Lascaux, France - Prehistoric Cave Paintings 16,000 B.C.
Deer – Chauvet, France Cave Paintings 30,000 B.C.
rhino – Chauvet, France Cave Paintings
leopard - Chauvet Cave Paintings
Palette is that of the Earth
- Paints are "stones + water”
- Yellows, oranges, reds are iron "earths”
Fe2O3 (hematite), FeO(OH)·nH2O (limonite)
- Greens from clays made of aluminum/silicon /oxygen
Al-Si-O
- Brown : manganese oxide, Black (charcoal) and White (chalk or bones)
MnO2
C
CaO and CaCO3
Greek Four Color Painting (theory attributed to Pliny)
•A very confusing topic because so little Greek
painting survives
•Conservative color ideas authored by Aristotle, Plato,
and others but also by Romans Pliny & Plutarch
writing about classical Greek painting.
"the noble and restrained palette is the
proper choice for all sober-minded painters”
Gaius Plinius Secundus, better known as
Pliny the Elder, was an author, naturalist,
and natural philosopher as well as naval
and army commander of the early Roman
Empire. Spending most of his spare time
studying, writing or investigating natural
phenomena in the field, he wrote an
encyclopedic work, Naturalis Historia.
Greek Four Color Painting
• white – black – yellow – red the very colors predominating in cave painting
• white & black correspond to extremes of light and dark
• yellow & red correspond to intermediate hues
Really? Only 4 colors?
c. 540 BC, National Archaeological Museum. One of four paintings on a
piece of wood that survived, found in the village Pitsa (inside a cave ?)
(Corinth) in the region around Sikyon.
www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/Arts/SacrificePainting.htm
Greek Four Color Painting
• white – black – yellow – red the very colors predominating in cave painting
• white & black correspond to extremes of light and dark
• yellow & red correspond to intermediate hues
First a matter of Philosophy
Greek thought: where the symmetry of ideas was important
Four elements (air, fire, water, earth) and
Four natures (qualities) (dry, humid (moist) , cold, hot)
So, naturally, we should have four colors (white, black, yellow, red)
They had some strange ideas…
Aristotle: all colors are mixtures of lightness and darkness (white and black?)
Demokritos: pale green (chloron) can be made from red + white
Plato: leek green (prasinon) can be made from “flame” (purron) and black
Results Reflects Greek Attitudes
• Greek preference for theorizing, for abstract thought, for doctrine
• a distaste for experimentation, for manual skill and craft
• a aversion to mixing, an idea in classical thought that mixed pigments were
impure and inferior to pure pigments made from natural sources
"Mixing produces conflict" Plutarch
Results Reflect Reality of Limitations of Pigment Materials
because of the chemical properties of the ancient pigments,
—how they interacted with light (their spectral properties) —
mixing them led to neutral, dull hues: mud.
Did the Romans’ preoccupation with Greek color ideas affect their palettes?
Did the Romans’ preoccupation with Greek color ideas affect their palettes?
Decidedly not, judging by the frescoes
uncovered at Pompeii.
There are 29 pigments identified in all
of the Pompeii paintings.
http://www.
http://www.knowledgerush.com/kr/encyclopedia/Gallery_
of_Pompeii_and_Herculaneum/
Affresco Casa di Venere in Conchiglia, Pompei
And the art and painting of ancient Egyptians?
As master craftsmen of materials, Egyptians had large palette of pigments
www.love-egypt.com/ancient-egypt-art.html
A Block from the Sanctuary in the Temple of Mentuhotep II at Deir el-Bahri, reign of Mentuhotep II,
2010–2000 B.C.
http://www.metmuseum.org/works_of_art/collection_database/egyptian_art/a_block_from_the_sanctuary_in_the_temple_of_mentuhotep/
Nany's (a woman in her seventies, was a chantress (ritual singer) of the god Amun-Re.)
Funerary Papyrus, reign of Psusennes I,
ca. 1040–992 B.C..
ttp://www.metmuseum.org/works_of_art/collection_database/egyptian_art/a_block_from_the_sanctuary_in_the_temple_of_mentuhotep/
A facsimile produced by the Graphic Section from the MMA's Expedition to Egypt between the
years 1907 and 1937. The Museum's artists used tempera paints to reproduce the quality of
ancient pigments.
www.love-egypt.com/ancient-egypt-art.html
A facsimile produced by the Graphic Section from MMA.
www.love-egypt.com/ancient-egypt-art.html
Egyptian faience sculpture
Boat Carrying Captives from Nubia, Tomb of Huy (facsimile),
Reignreign of Akhenaten–Tutankhamun, Egypt (Thebes)
1349–1327 B.C.
Portrait of the Boy Eutyches,
Egypt, Roman Period, 100 AD,
Encaustic (wax, etc.) on wood
Roman Egypt was an extremely diverse civilization. The population
consisted of Roman citizens and citizens of Greek cities such as
Alexandria (both of these groups made up of peoples of many different
ethnicities) and native Egyptians.
Clearly, the Egyptians,
in contrast to the Greeks,
placed high value of craft and skill.
They contributed much to the development
of pigments and the art of coloration.
The Greek Four Color Problem: is it real ?
That they couldn’t perceive or discriminate the range of colors that we can?
or is it just a problem of language, of naming?
• they certainly had access to other pigments (e.g., Egyptian blue frit)
• speculation is that Greek sensitivity was to effect of color, not so much to hue
maybe blue was close to black, as yellow is similar to white
• sinople used to refer to both green and to red
(is actually a red earth from Sinople near the Black Sea)
• color terminology is NOT universal; some cultures have only 4 color terms
“Colors are the product of language under the influence of culture.” John Lyons
or is it a problem of perceptual psychology?
no different than my yellow ≠ your yellow
Color is a hot topic for linguistic study
Linguistic anthropologists Berlin and Kay, propose evolution of color terms that follow:
”Color vocabulary unfolds in strict sequence" black/white, then red, then yellow , then
green, blue, then the secondary (more random) purple, orange, brown, pink….”
Hmmmm, I think I’ll paint that idea…
Interface
(Sharon Burgmayer, 2002)
(at the interface of feeling and thinking, inspired by Mark Lord)
GREEK COLOR THEORY AND THE FOUR ELEMENTS
A Cosmological Interpretation
J. L. Benson
Amherst, Massachusetts: University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries
2000
http://www.library.umass.edu/benson/jbgc.html
Alkmaion: how does the eye see? It sees through the water that surrounds it
the ray which transmits the color of an object to the eye is a kind of fire.
In any case Demokritos conceived of colors as so many quantities of energy (light), ranging from a
pure form of it to a total lack of it (black). Such reasoning comes from a quite different sphere from
the idea of colors laid on an artist's palette: colors are not something laid on objects but energy
equations of the objects themselves. In fact, Demokritos would deny the existence of artists' colors as
such. To complicate matters for us, Anaxagoras - without being an atomist - had the same opinion
about the nature of color.
the two characteristics of Greek color sensibility appear:
* Color is rays of light or fire.
* Color reflects the state of the object to which it belongs.
Greek Four color theory
http://www.library.umass.edu/benson/jbgc.html
Although the theory of the four elements is well known, the concept of a theory of four
colors is virtually unknown, even among many scholars in the ancient field. What is that
concept? It refers first of all to a seemingly insoluble problem in the history of Greek
painting, arising from references in Pliny the Elder and Cicero, to the use of quattuor
colores: black, white, yellow, and red in certain Greek paintings
The ancient tradition in regard to a connection between the Four Elements theory and the
Four Colors theory - for so it must be called - is not only meager and sketchy but, on the
face of it, enigmatic. Yet the parallel positioning of the two concepts, e.g., in Empedokles,
Demokritos and Plato, is so noticeable that one cannot really doubt whether the Greeks
regarded them as being correlative, but only whether they connected each of the four
elements to a particular one of the four colors.
Polish kermes lives in the roots of
Scleranthus perennis L. Polish kermes are
found from eastern Germany to the Ukraine
. This shield louse, or scale insect, is a
parasite on the roots of Scleranthus
perennis. The female insects are collected in
June, killed in a vinegar solution, dried, and
marketed in this form as the raw material
for the dyestuff. From a single plant, 40 to
50 insects can be collected. After they are
taken from the roots of the host plant, it is
replanted.
The Cochineal bug is found in desert locations in Arizona, New Mexico, and California
to Montana, Colorado, Texas, Florida and North Carolina.
They feed on the juices of the cacti plant, especially the prickly pear cacti.
Visualizing the atomic and molecular level
elements
copper, Cu
Sulfur, S8
compounds
vermilion, red lead
homogeneous
blue frit
heterogeneous
blue frit + ochre
elements
compounds
homogeneous
heterogeneous
copper
vermilion
blue frit
blue frit + ochre
Cinnabar (natural mineral)
Vermilion (synthetic)
HgS
Red Lead
Pb3O4, or
2PbO·PbO2
elements
compounds
homogeneous
heterogeneous
copper
vermilion, red lead
blue frit
blue frit + ochre
Ochres: a mixture of
Iron oxides
Iron oxide Hematite, Fe2O3
Iron oxide Magnetite, Fe3O4
Egyptian Faience sculpture
and
beads
The blue color of faience is
chemically the same ‘stuff’
as the pigment blue frit
elements
compounds
homogeneous
heterogeneous
copper
vermilion, red lead
blue frit
blue frit + ochre
blue frit
ochre