Friday, August 12, 2016

Red Pigments

Jusepe de Ribera
St James the Greater
ca. 1614
oil on canvas
private collection

Duncan Grant
Portrait of Vanessa Bell on Red Sofa
1917
oil on canvas
National Portrait Gallery, London

"Gellius is reporting a conversation he had with Fronto (a poet and grammarian) and Favorinus (a philosopher). Favorinus remarked that eyes are able to isolate more colors than words can name. Red (rufus) and green (viridis), he said, have only two names but many species. ... Rufus is a name, but what a difference between the red of blood, the red of purple, the red of saffron, and the red of gold! They are all differences of red but, in order to define them, Latin can only make recourse to adjectives derived from the names of objects, thus calling flammeus the red of fire, sanguineus the red of blood, croceus the red of saffron, aureus the red of gold. Greek has more names, Favorinus says, but Fronto replies that Latin, too, has many color terms and that, in order to designate russus and ruber (red), one can also use fulvus, flavus, rubidus, poeniceus, rutilus, luteus, spadix.

– Umberto Eco, from a 1985 essay translated into English under the title How Culture Conditions the Colors We See

Anthony van Dyck
 St Jerome
1615-16
oil on canvas
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

Duncan Grant
Portrait of Vanessa Bell
ca. 1918
oil on canvas
National Portrait Gallery, London

Palma il Vecchio
La Bella
1518-20
oil on canvas
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Titian
Judith with Head of Holofernes
ca. 1515
oil on canvas
Galleria Doria-Pamphilij, Rome

Daniel Mytens
Portrait of Endymion Porter
1627
oil on canvas
National Portrait Gallery, London



Bernhard Strigel
Annunciation to St Anne
ca. 1505-10
oil on panel
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Lucas Cranach the Elder
St Christopher
ca. 1514
oil on panel
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Carlo Dolci
Christ Child with Flowers
1663
canvas
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Gabriel Zehender
Portrait of a married couple
1525
oil on panel
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Bartolomeo Nazari
Portrait of Doge Vincenzo Querini
18th century
oil on canvas
Museo Correr, Venice

Alessandro Allori
Portrait of Francesco I de'Medici
ca. 1558
oil on lead
private collection

Bernardino Butinone
Adoration
1493
oil and tempera on panel
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid