COLOUR AND HUMANISM
Colour Expression and Patterns of Thought about Colour,
the Lost Tradition of the Great Venetians,
the Dynamics of the Classical Palette of Earths,
and the Power of Colour
as a Cultural Instrument Today
Don Pavey
Roy Osborne Editor
Revised Edition
Micro Academy, London
Copyright © 1956, 2001 & 2009 D.A. Pavey
First published 2003 by Universal Publishers, Parkland, Florida
Second, revised edition published 2009
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of
the author.
Cataloguing and Publication Data
Pavey, Donald Adair (1922- )
Colour and humanism
Colour-History
I. Title
701.85
Universal Publishers/uPUBLISH.com
USA 2009
www.uPUBLISH.com/books/pavey.htm
T
ISBN 1-58112-581-X
Dedicated to my partners
Marjorie Hayward OBE
Audrey Mitchell
John Lord
and my editor Roy Osborne
Contents
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
Preface
Principal Sources
Introduction
Greek Colour Archetypes
Colour in Greek Figure Painting
The Erotic Jinx Colour-wheel
Greek Soul
Byzantine Flesh of the Spirit
Tuscan Balance of the Austere and Florid
Colour Symbolism in Renaissance Poetry
Liturgical, Revelatory and Profane Colour
The Triumph of Wisdom over Ignorance
The Colour of the Bacchanals
Titian I: Pigments and Media
Titian II: The Humours and the Lydian Mode
Titian III: Phrygian Music
Titian IV: Religion and the Hypolydian Mode
Titian V: Eroticism and the Dorian Mode
Titian VI: The Exemplar
Heirs to Titian’s Tradition
Thunder and Lightning: Baroque Tonality
The Baroque Temperament
The Colour Science of Modelling Form
Music and Colour
Baroque Diatonic Colour Theories
Prismatic Rococo Colour
Neo-Classicism in France
Eclipse of the Academic Palette
Impressionism and the Spectrum Palette
Revival of the Classical Palette
The Dimensionality of Colour Today
Humanism, or, an Art and Ethos of the Group Mind
1
5
13
17
20
26
32
38
44
49
58
76
80
85
93
104
108
112
116
120
128
141
152
160
166
175
184
190
204
209
216
237
1
2
3
4
5
1
2
3
4
Appendices
Colour as a Psycho-aesthetic Instrument
Shapes and Colours
The Colour Affects Cylinder
Humanist Colour Poems
Some Eastern Colour Archetypes
Bibliography
Indexes
Colorants & Painting Processes
Symbolic References
Ancient & Classical References
General Index
249
256
257
263
269
271
278
280
282
284
Acknowledgements
Roy Osborne, special thanks for bringing depth of scholarship to
his editing & for suggesting new material that contributed towards
restructuring the text for publication. Nicholas Browne and David
Lenartowicz, for technical direction, design & layout of the text.
Sheena Clarke, for drawn illustrations (pp. 70 & 101). John Lord,
for collaborating on Chapter 29 & for his invaluable work on
ProMICAD. Stuart Durant, formerly Reader in History of Art at
Kingston University, co-founder of the Colour Reference Library at
the Royal College of Art. Hans Brill, formerly Senior Librarian of
the Royal College of Art, his successors, the Colour Reference Librarians. John Gage, formerly Professor of Art History at Cambridge University. Christophe Furer von Haimendorf, formerly Professor of Anthropology at the University of London. G.D. RyderSmith, formerly lecturer in Psychology at the University of London.
G.J.R. Frankl, formerly lecturer in Renaissance History of Art at the
University of London. F.G. Grossman, formerly Examiner & Lecturer in History of Art at the University of London. Meike
Laurenson, researcher in German studies. Karl Ryberg, director of
Monocrom, Stockolm.
Colour and Humanism
Preface
For over half a century Don Pavey has undertaken extensive research
into the evolution of European painting, from Ancient Greece to the
present day, with reference to its form, technique, psychology and content. The text included here integrates all four aspects into a broadly
chronological survey of the application of colour in painting.
The original typescript was completed and bound in 1956, significantly predating various other ‘histories’ of colour by Birren, Brusatin,
Kemp and Gage. 1 Like Birren, Pavey trained as a painter, and a major
theme that runs through the book is the tenacity of the ‘four-earths’
palette associated with Apelles, of its periodic adoption by other painters during and after the Italian Renaissance (most notably by Titian),
and of its relationship to the ‘spectral’ palette of painters after the time
of Newton. According to the author, the text follows a somewhat tortuous path ‘through the ramifications of different cultural and theoretical
aspects of colour as understood by artists particularly, but also by some
colour scientists and spiritual thinkers’.
Pavey studied as a Royal Scholar at the Royal College of Art in
London, where he won prizes in painting and architecture. In 1946, he
was graduated with a Medal of Special Distinction, and later returned to
the RCA to study Design Research. In the 1950s he also began to assemble an extensive library of rare and historical books on colour, a
significant collection that later formed the nucleus of the RCA Colour
Reference Library. For many years he supervised dissertation and thesis
research for undergraduate and postgraduate degrees at Kingston Polytechnic (now Kingston University). Among his own writing projects, he
edited the Methuen Handbook of Colour and Colour Dictionary
(1963), 2 published Art-based Games (1979), led the team that produced
the Mitchell Beazley book, Colour (1980), and wrote a history of the
Winsor and Newton paint manufactory (1984). 3
As a practising designer, with Marjorie Hayward and Audrey
Mitchell, he formed a successful professional consultancy 4 that undertook numerous commissions for murals, stained-glass windows, interior
scenarios, graphics, sculpture and other design work prominently using
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1
BIRREN, F. (1965), A History of Color in Painting, New York; BRUSATIN, M.
(1983), Storia dei colori, Turin; KEMP, M. (1990), The Science of Art, New Haven, CT;
GAGE, J. (1993), Colour and Culture, London.
2
Originally published as KORNERUP, A. & WANSCHER, J.H. (1961), Farver i farver,
Copenhagen. Second & third revisions were published in 1967 & 1978.
3
PAVEY, D. (1979), Art-based Games, London; VARLEY, H., ed. (1980), Colour, London & New York; & PAVEY, D. (1984), The Artists’ Colourmen’s Story, London.
4
Hayward Mitchell Pavey Ltd, based in London.
1
Colour and Humanism
colour. He also completed several dissertations, translations, and articles for Athene, the Journal of the Society for Education through Art,
which he edited for a number of years. Additionally, supervising small
classes for children of school age, Pavey set up and directed the Junior
Arts and Science Centres (JASC) between 1968 and 1976.
In 1986, with Gary Dalal and the late John Lord, he founded Micro
Academy, an arts-and-sciences multimedia workshop devoted to the
preparation of educational filmstrips, videos and computer software. 1
ProMICAD, the most prominent of these resources, reflects Pavey’s
lifelong interest in the prognosis of ‘genius’ through the aesthetics of
colour, and his belief that a new dimension could be added to the diagnosis of personality by introducing bicameral theory – the orientation of
right versus left having largely been neglected, for example, in Max
Lüscher’s psychological colour theories. 2
The two concluding chapters of Colour and Humanism serve further
to emphasise that Pavey’s research was never purely academic, but always intended to contribute to holistic understanding and socially beneficial applications. A relentless seeker himself, when Jo Ledger, a fellow student painted his portrait at the RCA, he aptly included within it
the Latin title Quæsitor – ‘the Seeker’. 3
At the time of compiling this manuscript, Pavey found that his quest
was threefold: to endeavour to improve colour practice; to help build a
corpus of colour knowledge of practical and inspirational use to artists
and designers; and to find a way of using colour to help look for the
direction in which one might elicit ‘genius’ (or the potential for exceptional achievement) in all persons who aspire to do well.
First, he wanted to raise the level of colour aesthetics, awareness and
colour practice in art and design, which at that time seemed of an unacceptably poor standard. Between 1954 and 1958 he undertook colour
research in the psychology and history of art at the University of London, while devising and teaching basic design and colour courses at
Kingston College of Art (as it then was) and continuing to practise as a
professional artist and designer. Secondly, it seemed that there existed
no accredited body of knowledge about colour – its history, symbolism
and significance. Hence he set about establishing a foundation for the
teaching of colour sufficiently important to enable it to stand as a respected area of study in its own right. Helping to found the RCA Colour
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1
ColorDome (subsequently ColourAcademy), a colour-information website, was founded
at Micro Academy in 1997 by Carole Anne Ferris, Roy Osborne, Michael Lancaster,
John Lord, Nicholas Browne & Don Pavey.
2
LÜSCHER, M. (1949), Der Psychologie der Farben, Basel.
3
A series of portraits painted by the author can be seen at St Lawrence College on the
Isle of Thanet, Kent.
2
Colour and Humanism
Reference Library, in 1975, with Stuart Durant and Hans Brill, was an
important step towards this goal. In 1983, as well as launching a series
of colour symposia with Hans Brill at the RCA, he joined with John
Morley to convene a meeting of artists and designers from all over Britain in order to propose the formation of an Art Research Foundation. In
the event it was found that there was a large collection of educational
artwork to house and many of the delegates were also teachers so that
his hope for an art research establishment was diverted towards cofounding (with Morley) the National Art Education Archive in 1985 at
Bretton Hall, near Wakefield. 1
Thirdly, a question that engrossed Pavey was what effects colours
might have on people, and what meanings might be attributed to colours, especially when placed or located in different parts of the field of
vision. In the late 1950s he contacted Carl Gustav Jung on this question,
and began to note the work of American psychotherapists, several of
whom were starting to research similar areas of interest (see Chapters
29 and 30).
Experiments throughout the 1970s led to the production of computer-designed colour-teaching programmes on video, and to a computerised test of increasing sophistication, a Colour-Test originally intended to help art students to identify the direction of their aspirations
and potential. The test was further developed in association with John
Lord and eventually marketed as ProMICAD. 2 It was to establish itself
as a programme or tool purposely dedicated to confidence building by
offering positive personal profiles that indicate each participant’s assets
and (often hidden) talents.
In order to establish academic credibility for the rationale on which
the programme was based, Pavey set up a postgraduate project on aesthetic assessment, successfully carried out by Michael Challinor at
Kingston Polytechnic. Particular attention was given to the contrast
between cognitive and affective modes of assessment. This led to the
concept of ‘Effects Gradients’ set within the framework of Pavey’s ‘Affects Cylinder’. These observations also assimilate concepts that weave
in and out of the chapters that follow, and which focus on human and
humanistic issues that the author envisages may one day be resolved
through the interrelation of the study of colour with that of psychology
and ethics.
Roy Osborne, London, 2001
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Lawrence Batley Centre; parts of Pavey’s own collections are on loan to the archive.
Distributed by Lifetime Careers, 7 Ascot Court, White Horse Business Park, Trowbridge, Somerset BA14 OXA.
2
3
Colour and Humanism
Quattuor coloribus solis immortalia illa opera fecere
‘With only four colours to make their works immortal!’
Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia, Book 36, Chapter 12
4
Colour and Humanism
Principal Sources
Four basic ‘earth’ colours were not only sufficient to make the names of
Apelles and his Greek contemporaries ‘immortal’, long after their paintings had perished, but this same, classical palette of colours was also at
root responsible for the glorious achievements of the Venetian painters
of the sixteenth century. The following text aims at analysing the expressive powers of the four colours of the classical tetrachrome palette
according to their usage by the great masters of the Age of Humanism,
and in relation to other colours and colour systems. A principal theme
focuses on the Venetian School of painting. 1 Its ancient ancestry is outlined, and also its influence on later generations, following the Golden
Age of the Venetians.
Few authorities, apart from Gage, 2 have so far dealt in depth with
the history of the basic palette of four earth-pigments, and on this account it has been necessary to refer to a considerable number of
sources. The earliest description of the earth palette has been taken
from Pliny’s Natural History, Book 35, together with the explanation of
the difference between the austeri and the floridi. 3 Book 33 provided
evidence that a certain kind of colouristic over-painting and underpainting was known to the Romans. The first chapter of Joseph
Priestley’s History and Present State of Discoveries Relating to Vision,
Light and Colours (1772) has been a useful source of information on
the science of classical colour theories; 4 Du Jons’ Painting of the Ancients (1638) also proved valuable, 5 but Pòrzio’s 1548 commentary on
Aristotle’s theory of colour has been of primary importance. 6
With regard to the colour-temperament factor, the Venetian editions
of Galen also figure in the argument. 7 Quality of colour has been an
essential consideration, and Theophilus, Cennini, and the Marciana and
Volpato Manuscripts 8 have been referred to because they deal extenF
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1
The classical palette typically consisted of red ochre, yellow ochre, chalk white & vinecharcoal black, mixtures of which were ideally suited to depicting the colours of skin, fur
and hides. The blue-black offered some unsaturated blues and greens.
2
GAGE, J. (1993), Colour and Culture, London, Chap. 2.
3
PLINY (1st cent. CE), Natural History, Book 35, Chaps. 12 & 129 et al, trans. M. JexBlake (1896).
4
PRIESTLEY, J. (1772), History and Present State of Discoveries Relating to Vision,
Light and Colours, London.
5
DU JON, F. (Junius, 1638), The Painting of the Ancients, London.
6
PÒRZIO, S. (Portius, 1548), Aristotelis de coloribus libellus, Florence.
7
Galen (129-200 CE) was a Greco-Roman physician.
8
THEOPHILUS (10th cent. CE), An Essay upon Various Arts, London, trans. R. Hendrie
Hendrie (1847); CENNINI, C. (1437), Il libro dell’arte, trans. D.V. Thompson (1932);
MERRIFIELD, M.P. (1849), Original Treatises Dating from the XIIth to XVIIIth Centu-
5
Colour and Humanism
sively with the appropriate pigments, grounds and media. They were
discovered and translated by Mary Merrifield as a result of a Government Commission to probe the reasons for the superiority of Italian
colouring. Arthur Laurie’s interpretations of Pliny, Vitruvius and Dioscorides have been taken as not only being the most correct but also the
most likely readings of these texts by the sixteenth-century Venetians, 1
though the theories of Ernst Berger have not been entirely ignored. 2
Leonardo’s theory of colour has been taken mainly from his Treatise on
Painting, his projected work on colour never having materialised.
The remarks on colour by some of the well-known contemporary
writers on painting have been quoted as well as those of some lesserknown writers of unpublished texts that have remained in manuscript.
Especially important have been some of the comments of Borghini,
Ridolfi, Dolce, Armenini, Vasari and Palma Giovane. 3 The treatises on
colour by D’Enghien (c. 1450) 4 and Occolti (1568), 5 for example, form
a general background. Telesio (1528) 6 has occasionally been acknowledged in art histories, but an equally good insight into humanistic colour symbolism is given in Alciati’s ‘Emblem Poem’ of 1531, 7 and ‘colour sonnets’ by Morato and Rinaldi. 8 Salmon and Barrow 9 did the
same somewhat less gracefully for later, Baroque colour symbolism.
Francesco Maurolico provided a revealing picture of the scientific attitude towards colour during the sixteenth century, and his treatise on
optics anticipated that of Newton. 10
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ries on the Arts of Painting, London; in which the Marciana & Volpata MSS are given in
their original form & in translation.
1
LAURIE, A.P. (1910), Greek and Roman Methods of Painting, Cambridge.
2
BERGER, E. (1904-9), Beiträge zur Entwickelungsgeschichte der Maltechnik, Munich.
3
BORGHINI, R. (1584), Il Riposo, Florence, Book 2, pp. 106 ff; RIDOLFI, C. (1648),
Delle maraviglie dell’arte, Venice; DOLCE, L. (1565), Dialogo, Venice; ARMENINI,
G.B. (1586), De veri precetti della pittura, Ravenna, Book I, pp. 7-10; VASARI, G.
(1568), Le vite …, Florence, especially Vol. 1, pp.179-95; BOSCHINI, M. (1674), Le
ricche miniere della pittura veneziana, Venice, quotes Palma Giovane.
4
D’ENGHIEN, J. (SICILE, 1503), Le Blason des couleurs en armes, Lyons. Sicile
Herault was Sicily Herald to Alfonso V of Aragon & has been identified as Jacques of
Enghien in Flanders.
5
OCCOLTI, C. (1568), Trattato de’ colori, Parma.
6
TELESIO, A. (Thylesius, 1528), Libellus de coloribus, Venice; see PAVEY, D., trans.
& OSBORNE, R. ed., (2003), On Colours, London.
7
ALCIATI, A. (1531), Emblemata, Augsburg; the Antwerp edition (1573) has an excellent commentary by Claude Mignault on Alciati’s Colour Poem.
8
MORATO, F.P. (1535), Del significato dei colori, Venice; & RINALDI, G. de’ (1588),
Il mostruoissimo mostro, Ferrara.
9
SALMON, W. (1672), Polygraphice, London, Book 3, Chap. 16; & BARROW, J.
(1735), Dictionarium Polygraphicum, London.
10
MAUROLICO, F. (1575/1611), Photismi de lumine et umbra, Naples; see Theorem 29,
Diaphanorum partes; & NEWTON, Sir I. (1704), Opticks, London.
6
Colour and Humanism
Although some of Lomazzo’s pseudo-medical notions on painting of
1584 appear to be flights of fancy, 1 and are viewed today with a degree
gree of mistrust, the chapters not translated by Richard Haydocke
(1598) 2 deserve more attention than they have had, for example, in
Hetzer’s Tizian: Geschichte seine Farbe, 3 an otherwise authoritative
book on Titian’s use of colour. Lomazzo developed current theories of
colour founded on traditions not only ancient but also radical in the
history of the theory of painting. It was Lomazzo who, through the classical concept of the four Humours, first crystallised a formulary for
expressing the four Temperaments through colour in painting, inspired
by his observation of Titian’s colouring. An interesting problem is the
extent to which this association was applied intuitively or even consciously to the process of painting before Titian’s death in 1576. By the
time the idea had been published by Lomazzo, it was already being
outmoded by an early Baroque movement away from classical purism
and by a new handling of the oil-painting medium itself.
The notion of relating heraldic colour with temperament had been
established well before Titian’s time by Jacques d’Enghien, the Sicily
Herald, whose noteworthy treatise was published in Italian in Venice in
1565. 4 The first version of this book on heraldic emblazoning, written
in French about 1450, also contained the correlation. These small
books, often little more than manuals, are a most interesting link in the
development of Lomazzo’s system, and indeed it would be astonishing
if Titian had not at least seen the Venetian edition. Again, there is the
possibility that Titian painted more and more exclusively in the four
pigments of the classical tetrachrome palette, which corresponded with
the colours of the humours.
On the other hand, the association might have become obvious to
D’Enghien through the connection that heraldry had in its early days
with alchemy and medicine. He does in fact mention Avicenna in his
preface, and anyone who has read the ‘Canon of Medicine’ 5 cannot but
be impressed by the charts that associate colours with the humours. For
his references to the humoural colours, Lomazzo seems to have been
superficially acquainted with Galen, 6 and here again one has to refer to
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LOMAZZO, P.L. (1584), Trattato dell’arte della pittura, Milan.
HAYDOCKE, R. (1598), A Tracte Containing the Artes of Curious Paintinge, Carvinge, and Buildinge, Oxford.
3
HETZER, T. (1935/1948), Tizian: Geschichte seiner Farbe, Frankfurt-am-Main.
4
D’ENGHIEN, J. (SICILLO, 1565), Trattato dei colori nelle arme, Venice.
5
Avicenna (Ali ibn-Sina) was an 11th-cent. Arabian philosopher & physician, whose
Canon of Medicine attempted to systematise all known medical knowledge up to his time.
6
Lomazzo probably knew of GALEN (1500), Therapeutica ad glauconen, Venice, Books
2 & 14; see GALEN (1490), Opera, Diomedes, ed., Venice, Books 16 & 19; & GALEN
2
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Colour and Humanism
the original texts, as few of the relevant books have been translated into
English. Lodovico Dolce had, by the mid sixteenth century, however
already rendered works of Galen and Pliny into Italian.
In following the development of the classical approach in later painting, it has been necessary to estimate the influence of ‘prismatic’ theory, and to contrast the central academic tradition with the pseudoscientific academic tradition. One of the champions of the latter was
Gérhard de Lairesse, 1 whose eighteenth-century treatise on painting
laid down numerous laws about colour, some adapted from Alberti
(1435), 2 and others which can ultimately be traced back to ‘The
Craftsman’s Handbook’ by Cennini, originally written about 1395.
Lairesse’s views illustrate a typically Baroque attitude towards luminism (see Chapter 19) and its strong denigration of the importance of
colour in painting, and indeed in all the visual arts, from architecture
and costume to the smallest andachtsbilder or greetings cards, in favour
of chiaroscuro.
Newton’s Opticks of 1704 had a profound effect on various painters.
It prompted Hogarth, for example, to design the first ‘spectrum’ palette,
which he described in his Analysis of Beauty of 1753. Among the fiercest arguments against Newton’s theory of the composite nature of white
light were those of Goethe, whose Geschichte der Farbenlehre (1810)
was deeply influenced by his observations not only of the atmospheric
conditions in Venice but also of Venetian painting technique. 3 While
Goethe’s arguments tended to be almost entirely empirical, other opponents of Newton reasoned along accepted classical lines of argument.
An exemplary version of classical theoretical thinking is included in De
coloribus derivatis, by Arnoldus de Riols (1741). 4
In the text that follows, the most important sources of information
on the colour aesthetics of the painter are the paintings themselves, and
the complex colours of flesh and the modelling of form usually offer a
key to the artist’s visual thinking. Sometimes, too, the depiction of a
light source or a rainbow has shown the precise attitude of the painter
towards a theory of light and colour. Nevertheless, there is a danger in
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(1548), De atra bile, Book 3; & Quod animi mores corporis temperamenta sequantur…,
Venice, trans. L. Dolce.
1
LAIRESSE, G. de (1735), The Art of Painting, London, trans. J. Fritsch.
2
ALBERTI, L.B. (1435), De pictura, Florence, trans. Leone (1727) & Spencer (1959).
3
See also GOETHE, J.W. von (1810), Zur Farbenlehre, Tübingen.
4
RIOLS, A. de (1741), ‘De coloribus radicalibus’ & ‘De coloribus derivatis’ in his Democritus redivivus, a MS formerly in the collection of the author, together with the following MSS: BARTHOLOMEUS ANGLICUS, De iride, trans. Trevisa 1398; ROMANO,
G.B. (c. 1680), De luce et coloribus & De coloribus; PECQUE, M. (c. 1720), ‘Couleurs
pour peindre’; BOOTH, J. (c. 1840), Coloured Inks, &c; & RUSKIN, J. (c. 1880), holograph letter to Mrs Blackburn on the subject of colour.
8
Colour and Humanism
considering colour as one element in isolation from the other basic aspects of design. Colour, then, is dealt with as often as possible within
the context of its related aesthetic features. Moreover, it is well to bear
in mind that even the most comprehensive treatises on colour have only
played a minor part in the history of painting, and their value has generally been greater from a retrospective point of view than from a causative one. Painters themselves have been predictably less ‘articulate’ in
literary than in visual expression; and at least one colour application –
the ‘austere’ four-colour palette – has been handed down through studio
practice from ancient antiquity, but its significance has rarely been
clearly defined in literary texts. The brilliant pigments, the so-called
‘florid’ colours, have a conspicuous way of catching the imagination of
the dilettante far more than the humble ‘earths’ (red ochre, yellow
ochre, (chalk) white and (charcoal) black). The authors of recipe books
have frequently paid elaborate attention to secret preparations, in the
false belief that they would enhance paint mixtures. At times, one is
even given the impression that painters could do without the earth colours altogether, as in Hogarth’s Analysis of Beauty.
The Rococo colourist was certainly not encouraged to look on the
earths as elementary or primary colours. A fashionable book on the
minutiae of Rococo culture was the Marquis de Caraccioli’s Livre de
quatre couleurs of 1760, which was actually printed in four ‘prismatic’
hues, blue, violet, crimson and a deep yellow or orange. 1 The latter
was the colour of a chapter on a frivolous gallante. As a symbol of
wind and air, blue was the colour of the print in the section on fans; the
crimson chapter was about the various modes of etiquette in different
parts of the world; and the section printed in violet (since faded to
brown), the precious colour, was on beauty treatment and toiletry.
As against this preoccupation with spectral colours, which was also
evident in Rococo books on painting, notably Le Blon’s Coloritto of
1725, 2 certain later treatises extended the theory of mixture of the four
earth colours to most absurd lengths. Bouvier, in his Manuel, 3 regimented mixtures of the four classical colours in six rows of sixteen or
more portions on the palette, and yet the Manuel was written for beginners without knowledge of painting or even access to a painting instructor. Handbooks became so technical that the personal instruction of a
master became essential to provide a key to understanding the ‘freemasonry’ of art.
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CARACCIOLI, L-.A. de (1760), Le Livre de quatre couleurs, Paris.
LE BLON, J.C. (1725), Coloritto; or, The Harmony of Colouring in Painting, London.
3
BOUVIER, P-.L. (1827), Le Manuel des jeunes artistes et amateurs en peinture, Paris.
2
9
Colour and Humanism
As early as 1740, Father Castel had put this most neatly in his
L’Optique des couleurs, when he said:
Painters, I like to think, have their own rules that usage gives them, as in all
the arts and professions, rules that Masters transmit to their pupils, more
by mute example and by the correction they make to their work, than by
precise consideration and well-articulated precept. 1
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Theoretical colour diagrams, offered as an aid to colour mixing, became
numerous after the colour circles of Moses Harris (1766); 2 and the circular spot diagrams of Carvalho e Sampayo (1787) are likely to have
influenced the format of Chevreul’s colour atlas of 1839, 3 in its turn a
teaching aid that contributed towards the development of Pointillist
painting. In England, the botanist Sowerby’s New Elucidation of Colours (1809) 4 proved to be of special interest for those who practised the
glazing technique of painting, as in watercolour. John Burnet’s treatise
on colour of 1827 made use of excellent watercolour diagrams for the
analysis of colour use, 5 especially in the paintings of Titian. The Titian
colour tradition had been perpetuated in England by Reynolds, but
more through his painting than through his Discourses, which were too
grand to discuss the ‘cookery’ of art. 6 Timothy Sheldrake, in his Society of Arts lectures, 7 published researches on Titian, and his contribution to the knowledge that then existed on the subject, has also been
mentioned. The main English handbooks on the classical approach were
those by Bardwell (1756) and Cawse (1822 and 1840). 8 With regard to
viewing examples of Titian’s work in colour, Filippo Pedrocco’s Complete Paintings is recommended. 9
The modal and temperamental values of the colours described by
Lomazzo, Morato, and Rinaldi were drawn attention to by Goethe and
cast into a more scientific frame of reference by the Jungian researchF
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1
CASTEL, L-.B. (1740), L’Optique des couleurs, Paris, p. 22.
HARRIS, M. (1766), The Natural System of Colours, London.
3
CARVALHO E SAMPAYO, D. de (1787), Tratado das cores, Valetta, Malta & (1788),
Dissertação sobre as cores primitivas, Lisbon; see also CHEVREUL, M-.E. (1839), De
la Loi du contraste simultané des couleurs, Paris.
4
SOWERBY, J. (1809), A New Elucidation of Colours, London.
5
BURNET, J. (1827), A Practical Treatise on Painting, London.
6
REYNOLDS, Sir J. (1797), Discourses, London.
7
SHELDRAKE, T. (1798), Dissertation on Painting in Oil in a Manner Similar to that
Practised in the Ancient Venetian School, London, Society of Arts, Vol. 16.
8
BARDWELL, T. (1756), The Practice of Painting and Perspective Made Easy, London;
CAWSE, J. (1822), Introduction to the Art of Painting in Oil Colours, London; &
CAWSE, J. (1840), The Art of Painting Portraits, London.
9
PEDROCCO, F. (2001), Titian: The Complete Paintings, London & New York; trans.
from the Italian ed. of 2000.
2
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Colour and Humanism
ers, Max Lüscher and Walter Furrer, taking theories of colour-ethos to
their logical conclusion in concepts of colour in relation to mood and
temperament evaluated by the Internationale Arbeitsgemeinschaft für
den Lüscher-Test. In more recent times, the author has built on this
work by developing his own diagnostic system, called ProMICAD,
widely used by career agencies and schools for the guidance of jobseekers in looking for careers appropriate to their character and personal effectiveness. 1
With regard to the more ancient aspects of humoural colour, the author is grateful to Charles H. Talbot of the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum for recommending Medieval and ancient sources, and to
William R. Pasfield for suggesting sources referring to the classical
music-colour modal relation. Special thanks are due to Dr G.J.R.
Frankl, for his stimulating survey of ‘Colouristic Painting, from Grünewald to Velazquez’, and to Prof Christoph von Furer-Haimendorf for
his favourable criticism of an earlier text on iconography, which was to
stimulate further research, much of which is included here. The first
draft was completed in 1956 but the author was deterred from publication at that time, as Sir Herbert Read advised that the necessary illustrations would be too costly to reproduce.
The original manuscript was presented in 1976 to the Colour Reference Library of the Royal College of Art. The full text of Colour and
Humanism, with two final chapters added, was revised by the author in
2001 with the scholarly assistance of Roy Osborne, without which this
publication would have been impossible. Minor amendments to the first
edition were made by the author and editor in 2008.
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1
In Chap. 29, these conclusions are touched on as presented in LÜSCHER, M. (1948),
Klinischer Test zur Persönlichkeitdiagnostik, Basel, & FURRER, W. (1953) Die Farbe in
der Persönlichkeit-Diagnostik, Basel, the lehrbuch of the Lüscher Colour-Test.
11
Colour and Humanism
12
Colour and Humanism
Chapter 1
Introduction
A delight in sensuous painting from the nude figure has been the
special feature of most schools of painting during the great periods of humanism. A central problem has been exactly how to
model form, and which colours or mixtures of colours to use for
the highlights, halftones and shadows. Although different schools
have prescribed different answers, ranging from the ritualistic
red-green flesh of the Byzantine Madonna to the delicate nuances
of a Renoir, in each case the answer has been suggested by the
elusive filmy colours of human flesh seen through the eyes of a
different society. There has been a continual pendulum of taste
which has swung from the colouristic projection of form, in
which mass is given solidity through the use of ‘warm’ or intense
colour on advancing planes and ‘cold’ or subdued colour on receding planes, to monochromatic modelling that relies on nothing more than the distribution of lights and darks of the same
hue.
Following on from the Italian Romanesque painters, the tendency amongst the Florentines, for example, was towards evergreater subtlety of colouring until, in the paintings of Leonardo
da Vinci, the modelling of form was little more than monochromatic. In fact, the impermanence of some of his pigments has
often made it impossible to tell if his modelling was colouristic at
all. Florentine painting of the High Renaissance gave the modelling of form precedence over almost every other aspect of composition. 1 The Venetians, on the other hand, retaining an earlier
tradition, succeeded in combining powerful modelling with
equally strong colouristic changes; and Titian is perhaps the most
discussed and disputed colourist of all time, since he was able to
give the play of atmospheric light over flesh a sensual and radiant transparency, while at the same time achieving the most vigorous transitions of colour-modelling. It is not without good reaF
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Was this move towards ‘sculptural’ realism in painting driven by an ongoing desire by
the clergy to convince the laity that invented fables, such as that depicted in Leonardo’s
versions of The Virgin of the Rocks, had at one time actually taken place?
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Colour and Humanism
son that his use of colour has held a peculiar fascination for many
painters and schools of painting down to the present day, and
many misguided recipes have been proposed as the secret of the
peculiar lustre that is associated with his colouring. 1 The truth is
that Titian did not employ any trick technique or secret medium,
but he did employ a studio procedure that evolved over his exceptionally long life and which had grown out of a combination
of circumstances. It was his spontaneous way of applying traditions not only of the immediate past but also of the greatest antiquity, for his age was one that took the liveliest interest in classical Greek and Roman theories of painting as they were understood at that time.
A full appreciation of Titian’s colour demands an acquaintance with Hellenistic painting of the early third century BCE,
and moreover it is not really possible to appreciate fully any succeeding European colour technique without knowledge of the
methods of Titian, whose influence spans and dominates the
whole field of European painting. His work demonstrates the
living continuity of the Greek tradition during the High Renaissance period – but Titian’s procedure was a special interpretation
of colour conventions that existed before him, and it also persisted well after him.
Notwithstanding the fact that no ancient Greek paintings apart
from odd fragments have survived, the Greek four-colour palette,
or tetrachromatikón, was perpetuated over some two thousand
years in the kitbag of the journeyman painter. Its basic constituents were red earth, yellow earth, white and black, which is to
say the two ochres plus chalk or gypsum and powdered charcoal,
the parent colours of all the ‘earth’ palettes. A notable feature of
this austere palette is the absence not only of blue but also of
green and purple and all bright or florid pigments. As a classical
fount of Western painting, this ‘earth’ palette has been much
more enduring than has generally been acknowledged, in spite of
the inroads of scientific rationalism into the painter’s atelier in
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
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1
GAGE, J. (1993), Colour and Culture, London, pp. 29-38, ‘The Fortunes of Apelles’.
Titian was perhaps the first painter to mix colours extensively on his palette & canvas, &
not just for the flesh tints.
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Colour and Humanism
Following the Renaissance, the old traditions of colour composition, long tested by time, were swept aside by a popular science which professed to apply Isaac Newton’s theories of colour
to a manner of the painting that was now more properly to be
called the coloured imitation of nature. Notions that were frequently attributed to Newton were in fact rarely more than obvious colour phenomena observed by artists for hundreds of years,
and hence painters lost to ‘science’ far more than they gained.
However, the ‘spectrum palette’ of rainbow hues became an important medium for the new expression of frivolity in Rococo
painting, and later still it was a dazzling source of realism in
paintings by the French Impressionists. Ultimately, the reaction
to Impressionism resulted in a revival of the tetrachrome palette,
not in its degenerate academic form but with a certain classical
purity, as in the works of various Cubist and Constructivist
painters.
In the face of the impact of ‘scientific’ ideas about colour, it
might be wondered why such an ancient mode of painting survived at all; but after Titian there was a positive mania for copying his works without understanding the grand simplicity of their
colouristic structure. Treatises guessed at his methods, and corrupt Titianesque palettes were recommended by the academies.
One can sense the desperation of generations of painters looking
for a ‘lost secret’, not realising that it was the purpose of painting
that had changed. Many painters attempted the impossible in
striving for imitation and ‘realism’, and in doing so fell far short
of the achievements of the Venetians, who had aimed more especially at decoration.
Scientific rationalism prompted a new and acute preoccupation with colour-imitation right from the beginning of a painting,
and this resulted in a comparative deadness. Few painters of a
humanistic orientation have been of a calibre to resist the lure of
imitation, and only a few more perceptive humanist painters of
succeeding generations have tended to alight automatically on
the basic classical manner in all its colouristic simplicity. Even as
late as the 1950s, when the artistic tendency still favoured Purism
and Functionalism, a similar convention had once again been
quoted by the avant garde, and the extraordinary versatility of
the classical palette is illustrated in works of painters as diverse
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Colour and Humanism
as Pablo Picasso in his Cubist and ‘classical’ periods, Marcel
Duchamp, Giorgio de Chirico, Amedeo Modigliani, Massimo
Campigli, and the Americans Ben Shahn and Philip Guston.
Scientific humanism in painting has always been much engaged with categories of expression, such as tragic, comic, or
pastoral, and certain colorations and motifs have often had their
expression in the appropriate mode. So it was reasoned that colour and light could, through the agency of mood and temperament, be transposed into poetry or even music; but above all the
great humanists found the earth colours the most apt reflectors of
man’s experience of himself and his environment, and a contrast
to the brilliant Medieval dyes and glazes which were more effective in rendering glorious and colourful revelations of the spirit in
religious art.
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Colour and Humanism
Chapter 2
Greek Colour Archetypes
Throughout the ancient countries of the Mediterranean the art of
colouring an image with pigments was dependent upon primitive
systems of colour-lore. These stemmed from well before the
Golden Age of Pericles and lingered on until the last affectations
of classicism after the Italian Renaissance had passed. Colour
observances went beyond personal preferences and prejudices,
having their roots in the customs and taboos of the seasonal festivals, with their display of sacred liturgy, the ‘blazon’ of civic
and military regalia, and the colour-favours of the different clans
and factions. Only later, in Hellenistic times, was there an overwhelming show of the quirks of mood and temperament.
At times, as at the festival of the Theophania, colour was held
in such awe that that the very gods could put in an appearance as
much through the agency of their colours as through any display
of statuary. Special feasts were held in honour of the vesting of
the gods with colours (and sometimes with gold leaf), 1 as with
Phoebus Apollo, a sun deity, or with dyed vestments at the
Endymatia of Hera, and at the clothing of Brauronian Artemis
with the flaxen chiton and the purple-striped himation. Of the
four classical colours, the archaic rite of Reddening or Iosis had
to do with the seasonal painting of Dionysus (also known as Bassareos) and his priestesses, the Bacchantes; Yellowing or Xanthosis was associated with Artemis and Spring; Whitening or
Leucosis, as of Athena Sciras, was a Summer rite; and Blackening or Melanosis was a winter offering to the infernal gods.
The Mysteries at Eleusis dramatised the most primeval of all
colour contrasts: that of white against black, the opposition of
blinding light against Stygian gloom and chaos. 2 The analogy
was between creation and destruction. In the beginning, so the
legend went, the dark goddess, Night, conceived by the Wind a
silver eggout of which Eros brought all that had been hidden into
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MÜLLER, C.O. (1852), Ancient Art and Its Remains, London, p. 38 ff., which describes
the colourful dressing of statues.
RUCK, C.A. (1978), The Road to Eleusis, London, p. 37 ff: ‘Solving the Elusinian
Mysteries’.
2
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Colour and Humanism
the light of day. 1 The hemisphere of incandescent white light
came to be called the Sol superus presided over by Apollo; while
the Sol inferus was engulfed in the blues and blacks of the dark
lower regions into which the sun descended after twilight. The
phenomena of nature that brought about darkness and light were
seen as dramatic and magical symbols and a key in the playing
out of events in the life of people on earth.
The most striking colour convention of the ancient world was
the pure white flesh that the Aegean artist gave the female. The
practice was introduced by the painter Eumaros, who, in doing
so, said Pliny, made the first step from monochrome to polychrome painting. The idea had its origin in the distant past. The
Great White Goddess of the Aegean, for example, was the lunar
archetype of various pallid goddesses, including silver Cybele, or
Juno of the white cow image, and the shining white huntress of
the night, Artemis. Vestal Virgins, too, took the white veil, and
matrons sacrificed in white to Proserpine, according to Virgil and
Ovid. At Athens, white was a symbol of joy as well as of innocence and purity, while black was often a colour of affliction.
The whole concept of blackness was allied with the darkening
of the blue sky and sea at night, and it was a bluish-black indigo
that was assumed by those Greek women who believed, said Antonio Telesio, that the spirits of the dead departed into the blue
heavens. 2 After death, the soul cast off its physical body and departed into the boundless blue ether, called Uranos or the Monad
of the Intellect by the Pythagoreans. Black also reflected the melancholic condition of the wearer. A black veil was worn by
Tethys to make her sentiments clear when she deplored the future
death of Achilles before Zeus. Aegeus took the black sails of his
son Theseus as signifying failure and death; and cyanine rocks
were the grim landmarks that rose in terrifying appearance above
the boiling waters at the entrance to the Hellespont.
In redness, on the other hand, is the Promethean principle of
fire and heat, explained the cosmologist Pherecydes. And the red
god of love, Eros, had been born from a silver egg, out of the
gigantic lap of darkness. Red and all other colours were thought
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1
KERÉNYI, C. (1958), The Gods of the Greeks. Harmondsworth; see p. 14 for the ‘silver
egg’. Carl Kerényi was a colleague & friend of Carl Gustav Jung.
2
TELESIO, A. (1528), Libellus de coloribus, Venice, Chap. 1 on Blue.
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Colour and Humanism
by the Greek philosophers, especially Aristotle, to be derived
from ratios in the combination of black and white. The hot, light
colours were said to be vapours from myriads of tiny flames suspended in the atmosphere and perceived in the fire-pores of the
eyes, according to Empedocles, whilst the blacks and the cold,
dark colours were believed to be produced from humid vapours
perceived in the water pores. It was Aristotle who had the notion
that warm colours have their origin from the viewing of light
through a cloudy medium, and the cold colours from the appearance of darkness through a similar translucency – an idea that
later became part of Goethe’s theory of colour.
The red male figures, as on the marble metopes at Thermos,
follow a tradition of daubing all cult images with red, a custom
that predates painting with black, white or any other colour.
Many red things were ‘sacra’, that is to say both sacred and accursed, a concept unknown to Europeans today. Red was as if
blood itself, the blood particularly of circumcision or menstruation. The many red stone phalli and Priapic figures buried on
temple sites emphasise the antiquity of the charged nature of red.
Figurines of the Mother Goddess too, are found smeared with red
ochre, no doubt as the fiery deity presiding over the symbolically
red full moon and the menstrual cycle – changing from the white
new moon (governed by Artemis), symbol of birth and generation, to the red full moon (presided over by Selene) symbolising
life, passion and conjugation, and then finally to the old dying
moon, the black goddess of mystery and divination (presided
over by Proserpine or Hecate). Black and with bleeding red eyes
were the Fates or Eumenides. To call up the full fury of Hell, it
was customary to melt waxes of the three sacra colours in reverse order, black, red and white, and to mould them into the
form of the three-headed Hecate, the infernal daughter of Ceres.
Of the two other colour archetypes, the blue of the sky is personified in Coelus, who gave his name both to the sky (caelum) and
to blue (caeruleum), and greenness (viriditas), thought to be produced by the abundant creativity of Proserpine and Ceres in the
Spring. 1
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1
KERÉNYI, C. (1958), op. cit., pp. 205-12; & PLINY, op. cit., Book 35, Chap 6.
19