Colour
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We take colour for granted these days. Just look at this blog for instance. I know it’s not the jazziest one out there but there are plenty of strong, true intense colours that don’t change much from day to day. In the past such reliable colours were considered luxuries and many were used as codes to inform viewers about what was going on.
Red
Yesterday I was writing about the Bayeux Tapestry so I thought I would make a start with that.
Here is a family photo showing Duke William with his two brothers, Bishop Odo and Robert, who would look after Normandy once William had departed for England. The two brothers are dressed in blue but William’s long tunic is a strong red. This is no accident. The red is designed to show that William is a soldier, a leader. Red was associated with strength and ferocity – a military colour. Since dye tended to fade with time, faded red – ie pink – was also a military colour. Pink was worn almost exclusively by baby boys until the advent of colorfast aniline dyes in the 19th century, whereas blue was considered a girls colour.
Blue
Virgin in Prayer, Sassoferrato, painted 1640-1650 National Portrait Gallery
Blue had come to be associated with girls due to its use to mark out the Virgin in religious paintings. This particular intense shade of blue, ultramarine, was obtained by grinding a paste of lapis lazuli, a semi precious stone only found in one small area of Afghanistan. From the earliest times the stone was prized for its rarity and the pureness of its colour. Lapis lazuli was worth more than its weight in gold. To honour the virgin it became routine to use this most precious of pigments to colour her robes.
Earth colours – yellow and red ochres, raw and burnt earths – were easy to obtain and cheap to produce. Likewise vegetable dyes – yellow, green brown, grey – could be gathered from the wild. Fixing the dye with a salt or urine mordant produced fabric that would fade more slowly. But these naturally obtained dyes marked the wearer out as being of low origin. Figures in paintings who are shown in shades of brown or grey are almost always of low class. At the opposite end of the scale was the nobility, and there was one particular colour reserved for the very grandest of these.
Purple
The emperor Justinian. 6th century mosaic from Ravenna Wikimedia
Purple dye was also known from the earliest times. Fabric dyed using murex sea snails was made by the Phoenicians and traded all around the Mediterranean. The dying process was lengthy, disgusting and costly. It took a lot of dye to produce the intense Imperial purple demanded by the emperors of Rome and Byzantium, so fabrics in the proper colour were highly prized and highly priced too. It is on record that the emperor Aurelian refused to buy the empress a gown of purple silk because it was far too costly even for him.
Paler shades of purple could be worn by the nobility and a mixture of murex and madder or kermes was used to produce a strong purple red to dye the cloak of imperial commanders but sometime purple was used to honour other people.
When the tomb of St Cuthbert, one of Britains nicer saints, was opened, it was found that his bones has been wrapped in a shroud of purple Chinese silk, the colour still true after 1000 years.
Black
Portrait of youth, Lorenzo Lotto, c 1508
Black is now the colour of formality – black tie, little back dress, mourning clothes – but in the middle ages, as was the case with red, black tended to fade. The dye was achieved by making a mixture of walnut shells and iron. As time passed the iron reacted with light and moisture to tint the fabric a reddish hue. Benedictines, an order of monks who wore black habits, are frequently described as wearing ‘rusty’ black.
In the 15th century new mordants were discovered that would fix dyes firmly, and black became a very fashionable thing to wear. Lorenzo Lotto, who painted the picture to the right, is noteable for his lavish use of black, emphasising the seriousness of his pictures and the worth of his subjects.
As a foot note to this, any time you see a film with early knights dressed in black fabric, bear in mind that it’s romance and not reality.
Tomorrow I’ll be writing about livestock! See you then.
Elin Gregory 
I thought that, of the lesser colors, green was also difficult because it was one of the more fugitive. Have I remembered wrong? It’s been a long time.
And how odd about lapis. I’ll have to look up where our current sources are, as now it’s classed as a semiprecious stone, well within the reach of impoverished college students and the like! I had a silver brooch with a big fat lapis cabochon in a sort of Victorian-collar-pin lozenge setting.
Ooh that sounds super. The really good stuff with the little flecks of gold in it still comes from Afghanistan, but there’s a stone called Azurite that bears a very close resemblance and they use that a lot for jewellery. It doesn’t behave the same way in pigments, though *nods* [I am writing a medieval fantasy novel about it].
I think all dyes and pigments were fugitive to an extent. Basically bright colours meant new clothes, which mostly meant wealth.
The blue in the Virgin in prayer painting is beautiful and vibrant – and to think they used lapis lazuli. What a hard time early artists had getting their colours.
Fascinating blog. I love colour In Egypt at the rug making place (duh words not coming to me) they used only natural dyes for the wools and silks and in fact there is very little colour among native Egyptian dress. Guess it’s all hidden in the tombs. When I can speak rationally I’ll come back its that kind of day
Fascinating. It’s so interesting that colors are associated with different things and how the meaning changes across time and cultures.
I knew that purple was often used by royalty but this information is wonderful. I did not know blue was considered a girls’ colour. Although, I suppose blue was the original colour of the wedding dress.
Denise at Organization and Inspiration for Fellow Writers, participant of A to Z Blogging Challenge
Very interesting. I’m not an artist, but my daughter is. I love color. I love the way different countries use color, like India, Mexico, Spain, well, you get the picture. Thanks for the fascinating post.
Hugs,
Kathy
In case anyone was wondering what was disgusting about the snails, apparently they needed to rot first. Nothing like dead rotting sea creatures.
I look forward to reading about livestock!
Fascinating stuff. Have I told you about the depiction of Guy de Peverel by Lionel the not very good painter and its overenthusiastic use of red (amongst other issues)?
Great post about color! I had learned how they used to make purple (with snails)…amazing. I can see why it was so expensive and used for royalty.
Colors may be universal but obviously the meanings across all cultures are something we need to learn so we can understand each other.