Color summary

All kinds of objects have been used to make white paint, including chalk, fossilized sea creatures and rice, none of which were particularly effective. Historically, the most popular white paint was made with a far more dangerous ingredient: lead.

European artists in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries loved lead white. Its color was so pure that it was used to highlight details, such as the reflection on a silver jar, or the glimmer in someone’s eye. Lead white was especially favored by the Dutch School, which included artists such as Vermeer and Rembrandt.

When you're in an art gallery, it’s easy to imagine that you’re seeing the paintings as they were originally created by their artists – but this isn’t entirely accurate.

Take, for example, the great English landscape painter Joseph Mallord William Turner, or more specifically, his 1835 piece Waves Breaking Against the Wind. While it depicts a rather unsettling gray sunset, it’s really just the ravages of time at work. Turner originally used a bright red paint called carmine, but the pigment lost its luster over time.

Think of the imports from the Far East and you’ll probably recall the Silk Road, the route by which materials and spices were transported across continents.

Among these products was a pigment known in Asia as ivy yellow, one of the oldest shades of yellow. Confusingly, this pigment comes from the tree Garcinia hanburyi, and not actually from ivy. The garcinia tree is related to the mango, but instead of a delicious fruit, it produces a highly sought-after resin.

Arsenic’s use as a poison is well known, featuring prominently in detective fiction. But even the most imaginative crime author wouldn’t have connected its use in paint to a Napoleonic mystery.

This particular historical conundrum arose shortly after Napoleon’s death in 1821, when one of his doctors took a few strands of his hair.

The National Gallery in London is home to Michelangelo’s painting, The Entombment (1501). Beautiful though it is, there’s an odd blank section in the bottom right-hand corner. Experts believe that he had saved the spot to paint a kneeling Virgin Mary. The problem was, Mary is traditionally depicted wearing blue clothing, and since blue paint was so expensive at the time, Michelangelo probably couldn’t afford to paint her.

Beautiful, deep blue paint is extremely expensive because it has to be extracted from lapis lazuli, a rare semiprecious stone found in Asia, and especially in Afghanistan.

These days, getting a tattoo might seem trendy, but it’s not a new thing.

Just consider indigo dye, which Britons used to paint themselves before battle. We know they did this because the Romans observed them doing it when Julius Caesar first conquered the region, and when they did it again in the first century AD.

Though every color has a story to tell, no color carries the same glamor and historical clout as purple.

In fact, purple was even a factor in the romance between Julius Caesar and Cleopatra, ruler of Egypt. In 49 BC, Cleopatra organized a party for Caesar to celebrate his victories over his former ally Pompey. Like all the best parties, this one had a color scheme. Purple stones littered the palace, and the sails of Cleopatra's boat were colored purple. Even the palatial curtains and soft furnishings were dyed purple.