Colors have their own characters.
They keep secrets and hide dark pasts.
Every color we see in great works carries with it an unusual story, from the ultramarine with which Johann Vermeer wove his turban Girls with a pearl earring to the airy light shade of red that fuels the angry sky in the painting A scream Edward's Work.
These stories unlock exciting new layers of masterpieces, which we usually claim to know every detail of.
This fascinating and forgotten language of paintings and sculptures that communicate with us is the subject of my new book. The Art of Color: A History of Art in 39 Pigments.
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Color, as it turns out, is always deeper than mere appearance.
Prussian blue, for example, is a captivating color that connects Hokusai's painting in an unusual way. A big wave Kanagave code (1831) in The blue room (1901) by Pablo Picasso.
If it had not been for an accident in an alchemical laboratory in Berlin in 1706, such works, as well as countless others, including those by Edgar Degas and Claude Monet, would never have radiated their mysticism and power.
What is the charm of color?
It all started when Johann Conrad Dippel, a German occultist, poorly crafted a recipe for a forbidden elixir that he believed could cure a person of any disease.
Born in Frankenstein's castle three decades earlier, Dippel (some authors believe that he served as Mary Shelley's inspiration for the character of Frankenstein) almost threw a bucket of soaked wood ash and cow's blood when the paint manufacturer with whom he shared a shop abruptly stopped him.
Having run out of crimson dye, he grabbed Dippel's failed attempt, added a larger amount of crushed deer antlers, put the mixture back on the heat, and began stirring.
Soon the two of them were staring in astonishment at the mixture boiling in the cauldron.
Instead of red, of which there was no trace, they received a deep shimmering blue that could rival the brilliance of overpriced ultramarine – a color that was for centuries more prized than gold.
It didn't take long for artists to embrace Prussian blue (named after the region where it was happily brewed) and thus add fresh layers of mystery and allure to their own works.
That's the charm of colors: they are striking.
Watch the video about the forgeries that fooled even the most prestigious museums
Just as the origin of a word can expand our understanding of the particular poem or novel in which it appears, so too the origin of the color used shapes the meaning of a masterpiece.
Colors have been discovered by cavemen and astute scientists, as well as by vile charlatans and greedy industrialists.
They define the works of all artists, from Caravaggio, Cornelia Parker and Giotto to Georgia O'Keeffe, telling exciting stories.
Although Van Gogh only used a tiny bit of so-called Indian yellow to paint the moon in the painting Starry night (1889), the harsh hue still has an aura that suggests an unsophisticated origin.
It was obtained from the urine of a cow fed only mango leaves.
The meaning of color is inseparable from the way it is made.
We have selected several great works whose deepest meanings have been revealed through the study of the origins of colors and the events surrounding them.
1. Bone black in the picture Madame X
John Singer Sargent exhibited a portrait of Waterdzinia Amelia Avegno Gautro, the wife of a French banker, at the Paris Salon of 1884, which was followed by a scandal.
It was considered inappropriate because it showed the seductively falling right side of her black satin dress, which clung to her body.
That's not the only reason the image seems disturbing.
Sargent mixed several different colors to paint the model's pale skin.
He made the shade from an unusual combination of lead white, dyer's broch, cinnabar, and chromium hydroxide green.
He also used a crumb of ancient bone black, which was previously obtained from the broken remains of burned skeletons.
The secret ingredient further deepens the complexity of the beautifully anemic model.
Bone black transforms the meaning of the portrait into a meditation on the transience of the body, blurring the line that separates desire and decay.
2. The red brooch in Vermeer's painting Girl with a glass of wine
Picture Girl with a glass of wine It depicts the unease between a young woman, the central figure, and her wooer, depicted maliciously pouring alcohol into her glass while her tutor naps in the corner.
To heighten the tension, Vermeer ingeniously soaked her dress with red brocade.
This pigment was obtained from the bright red root of a perennial herbaceous plant from the family Rubia tinctorum.
The root of the plant, when cooked, releases an organic compound called alizarin, from which a ruby-like liquid can be squeezed out that is stunning to the eye.
While the lecherous suitor may be pouring a measured drink, she sets in motion the violent energy of the painting.
3. Chrome orange in the picture Glowing June Frederika Lejtona
The famous painting with the sleeping nymph Glowing June Sir Frederick Leighton may seem to embody the ease of a carefree summer nap.
For some, the figure positioned below the level of the looming horizon above her, as well as the sight of the deadly oleander, positioned so that her bent arm can reach it, introduce themes of death and funeral into a seemingly innocuous, lazy setting.
However, Leighton wisely covered her massive figure with layers of chrome orange, a then relatively new pigment.
Its production in the 19th century was made possible by the discovery of vast underground deposits of chromite, an initially uninteresting and murky mineral, near Paris and Baltimore (Maryland).
Through alchemy, this mineral can become a transcendental radiance.
Clad in chrome orange, the heroine does not seem like a mortal being about to be buried.
Rather, it is like a treasure that will forever be within reach of discovery – a unique symbol of endlessly renewing beauty.
4. Lead-tin yellow on Rembrandt's Belshazzar's feast
In 1940, a researcher at the Munich Donner Institute stumbled upon one of the greatest discoveries in the history of art.
Richard Jacobi managed to use a "reverse engineering" technique to obtain a secret recipe for yellow paint that had been passed down from generation to generation.
He inexplicably disappeared from paintings in the mid-18th century.
Jacobi discovered that heating a mixture of lead(II) oxide and tin dioxide in a certain proportion could produce a wonderful range of shades from a dull mustard to an orange chiffon.
Titian used it to illuminate drapery Bacchus and Ariadne, and Rembrandt used it to write God's words on the wall Belshazzar's feasts.
5. Emerald green on On a summer day Berte Morisot
Some suspect that Napoleon died in 1821 from prolonged poisoning caused by Scheele's green.
It is a pale green pigment found on the wallpaper that adorned his exiled bedroom on the island of St. Helena.
Half a century later, French painter Berthe Morisot reached for emerald green, a close relative of Scheele's wicked green, to paint the sky in her painting. A summer day.
It shows two young women in a boat, lazily sailing along a polka-dotted river, but there's something unsettling about the air they're breathing.
Interwoven with arsenic, the emerald green lends a sickening rawness to the scene, which seems to be constantly stirring.
6. Cobalt purple on Monet Perunikama
Art and happiness go hand in hand.
Among the happy events of the 19th century we can also include the invention of cobalt purple, the first purpose-made purple pigment, and the invention of portable paint tubes, which allowed artists to leave the studio.
This was especially important for the Impressionists, who wanted to capture in their paintings how shadows fall in nature.
"I have finally discovered what the color of the atmosphere really is," was part of a conversation Manet had with friends in 1881.
"He is purple. Fresh air is purple."
"That's my discovery! In three years, everyone will be using purple!"
Among those who would prove that Manet was right was Claude Monet, whose paintings with iris and lily motifs would not exist without that great discovery.
It is an understatement to say that Monet's canvases are predominantly purple – immersed in it.
7. Lead white in Symphony No. 1: The White Maiden James McNeill Whistler
White has a dark side.
Just look at the work. Symphony No. 1: The White Maiden James McNeil Wister, whose title, or rather repetition, bele, perhaps too conspicuously trying to hide the dirt from which the paint originated.
The painting represents the embodiment of impeccable purity, but it relies on a soiled pigment: lead white.
To obtain it, it is necessary to leave lead belts for a month near a vinegar pond in an earthenware vessel, surrounded by layers of fermenting animal dung.
The combination of acetate, formed by the proximity of lead and vinegar, with carbon dioxide fumes from the feces produces an unnatural white patina on the lead bundles, as captivating as it is deadly.
Nicander of Colophon, a Greek physician and poet, described lead white as a "disgusting potion" in the second century AD that could cause far-reaching neurotic phenomena in people who made it.
Far from wanting to trivialize Whistler's work.
The origin of lead white gives it an unexpected positive dimension and reinforces all our faith in the fact that art has the power to transform us into something beautiful and new, regardless of the past.
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