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on paper, Rubens worked up his designs with color from the start. On the gray imprimatura he might try out his composition, sketching the outlines and the modeling in a thin paint. He developed the oil sketch, which he must have learned in Italy, a small-scale version in which he planned not just the composition but also the coloring. If the oil sketch was relatively finished (called then modello), he could use it first to show to the patron for his approval, and then he could turn it over to a skilled member of his large workshop to execute (Held 1980: 5). Like Titian, he needed to add only final touches and sign the work. These sketches were highly valued already in the seventeenth century. As a Catholic, Rubens received many commissions for large altarpieces, for which his exuberant style was well suited to express the spirit of celebration the Counter-Reformation was seeking. Even in scenes of suffering, such as the gruesome Martyrdom of Saint Livinus (Brussels) whose tongue is being torn out, Rubens was able to convey triumph and release. He had developed his version of Titian’s open brushwork, which he used to put every figure and even the background in motion. For the Consequences of War painted for Ferdinand II de’ Medici in Florence (see Plate 8.5), he invoked his understanding of classical mythology to show the ravages of the Thirty Years War then raging across Europe. At the center, a radiant nude Venus battles with the ugly fury Alecto for armored Mars, the god of war and Venus’s lover. Propelled by the wailing Europe, black clad in mourning, the fury tugs the viewer towards the roiling sky at the right, filled with monstrous allegories of famine and plague. Mars glances with a touch of reluctance back at the pleading Venus, but he strides forward, trampling a book. His bloody sword points at the victims of war: a woman holding a lute with a broken neck; an architect; and a terrified mother hugging her child, a benevolent blue sky behind Venus and the charming amorini around her promise the rewards of concord. Venus’s luminous flesh contrasts with the clotted dark around Mars and the mottled skin of the mad, shrieking Alecto. Rubens’s swirling brushstroke activates the viewers’ emotions, the appeal of the oil sketch extended to the finished painting. It is hard to remain aloof. Contrast Rubens’s spontaneous calligraphy with Poussin’s hard-edged figures, defined by colors of unnatural purity. Notice how little brilliant color Rubens uses. The chaos of strife is conveyed by mingled grays and browns streaked with lightning flashes.

POUSSINISTES−RUBENISTES QUARREL The contrast between the approaches of Poussin and Rubens encapsulated a fundamental opposition—already seen in the sixteenth century between Raphael and Titian and already formulated by Vasari—between the primacy of disegno or colorire. The dispute took center stage again at the end of the seventeenth century in what became known as the Poussinistes–Rubenistes quarrel. Roger

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de Piles challenged the position of the French Académie Royale on the role of color, and their president, Charles Le Brun, held that the importance of color was its symbolism, in other words, its intellectual content. Poussin was his hero and the model who was promoted in the Académie. “Colour depends entirely on matter, and, as a result, is less noble than design, which comes directly from the spirit,” Le Brun declared (Bryson 1981: 60). Roger de Piles’s brilliant strategy in defending color was to claim that it is as much a rational process as drawing. He first asserted that coloring is indispensable because it is what makes things visible: “Nature is only imitable as far as she is visible and she is only visible, as she is coloured” (Puttfarken 1985: 63). He then distinguished between the material of the painter’s color, the pigments, and the mixture that the painter creates to imitate nature. Pigments are not the equivalent of colors that we observe in nature. The challenge to the painter is to translate what is viewed into a convincing simulacrum. De Piles’s trump card was to apply to couleur the argument used to justify dessin: it is just as true that the painter must correct the colors of nature. De Piles extended the concern for naturalism, which has been the constant factor throughout the period under study, to require the painter to go beyond imitation and compensate for the inadequacies of nature. He must also create a harmonious ensemble that is both pleasing and affecting. In this De Piles cited Rubens as the model. De Piles had at last made the case for the engagement of the intellect in the facture of painting, beyond the creation of a design. At the same time, he elevated the status of coloring and subversively underwrote appeal to the emotions as a desirable attribute of painting.

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CHAPTER NINE

Architecture and Interiors CAMMY BROTHERS

INTRODUCTION Fifteenth-century Venetian architecture was a celebration of color, while architects in Rome introduced blinding expanses of white travertine. Renaissance cities developed individual color palettes in relation to their local building traditions, available materials, and changing social, economic, and cultural circumstances. The local logic of color was by no means static, but could shift from decade to decade in response to the arrival of new ideas or the desire to take on a more modern appearance. Although the broad fifteenth- and sixteenth-century preoccupation with antiquity might lead one to believe that architects’ and patrons’ approaches to color were guided by their understanding of ancient Rome, the built record suggests a more complicated story. It is true that certain texts by Alberti, Raphael, and others were in part shaped by the works of Pliny the Elder and Vitruvius, as well as the perception of the ancient past. However, of even greater importance were the locally available and esteemed examples of monumental building, which for the most part were of more recent vintage: this could mean San Marco and the Palazzo Ducale in Venice, San Giovanni dei Fiorentini in Florence, and the Colosseum in Rome. One might call these “local antiquities,” with the proviso that antiquities here means “old buildings” more than, strictly speaking, those of classical origin. This chapter considers three aspects of the Renaissance response to color: as idea, material, and image. Ideas about color were intertwined with attitudes towards ornament and were likewise fraught with ambivalence. While some ideas and beliefs may be extrapolated from practice, in other cases written

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sources provide helpful points of reference. In addition to considering the materials with which buildings were constructed and their coloristic qualities, this chapter also analyzes the image of architecture as it existed in the collective imagination and was manifest in painted interiors as well as envisioned in panel paintings. Both Renaissance texts and paintings about ancient architecture reveal a conviction that the Roman monuments had been enriched with the colors of gold, porphyry, and bronze, which were stripped over time. Painters, in frescoed interiors, altarpieces, and panel paintings, often sought to recreate this lost richness through illusion. The discussion here is by necessity selective. Even these few examples may be sufficient to demonstrate that distinct essays could be written about each city in Italy with little risk of redundancy.

THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF COLOR It is worth asking why the subject of color in architecture has been neglected in scholarship.1 The most obvious explanations are historiographical and circumstantial. The early, formative texts in Renaissance architecture relied on black-and-white photographs, which encouraged analyses based on considerations such as composition and the use of architectural language. The abstract conventions of architectural drawings have further contributed to this phenomenon: when scholars study buildings through their representation in plan and section this necessarily excludes a consideration of materials and color. In general, many architectural analyses of the twentieth century renounced any consideration of the sensual, perceptual aspects of architecture.2 Indeed, John Ruskin’s embrace of Venetian Gothic architecture (as ambiguous as that term is) had everything to do with his distinctive approach to architectural description, focusing on precisely those elements—color, light, materials, and ornament— which twentieth-century writers for the most part would leave behind. As he wrote, “I cannot consider architecture as in anywise perfect without colour” (Ruskin 1849: 125, s. XXXV.III, quoted in Fachechi 2016: 6–9). The reception of Palladio in England, which occurred primarily through the publication of his Four Books, reinforced these tendencies to see the Renaissance, and by extension classical architecture, as white (see, for example, Barry 2011: 31–62). It further had the effect of flattening the surfaces of Palladio’s buildings—the high relief of his churches and palaces was not evident in the orthogonally rendered woodcut prints, and what were engaged or detached columns often became pilasters in their reinterpreted English versions. Sculptural ornament was similarly minimized. While not strictly relating to the topic of color, this did mean that the contrast of light and dark so crucial to the impact of Palladio’s façades in Italy was nowhere in evidence in the English reinventions.

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In Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism (1949) Rudolf Wittkower ushered in a focus on proportions and measurements, which was even more abstract than the focus on the orders and made materials irrelevant. An example of the distortions that Wittkower introduces and his suppression of color as a primary component of Renaissance buildings emerges in his discussion of Giuliano da Sangallo’s centralized church of Santa Maria delle Carceri in Prato. After noting that the exterior “is faced with white limestone slabs which are divided into geometric units by dark green framing bands,” he goes on to describe “the purity of its whiteness” (Wittkower [1949] 1971: 21). This is a very strange association, given that pure whiteness is nowhere to be found, either inside or out: as he just stated, the exterior alternates green and white limestone, and the interior includes pietra serena, white stucco, and blue-andwhite glazed terra-cotta by della Robbia. He writes: The church, standing here like a precious jewel, is conceived, as it were, in Alberti’s spirit. Its majestic simplicity, the undisturbed impact of its geometry, the purity of its whiteness are designed to evoke in the congregation a consciousness of the presence of God—of a God who has ordered the universe according to immutable mathematical laws, who has created a uniform and beautifully proportioned world, the consonance and harmony of which is mirrored in His temple below. (21) Thus for Wittkower, architecture is made of concepts, not of bricks or marble. His assertion of the abstract basis of Renaissance design was undoubtedly part of what allowed him to make it seem so pertinent to modern designers. This raises another possible explanation, which is that the minimalist, austere, and white aesthetic of modern architecture has also had an impact on the way in which older architecture has been examined (Payne 1994: 322–42). Counteracting these trends, Paul Hills’s book Venetian Colour (1999) stands out for its direct treatment of the topic and for viewing architecture in relation to sculpture, painting, glass, and mosaic (on artifacts, see Clark, this volume). More recently, the “material turn” in many branches of the humanities has been accompanied in architectural history by greater attention to the stuff of which buildings are made, including color.3 So far, these assessments have been piecemeal; however, combined with a renewed interest in the sensual qualities and effects of architecture, the moment may be ripe for a reintroduction of some of the aspects of architecture that fascinated Ruskin.

THE IDEA OF COLOR While Renaissance painters and architects associated ancient Rome with rich colors and materials, the ancient writers they read mostly viewed color

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with suspicion, associating it with excessiveness and luxury, and thus moral censure. The use of color in Renaissance architecture is intertwined both with material richness and with ornament. Both had complicated associations in Renaissance culture, as a range of authors from Vitruvius to Palladio suggest. In textual accounts and paintings, Renaissance writers and artists demonstrated that they considered the ancient past to be endowed with rich color, deriving especially from colored marble, porphyry, and gold. Since marble was not imported from Africa or elsewhere outside of Italy during the Renaissance, the desire to match this richness could be met either through the reuse of ancient bits and pieces, known as spolia, or through their evocation in paint. As fifteenth- and sixteenth-century authors attest, the use of color was linked to that of ornament as well as expense, both of which were fraught with conflicting principles depending on circumstance, local ideology, and building tradition. In ancient Roman culture, as described by Vitruvius, large expenditure was morally suspect, only justifiable in particular circumstances and in relation to the high rank of the patron (Vitruvius 1996–8: bks I and VI; Nichols 2017: 83–129). In Alberti’s De re aedificatoria, he proposes a theory of ornament that detaches it from expenditure, much as he had in the Treatise on Painting (on art, see Hall, this volume). There he had famously argued that it is the painter’s skill, not his use of gold, that merits praise (Alberti 1991: bk 12, 85–6). Along similar lines, he writes of architecture: I therefore conclude that anyone who wants to understand correctly the true and correct ornament of building must realize that its principal component and generator is not the outlay of wealth but the wealth of ingenuity. I firmly believe that any person of sense would not want to design his private house very differently from those of others, and would be careful not to incite envy through extravagance or ostentation. On the other hand, no sensible person would wish that anyone else should surpass him in the skill of his workmen, or in praise for his counsel and judgement; as a result the overall division and compartition of lineaments will draw much praise, which is in itself the primary and principal form of ornament. (Alberti 1988: bk 9, 292) Alberti goes on to recommend the “severest restraint” in private buildings. He specifies that they should use modest materials, with costly and extravagant ones being reserved for public buildings: They [private buildings] should not presume to have doors of bronze […] or of ivory; nor should the ceilings sparkle with large quantities of gold or glass; Hymettian or Parian marble should not glisten everywhere: such

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things are for temples […] in the private house […] Cypress, larch, or box will suffice. The revetment should be of plain white stucco, decorated with simple murals. (bk 9, 293) He tempers this severe position by specifying: “Not that precious materials should be completely renounced and banished; but they should be used sparingly in the most dignified places, like jewels in a crown” (bk 9, 293). Alberti explicitly discusses the use of color in book six, in the context of his discussion of various forms of revetment. Here he mentions fresco and how to preserve its color, the use of marble revetment, and how thick it should be, colored mortars, mosaic, intarsia (wood inlay), and paving. His primary concern is for a pleasing composition. He concludes by recommending that “In all the revetments described above, avoid using the same color or shape too frequently, or too close together, or in a disorderly composition” (Alberti 1988: bk 6, 179).4 A number of Alberti’s ideas about expenditure, craft, decorum, and ornament derived from Vitruvius, who had written along similar lines concerning excessive expenditure on ornament in architecture or on costly materials in paintings. Vitruvius wrote disapprovingly of the new taste of the elites: “That which without question the earlier generation, expending labour and diligence, strove to demonstrate through artistry, now is achieved through colours and their elegant appearance” (Vitruvius 1996–8: 7.5.7; quoted and translated by Nichols 2017: 170). Vitruvius singled out particular pigments for special censure, due to their expense: vermilion, malachite, azurite, and indigo, all deriving from foreign sources.5 Much as Alberti did in his treatise on painting, Vitruvius values technique (ars) and refinement (subtilitas) over expenditure. While Vitruvius is most frequently cited with regard to questions of material richness and decorum, ornament, and even the use of color, another essential source is Pliny the Elder.6 His Natural History took materials as a central concern, particularly in books thirty-three to thirty-seven (Pliny the Elder 1952). Like Vitruvius, Pliny censured excessive luxury, writing, “now we only appreciate the richness of the material and not that of the mind.” He praised Apelles for using four colors: white, yellow, red, and black, which he considered “austere colors,” preferable to the “florid colors” in use in his own day (McHam 2013: 234). Despite his negative framing of color, Pliny’s descriptions of the multicolored marbles used in temples and palaces could well have fueled Renaissance architects’ and patrons’ associations of richness with ancient architecture. He wrote: Markings of various colours and decorations of marble in general are first mentioned by that most accurate exponent of the details of high living, Menander […]. Marble columns were certainly used in temples […]. He

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[Homer] decorates even his royal palaces, however sumptuously, only with ivory, apart from metals—bronze, gold, electrum and silver. In my opinion, the first specimens of our favourite marbles with their parti-coloured markings appeared from the quarries of Chios. (Pliny the Elder 1962: 36.44–6) Thus the history and detail provided by Pliny’s text in a sense counteracted his criticism. Against this modest and economizing of Vitruvius and Pliny morality is the wistful and melancholic view found in Raphael’s letter to Leo X of 1519, in which he laments the inability of modern architects to achieve the richness and color of the ancients. He writes of the “opulence, ornamentation, and grandeur” of the ancient world and laments its destruction by greedy men, who burn the ancient marbles for their lime. While praising the work of Bramante, he indicates that it can never attain the stature of ancient architecture because of its comparative poverty of materials: Even though these days architecture may be very clever and very closely based on the style of the ancients, as can be seen in the many beautiful works by Bramante, nevertheless the ornamentation is not done using raw materials of similar expense to those used by the ancients, who, it seems, realized what they envisaged with endless amounts of money and whose will alone surmounted every difficulty. (Hart and Hicks 2006: 182)7 Raphael’s association between ancient architecture and rich materials had also appeared some years earlier in the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili of 1499, although it was a work of fiction and not a commentary on architecture. Illustrated with black-and-white woodcuts, it included a number of vivid descriptions of ancient architecture, often including references to color. In one example, the author describes the courtyard of the queen’s palace he comes upon as being made of gold with pilasters of “fine oriental lapis-lazuli, its color delightfully enhanced by a scattering of tiny sparkles of gold.” The ornament is described as made up of “chalcedony, agate, vermilion amethyst, garnet and jasper, alternating in colour and subtly carved.” This is followed by a further description of the relief representing vines, which is described in this way: “They formed an unbelievably rich ceiling with their variegated foliage, made from splendid Scythian emeralds […] with flowers of every season made from sapphire and beryl” (Colonna 1999: 96–8). Fascinatingly, Poliphilo does not just conjure this courtyard as an image but ponders how it was made, both its conception and facture. He muses: What art, what bold ambitions, what steadfast will had assembled them so perfectly? Was it done with sculptor’s adhesive, or soldering, or hammering, or with the founder’s art? It seemed to me impossible that a roof so wide and with such excellent joints should have been made by any of these three methods of metalworking. (Colonna 1999: 98)

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In Poliphilo’s account, the architecture of the queen’s palace is an extension of the majesty, richness, splendor, and embellishment with which she herself is dressed (on clothing, see Frick, this volume). She is described as having feet thus “shod in light sandals of green silk” that rested on a cushion of “crimson velvet,” itself ornamented by tassels of “gold and scarlet silk.” She was surrounded by ladies-in-waiting who were themselves dressed in gold. Personal and architectural adornment are thus intertwined and both characterized by rich color. A less well-known, anonymous source, the odd, long, list-like poem Antiquarie prospetiche Romane (c. 1500) also includes a description of a building of great luxury, possibly the Domus Aurea, which had “golden brass cornices,” a colonnade of porphyry, and “bases and capitals inlaid with finest agate and jasper.”8 These descriptions may have been inspired by the Hypnerotomachia Polifili, but even so their repetition in this context provides an indication of how resonant they were.

VENICE Venice is widely famed for its colorful façades, and historical accounts suggest that what visitors see now is a pale reflection of its original glory. Venetians were in the curious position of espousing an egalitarian and inclusive philosophy of governance and at the same time embracing the most ostentatious architecture of any Italian city (see, for example, Rosand 2001; Howard 2002). The contradiction is apparent even within the language applied to architecture: Venetian fifteenth-century palaces are called case (or ca’ in the Venetian dialect) but boast façades of greater outward richness than anywhere else in Italy. The reasons for this embrace of color harken back to the city’s origins as an imperial power, beginning with the conquest of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade. Through the conquest and subsequent looting of Constantinople in 1204, Venice brought back many spoils of the Byzantine capital’s own imperial history and used them to adorn the façade, walls, and floors of the Basilica of San Marco with precious marbles (Norwich 1982: 125–7; Howard 2000, 2002; Lazzarini and Wolters 2010). The significance of this act of plunder and appropriation is that it endowed Venice’s most important building with a sparkling, polychromatic façade that became the local model for centuries to come. Filarete provides a vivid description of the colors found in the Venetian marbles of San Marco: This marble is very beautiful because it is greatly varied and spotted with natural spots in such a way that much of it looks somewhat like salt meat, mixed red and white, and some looks like clouds. (Filarete 1965: III, 31 [17r]) In addition to the fine marbles, the four monumental gold horses, the most spectacular fruit of the conquest, would have further enhanced the richly

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colored effect of the façade from their elevated perch. Gentile Bellini’s painting of Procession in Piazza San Marco (1496) reveals that the Basilica would have been even more highly colored during the Renaissance than it is today, with gilding covering the prophets and gilded foliation at the roofline (Hills 1999: 65). As a city with no claims to a Roman past, Venetians attached particular importance to their earliest monumental, civic buildings, both San Marco (begun 1063) and the Palazzo Ducale (begun 1150). While San Marco’s color came from looted marbles and statues, the Palazzo Ducale was made of stones newly quarried from nearby sources: Verona red and Istrian white. In contrast to typical stone or marble revetment, its pattern has no relation to architectural members such as windows or balconies. These two monuments were key models for one of the most color-saturated façades on the Grand Canal, that of the Ca’ D’Oro (1420–31, see Plate 9.1). Marin Contarini, although not a nobleman, emulated the city’s most noble monuments in his private home. While it is most closely modeled on the materials, colors, ornamentation, and patterns of the Palazzo Ducale, the use of columns of different colored marble draws inspiration from San Marco. As Paul Hills has observed, Contarini conceived of the façade in terms of “two pairs of colours, gold and blue, red and white” (Hills 1999: 69). The documents confirm Contarini’s particular fixation on color. He instructed Zuan de Franza, “that all of the red stonework that is in the said facade and all of the red dentil [-courses] are to be finished with oil and varnish so that they appear red” (Hills 1999: 71). Contarini thus found a path between painting and revetment, the two typical ways of giving color to Renaissance façades, by actually painting over inlaid stone. His example is fascinating, because it indicates that the qualities of the actual materials were insufficient for his purposes (Goy 1992: 227–32; Hills 1999: 60–2). The strong colors employed on the Ca’ D’Oro would certainly have stood out in the fifteenth century, particularly for a private house. However, there would have been more parallels than we can now imagine: aside from the gilding on the upper level of San Marco, there are traces of paint on the arcade of the Palazzo Ducale, and the Porta della Carta was also colored and gilded (Goy 1992: 227–8). The Ca’ D’Oro is only one striking example among many of the fifteenthcentury polychrome façades in Venice. Ca’ Dario (attributed to Pietro Lombardo, 1487–92) is an interesting parallel in palace designs, in that its use of green and red porphyry and veined marble slabs on the façade are modeled after the Basilica of San Marco. Along similar lines but far more spectacular is the façade of the Scuola Grande di San Marco, next to SS. Giovanni e Paolo by Pietro Lombardo and Mauro Codussi (1488–95). Its veined, inlaid red and green porphyry roundels, gray stone frieze, not to mention its perspectival illusionism

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and sculptural relief, create the effect of a monumental, three-dimensional painting, rivaling the Basilica in its complexity and ornament. There are many other examples, too numerous to describe, from San Zaccaria to Santa Maria dei Miracoli, all making reference to San Marco. The arrival of Jacopo Sansovino in Venice in 1527 and the publication of Serlio’s treatise in 1534 together had the effect of broadening the references of Venetian architecture.9 That said, Sansovino’s extraordinary success depended in large part on his ability to fuse an imported all’antica language with local modes of building. Although the Procuratae Nuove, the Library, and the Zecca are all made of white Istrian stone, in the portico of the brick bell tower, Sansovino ingeniously inserted red Verona stone strips as a framing device around the figurative reliefs and the frieze, thereby creating a dual color pattern that connects it to the Palazzo Ducale, just opposite. Andrea Palladio made no such concessions. His façades of San Giorgio and of the Rendentore are not only covered exclusively in Istrian white revetment, but even ornament is kept to a minimum, so that the pleasures afforded the visitor are only those of observing the churches’ geometry and the play of light and shadow. One might argue that Palladio’s manipulation of relief in these façades is subtle enough to allow light and shade to take the place of color, but it is not clear this was persuasive to the Venetians—his limited success in Venice may be attributed in part to this uncompromising eschewal of color and ornament.

FLORENCE Unlike Venice, Florence was a city with an ancient Roman past and some archaeological traces. Nonetheless, the most important reference points for its Renaissance buildings were its own early civic and religious monuments, the Baptistery of San Giovanni (1059–1150) and the Palazzo Vecchio (begun 1292).10 The Romanesque Baptistery, with its contrasting bands of green and white stone, together with the church of San Miniato al Monte (begun 1013–63) became models for fifteenth-century religious structures, from Alberti’s Santa Maria Novella (1461–70) and his Shrine of the Holy Sepulcre in the Rucellai Chapel at San Pancrazio (1464–7) to Giuliano da Sangallo’s Santa Maria delle Carceri in Prato (1484–95).11 The sober Palazzo Vecchio, by contrast, projecting its messages of civic strength and restraint, became the model for private palaces: most prominently, Michelozzo’s Palazzo Medici, followed by Giuliano da Sangallo’s Palazzo Gondi and Palazzo Strozzi. Even the Medici’s rivals and enemies, the Pazzi family, chose the same model in their family palace, designed by Giuliano da Maiano (1458–69), as did, to a lesser extent, the Rucellai in the palace designed for them by Alberti. Palazzo Vecchio and the palaces modeled after it employed stone revetment rather than the

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more economical stucco over brick. Nonetheless, the single, dull tone of the stone conveyed a measure of modesty, important for Florentines, who were always careful to avoid the appearance of excess.12 While these two buildings provided a template for religious and domestic exterior façades, Brunelleschi and the della Robbia family introduced a lasting model for Florentine interiors. The palette that would come to be associated with much fifteenth-century Florentine architecture—gray pietra serena, white stucco, and contrasting blue and white glazed terra-cotta—was first introduced at the Ospedale degli Innocenti of 1419. Intriguingly, this beautiful and decorous composition was not repeated in exterior architecture, but rather moved inside to become the dominant model for church and chapel interiors. We may speculate that this outward display of color was deemed appropriate in the context of a charitable building, but not elsewhere. The most paradigmatic exemplar of this color combination in an interior is in the Pazzi Chapel, an extension of the church of Santa Croce.13 In Brunelleschi’s Old Sacristy in San Lorenzo, Donatello and Verrocchio added complexity to this scheme. Donatello’s stucco roundels, in blue and orange tones, complement the alternating blue and orange angels in the frieze, and the warmth of his bronze doors, while Verrochio’s marble and red porphyry table and wall tomb add richness to the otherwise humble composition. Yet a much-cited passage in Manetti’s life of Brunelleschi recounts the architect’s dismay at the sculptor’s intervention, and his sense that his work had been destroyed (Manetti 1970). Independent of their work with Brunelleschi, the della Robbia family achieved extraordinary success all across the city, creating sculpture as well as architectural ornament that was able to fulfill a taste for ornament without the use of marble or hard to obtain material. Glazed terra-cotta was prized for being highly visible from afar, even in church interiors, and for its durability (Cambareri 2016: 37). Vasari notably devotes one of the biographies in his The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors, and Architects (1550) to Luca della Robbia, also citing the contributions of his nephew Andrea, writing, If I have spoken on this subject at greater length […] than it appeared to be necessary, let no man blame me, seeing that the fact that Luca discovered this new form of sculpture—which, to my knowledge, the ancient Romans did not have—made it necessary to discourse thereon, as I have done, at some length. (Vasari [1550] 1996: 280) Thus he justifies the space he devotes to della Robbia by reference to the novelty of the technique, which had not been known in antiquity. As if to reinforce the notion that palaces within Florence should be monochromatic and restrained, when the Medici built beyond Florence, they boldly introduced color. Poggio a Caiano, begun under Lorenzo de’ Medici, not far from Florence, and continued under Leo X, includes a prominent, elevated

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portico with a blue and white and green glazed terra-cotta frieze designed by Bertoldo, an exterior fresco depicting the Death of Laocoön by Filippino Lippi and a polychrome barrel vault, both in the exterior portico and the interior salone, itself adorned by frescoes (Cox-Rearick 1982: 167–210).

ROME In Rome, the color palette of palaces was dramatically and definitively transformed with the construction of the Cancelleria, and its use of broad expanses of white travertine revetment in lieu of stucco (see Figure 9.1). It is a fascinating example of how a single building can alter the local aesthetic—not by its own, exclusive presence but by the model it created for new palaces. The architecture of the Cancelleria, in its use of flat, even revetment of travertine, and in the disposition of the orders, was inspired by a range of ancient Roman models, from the Colosseum—also a source for its travertine—to the Castel Sant’Angelo and Cecillia Metella. Prior to this, the most grandiose palace had been the Palazzo Venezia, which was built in stucco over brick with stone confined to the window frames, string courses, and balcony. The Cancelleria’s smooth white revetment immediately became the model for subsequent Roman palaces, such as the Palazzo Turci and Palazzo Castellesi (Daly Davis 1989: 442–57; Brothers 2000: 82–101). While the Cancelleria’s façade on two sides was emphatically white, its interior courtyard would have been just as striking for the pink color of its granite corner piers and the gray marble of its spoliated columns (Waters 2016: 149–79). The fashion for travertine façades continued through much of the sixteenth century, as seen in Peruzzi’s Palazzo Massimo alle Colonne, among others. It shifted with the Palazzo Farnese, the sheer scale of which may have necessitated a return to the more economical tradition of stucco over brick with travertine details. While white travertine prevailed in Roman façade architecture, intense color became increasingly characteristic of palace and chapel interiors over the course of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. A focal point of the embrace of color in Renaissance Rome is Agostino Chigi, and two significant aspects of this can be seen in his Villa Farnesina and in the Chigi Chapel.14 Although Raphael had a hand in both, he was only peripherally involved at the Farnesina and thus the common point may be best understood as Chigi himself (on Chigi, see Rowland 1986). The discovery of the Domus Aurea in Rome in the last decades of the fifteenth century gave patrons and architects a concrete idea of how ancient Roman houses had been ornamented: the colors they had used, particularly vermilion and gold, the stucco ornamentation, and the grotesque motifs (see, for example, Dacos 1969). But even before and after this discovery, ancient literary sources had offered descriptions of Roman interiors with fictive columns and windows.

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FIGURE 9.1  Cancelleria, Rome, façade. Photograph by Lalupa. © Wikimedia Commons.

These sources provided a basis for Chigi and his architect and painter, Baldassare Peruzzi, to arrive at an extraordinary embodiment of this reconstructed vision of an ancient Roman room in the Sala di Prospettiva, the salone of the Villa Farnesina (see Plate 9.2). In addition to the virtuoso perspectival illusionism, the room is notable for the melding of two- and three-dimensional color that is now fictive, now real. The floor and door frames are marble and porphyry, as are the fictive columns framing the fictive balcony. All of this forms the centerpiece of a villa that is remarkably modest on the exterior, simple stucco over brick, distinguished only by its ornately carved frieze. The Chigi Chapel in Santa Maria del Popolo, the funerary chapel designed by Raphael in close collaboration with Chigi, was similarly exceptional. At the same time, it is also the culmination of a series of interests and obsessions that had been percolating in the culture for decades. In a sense, it is like a painted chapel made out of real materials. It is in other ways the result of a confluence of interests between the patron and Raphael, who, as mentioned above in his letter to Leo X, had lamented the impossibility of building with the richness of the ancient Romans. In the Chigi Chapel, aside from the frequently found Carrara white, scholars and conservators have identified a wide array of colored marbles, red, yellow, and green: africano,

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rosso antico, portasanta, and giallo antico, among others (Shearman 1961; Magnusson 1987).15 Raphael was a protagonist of the Roman uses of color in another project as well: the Villa Madama, begun on the Monte Mario for Pope Clement VII. A recently published poem by Sperulo describes the use of spoiliated marble in the villa: “I carry hither numerous marbles pulled out of ancient ruins” (Sperulo’s Villa Iulia Medica, translation in Elet 2017: 185). He also describes the use of multiple rich and colored precious material with a range of qualities: Now, it is necessary to search out the different marbles and the many columns to be placed around the planned courtyards and the mosaic floors contriving varied figures, and the huge roof-beams clad in plentiful gold; for no part shall be without exotic marble, and the house shall incorporate nothing cheap. (Sperulo in Elet 2017: 185) Elet has suggested that some of Sperulo’s accounts do not seem to correspond to actual, existing marbles, but others do (73). The interior, planned by Raphael but executed after his death by Giovanni da Udine, Giulio Romano, Baldassare Peruzzi, and others, makes a literal attempt to recreate the coloristic and relief effects of the Domus Aurea (42–3).

BROADER GEOGRAPHIES OF COLOR: SEVILLE, GENOA, HAARLEM Beyond Florence, Venice, and Rome, local circumstances contributed to diametrically opposed aesthetic outcomes, from the intensely ornamented and colored interior courtyards of sixteenth-century Seville and Genoa to the extreme whiteness of Dutch church interiors. Seville and Genoa serve as two representative Mediterranean examples, trading partners whose architecture reflected both local traditions as well as the movement of materials, workmen, and technical knowledge across the sea. For Seville, the use of color followed a similar logic to that of Italian cities (on Islamic Spain, see Pon, this volume). The Alcazar, originally an Almohad structure begun in the tenth century, continued to function as the example of monumental architecture worthy of imitation even after Pedro the Cruel had vanquished the ruling Islamic dynasty. In making the Alcazar his royal residence, the new Christian ruler paid homage to the art of the conquered, building his patio with tile and stucco work that referred both to the earliest parts of the complex and also to the Alhambra’s Court of the Lions in Granada. Most pertinently in our context, his patio employed the bright, polychrome tiles characteristic of Islamic architecture in Spain (Lleó Cañal 2002; Brothers

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2015). The use of these colorful tiles cast a long shadow. The Casa de Pilatos is often interpreted as an amalgam of imported Italian elements and “native” Spanish ones, typically called mudéjar (see Figure 9.2). Significantly, the “Italianate” elements are composed of white marble, imported from Genoa. The tiles are of local manufacture—they are not reused tiles dating from the era of Almohad rule but rather newly made, an approximation of the earlier work in color and texture. They tend to have more pronounced seams between colors and a substantially different palette, tending more to yellow, green, and brown rather than blue and white.16 Genoa, too, has several examples of brightly colored tile work being employed on its interiors, both chapels and palaces, a direct result of trade contacts with southern Spain where these tiles were produced. While some palaces and chapels included tiles that were imported from Seville, in other cases tiles were produced in Liguria, Italy, in imitation of the imported tiles.17 Outside of Genoa, in nearby Savona, the Palazzo della Rovere offers a fascinating and distinct example of how local traditions and available materials have an impact on color in architecture (Figure 9.3). Designed by Giuliano da Sangallo for Cardinal della Rovere, it combines an all’antica use of pilasters with a palette that is distinctly Ligurian. Overall, the façade has an austere effect, but Giuliano introduces ornament through the geometrical

FIGURE 9.2  Casa de Pilatos. Photograph by and © Cammy Brothers.

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FIGURE 9.3  Palazzo di Savona. Photograph by and © Cammy Brothers.

arrangement of black stone (pietra nera) and white marble on the first level. It is similar to the mode of articulating the façade Giuliano had employed on the exterior of his church of Santa Maria delle Carceri in Prato, but Ligurian gray stone is used in place of the green and white marbles that were typical of Tuscany. In much of northern Europe, and dramatically in Holland, the arrival of Protestantism, and the wave of iconoclasm that accompanied it, had dramatic effects on the color of religious architecture. Though civic buildings retained their use of red brick, Dutch seventeenth-century church interiors were whitewashed to reflect the new, austere aesthetic of purity. One example is Jacob Van Campen’s Nieuwe Kerk (New Church) in Haarlem (built 1646–9). Van Campen, who had Palladio’s fourth book translated, would have found support in the text. Palladio wrote, “Of all the colours, none is more proper for churches than white; since the purity of colour, as of the life, is particularly grateful to God” (Palladio 1997: 82). Some scholars have speculated that Palladio’s own preference for white and for simplified church plans registered his contact with religious reform circles in northern Italy (see, for example, Ackerman 1966). Pieter Saenredam’s paintings of church interiors, including several of the Nieuwe Kerk in Haarlem, demonstrate perhaps more clearly than the buildings themselves the way in which the Calvinists pictured their places of worship, with white-washed walls, light-flooded space, and simple geometry (Figure 9.4).18

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FIGURE 9.4  Pietr Saenredam, Interior of the New Church in Haarlem, 1628. Inv. no. 311. © Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest.

BEYOND LOCAL COLOR For the most part, this chapter argues that the use of color in architecture adhered to a local logic, determined by the availability of materials, regional norms regarding display and modesty, and the particular local models that were available to view. However, in two significant cases, the uses of color went beyond this and make it possible to observe broad patterns across a range of locales. The two instances that defy my broader points are the interiors of church chapels and fictive architecture. The notions of decorum and restraint that operated in various ways in particular Italian cities seem to have been suspended for chapels within churches. This is easy to understand from the standpoint of writings on architecture, in that Alberti, for example, is very clear that the greatest expenditures may be reserved for houses of God, and chapels that were paid for by individuals or families offered the best opportunity for justified self-glorification. At the same time, in many cases, the significance of chapels meant that artists, workmen, and materials were often imported for the occasion. Thus Angela Dreszen, for example, detects a Lombard look in the Capella del Succorpo in Naples, which can be ascribed to the bottega (studio, workshop) that created

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it. The Capella del Succorpo, a burial chapel for Cardinal Colonna, is largely composed of fine white marble columns, but color is introduced through a distinctive and lavishly colored inlaid floor, evocative of Cosmatesque floor patterns but different (Dreszen 2004: 183). Its expensive materials and the prominence of colored marbles, as well as its purpose as a burial chapel, evoke comparisons with Raphael’s Chigi Chapel. In the chapel of the Cardinal of Portugal at San Miniato al Monte in Florence, vibrant color is employed to dramatic effect on the five constructed surfaces: the three walls, the ceiling, and the floor. While each of these individually has precedents and parallels in Florentine culture, their combination resulted in a chapel of extraordinary richness (see Ng 2020). Vasari considered Luca della Robbia’s work for the Cardinal of Portugal Chapel his finest achievement and described it in some detail (Vasari [1550] 1996: 277) (see Plate 9.3). Della Robbia went beyond his typical palette and geometry in the vault. It boasts remarkable spatial and coloristic complexity, featuring green, yellow, and blue patterns of three-dimensional squares, evocative of ancient Roman stonework without being derivative of it. Distinct from the burial chapels of Succorpo in Naples, of Chigi in Rome, and of the Cardinal of Portugal in Florence, is another Florentine example, but a domestic one. The private family chapel in Palazzo Medici features frescoes by Benozzo Gozzoli and a cosmatesque floor of colored marble (c. 1459), as well as inlaid wood. In its floor particularly, exceptional for a domestic interior, it suggests the gravitas and luxury of a burial chapel within a church.19

THE IMAGE OF COLOR: FICTIVE ARCHITECTURE Color in architecture most obviously pertains to the materials of which it is made, whether red brick, white travertine, red or green porphyry, variously colored marble, rosso di Verona, pietra serena, glazed blue terra-cotta, or painted stucco. But in addition to this understanding of color as a material artifact is another important aspect: color as image. In this regard, paintings of architecture— either as backgrounds or as fictive architecture—form an important part of the story. Both Renaissance texts and paintings about ancient architecture reveal a conviction that the Roman monuments had been enriched with the colors of gold, porphyry, and bronze, which had been stripped over time. Painters, in frescoed interiors, altarpieces, and panel paintings, often sought to recreate this lost richness through illusion. This is a topic unto itself, and I can only hint at a few significant examples. For Filippino Lippi, antique architecture serves as a vivid and demonic foil for the presentation of scenes from the Golden Legend (Sale 1976; Brothers 1992; Vitello 2003). While Roman triumphal arches and temples frequently figured in the backgrounds of paintings by Filippino’s contemporaries, such

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as Ghirlandaio, Signorelli, or Fra Carnevale, Filippino places the architecture front and center. Aside from its compositional prominence, his representation of architecture is distinguished by the prominence of color and material richness, as well as its archaeological intensity. The importance of materials to Filippino and to his patron emerge from a letter he wrote to Filippo Strozzi on May 2, 1489, describing his work on the Carafa Chapel and its lavishness: I am now making an ornament for the marble altar […] and then the pavement will be the most ornate on earth, with porphyry and serpentine marble, all very finely executed, and a finely carved marble parapet, all with a very rich effect. (quoted in Geiger 1986: 187)20 It is fascinating, though beyond the scope of this chapter, that Filippino was referring to work for Cardinal Carafa, also the patron of the Capella del Succorpo in Naples. What emerges here and elsewhere is that there were protagonists, among both patrons and artists, propelling forward the use of intensely colored materials in multiple media and in various locations: Carafa, Chigi, Raphael, Peruzzi, and Filippino, to name but a few. While Filippino’s work is a heightened example of a particular approach to representing rich materials in paint that is characteristic of many other painters, including not only those mentioned above but also Mantegna, Botticelli, and Pinturrichio, there was also a very different possible approach to fictive architecture. In the Veneto, northern Italy, in the late sixteenth century, Veronese created a vision in white in his illusionistic ornaments, windows, columns, and doors of the Villa Barbaro at Maser. Complementing the exterior architecture of Palladio to a remarkable degree, the whiteness of the fictive frames sets off lushly green illusions of landscape, as well as real ones. Veronese created a model that was much imitated across the Veneto and no doubt contributed to our image of the simplicity and tranquility of these country estates.

CONCLUSION The overwhelming whiteness of modern architecture, combined with the perception of classical architecture as white, and with black-and-white photography have together obscured the significance of color in Renaissance architectural history. Ruskin, one of the few writers to give color and light prominence in the consideration of buildings, eschewed Renaissance architecture altogether. Scholars have begun to overturn this long-standing neglect, focusing in particular on materiality, but as I have hoped to suggest here, this consideration is intertwined with the conception of color and with its image.

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While we often view Renaissance architecture through the lens of the reinvention of the antique past, in the case of color the most pertinent models were sometimes more immediate ones. Many factors contributed to the approach to color that each city took, from the availability of materials to the ethical, political, and social sensibilities regarding expenditure on architecture and the display of wealth. In some cases, such as chapels and painted interiors, the logic was not local at all, but grew out of notions of richness and ornament common to many patrons, artists, and architects across Italy. Wittkower and the tradition he represents gave his readers a Renaissance of proportion: the golden section, as exemplified by the works of Alberti and Palladio. The project of reinvesting those abstract measurements with the material qualities of real buildings—what they were made of, how they were made, their qualities of texture, light, and color—is just beginning.

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CHAPTER TEN

Artifacts LEAH R. CLARK

INTRODUCTION A close observation of a Renaissance painting of a scholar or saint in his or her study will reveal a kaleidoscope of colors on a variety of artifacts. Take, for example, Ghirlandaio’s painting of St. Jerome in his study from the church of Ognissanti in Florence (see Plate 10.1). European blue-and-white ceramics mimic colorful imports; paternoster beads made out of glass, ceramics, or precious stones hang on walls and glitter in the light; multicolored Turkish carpets grace tables; books with colorful bindings litter desks and bookshelves; gold, silver, copper, and bronze vessels catch the light; while glass receptacles provide a luminous sparkle. Such a variety of artifacts and colors can be matched to descriptions found in contemporary inventories as well as customs registers. Color played an important role in the interest in, and interpretation of, a wide range of small portable objects—from gems and jewels to glass and ceramics—that were increasingly collected and prized in the Renaissance. This chapter is attentive to the ways in which color held specific cultural or symbolic significance depending on the artifact and its color, from references to antiquity to that of foreign lands. Renewed interests in antiquity as well as expanded trade routes meant that new types of artifacts introduced new color sensibilities in the Renaissance. Ancient gems were highly celebrated not only for their iconographies, but also for the allure of their color and the craftsmen’s manipulation of the tonal differences of their materials. Jewels—from rubies to emeralds—were prized too for their color and the effects they had when worn on the body or adorning a book cover or reliquary. Medieval lapidaries paired

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with new antiquarian interests gave rise to an understanding that color could endow jewels with particular magical properties. An emphasis on brilliance also led to increasing interests in translucent materials, such as Venetian glass, which was then enhanced with colorful decorations. Trade and diplomacy also introduced new types of objects and colors, as discussed by Kirby in this volume, such as the blue cobalt designs appearing on Chinese porcelain that were copied and mimicked in ceramics across the globe from Persia and Turkey to Spain and Italy. Color also played a central role in the mimicry of materials—from the depiction of porphyry and marble on the back of small portable panels to the imitation of blue motifs on counterfeit porcelain. This chapter explores not only how color was integral to the interpretation of artifacts but also how the introduction of new colors on novel artifacts gave rise to copies and replications, and in turn new objects, leading to novel approaches to the material and visual world.

A CULTURE OF COLLECTING The history of artifacts and their colors in the Renaissance is intrinsically tied to the history of collecting. An emphasis on classical austerity and a criticism of color was connected to sensibilities that were often at odds with the real practices of collecting and the desire of collectors. Indeed, color often played a controversial role as discussed by Pon in this volume. In defining “taste,” color was an easy target in attacks on opulence and display. For example, in Angelo Decembrio’s De politia litteraria (On Literary Refinement), dating from the 1450s, learned courtiers and humanists discuss with Leonello d’Este, the Marquis of Ferrara, the practices of collecting from the objects and books suitable for a study to the physical appearance of the library. In one section, artists are singled out as “pandering to the extravagance of princes and the stupidity of the crowd,” because they “are far more concerned with opulence of color and a frivolous charm” (Baxandall 2003: 54). In another section, individuals are ridiculed for prizing the adornment of their books over their content, stating that some “dress their books in purple, silk, pearls, gold, for the beauty of books entices many into reading them” (Celenza 2004: 58). In these discussions, color is characterized as an easy way to please the eye, appealing to the senses rather than the intellect. In the words of Giovanni Conversino “it is the ignorant man who is attracted simply by the color” (Hills 1999: 91). The inscription found in Duke Federigo da Montefeltro’s library at the Palace of Urbino brought the message home to those who entered the space: Let there be wealth, golden vases, abundance of money, crowds of servants, sparkling gems. Let there be colorful clothes and precious necklaces; but this illustrious furnishing [that is, the library] excels all of that by far. (Campbell 2006: 35)

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Color did, however, have a place in artistic discernment and in aesthetic discussions, but there was a fine line between overt opulence through the use of color and jewels and the perceived simplicity of unadorned books and white marble. As is evident in the painting by Ghirlandaio, colorful artifacts could be found in abundance in a collector’s study. Some collectors used the color of the bindings of books to correspond to the organization of contents (Hobson 1975: 10; Thornton 1997: 136–7). In the collections of Eleonora d’Aragona, Duchess of Ferrara, the color of morello (a purple-mulberry shade) was used to bind some of her books as well as a small diptych by Ercole de’ Roberti (Clark 2018: 113, 128).1 There is evidence that brightly colored paternosters were used in combination with other art objects to decorate collecting spaces. The inventory from 1489 of Frate Franceschino da Cesena describes “83 lead medals […] covered in red and white tin foil attached to the shelf in the study […] with a row of paternosters of many colors” (Leino 2013: 254). Paternosters could indeed come in a variety of colors, such as the “string of amber with some animals inside” that was sent to Isabella d’Este, the Marchioness of Mantua or the hundreds found in the inventory of her mother, which ranged from coral to black and gold amber to bright blues (Welch 1995: 265; Archivio di Stato di Modena [ASMO] 6114). As a new bride, Isabella d’Este wrote to Girolamo Zigliolo, a Ferrarese courtier, specifying different colors of rosaries as well as cloth that she wanted purchased in France: “these are the kind of things that I wish to have—engraved amethysts, rosaries of black, amber and gold, blue cloth for a camora, black cloth for a mantle, such as shall be without a rival in the world” (Welch 1995: 250). Color also played a central role in the collection and appreciation of gems and jewels that were highly prized in the Renaissance, serving numerous functions: they adorned the body sewn into gowns or hats, worn as rings, necklaces, or crowns; they were collected in their own right, particularly antique gems that were carved with mythological iconography that served as a material form of engagement with the classical past; and they were used to decorate drinking vessels and table services often carrying apotropaic qualities (supposedly having the ability to avert evil or bad luck). In Brussels, the Bohemian nobleman Leo of Rozmital remarked on a table where “clothes adorned with pearls and gems” were displayed alongside “all the precious stones, arranged according to their various names” (Buettner 2014: 213). Jewels were given names as a way to personalize them, but the organization of these stones might have been according to the generic names of the stones, their color, or their individualized “names.” Their names could derive from the visual properties of the stones, such as the famous Il Spigo, the Italian for lavender, a jewel once belonging to King Alfonso d’Aragona of Naples, or Il Buratto, another famous stone referring to a type of lace, while others were given names that were anthropomorphic (Venturelli 2008: 96; Clark 2018: 101).

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The range of colors and gems was always eye-catching and closely scrutinized by observers, such as when the Duke of Burgundy entered Paris in 1461 wearing, a plume on his hat of inestimable price; it was garnished with nine large rubies, five large diamonds, three of the largest and clearest pearls on earth, and sixty-two other pearls of great value; and on the chamfer of his horse there were likewise nine large rubies interspersed with pearls without number. And on the sallet, carried behind him, was set a rich ruby of Flanders, the marvel [outrepas] of Christendom. (Buettner 2014: 212) While many of these jewels no longer survive, such textual accounts as well as representations provide us with an indication of the chromatic variations and brilliance. A variety of jewels are visible in a painting by Petrus Christus depicting a couple visiting a goldsmith in his shop (see Plate 10.2). Individual stones and large pearls are placed scattered on a dark cloth, so as to highlight their colors, and beside them a constellation of small pearls are on display, the painter paying particular attention to the gradients of gray and white so as to evoke their luster. Above, pinned to the wall are three jewels already mounted in gold, set with a variety of stones and pearls. The male purchaser wears a similar, yet smaller, jewel at the center of his black hat; the four pearls, central stone, and dangling ruby are particularly highlighted against the dark material. The lady, likely the bride, wears no jewelry, but her hand points the viewer towards the small set of scales that are being used to weigh a ring with a red stone, probably a wedding ring. More rings are on offer on the shelf, placed on white holders, juxtaposed against an orange display case. The shelf is framed by a string of brightly colored paternosters, similar to those described in inventories of collecting spaces. Meticulously rendered jewels also appear in a manuscript of the jewelry of Duke Albrecht V and Duchess Anna of Bavaria commissioned in 1552 and painted by Munich court painter Hans Mielich (see Plate 10.3).2 Here, the artist has placed the individual jewel against a full-page dark background, so as to contrast the golden mounts and glistening pearls. The purple makes visible the artist’s labor at filling the entire space with pigment, where brushstrokes remain discernible. The jewel hangs from a thin gold chain, and Mielich has provided the illusion of a shadow by utilizing a darker pigment of purple, setting the jewel into relief. Color is used sensitively and intently in the rendering of the jewels, particularly in the central dark jewel, where gray pigments highlight its cut. Similarly, different pools of red make up the rubies, imitating the way that light plays with the chromatic variations of stone. The play of light could enliven depictions carved on gems, something contemporaries were aware of. Ciriaco d’Ancona remarked on the intaglio depicting Alexander the Great and how the limbs came alive when “one holds the solid part of the gem to the light” (Fusco and Corti 2006: 119). The weather,

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it seems, could also play a role in the viewing of gems. Domenico di Piero, the collector and trader of gems in Venice, was recorded as not wanting “to show them in weather that makes them look different from what they actually are” and waited until a clear day appeared to show them (120). Stones’ color sensitivities to light thus played a role not only in their display but also in their engagement, requiring a close handling of the jewels or gems as the viewer held them in their hands, brought them up to the light, even twirled them, closely scrutinizing their material qualities and sheen.

MINERALOGY, MAGIC, AND THE PROPERTIES OF STONES The allure of stones and gems and their chromatic qualities in the medieval spiritual context is well known in writings by Abbot Suger, Albertus Magnus, and in lapidaries (Evans 1922; Riddle 1977; Weisheipl 1980). New antiquarian interests combined these older ideas with the collecting culture of the Renaissance and also with the quest for knowledge of the larger world. The chromatic qualities of stones were part of their efficacy, connected to the belief in the humors. Aristotle’s pupil, Theophrastus, in his treatise On Stones argued that gems obtained their “special excellence” from variations in “color, hardness, softness [and] smoothness” (De Maria 2013: 121). Green chalcedony flecked with red jasper, for example, is described as a calorific. Red stones could function as styptics, and wine-colored stones, such as amethysts, prevented drunkenness (Buettner 2014: 215). Serpents’ tongues (actually fossilized sharks’ teeth) were used to test food in court ceremonials but were rather bland in color, so elaborate and colorful display devices known as languiers or espreuves were often made out of bright coral, shaped into a tree from which to hang the gilded “tongues” (Belozerskaya 2002: 97). Such an example still survives in Vienna where numerous teeth hang off a coral tree supported on a gold base, also used as a saltcellar. The practice is alluded to in the painting by Petrus Christus where two shark’s teeth in gilded mounts hang from a nail above a coral branch in the middle of the lower shelf (see Plate 10.2). Coral could also come in handy for merchants; as Albertus Magnus’s treatise instructs, it “speeds the beginning and end of any business” transaction (De Maria 2013: 121). Vases in hardstones such as porphyry, alabaster, and granite were often stored in church treasuries, carrying with them mystical properties praised by Abbot Suger as materials that reflected the glory of Heaven and were metaphors for spiritual illumination. Hugh of Saint Victor described the heavenly church as built of “living stones,” while fifteenth-century humanists, such as Leon Battista Alberti, noted that the physical characteristics of porphyry alluded to the virtue of patience. Wealthy fifteenth-century patrons who wanted to evoke the multivalent symbolic meanings of porphyry used it for their tombs (Butters 1996: 99–106).

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Artists and goldsmiths utilized the color variations of stone and gems to create stunning works of art. A saltcellar belonging to Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy is described as being in a variety of colors of hardstone with a red jasper bottom, a green jasper top, and a cover depicting the figure of a Saracen drawing a bow at a Turk (Belozerskaya 2002: 93). The tonal differences already visible in certain hardstones and gems were manipulated by craftsmen from ancient times to the Renaissance. Antique artists were praised for their dexterity in this, showcased in the highly prized Medici gems and hardstones such as the Tazza Farnese. Caradosso Foppa, a leading Milanese goldsmith, was singled out by Teseo Ambrogio degli Albonesi in 1539 in this art, for his “knowledge and discernment of […] pearls and other bright, variously colored stones” and for his use of bas-relief contrasts (Brown and Hickson 1997: 10). This use of contrasts is evident in a sixteenth-century cameo, in which an anonymous artist has utilized the varied colors of sardonyx to highlight the profile of a Roman emperor, while utilizing the more subtle differences to add accents, such as the laurel leaf and pendant cameo, creating a meta-cameo (Figure 10.1).

FIGURE 10.1  Italian, Bust of a Roman emperor, mid to late sixteenth century, sardonyx and gold. The Milton Weil Collection, 1938. © The Metropolitan Museum of New York.

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The emphasis on comparison or paragone was central to contemporary aesthetic evaluations, often facilitated by collections, which housed a wide range of objects in a number of materials. Most commonly understood as a competition between the arts, such as painting to sculpture or painting to poetry, comparison was also key to understanding color relationships. The fifteenth-century Venetian Giovanni di Fontana instructed the application of “bright and dark colors” to not only indicate an image to be seen in relief but also to achieve perspective (Hills 1999: 94). Leonardo da Vinci referred to paragone as contrasting colors as well as contrasting light and dark in relief, as discussed by Hall in this volume. In portraiture, fictive variegated colors of stones on the reverses, or versi, of portraits played on the paragone tradition and the competition between poetry and art. Leonardo da Vinci’s double-sided portrait of Ginevra de’ Benci represents her physical beauty on the obverse, while the simulated porphyry with an inscription on the reverse speaks to the qualities often asserted to be unobtainable by the visual portrait (Cropper 1986). The representation of porphyry underlines permanence, thus using painting and representation to refute the notion that the literary portrait is more enduring. This simulated marble was not uncommon, appearing not only on the versi of portraits but also devotional panels, in manuscript illumination as well as in fresco decoration (Didi-Huberman 1995; Schmidt 2005). The appeal of gems and stones as metaphors is evident in the poems about Ginevra de’ Benci circulating in literary circles that drew on particular colors. Cristoforo Landino remarked on her beauty, noting “her face resembled what we often see when white lilies are mixed with red roses, or if an Indian gem found in the Erythrean Sea should come tinged with purple color” (Walker 1967: 33). Lapidaries discuss the importance of images and inscriptions in increasing the powers of the stones or gems, many of which spoke directly to the fears and hazards to which rulers were particularly susceptible, such as allowing the beholder to be bold or timid, and protecting them from disease, poison, enemies, demons, and other evils. Early modern inventories, particularly from the Burgundian court, record knowledge of the magical properties of these gems (Evans 1922). The inventory of the artist Lorenzo Lotto reveals not only a chromatic range but also the symbolic interpretation of jewels and their representations. His will mentions “twelve cameos of naturally multicolored stones, with the twelve astrological signs carved on them” as well as “a gold ring inset with a beautiful antique cornelian, with a crane taking off and a yoke at its feet, and in its beak the sign of Mercury; this signifies the active and contemplative life, and the possibility of rising above earthly matters through spiritual meditation” (De Maria 2013: 124). The Picatrix, an eleventh-century Arabic work on astral magic, which influenced fifteenth-century Italian treatises and thought, discusses the use

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of gems for medicinal purposes, including incantations and fumigations for dealing with demons and drawing planetary influences into engraved stones (Aakhus 2008: 187). The Hortus sanitatis, a sort of fifteenth-century natural history encyclopedia, provided information on the medicinal properties of certain plants. In Jacob Meydenbach’s publication, a lapidary section was included, as illustrated in Figure 10.2, in which different stones are on display (in some editions color has been added to distinguish the stones). In Marsilio Ficino’s

FIGURE 10.2  “De Lapidus” from Jacob Meydenbach’s Hortus sanitatis, Mainz, fifteenth century. Unnumbered leaves. © Wellcome Collection, London.

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Books on Life, color plays a key role in the health of a scholarly individual. In his classification of the planets and the spirit, he relates odors to colors as well as stones: Watery colors, or white, green and sometimes saffron, violet, rose, and lily colors are colors that refer to Venus, the Moon and Mercury, while sapphire colors, which are even called airy, much fuller of purple, mixed with gold and silver, and perpetually green, belong to Jove. The more ardent colors of saffron, pure golds, and clearer purples, belong to the Sun. If the colors are even more alive or like silks, they belong to the stars. (Ficino 1980: 120) For Ficino, color and stone combinations could have particular effects, such as using gold and coral for illuminating the spirit. Specific stones, spices, and colors associated with “Jovial” qualities could also help an ailing belly such as “silver, jacinth, topaz, coral, crystal […] sapphire, green and aery colors,” while one should at the same time “entertain thoughts and feelings which are especially Jovial, that is steadfast, composed, religious and law-abiding” (Ficino 1989: 249). The medicinal qualities of stones were put to use on the bodies of the very people who collected them. When Lorenzo de’ Medici was on his deathbed, his doctor, Pier Leone, placed the heliotrope stone onto his skin in hopes of reducing his fever (heliotrope is also known as bloodstone, often made of green jasper [chalcedony] with red speckles of hematite). This was insufficient, and instead the Duke of Milan’s physician was brought in, Lazzaro of Pavia, who disagreed with the heliotrope technique, insisting that Lorenzo needed a cooling rather than a calorific treatment, and prepared a poultice from crushed pearls (Aakhus 2008: 191). The wearing of certain gems or colors on certain days was recommended by Ficino as a way to counteract bad astral influences, or to encourage good ones, and to inspire harmonization of dissonance in the soul (Aakhus 2008: 191). In Georgius Agricola’s sixteenth-century treatise on mineralogy, he noted emeralds were not to be worn during “dangerous or lewd” acts, such as “cohabitation,” for if worn by either man or woman and “it touches the flesh, even when set in a ring, it will be shattered.” Equally, the color of emeralds could also prove a useful tool in determining infidelity, because “the stone will turn white” if a wife’s “husband is unfaithful” (De Maria 2013: 129). In the art of memory, certain gems were used as aide-memoires. In the Thesaurus artificiosae memoriae published in 1579, Paradise is envisioned as a “wall sparkling with gems” whereby the reader is asked to “imagine the orders of spirits as painters paint them,” creating memory places in abbeys and churches known to them (Yates 1992: 122). The association of gems with Paradise was linked to their provenances and beliefs that the Heavenly Jerusalem might be

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found by going “East.” Increased travel and trade and the discovery of new routes both east and west inevitably contributed to new understandings of materials, but also introduced new color sensibilities and knowledge.

TRADE AND TRAVEL Many precious objects in courtly collections had foreign provenances, and interest in these artifacts was spurred by narratives about their exotic origins. As Stefan Halikowski Smith has argued on the mystification of spices, marvels from the east were intricately bound in fanciful speculations, oral and popular beliefs, and travelers’ and merchants’ accounts of foreign places, far from Europe (Smith 2001). Color played a central role in descriptions of the New World and the material culture that could be found there, as discussed by Kirby and by Mancall in this volume. Bartolomé de las Casas, a Dominican friar who spent time in the New World, was struck by the featherwork made by amantecas (feather artists). The feathers were described by de las Casas in the mid-sixteenth century as “green, red or gold, purple, bright red, yellow, blue or pale green, black, white and all the other colors, blended and pure, not dyed by human ingenuity but all natural, taken from various birds” (Russo et al. 2015; Newall 2017: 55). These featherworks were highly collected: Margaret of Austria’s collection of New World objects, for example, amounted to 170. They were received as gifts from her nephew Charles V in 1523 as part of the treasures the explorer Hernán Cortés had presented to Charles, originally given by the Aztec ruler Motecuhzoma II in 1519, also referred to as Montezuma II (MacDonald 2002). Imports from the “East,” comprising Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East, were highly sought in Europe as indicators of the luxuries of wealthy courts abroad. Color had a large part to play in the allure of many of these artifacts—from blue-and-white porcelain to the bright yellows and reds of spices to colorful textiles. Duarte Barbosa discussed the great city of Bisnagua (present-day Vijayanagar, India) as a place ripe with all the precious objects desired by collectors in a range of colors: Here [a] great store of the brocades of poorer quality brought for sale from China [and Alexandria], [and much cloth dyed scarlet-in-grain and other colors and coral worked into paternosters and in branches], vermilion, saffron, rosewater. (Barbosa 1967: 202–3; brackets in original) The list of diplomatic gifts exchanged between the Mamluks and Italian states provide an array of colorful imagery. In 1473, during political and trade negotiations, the Mamluk Sultan Qaitbay of Cairo sent Doge Nicolo Tron of Venice twenty pieces of porcelain, medicinal herbs, fine sugar, and a civet horn.

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Similarly in 1487, Qaitbay’s ambassadors in Florence presented Lorenzo de’ Medici with porcelain, “Moorish” vases, textiles, and spices as well as exotic animals including a prized giraffe (Mack 2002: 23; Behrens-Abouseif 2014: 113–14). This kaleidoscope of colors is alluded to in contemporary paintings of the Adoration of the Magi, where the biblical story of wise men from the East bearing gifts was conflated with contemporary diplomatic gift practices. Chinese porcelain was rare in Europe in the fifteenth century, taking a circuitous route across the world traveling via Persia and then into the collections of the Mamluk and Ottoman sultans, who then gifted it on to European courts. Two main colors of porcelain made its way into Europe in the fifteenth century—that of the celadon green variety and the better-known blue and white. Lorenzo de’ Medici’s 1492 inventory describes both types as does the 1493 inventory of Eleonora d’Aragona, Duchess of Ferrara. The list of Eleonora d’Aragona’s collection of porcelain is largely organized by color, beginning with “green porcelain” followed by blue and white. Some pieces in Eleonora’s collection were described as white, probably describing qingbai ware, made with glaze that carried a light tinge that ranged from bluish gray to bluish green (the famous Gaignières-Fonthill Vase is an example of this type). By the sixteenth century, however, these Italian collections were soon surpassed by the large amount of porcelain making its way into Portuguese, Spanish, and Dutch collections through new trade routes. This is evident in Dutch paintings where porcelain is showcased as a colorful complement to other luxury objects on display (Weststeijn 2014). In Lisbon, porcelain became a regular household item, and in some cases, it was displayed in special rooms, primarily used by women, and called Casa de Vidros or das Porcelanas alongside Venetian glass, medicine, fruit preserves, and scented waters (Crespo 2015). Spain’s expansion into the New World meant that a sovereign such as King Philip II had access to colorful artifacts and materials from around the globe to make up his collection, which included manuscripts, tapestries, jewelry, prints, books, natural specimens, over fifteen hundred paintings, and an incredible amount of porcelain, amounting to over three thousand pieces (Finlay 2010). The pearly whiteness of Chinese porcelain was connected to its material qualities, but this whiteness also contrasted with the blue floral patterns depicted in cobalt blue (see Figure 10.3). Whiteness as a category of color to reflect refinement seems to have emerged at this time. Porcelain appealed because its material properties were assumed to be magical and similar to alabaster. It was speculated that it was a sort of precious stone, or that it was a marvelous liquid that solidified underground, or a mixture of water and crushed eggshells and seashells (Kerr 2004; Finlay 2010). The particular decoration of blue floral motifs and interlocking patterns found on Ming porcelain vessels became a style eagerly mimicked in imitation ware. The variation in vocabulary makes it sometimes difficult to ascertain just

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FIGURE 10.3  Jar, Chinese porcelain, made in Jingdezhen, 1500–50, Ming dynasty. © The Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

exactly what is being conveyed in inventories. The term porcellana might refer to authentic Chinese blue and white, but it could also be used to refer to Islamic variations. In the accounts of the Florentine merchant Filippo Strozzi, references to porcelain and damascene porcelain points to the variety of ceramics available through his trade networks. In the 1470s, he is recorded as purchasing in Venice “10 bowls of porcelain: 8 small white and 2 with blue leaf [patterns]” as well as “porciellana domaschina,” alongside a significant amount of glass and chalcedony (Spallanzani 1978: 165–7). Vocabulary appearing in inventories also points to the foreign associations with colors, as discussed further by Oltrogge in this volume. For example, colore arabico detto turchino was used to refer to a turquoise-colored glass, while blue paper known as carta azzurra was also referred to as carta turchina. The origins of pigments could also be discerned by names such as endego de baghedad (Baghdad indigo) or, with reference to ceramics, azzurro damascene (damascene blue) (Berrie 2007: 144).

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From Lisbon to Venice to Antwerp, inventories reveal that major trading centers were not only sites where colorful foreign objects were traded, purchased, and exchanged but also places where traces of trade could be found in domestic interiors. Portuguese homes have already been mentioned, but Venetian palazzi also became a repository for possessions that had frequently been acquired abroad, as many merchants traveled and even lived in the Levant. Bright textiles, Turkish carpets, blue-and-white ceramics, and gold and brass metalwork colored Venetian interiors and could also influence local production. In Antwerp in the 1520s, Albrecht Dürer acquired a variety of colorful objects including “three porcelain dishes,” “Calicut feathers,” and a “green jug with myrobalans [plum-like fruits]” from Portuguese traders (Newall 2017: 58–9). Those who died abroad also bequeathed their colorful possessions to loved ones back home, such as Stefano Ravagnino who left two coral rosaries to his sister in Venice (Howard 2007: 63). While today some of the vocabulary used in inventories can be confusing or unclear, what is remarkable is the attention to variations in color by inventory compilers. Cristoforo del Fiore was a notary who spent a considerable amount of time in Mamluk cities, drawing up wills for merchants dying abroad. His familiarity with the Arabic language and with Syrian material culture provided him with a wide range of vocabulary to describe the objects bequeathed, paying attention to the variety of materials and colors (Howard and Bianchi 2003: 236–7). In one merchant’s inventory, del Fiore recorded porcelain in a range of colors: a blue-and-white bowl, four small green bowls, and a large bowl containing ground ginger, demonstrating that porcelain was also used to house spices. The use of porcelain to hold food was a common practice in Mughal India, often represented in miniature paintings of courtly rituals (see Plate 10.4). The painting is a concatenation of colors, from the blue-and-white motifs found on the porcelain bowls, the floor tiles, and the architectural decorations to the rich reds, blues, and oranges that constitute the textiles, architectural embellishments, and weaponry (Hess 2004: 7–10). Repeatedly cropping up in inventories abroad as well as in Europe were drug jars or albarelli, often used to hold colorful spices and medicines (see Plate 10.5). The Venetian Stefano Ravagnino had a warehouse in Damascus where he stored 280 “big spice-jars piled up, glazed in black and some white and red” (Howard and Bianchi 2003: 254). While most albarelli are now housed in museums, empty of their contents, the contrast between the colorful decorations on the jar with the bright hues of the spices inside would have been striking. An inventory of a spice shop in Florence from 1424 demonstrates that colorful drug jars were already in abundance at this time (Spallanzani 1978: 155–8). Nineteen vases were described as white and blue, while five small albarelli were white and yellow and others green and yellow. The application of color on these vessels gave rise to new styles and tastes. Ceramics produced in Persia, the Ottoman Empire, and the Mamluk Empire

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looked to Chinese porcelain as inspiration incorporating blue-and-white motifs but combining them with local traditions. Likewise, these ceramics influenced potters in Spain and then Italy, who began using a wider range of colors. The colors of ceramics extended beyond what was found on shelves, as the floors of chapels, studies, and other interior spaces were marked by bright tiles, mimicking many of the designs found on vessels. Surviving floor tiles can still be found in some churches in Naples, while the Museo Filangieri in that city retains some from the Carafa Palace, and the Louvre holds specimens from the Caracciolo Chapel in San Giovanni a Carbonara in Naples. The Castel Nuovo’s floors in Naples were also decorated with Valencian tiles, ordered by King Alfonso d’Aragona in the 1440s, which contained colorful designs with manganese and red as well as others in blue and white incorporating Aragonese arms, devices, and mottos (Filangieri 1937: 311–12). In 1577, David Ungnad, ambassador to Constantinople for the Holy Roman Emperors Maximilian  II and Rudolf II, sent Venice a present of ceramic tiles from Iznik, Turkey, that cost over one hundred ducats, demonstrating that bright tiles could be an appropriate diplomatic gift (Fontana 2007: 282). Innovations to convey brilliance on pottery first emerged in Islamic Spain, where the technique of lusterware was employed. Here, whole vessels were covered in a tin oxide providing the form of a white canvas. But these vessels were not simply left white; instead, highly vibrant colors such as manganese were added to provide vegetal patterns in rich purples. The firing process of the luster also gave rise to a metallic sheen and a copper appearance, turning these ceramics into artifacts that mimicked more expensive metals, and also speaking to cultural interests in brilliance (Hess 2004).

BRILLIANCE: GLASS AND GOLD While not a color, brilliance and an emphasis on light and luster were central to color sensibilities in the Renaissance and informed cultural practices. Color could also be used to add luster to mimic more expensive materials, from gems to porcelain to gold (Ajmar-Wollheim 2014; Bol 2014). Fifteenth-century courtly magnificence placed an emphasis on splendor, reflected in the gems adorning one’s body or the plate and table services adorning one’s credenza. Princely bodies were understood to evoke brilliance, such as Borso d’Este, the Duke of Ferrara, who was described as “joyful and jocund and lordly and resplendent with his imperial appearance ornamented by gold and gems,” his eyes “resplendent,” and his face bright enough to “obscure the sun” (McCall 2013: 446). Filarete, the fifteenth-century humanist, compared princes to lustrous gems, noting that they should be “splendid and luminous without any stain” (452). While certainly a metaphor for moral constancy, real bodies were adorned with metallic fabrics and gems in a range of colors to exude their inner brilliance.

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The jewel-encrusted vessels that graced many a princely table also spoke to luminosity. In the fifteenth century, interests in the designs and brilliance of metalware also informed humanistic writings where the notion of splendor could refer to luminosity. Passages from the Neapolitan humanist Giovanni Pontano’s treatises on splendor and magnificence highlight the function of a diversity of objects as markers of distinction. Pontano remarks that King Alfonso had various vessels of silver and gold and beautifully embroidered tablecloths but that a more modest man could also show splendor in the range of decoration, art, form, and material of the objects, whether in “gold, silver or porcelain” (Pontano 1999: 231–3). In addition, the adornment of the house with “paintings, tapestries […] cloth woven with gems, cases and caskets variously painted in the Arabic manner, little vases of crystal […] brings […] prestige” (Welch 2002: 215). Pontano’s list evokes a variety of objects from around the world, many of which were known to be highly colorful or luminous. The play of light often brought out the colors and materials of objects and was something to which collectors were sensitive. When Isabella d’Este was interested in four vases that once belonged to Lorenzo de’ Medici, Francesco Malatesta sent drawings of the vessels noting that they recorded the correct sizes and colors; however, the painters could not reproduce their “gloss” or luster. Indeed, Leonardo da Vinci, Malatesta notes, admired the rock-crystal vase for its clarity and the amethyst-jasper one for its transparency (Fusco and Corti 2006: 188–9). This emphasis on light gave rise not only to predilections for the transparency of glass, but also its decoration in color. Vanuccio Biringuccio, a Sienese metalworker, noted that glass, is transparent and lustrous, and it is colored with substances or traces of metal to any desired color, in such a way that with the beauty of gems it deceives the judgement of the eyes of very experienced men […]. The best glasswork that is made in our times and that which is of greater beauty, more varied coloring, and more admirable skill than that of any other place is made at Murano. In addition to coloring them all possible tints, they make them very clear and transparent like true and natural crystal, and ornament them with paintings, and other very fine enamels. (Syson and Thornton 2001: 183) The profusion of foreign goods coming into Venice as well as the translucency and reflective quality of water have been seen as being influential on the material culture of that city and its residents’ color sensibilities (Hills 1999). The ability of glass to mimic other materials, while at the same time demonstrating transparency, particularly appealed to collectors. By the end of the fifteenth century, a new type of turquoise glass had been developed that imitated a semiprecious stone imported from Khurasan in central Asia. Other transparent vessels were molded into shapes that looked like gold or silver, including

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bulbous additions painted with blobs of color to imitate gemstones (Syson and Thornton 2001: 188–9). Duchess Eleonora d’Aragona’s collection of glassware amounted to over 130 pieces and included two vases made out of blue glass with gold, two glass jugs with gold, seven crystal ewers with handles decorated with gold, a bucket in blue glass used for holy water, as well as a bucket in white glass, five beakers with their covers all gilded, and a crystal cup with gold sporting Eleonora’s arms. Four small pitchers are described as “glass with various colors of glass” probably referring to millefiori glass (ASMO G114). Millefiori (literally, “a thousand flowers”) mimicked an ancient technique, utilizing multicolored canes sliced into thin sections to look like flowers, resulting in highly colorful patterned vessels, which could vary from flower-like designs to pools of color to even blurring or marbling (Hills 1999: 117–18; Syson and Thornton 2001: 187). By the sixteenth century, techniques that employed twists or net decoration (retorti or reticello) utilized color interspersed with white and became highly sought after. Biringuccio praised these, noting he had seen “glass the color of pearl or tinted green or blue or formed in various spirals [vetro a retorti] made entirely of a single very slender fiber like a thread.” Such “twisted designs [a reticello] of thorn branches and other crisscross inlays,” he declares, could appear on “rosaries, salt-cellars and drinking vessels” (Syson and Thornton 2001: 196). Eleonora d’Aragona’s inventory also records numerous vases in chalcedony glass including four tazze (cups) (two small and two big) and cups with feet. Chalcedony glass refers to the imitation of veined hardstones in glass and was known as a specialty of Venice. Collectors sought this material as a form of imitation of more expensive materials such as antique hardstones, but it certainly came to be a work of art on its own rather than simply imitation ware. By 1602, Antonio Neri praised chalcedony glass, describing it as “none other than a gathering of almost all the colors, and scherzi,” alluding to the musical term scherzo, meaning a vigorous, light, or playful composition (Hills 1999: 119). In 1507, Eleonora’s daughter, Isabella d’Este, sent a silver soup dish to her agent Lorenzo da Pavia in Venice for him to copy in five different colors of glass. Lorenzo, however, was only able to send her ones of green and crystal since other colors had not yet been put in the furnace. Isabella d’Este’s correspondence demonstrates that she was eager to procure Venetian glass but felt that the style often needed updating. In February 1496, she ordered two or three crystal beakers but specified she wanted them without gold trim— the absence of gold was a new style that she was particularly keen to have. In 1510, Isabella ordered and received six large water glasses with handles and covers, but she was not pleased with them, noting that the glass was not white enough, probably referring to its transparency (Brown 1982: 215–16). In 1534, she was eager for the Mantuan ambassador to select various drinking

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glasses among the new designs, specifying she wanted those decorated with the “lattimo design” and again no gold (lattimo referencing the opaque white vessels that were decorated with designs often drawn from contemporary artists) (McCray 1999: 73). Glass and ceramics point to the ways in which artists copied a variety of materials, often utilizing color to do so. This gave rise to not only new cultural sensibilities but also to technical innovations. An attention to color on a variety of artifacts reveals particular cultural attitudes to materials and the world of goods in the Renaissance. Collecting spaces and domestic interiors were sites of chromatic experiences, and colors on particular types of artifacts required specific engagement from viewers, such as looking at the ways in which light could play on the material properties of hardstones or gems. This play of light also gave rise to a new emphasis on brilliance, contributing to cultural symbolisms attached to luster. Specific colors were also understood to endow stones and gems with special, even magical, properties. The expansion of trade routes, exploration, and diplomatic exchanges also meant that novel artifacts found their way into European homes, giving rise to new vocabulary to describe new ranges of colors. This in turn provoked local imitations of materials and artifacts. Color thus played a central role not only in an emerging collecting culture but also by giving rise to new ways of understanding the ever-expanding material and visual world.

NOTES

Introduction 1. This can be seen in recent books, such as Finlay 2014; Zorach and Phillips 2016; St. Clair 2017; and Pastoureau 2018. Both Finlay and Pastoureau have produced other books on the subject as well. For pigments, see Feller et al. 1986–2007; Eastaugh et al. 2004; and Coles 2019. For pigments and trade, see Kirby et al. 2010; and Herrero-Cortel 2019. 2. For a study of Baroque representation in Europe and the Americas, see Zamora and Kaupe 2010. For a case study of color in the Baroque architecture of Turin, see Grognardi and Tagliasacchi 1988. For the use of Polish black limestone as a particular material in Baroque Kraków, see Marszalek and Skowrónski 2010. 3. Heuer (2019) extends the theme of “whiteness” into early modern European explorations of the Arctic to consider how imaginary whiteness, of icy and abstracted natural environments, connect with the image debates of the Protestant Reformation. 4. For a sampling of recent edited volumes on the material culture of the Renaissance, see Smith and Schmidt 2007; Cole and Zorach 2009; Findlen 2013; Anderson et al. 2015; and Jurkowlaniec et al. 2017. 5. It is a convention in linguistics to show basic color categories (BCCs) in small capitals (e.g., red). 6. For an important new anthology of essays on the early modern black diaspora, see Smith et al. 2018. For an investigation of language as a route to racial analysis, see Smith 2009. 7. For recent work on Shakespeare and race, see Bovilsky 2008; Smith 2009; and Thompson 2011.

Chapter 1 1. All translations of Aristotle are from Jonathan Barnes’s 1984 edition. 2. For more on color terms in natural history, see Oltrogge, this volume. For more on color mixing in painting, see Hall, this volume.

Chapter 3 1. Bordone’s large (370 × 301 cm) 1534 canvas is now at the Gallerie d’Accademia in Venice.

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2. The canvas, measuring 347 × 770 cm, is at the Gallerie d’Accademia in Venice. 3. The great architectural projects of the high Renaissance were not unique and drew directly not only on antiquity but on more recent achievements, such as Filippo Brunelleschi’s magnificent work in early fifteenth-century Florence (see King 2000). 4. The original version of Ramusio’s maps disappeared in a fire in 1574, but modern visitors can see reconstructed versions (see Schultz 1987: 66–7). 5. Later in the century, when European Protestants began to take greater interest in possible colonizing missions, Las Casas’s book was translated into English and published in London in 1582 as The Spanish Colony, a tool in the efforts of English promoters (most notably the younger Richard Hakluyt) to encourage other subjects of the Crown to travel to North America to arrest the spread of Catholicism (see Mancall 2007: 109–10). 6. The room, according to multiple estimates, was about 20 to 30 feet long and 15 to 17 feet across, with the gold to be piled to a height of 8 feet (see Cieza de León 1998: 226n1). In a calculation made in 1939, the ransom amounted to $8,344,307.00—all of it having disappeared in the centuries since its arrival in Europe. A more recent estimate placed the value at $12,500,000.00 (see [Inca ransom] 1939; Rowe 1967: 62). 7. The Atlas Miller is in the collection of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris; the Vallard Atlas is in the collection of the Huntington Library in San Marino, California. There are high-resolution facsimiles of both produced by the publisher Moliero, of Barcelona.

Chapter 4 1. More than thirty editions of Durandus’s Rationale divinorum officiorum between 1400 and 1584, and more than a dozen editions of Innocent III’s De sacro altaris mysterio between 1518 and 1576 were published across Europe respectively. 2. Charles Borrommeo, Archibishop of Milan, revised the precise cut of the chasuble, making it longer and fuller than contemporaneous Nortern European versions (see Johnstone 2002: 10–11). 3. Personal communication from Jeff Spurr, August 18, 2016. 4. Rubrication was almost always in red, in more luxurious books at times alternating with blue or very occasionally green, likely to promote “the mnenomic quality of each page” (see Saenger 1997: 170 and Smith 2010: 197). 5. For the text of this work, see Isidore of Seville 1850.

Chapter 5 1. Luzio and Renier (1896) noted that in 1493, when Leonora of Aragon died, her daughters Beatrice and Isabella d’Este wore sleeved gowns of brown wool, overgowns of the same color and fabric, and covered their heads with silk veils. Their one nod to fashion was that their veils were not of yellow or gray cloth, but rather bleached pure white. See also the log book of the tailor Antonio d’Agnolo (Florence, Archivio di Stato, Conventi Soppressi, N. 102, filza 83, fol. 28v) for widows’ clothing. 2. For a discussion of the discovery of cochineal in the New World, see Mancall, this volume. 3. One of the family logbooks now in the Archivio di Stato Firenze is from the Strozzi family and includes entries on the colors of clothing purchased and also sold by the family (for example, Carte Strozziane, 2d ser., 17 bis., fols. 54r, 55v, and 68v). Another example is the Minerbetti family logbook housed in the Biblioteca Laurenziana (acq. e doni, 229, 2). For the colors of trousseau clothing, see fols. 2v, 3rv, 81v, 82r. See also Oltrogge, this volume.

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4. In Renaissance Rome, prostitutes and Jews were made to wear red gowns. Elsewhere in Italy: in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Recanati, Jews wore a red circle; and, in Viterbo in 1450, Jews again needed a circle of red cloth on their outer clothing. Frederic Lane noted that in Venice, Jews were required to wear scarlet headwear, and that this communal dress marking even applied to Jewish physicians, highly esteemed in the Venetian community (see Lane 1973: 300). Alternatively, in this volume, Pon discusses the use of yellow hats and/or circles to mark outsiders. 5. This is not surprising, as both red dyes come from the pulverized bodies of tiny insects and the coloring agent in each of them is carminic acid. 6. Newton notes that in Venice, the togati who sat in the deliberative chambers of government were not allowed to enter clothed in black, unless they were in deep mourning, when a beard could also be okayed as a sign of grief (see Newton 1988: 21). 7. See the manuscript Florence, Archivio di Stato, Conventi Soppressi, N. 119, filze 855 and 857, dating from 1447–92. The friars wore at least sixteen different types of black, gray, and white fabric in their vestments, which consisted of layered ensembles similar to secular dress. 8. See Laver’s discussion of the “fossilization” of fashion in the dress of servants’ livery, military or guards’ uniforms, and waiters in restaurants. 9. See manuscript Florence, Archivio de Stato, Mercanzia, Reg. 288, fols. 112v, 113r. 10. See manuscript Florence, Archivio di Stato, Carte Strozziane, Ser. II, 17 bis, fols. 54r, 55v, 68v. 11. See Snook’s reference to the color of “tawny” that appears in Mary Wroth’s prose romance Urania (1621) as signifying feelings of abandonment, misery, and of being a victim of fate. 12. Roughly translated from the Italian: caffe tostato, “roasted coffee”; cocco, “cocoa”; tobacco, “tobacco”; vigogna, “vicuna”; and uccello del paradiso, “bird of paradise.” 13. From the Italian: fior di melagrano, “pomegranate flower”; albicocca, “apricot”; ciliegia, “fruit of the wild cherry”; bisciola, “bisciola”; papavero secco, “dry poppy”; ortensia, “hydrangea”; penna d’angelo, “angel wing”; fico, “fig”; and fior di lino, “flax flower.” 14. This associational memory was thoroughly investigated by Proust in Remembrances of Things Past. 15. From the Italian: terra d’Egitto, “Egyptian earth”; rena d’oro, “sands of gold”; terra d’ombra, “earth shadow”; and orizzonte, “horizon.” 16. From the Italian: scuro d’ombrello, “shadow of the umbrella”; fumo, “smoke”; filiggine, “soot”; foglia morta, “dead leaf”; pazienza, “patience”; and cenerognolo, “ashen.” 17. Snook writes about the four Galenic humors that it was believed that “a very white complexion betokens a phlegmatic humor, paleness or yellowness, melancholic and choleric humors, and blackness, a choleric humor” (2011: 27). 18. For the hypothesis of lead poisoning causing the death of Elizabeth, see Skerrett 2009.

Chapter 6 1. As a convention in linguistics, BCCs are printed in small capitals (red), BCTs in Italics (red). 2. The evolutionary sequence of what is now the UE model was revised several times after 1969 (see Biggam 2012: 70−85). 3. On the methodology, see Biggam 2012: 21–43.

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4. Additionally, relevant corpora have been exploited for this chapter: Jones 2013b, a; Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origine (TLIO); Dictionnaire du Moyen Français (DMF); The Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary (HT); and Huguet 1925–67. For studies on the color vocabulary in specialized early modern scientific and technical literature, see Edelstein 1969; Rebora 1970; Campbell et al. 2001; Seidensticker 2010; Monnas 2014; Tramelli 2016; and Buss 2017. 5. An exception is Alberti, who dismisses the yellow category but introduces an “ash color” (cinereum, bigia, and cenericcia) for the element earth according to the colorelement theory (Bätschmann and Gianfreda 2010: 78; Alberti 2011: ch. 9). 6. Göttingen, Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek 8 Cod. MS Uffenbach 49. 7. The spelling of all terms in early New High German, Old English, or Italian can show a number of variations. 8. An exception is found in Dolce, who notes two homonyms for yellow (croceo, giallo) and a different term for red (uermiglio) (Dolce 1565: 8). 9. On the pigment, see Kirby, this volume. 10. Turchino is a non-basic blue term in Borghini’s opinion, his principal term for blue is azzurro (Borghini 1584: 235). 11. On the colorants sappanwood and brazilwood, see Kirby, this volume. 12. The pigments listed are kesselbraun, braunrot, earth of Cologne, asphaltum, and umber. On the identification of the materials, see Laaser 2017: 171–92. 13. The pigments include a campana earth, umber, burnt green earth, asphaltum, and mumia. 14. Leonardo gives no information on pigments used for morello. 15. Morella is documented as a name for the Crozophora tinctoria in Latin from the fourteenth century (see Clarke 2011: 180). However, morella was also the Medieval Latin name of Solanum nigrum L. (black nightshade). On the distribution of maurel and cognates in Romance languages, see FEW: under maurus. 16. In more recent French it is jaune (“yellow anger”; Glanemann 2003: 435).

Chapter 7 1. In this and other quotations from early modern English texts, I have modernized spelling but retained original punctuation. 2. I am grateful to Susan Patrick for checking out my observations on musical matters. 3. A performance of Berchem’s cycle, here entitled La Favola di Orlando, by the Daedalus Ensemble is available on Accent recording (ASIN B002BICOEO). 4. Other instruments with inlay work are in the collection of the Musée des Instruments de Musique/Muziekinstrumentenmuseum, Musées Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire/ Koninklijke Musea voor Kunst en Geschiedenis, Brussels, including a guitar by Seelos with striking similarities to what Ronsard describes about his own guitar. Available online: http://www.carmentis.be/eMuseumPlus?service=ExternalInterface&modul e=collection&objectId=109388&viewType=detailView (accessed May 15, 2018). 5. Performances by Ensemble Clément Janequin of this and some of the other settings can be heard on a Harmonia Mundi recording, “Amours de Ronsard” (ASIN B00C3V02Q6). 6. This is the wording of the passage in a manuscript version of the Historia (written in Nuremburg, c. 1580, the manuscript is now designated Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, Cod. Guelf. 92 Extrav), on which the 1587 print version was based ([Dr Faustus] 1580: ch. 25). The print version and its c. 1587 English translation, from which all my other quotations come, do not use the Latin terms:

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ist es endlich geschenen/vnd solcher gestalt ([Dr Faustus] [1587] 1988: 56), “it is as it is, and let it be as it will, since it was done” ([Dr Faustus] [1587] 2005: 98). 7. Different editions of Shakespeare’s works use different line numbering. Line numbers in this chapter refer to The Arden Shakespeare’s usage (see Shakespeare 2011, in the Bibliography).

Chapter 8 1. Broecke discusses the question of why Cennini wrote the Libro dell’arte. It is impossible to know if the title means “the guild book’” or “the professional manual” (see Broecke 2015: 6). 2. Filarete was the first to describe the Flemish technique in Italy (see Charles Eastlake’s English translation, 1960: 66), but he appears not to have fully understood it (see Hall 2019). 3. For the history of the Italian cartoon, see Bambach 1999. On cartoons in the Netherlands in the sixteenth century, see Robinson and Wolff 1986. 4. There is a drawing Michelangelo made of Leonardo’s cartoon of Saint Anne the Madonna and Child (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford) in which he copies with clear admiration the compact composition, but he renders the group as if it were carved from a block of marble. The figures in his Doni Tondo (Uffizi Gallery, Florence) of about the same date are clearly outlined and hard edged. 5. Dolce has his spokesman Aretino remark: “And no small number [of painters] […] delude themselves into believing that the fact that they put musculation on their figures and elaborate the same to an excessive and inapposite degree makes them Michelangelos in their draftsmanship; whereas the upshot is that they and their clumsiness are held up to ridicule by those who possess discernment” (Roskill 1968: 144–5). 6. A typical example is the shepherd in Giorgione’s Tempest, who is painted on top of the landscape (Hall 1992: 220). 7. The most prominent case is Titian’s Pesaro Madonna, where he repainted the upper zone twice (Hall 1992: 223). 8. Jodi Cranston (2010) explores the implications of Titian’s use of open brushwork. 9. Charles Hope gives as the reason that it was the wrong size for its intended location (Hope 1980: 147). 10. For the best description of Tintoretto’s technique, see Dunkerton 2007. 11. Calvin believed art had two purposes, to instruct and to give pleasure, the latter including chiefly landscape: “Concerning those things that can legitimately be represented there are two different kinds. The first consists of histories, and the second of trees, mountains, rivers and persons that one can paint without any meaningful intention. The first kind provides instruction, the second exists only to afford us pleasure” (Calvin [1563] 1960: 1:112; Hall 2011: 26). 12. The term corrupt derives from Latin corruptus, the past participle of the verb corrumpere “to taint, contaminate,” which is cognate with the English term and the French (couleur rompu). It entered the workshop vernacular in the second half of the seventeenth century. Joachim von Sandrart recommended that painters use lighter colors for the distance, so that they would be less distinguishable, in other words, for aerial perspective (Sandrart [1675] 1925). 13. Cropper and Dempsey (1996) discuss Zaccolini in conjunction with other manuscripts on Poussin. 14. Plesters (1983) noted that the imprimatura of the Samson was a yellow-brown earth pigment, perhaps raw umber. Typical of his later works is a gray imprimatura of lead white, chalk, and ivory or bone black.

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Chapter 9 1. An important recent exception is Alina Payne (2016), G. Johnson (2018) and in other publications discusses why the consideration of color has been neglected in discussions of sculpture, pointing in particular to the impact of black and white photography. 2. Quiviger (2010) discusses broader issues related to sense perception and the visual arts in the Renaissance. 3. See, for example, Michael Cole (2011: 1–16) as well as the work of Christy Anderson, Fabio Barry, Alina Payne, and Michael Waters. 4. Alina Payne also comments on the significance of this passage (see Payne 2009: 365–86). 5. Nichols (2017: 170) cites passages in Vitruvius including 7.9.4 and 7.9.6; vermilion is singled out for special censure. 6. Fane-Saunders 2016 considers all aspects of Pliny the Elder’s impact on architecture, including his discussion of color. 7. Italian text in three manuscript versions in Shearman (2004: 500–45); translation in Hart and Hicks (2006: 182). 8. One stanza, for example, reads, “It was built in three tiers of columns / With golden brass cornices and / Lined with granite marble / The first colonnade was of porphyry” (Fienga 1980: 86–8; see also Calvesi 2006: 55–76). 9. Manfredo Tafuri (1985) argued that this also opened up the possibility for families to express their political alliances through architectural patronage. 10. See Burns 1971. San Giovanni was more complicated, because some believed it to be an ancient Roman temple of Mars (for example, see the discussion in Nagel and Wood [2010: 135–46]). 11. Rudolf Wittkower (1971: 43) calls the Baptistry and San Miniato “Proto-Renaissance.” 12. The extensive literature on this topic includes A.D. Fraser Jenkins (1970: 162–70), Richard Goldthwaite (1980), and James Lindow (2007: 9–42) with additional references. 13. For alternative attribution, see Trachtenberg 1996. 14. Much of the chapel’s decoration, and even its tomb, was completed after Raphael’s death under the direction of Chigi’s heirs (see Bentivoglio 1984: 125). 15. Cecilia Magnusson (1987) identifies a large number of the marbles with the help of a conservator, Amerigo Maresca. 16. For a broader discussion of the palace, see Lleó Cañal 2017. 17. Loredana Pessa and Eliana Mattiauda (2007) have catalogued many of these tiles. 18. Walter Liedtke (1975–6) discusses his drawings for the Nieuwe Kerk and reproduces them along with the paintings. For the broader context, see Vanhaelen 2012. 19. Alexander Nagel and Christoper Wood (2010: 185–94) take a particular interest in cosmatesque floors as being evocative of early Christianity. 20. The original reads: “Fassi ora un ornamento per l’altare di marmo […] dipoi s’arà essere più ornate in terra di pavimento porfido o serpentine, tutto sottilissimamente fatto, un parapetto di marmo ornatissimo, e in effetto tutta richissima.”

Chapter 10 1. Archivio di Stato di Modena (hereafter ASMO), Guardaroba G114, 133V. The diptych is now in the National Gallery, London (Campbell et al. 2001). 2. The entire manuscript is available online, see World Digital Library 2015.

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CONTRIBUTORS

Tawrin Baker is Visiting Assistant Professor at the Program of Liberal Studies, University of Notre Dame, USA. Cammy Brothers is Associate Professor at Northeastern University’s College of Arts, Media and Design, USA. Amy Buono is Assistant Professor at the Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at Chapman University, USA. Leah R. Clark is Senior Lecturer in Art History at the Department of Art History at the Open University, UK. Carole Collier Frick is Professor of History and Chair at the Department of Historical Studies, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, USA. Sven Dupré is Professor of History of Art, Science and Technology at Utrecht University and the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Marcia Hall is Carnell Professor of Renaissance Art and Director of Graduate Studies at Temple University in Philadelphia, USA. Jo Kirby is an independent scholar. She was formerly a senior scientist in the National Gallery, London, UK. Peter C. Mancall is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities at the University of Southern California, USA. Doris Oltrogge works as a researcher in art technology and book illumination at CICS, Technical University of Cologne, Germany. Lisa Pon is Professor of Art History at the University of Southern California, USA. Bruce R. Smith is Dean’s Professor of English at the University of Southern California, USA.

INDEX

Note: Page locators in bold refer to tables and in italic refer to figures. A sa guitarre 134–5 aerial perspective 161, 162 albarelli 199 Alberti, Leon Battista 19, 110, 191 architecture 170–1, 176 color categories 112, 113, 121, 207 n.5 ch.6 naturalistic coloring system 150–1 Alcazar, Seville 179 alchemy 12 Alhacen 32 alum 40, 41, 43, 47 Americas collections of artifacts from 65, 196 colonization of 46, 55, 62–9, 197 Amsterdam 39, 39, 46, 51 anatomical works, color in 24–5, 28 Antiquarie prospetiche Romane 173 Antoninus, Saint 99 Antwerp 39, 49, 51 apothecaries 51 architecture and interiors 8, 167–85 chapels 175–6, 178, 182–3, 184 fictive architecture 183–4 Florence 175–7, 183 Genoa 180 Haarlem 179–81, 182 historiography of color 168–9 idea of color 169–73 Rome 177–9

Savona 180–1 Seville 180 Venice 173–6 views on ancient 56, 168, 171–2, 172–3, 177–8, 183 Ariosto, Ludovico 130–3 Aristotle 21, 22, 25, 26–7, 29, 157 art 149–65 chiaroscuro 157–9 drawing vs coloring 3, 157, 164–5 Dutch landscape painting and on-spec production 159–60 Italian landscapes 160–1 Leonardo’s sfumato 152–3 Michelangelo’s cangiantismo 153–4 naturalism 149, 150–1, 155, 165 Poussin 161–3 Raphael’s unione mode 153 Rubens 163–4 sculpture 149–50 from tempera to oil 150–3 Titian’s open brushwork 154–7 artifacts 187–203 books 188–9 brilliance 200–3 culture of collecting 188–91 gems and jewels 189–91 properties of gems 191–6 trade and travel 196–200 Astrophel and Stella 134

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Atahualpa 65 Averroes 21–2 Avicenna 23, 24 azurite 36, 49, 114 azzurro 113–14, 115 Bacon, Francis 27 Baptistery of San Giovanni 175 Barbosa, Duarte 196 Barthes, Roland 104 basic color categories (BCCs) 13, 109, 110, 111–13 basic color terms (BCTs) 13, 109, 110, 113 Basilica San Marco 173–4 beauty 89–90, 105–6, 134, 140, 193 Berchem, Jacquet de 133 beretino 121 Berlin, Brent 13–14 Biggam, Carole P. 14 Biringuccio, Vanuccio 48, 201, 202 black at Burgundian court 9–10 clothing 92, 97–99 dyes 47 liturgical color 81 metaphor and emotion 124, 125 pigments 42 blackness 15, 24, 27 Blázquez, António 88 blue association with Virgin Mary 77–8, 82 clothing 100–1 cobalt 5, 37, 47, 48, 188, 197 dyes 44–5 glass 47, 202 indigo 5, 36, 37, 44, 49–50, 114 Italian basic color terms 113–15 in landscape painting 159 Lotto’s liking for 76 metaphor and emotion 124, 127 pigments 36–7 in religious works 73, 74, 76–9 ultramarine 36, 76, 78, 113, 161, 163 and white porcelain 197–8, 198 woad 5, 36, 44, 97, 101 bodies, color in 20, 21, 23–4, 25, 26–8 books atlases 57, 67 collections 188–9

INDEX

Jewish texts 84 printing 6 red on title pages 138–9, 139 rubrication in Christian texts 85–7 Bordone, Paris 54–5 Borgia, Lucrezia 98 Boschini, Marco 156–7 botanical studies 24–5 Botticelli 89–90 Boyle, Robert 12, 14 braun 115–16, 117 brazilwood (Paubrasilia echinata) 40, 46, 67, 94, 117 Bril, Paul 159 brilliance 188, 200–3 Bronzino, Agnolo 102 brown dyes 47 German categories 115–17 Italian purple-pink and 118–20 names for silks in shades of 104 of workers’ clothing 101–2 Brueghel, Jan, the Elder 1–3, 15 Brunelleschi, Filippo 74, 176 Buettner, Brigitte 10, 73, 189, 190, 191 Burgundy, Duke Philip the Good of 97, 190, 192 Ca’ Dario 174 Ca’ D’Oro 174–5, 178 cabinets of curiosity 58, 59–60, 61 Caccini, Francesca 133 Calvin, John 160, 208 n.11 Campbell, Stephen 188 Campen, Jacob Van 181 Campion, Thomas 146–7 Cancelleria 177, 178 candle flame 22 cangiante 96, 150, 151 cangiantismo 150, 153–4, 158 canvas 154, 160 Capella del Succorpo 182–3, 184 Capilla Real, Madrid 82 Carafa Chapel 184 Cardano, Girolamo 22–3, 29 Cardinal of Portugal Chapel 183 cardinals’ attire 100

INDEX

carnation 123 cartoons 152, 155 Carvaggio 158–9, 163 Casa de Pilatos 180 Cassaria 132 celeste 113 Cennini, Cennino 77, 78, 120, 150 ceramics 12, 47, 51, 52, 187, 188 lead-tin-glazed earthenware 48–9, 49 lusterware 200 porcelain 5, 197–8, 198, 199, 200 Cervantes, Miguel de 142–4 chalcedony glass 202 “Challenge for a Mounted Tournament, in the Form of a Ballet” 136 chapels 175–6, 178, 182–3, 184 Charles V of Spain, King 64, 72, 74, 99, 196 Titian’s portrait 98, 98 chemistry of color 12, 24 chiaroscuro 157–9 Chigi, Agostino 177–8 children’s clothing 102–3 Chinese porcelain 197–8, 198, 200 chintz 5 Christ depictions of body of 7–8, 86 scenes from life of 7 Christian texts 85–7 Christus, Petrus 190, 191 churches chapels 176, 178, 182–3, 184 Florentine interiors 176 Protestant interiors 8, 181, 182 Roman interiors 177 seasonal liturgical colors 81–3 clerics, clothing of 87, 99 clothing 9, 89–105, 106–7 ascendancy of black 97–99 baptizing of Tupi 87–8 blue 101 changing identity and religious 87 children’s 102–3 clerical 87, 99–100 to exude inner brilliance 200 funerary wear 90 group identification through color 90, 92, 100–1 hierarchy of reds 93–5

245

intertwining with architectural adornment 173 inventories and log books 93, 205 n.3 ch.5 polychrome 96 purple blue 95 ruling ranks 92 silk colors 103–5 slashing 97 symbolic color 90 textiles 90–2 wedding ensembles 93 working ranks 101–2 cobalt 5, 37, 47, 48, 188, 197 cochineal (Dactylopius coccus) 5, 40, 45–6, 50, 66–7, 97 collections 58–61, 188–91 colonialism, European 46, 55, 62–9, 197 Colonna, Francesco 172–3 color merchants 51 Columbus, Christopher 55, 61, 62 commerce (see trade) commission, working on 160 condensation account of color 21–2, 28 Consequences of War 164 Contarini, Marin 174 coral 60, 60, 191 corpuscular philosophy 26, 27 “corrupt” color 150, 160, 208 n.12 Cortés, Hernán 63, 64, 196 cosmetics 105–6 costume design 146–7 Cranach, Lucas, the Elder 96, 97 crimson 40, 45, 46, 91, 92, 93, 94, 99, 116, 120, 122, 126 crystalline humor 28, 32, 33–4 d’Aguilon, François 30, 31 dance 136, 146 d’Aragona, Eleonora 189, 197, 202 De contritione cordis 85–6 De morali lepra 86 De Pictura 110, 112 Decembrio, Angelo 188 definition of color 21 del Fiore, Cristoforo 199 della Robbia, Luca 7, 169, 176, 183 density and rarity 27–8, 33, 34 Descartes, René 30, 31

246

d’Este, Borso 200 d’Este, Isabella 189, 201, 202 diplomatic gifts 196–7 Domus Aurea 173, 177, 179 Don Carlos 103 Don Quixote 142–4 Dossi, Dosso 131–2 drawing versus coloring debate 3, 157, 164–5 drug jars 199 Dürer, Albrecht 64, 199 Dutch churches 181, 182 landscape painting 159–60, 161 Dutch East India Company 50, 61, 160 dyes 9–10 supply of pigments and 49–52 techniques 43–7 and textile technologies 42–3 earthenware, lead-tin-glazed 48–9 the “East” 196–7 ekphrasis 129, 131, 132, 134, 136, 140 elephant 56 Elet, Yvonne 179 Elizabeth I, Queen 94, 95, 105 emeralds 66, 195 emotions and metaphors 123–7 espreuves 191 Etliche Künste 110, 111, 116 excess, color associated with 170–2 explorers 46, 61–2, 67 Eyck, Jan van 6, 79–80, 151 eye anatomy 28 crystalline humor 28, 32, 33–4 retinal theory of vision 31–4 Fabricius ab Aquapendente 28 face painting 105, 106 family colors 101–2 feather work 66–7, 67–8, 196 feathers 10, 88 festive color 79–83 feyelfarb 116 Ficino, Marsilio 194–5 A Fiery Spirit 146–7 Filarete 173, 200

INDEX

flashing 48 Flemish painters 151–2 Florence 8, 175–7, 183 Fontana, Lavinia 93, 104 Foppa, Caradosso 192 Fornaciai, Valentina 105 The Four Continents 58–9 Fra Angelico 150, 151 Francesco da Perugia 83 fresco techniques 36, 78 funerary wear 90 Geiger, Gail 184 gemstones 10, 189–96 ancient 187 association with Paradise 195–6 imitations 12–13, 48, 201–2 magical properties 193–4 medical properties 10, 194–5 as memory aides 195 pietre dure 11 works of art using color variations 192, 192 Genoa 179 Ghent Altarpiece of 1432 79–80 Ghirlandaio, Domenico 187 glass artifacts 201–3 coloring 47–9 invention 12 turquoise 201 glazed terra-cotta 169, 176 gold Aztec 63 brilliance 200, 201–2 brocades 78–9, 91 cloth of 91, 141, 146–7 glass decoration 202 harvesting of 52, 62 of Incas 65, 66, 205 n.6 as indicator of supernatural 150, 151 jewelry 63, 90, 190, 192 in The Lord’s Masque 146 melting down 65, 66 in poems of Ronsard 134, 136 simulation in painting 150, 151 in The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus 140 goldsmiths 190, 192

INDEX

grana 93 gray 47, 101, 104, 121 green 14, 23 in children’s clothing 102 dyes 45 metaphor and emotion 124, 127 pigments 38 of plants 22 porcelain 197, 199 referencing of Theological Virtues through red, white and 73–4, 75, 79 Gregory IX Approving the Decretals of Canon Law 76, 77, 79 grisaille painting 6–7, 81 grocers 51 Haarlem 179–81, 182 hair color 106, 116 harfarb 116 Hart, Vaughan 172 Haydocke, Richard 106, 111, 112, 118 health, glowing skin and good 106 heavenly realm, color in 22 Henry VIII, King 91, 99 Hicks, Peter 172 Hills, Paul 8, 169, 174, 188, 193, 201, 202 historiography of color 168–9 The History of Dr. Johann Faustus 138–41 Holy Family with Saints John the Baptist and Saint Elizabeth 162 Holy Thorn Reliquary of Jean, Duc de Berry 72–4, 72 humors, theory of four 23–4, 105, 124, 125, 126, 143 Hypnerotomachia Poliphili 172–3 image, color as 183–4 imitations of colors of nature and objects 11, 12, 188, 197–8, 201–2, 203 imprimatura 158, 159, 161, 163, 164 incarnato 123 India 4, 50, 196, 199 dye materials from 5, 40, 44, 46, 94 indigo 5, 36, 37, 44, 49–50, 114 interiors 54, 56, 168, 199, 201 church 8, 176, 177, 181, 182 inventories 198–9 iron mordant 43–4

247

Isabella of Aragon 149 Islamic Spain 48, 83–4, 179, 200 Janequin, Clément 137 Jesuit missionaries 87–8 jewels 187–8, 189–91 vessels encrusted with 189, 201 (see also gemstones) Jewish texts 84 Jews 94, 206 n.4 Johnson, Carina 64, 65 Jones, Inigo 146 Julius II, Pope 55–6 portraits 75–6, 78–9 Kay, Paul 13–14 Kemp, Martin 25 Kepler, Johannes 30, 32–3 kermes (Kermes vermilio) 40, 45, 93, 94 Kessel, Jan van, the Elder 58–9 kesselbraun 117 kin groups 100 knowledge, color in history of 11–13 La Bella 91, 91 La bocage 136 lac (Kerria lacca) 40 landscape painting 159–61 language of color 13–14, 109–27 appearing in foreign trade inventories 198 basic color categories 109, 110, 111–13 German browns 115–17 gray 121 Italian brown and purple pink 118–20 Italian terms for blue 113–15 orange 120–1 psychological aspects of color 123–7 textile technologies and color naming 121–3 languiers 191 lapis lazuli 36, 76, 78 Last Judgment 78 Laurana, Francesco 149 lazurium 113–14 Le Brun, Charles 165 lead antimonate 41, 48 lead-tin-glazed earthenware 48–9 lead white 36, 38, 42, 51, 114, 155

248

leibfarb 123 Leo X, Pope 56–7, 172, 177, 178 Leonardo da Vinci 152–3, 193, 201 light and color 20, 28–9, 30, 32 linen 90–1, 99, 101 lionato (leonino) 118 Lippi, Filippino 177, 183–4 literature and performing arts, color in 129–48 Don Quixote 142–4 The History of Dr. Johann Faustus 138–41 lyric poems 133–7 Orlando Furioso 130–3 The Tempest 145–7 liturgical color 81–3 Lomazzo, Giovanni Paolo 106, 110, 112, 113, 115, 118, 119, 120, 121, 126 Lombardo, Pietro 174 Lord John Stuart and his Brother, Lord Bernard Stuart 101 The Lord’s Masque 146 Lorrain, Claude 160–1 Lotto, Lorenzo 76, 193 Lucca red 94 luminosity 10, 201 lusterware 200 lux/lumen distinction 21 lyres 134 lyric poems 133–7 Machiavelli 92 madder (Rubia tinctorum) 5, 40, 45 madrigals 132–3 maps 53, 57, 59, 67 marble 11, 170, 171–2, 173, 174, 177–80, 181, 183 sculptures of pure white 149–50 simulated 193 Marlowe, Christopher 138, 141, 146 Martyrdom of St. Lawrence 156, 156 material culture, color in 9–11 mechanical philosophy 26–7 Medici, Bia de 102 Medici, Catherine de 59–60 Medici, Cosimo il Vecchio de 74–5 Medici, Lorenzo de 176, 195, 197 medicine cosmetics and 105–6

INDEX

four humors 23–4, 105, 124, 125, 126, 143 plants and 24–5, 194 properties of stones 10, 194–5 uroscopic charts 24 Melozzo da Forli 75–6 memory aids 195 metaphors and emotions 123–7 Meydenbach, Jacob 194, 194 Michelangelo 78, 153–4, 208 n.4 Mielich, Hans 190 millefiori 202 mixing of colors 23, 30–1, 32, 150 “corrupt” color 150, 160, 208 n.12 “modification theories” of color 20 moral associations of colors 125 censure 170 morello 119–20 Morley, Thomas 132 Motecuhzoma II 63–4, 66, 196 musical instruments 134–5 naming colors 103–5, 121–3 naturalism 7, 149, 150–1, 155, 165 Nature ornant la dame 133–4, 137 Newtonian color science 11–12 Nieuwe Kerk, Harlem 181, 182 Numantia 144 oil paint 35, 151–3 Old Sacristy of San Lorenzo 176 open brushwork 154–7, 158, 164 opera 133 optics, science of 28, 29–30 orange 109, 120–1 origin of color 21–2 Orlando Furioso 130–3 ornament 170–3, 176 Paduan manuscript 110, 112, 114, 115, 118, 119, 120, 121 painters’ primaries scheme 30–1, 32, 34 Palazzo della Rovere 180–1, 181 Palazzo Ducale 174, 175 Palazzo Medici 183 Palazzo Vecchio 175 Palissy, Bernard 12 Palladio, Andrea 56, 168, 175–6, 181

INDEX

Paradise 195–6 paragone 193 paramenta 81–2 paternosters 189 patronage, act of 55, 56 pavonazzo (modern paonazzo) 95, 119 pearls 93, 190, 195 Pereira, Benedict 23 performing arts (see literature and performing arts, color in) perspective 150, 151, 152 aerial 161, 162 philosophy and science 11–13, 17–34 intermingling of color worlds 25–34 knowledge in isolation 18–25 Picard, Liza 100 pietre dure 11 pigments and painting 35–42 supply of dyes and 49–52 Piles, Roger de 165 pink 104, 109, 116, 117, 121, 123 Italian brown and purple 118–20 Pizarro, Francisco 65 plants 24–5, 194 Pliny the Elder 171–2 Poggio a Caiano 176 Poliphilo 172–3 polychrome clothing 96 sculpture 7–8 Pontano, Giovanni 201 Pontormo, Jacopo 154 porcelain 5, 197–8, 198, 199, 200 porphyry 75, 173, 178, 191, 193 Portrait of a Noblewoman 93 portraits, reverse of 193 Portumna Castle, Ireland 53–4, 54 Poussin, Nicholas 161–3 Poussinistes–Rubenistes quarrel 164–5 power and identity 53–69 colonization of Americas 62–9 displays of wealth 54–61 prayer rugs 83–4 principle colors 22 printing 6 prisms 29, 30, 31 processions 57 prostitutes 94, 102, 103

249

Protestant iconoclasm 8, 65, 181, 182 liturgical color traditions 81 Pseudo-Augustine 85 psychological aspects of color 123–7 purple blue 95 color categories 115–16, 117 dyeing 46 liturgical color 81 pink and brown 118–20 royal 94 race, color and difference 14–15, 69 rainbows 11, 29, 30 Raphael 75, 76, 77, 78–9, 161, 177–8 on ancient architecture 172 chiaroscuro 158 letter to Leo X 172, 178 unione mode 153 workshop 153–4 readymade landscapes 160 recipes, color 12–13, 110, 114, 116–17, 123 red brown 116, 117, 118, 119, 120 cochineal (Dactylopius coccus) 5, 40, 45–6, 50, 66–7, 97 at court of Henry VIII 91, 92 crimson 40, 45, 46, 91, 92, 93, 94, 99, 116, 120, 122, 126 dress of prelates 100 dyes 45–6 glass 48 hierarchy 93–5 in History of Dr. Johann Faustus 138, 139 identification of Jews 94, 206 n.4 metaphor and emotion 124, 126 naming colors 122–3 pigments 38–40 prostitutes 94 -purple 120 referencing of Theological Virtues through white, green and 73–4, 75, 79 in Ronsard’s poem 134 scarlet 45, 46, 122–3, 126 in Sorceress Melissa 131–2

250

stones, properties of 191 a symbol of power 61 in The Tempest 145 in The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus 140 vermilion 39, 94 waning social status 97, 99 of working ranks 101–2 refraction 27–8, 29–30 religion and ritual 71–88 clothing and changing of identity 87–8 color and agency 83–7 colors and meanings 71–9 festive color 79–83 retinal theory of vision 31–4 retorti/reticello 202 Rome 177–9 Ronsard, Pierre de 133–7 Rubens, Peter Paul 1–3, 15, 31, 157, 163–4, 164–5 rubrication 85–7 ruling ranks, color of 92 Ruskin, John 168, 184 russet 102 Sacro Monte di Varallo 7 Saenredam, Pietr 181, 182 Sahagún, Bernardino 66–7 San Miniato al Monte 175 Cardinal of Portugal Chapel 183 Sánchez Coello, Alonzo 103 Sangallo, Giuliano da 169, 175, 180–1 Sansovino, Jacopo 175 Santa Maria del Popolo 178 Santa Maria delle Carceri 169, 175, 181 sappanwood (Biancaea sappan) 40, 46, 94 Savona 180–1 Savonarola, Girolamo 74 Savot, Louis 30–1 scale insects 40, 45, 97, 120 scarlet 45, 46, 122–3, 126 Scheiner, Christoph 33, 33 science, philosophy and 11–13, 17–34 intermingling of color worlds 25–34 knowledge in isolation 18–25 sculpture 149–50, 176 polychrome 7–8 Scuola Grande di San Marco 174 Sebastiano del Piombo 158

INDEX

Self-Portrait in a Studio 104 semen 26–7 Sennert, Daniel 26 The Sense of Sight 1–3, 15 Seville 180 sfumato 152 shadow, painting 150, 151, 152, 154, 158, 162 Shakespeare, William 129–30, 145–7 Shapiro, Alan 11, 12, 29, 30 sharks’ teeth 191 shells 61 shot silk 43, 96 Siam 61 Sidney, Sir Philip 134 Sifre evronot 83 silk 61, 94, 101 clothing 90, 91, 93, 94, 99, 100 colors 91, 103–4 dyeing 45, 46 shot silk 43, 96 silver 60, 65, 201, 202 cloth of 65, 91, 141, 146–7 Sixtus IV Appointing Platina Prefect of the Vatican Library 75, 76 skin color 14–15, 69, 89 cosmetics 105–6 healthy, glowing 105–6 tone 2, 123, 143 slashing 97, 96 slavery 5, 62, 67 Sluter, Claus 7 smalt 37, 160, 161 Sorceress Melissa 131–2 Southern, John 133, 134 Spanish colonization of Americas 46, 55, 62–9, 197 “species” of color 20 Sperulo 179 spice jars 199 Stanza della Segnatura 76, 77, 78, 79 stone vases 191 stones (see gemstones) Strozzi, Filippo 184, 198 sumptuary law 9, 89, 90, 100 supernatural events 138–9, 142, 145, 149, 150, 152, 153 Syson, Luke 201, 202

INDEX

Tainos 62–3 tanè 118 technology, color 5–8, 35–52 coloring glass and ceramics 47–9 dyeing techniques 43–7 dyes and textile technologies 42–3 pigments and painting 35–42 tempera 35, 159 The Tempest 130, 145–7 textile technologies color naming and 121–3 dyeing techniques 43–7 dyes and 42–3 printing techniques 5 textural accounts of color 26–7, 29 Theophilus 13 Thornton, Dora 48, 189, 201, 202 tiles 179–80, 200 tin mordant 43–4 Tintoretto, Jacopo 158 Titian 158, 162, 164 La Bella 91, 91 Martyrdom of St. Lawrence 156, 156 open brushwork 154–7 Portrait of Charles V 98, 98 “Tooo his lute” 137 trade in colorants 4–5, 49–52 and travel 50, 196–200 The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus 138, 140–1, 146 Transfiguration 158 travel colonization of Americas 46, 55, 62–9, 197 European explorers 61–2 trade and 50, 196–200 Tromboncino, Bartolomeo 132 Tupi 88 turchino 114–15, 123 turquin 123 ultramarine 36, 76, 78, 113, 161, 163 unione mode 153 universals and evolution (UE) model 13–14, 109 uroscopic charts 24 ut pictura poesis 129, 130, 133, 140

251

Van Dyke, Anthony 101 Vasari, Giorgio 154, 155, 157, 176, 183 vases, stone 191 velvet 78–9, 91, 91, 99, 100, 103, 140 Venice architecture 8, 173–6 commercial center for supply of materials 36, 51, 154 glassmaking 48, 201, 202 invented past 56 processions 57 verdigris 38 verditers 37, 38 vermilion 39, 94 Veronese, Paolo 184 Verrocchio, Andrea del 74–5 Villa Barabaro 184 Villa Farnesina 177–8 Villa Madama 179 violet 82, 116–17, 119, 120 Virgin Mary 77–8, 83 visibility of color 21 vision, retinal theory of 31–4 Vitruvius 56, 170, 171 wedding ensembles 93 weld 41, 46 Well of Moses 7 white children’s clothing 102–3 church interiors 8, 181, 182 explanations of 22–3, 26–7, 29 face paint 105 liturgical color 81 marble sculptures 149–50 in medical theory 24 metaphor and emotion 124, 125 pigments 42 porcelain 197 referencing of Theological Virtues through red, green and 73–4, 75, 79 textural accounts 26–7, 29 travertine 177 whiteness 30, 69, 105, 197 in architecture 8, 168–9, 181, 182, 184 whitening of the skin 105 widows 90, 205 n.1 ch.5 wills 199 The Winter’s Tale 129–30

252

Wittkower, Rudolf 62, 169 woad 5, 36, 44, 97, 101 wooden panels, advantages of canvas over 154, 160 wool 43, 45, 46, 47, 91, 99, 102, 114 working ranks, clothing of 101–2 yellow brown and 118 clothing 102

INDEX

dyes 46–7 glass 48 metaphor and emotion 124, 125–6 orange and 121 pigments 41–2 Zaccolini, Matteo 25, 162 Zorach, Rebecca 4

PLATE 1.1  Hand-colored uroscopic color wheel. From Ulrich Binder, Epiphaniae medicorum, 1506, fol. 1v. © Wellcome Collection, London.

PLATE 1.2  Crystalline humor (or lens) of a cow. Note the cloudy portion in the center, the result of cold cataracts, which Fabricius and others may have interpreted as confirmation of a visual theory in which incoming light and colors are delayed and fixed in the humor. Photograph by and © Tawrin Baker.

PLATE 1.3  Peter Paul Rubens, Juno and Argus, c. 1610. On the optical themes in the painting and the use of the painter’s primaries, see Parkhurst 1961. Photograph by DeAgostini. © Getty Images.

PLATE 2.1  Pigments used during the Renaissance. (a) From top left, row 1: lapis lazuli ultramarine; azurite; smalt; row 2: verdigris; malachite; green earth; row 3: vermilion; kermes lake; cochineal lake; row 4: madder lake; sappanwood lake (roset); weld lake; row 5: lead-tin yellow type 1; lead antimonate yellow; yellow ochre. (b) The same pigments ground in linseed oil. The lake pigments were made using typical fifteenth- and sixteenth-century recipes. Sappanwood and brazilwood give identical colors. Photograph by and © Jo Kirby.

PLATE 2.2  Dyes used during the Renaissance and examples of the colors obtained using an alum mordant (except for indigo, where no mordant is necessary). From left: kermes on wool and silk, kermes insects; cochineal on silk and wool, cochineal insects; madder on wool, madder root chips; brazilwood on wool, brazilwood shavings; weld on wool, dried weld; indigo on cotton, natural indigo powder. Bottom left: Polish “cochineal” and Armenian “cochineal.” Photograph by and © Jo Kirby.

PLATE 2.3  Circle of Joachim Patinir, Portuguese Carracks off a Rocky Coast (BHC0705), c. 1540. Oil on panel, 78.7 × 144.7 cm. Caird Collection © The National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London.

PLATE 3.1  Jan van Kessel, Americque, 1666. © Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Alte Pinakothek, Munich / Art Resource, New York.

PLATE 3.2  Coral and gilt spoon, c. 1530–40. Victoria and Albert Museum, no. 22681855. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

PLATE 4.1  Italian silk velvet, c. 1470–1530. Victoria and Albert Museum, no. T.820-1919. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

PLATE 4.2  Carpet with triple-arch design, probably Istanbul, c. 1575–90. 68 × 50 in. The James F. Ballard Collection, Gift of James F. Ballard, 1922. © The Metropolitan Museum of New York.

PLATE 4.3  Sammelband (separate items bound in one volume) with St. Isoldore of Seville, De summo bono, and St. John Chrysostom, De compunctione cordis, c. 1490–3. Manuscript and print with hand rubrication. © Bridwell Library Special Collections, Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, Dallas County.

PLATE 5.1  Botticelli, detail of workshop, Venus, c. 1486. Photograph by Jörg P. Anders. © Gemäldegalerie der Staatlichen Museen, Berlin / Art Resource, New York.

PLATE 5.2  Lavinia Fontana, Portrait of a Noblewoman, c. 1580. Gift of Wallace and Wilhelmina Holladay. Photograph by Lee Stalsworth. © National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC.

PLATE 5.3  Anton Van Dyke, Lord John Stuart and his Brother, Lord Bernard Stuart, c. 1638. © National Gallery, London / Art Resource, New York.

PLATE 5.4  Alonso Sanchez Coello, full-length portrait of Don Carlos of Spain, 1564. © Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

PLATE 7.1  Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, 1542, Venice, illuminated copy printed on vellum. © Newberry Library, Chicago.

PLATE 7.2  Dosso Dossi, The Sorceress Melissa, 1518. Galleria Borghese, Rome. © Wikimedia Commons.

PLATE 7.3  Dosso Dossi, Allegory of Music, 1522. Museo Horne, Florence. © Wikimedia Commons.

PLATE 7.4  Inigo Jones, A Fiery Spirit, for Thomas Campion’s The Lord’s Masque,performed alongside The Tempest, 1613. Collection of the Duke of Devonshire, Chatsworth House, UK. © Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth. Reproduced by permission of Chatsworth Settlement Trustees; Bridgeman Images.

PLATE 8.1  Francesco Laurana, PLATE 8.2  Michelangelo, Libyan Sibyl, 1508–12. Sistine Chapel, Vatican. Isabella of Aragon, 1487–8. Kunsthistorische Museum, Vienna. © Wikimedia Commons. Photograph by AnatolyPm. © Wikimedia Commons.

PLATE 8.3  Raphael, Transfiguration, 1520. Pinacoteca, Vatican. Photograph by Alvesgaspar. © Wikimedia Commons.

PLATE 8.4  Poussin, Holy Family with Saint John the Baptist and Saint Elizabeth, c. 1509–11. Gift of Mrs. Samuel Sachs in memory of her husband, Samuel Sachs. © Harvard Art Museum and Fogg Museum, Cambridge, MA.

PLATE 8.5  Peter Paul Rubens, The Consequences of War, 1638–9. Pitti Gallery, Florence. © Wikimedia Commons.

PLATE 9.1  Peruzzi, Sala di Prospettiva, Villa Farnesina. Photograph by and © Cammy Brothers.

PLATE 9.2  Ca’ D’Oro, Venice. Photograph by Didier Descouens. © Wikimedia Commons.

PLATE 9.3  Cardinal of Portugal Chapel. © Art Resource, via Getty Images.

PLATE 10.1  Domenico Ghirlandaio, St. Jerome in his Study, 1480. Fresco, 184 × 119 cm, Church of Ognissanti, Florence. © Wikioo.org—The Encyclopedia of Fine Arts. Wikimedia Commons.

PLATE 10.2  Petrus Christus, A Goldsmith in his Shop, 1449. Robert Lehman Collection, 1975. © The Metropolitan Museum of New York.

PLATE 10.3  Hans Mielech, Jewel Book of the Duchess of Bavaria, 1550s. Cod.icon. 429, fol. 18r. © Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich.

PLATE 10.4  Dasavanta and Mithra, Misbah the Grocer Brings the Spy Parran to his House, folio from a Hamzanama (The Adventures of Hamza), Mughal miniature, c. 1570. Folio from a Hamzanama (The Adventures of Hamza). © The Metropolitan Museum of New York.

PLATE 10.5  Albarelli (drug jars), Italian, possibly Pesaro, maiolica (tin-glazed earthenware), 1475–1500. © The Metropolitan Museum of New York.