I recall reading how shocked people were when they discovered that those pristine white marble Greek sculptures had been brightly painted.
One thing to bear in mind is that artist's pigment palettes and dyer's palettes are often quite different. Another thing is that paint colors often are not available in dyes. The beautiful ultramarine blue so commonly shown on clothing in the various Books of Hours painted for the Duc de Berry in the 14th c. was a color unavailable in dye. Third, colors that are desirable in paint - for example, rare or expensive pigments - are often quite different from the colors that are rare or expensive in dyes. That ultramarine blue i mentioned came from lapis lazuli and was expensive and desirable in paintings. But blue in clothing came from woad or indigo and was not so desirable. One of the most desirable colors for wool and/or silk was the bright blue-red from kermes and other similar lac insects (and in the 16th c. from New World cochineal). There is a lake from a lac insect used in paint (alizarin), but it doesn't have the bright glow of the dye. Additionally, what mordants are used to fixed the dyes effect the colors that result. Using different mordants -- for example alum, tannin, and iron -- results in three different colors -- alum fairly bright and true; tannin browned a bit; iron "saddened", i.e. greyed, a bit. Not to forget that mordants often weaken fibers so that they don't survive the centuries well. Further, what fibers are being dyed also effects that colors. Any cellulose fiber -- not just linen or cotton, but also various other bast fibers such as hemp, ramie -- do not take most colors well, so will be paler and fade more quickly. Whereas proteinaceous fibers such as wool and silk take colors very well. Silk tends to be reserved for the wealthy, but in many places common people wear wool, even in summer, if they have sheep, or other wool-type fiber bearing animals. Finally, unlike Euro-American artists of the 19th and much of the 20th centuries, in many cultures, artists are NOT painting from life, and this goes for the colors they use to depict garments. These points are true -- in general -- for many centuries and at least the continents of Asia and Europe, if not on other continents. I can't speak specifically to the Chinese issue, but it is worth reminding ourselves that art is not photograph, and just because something is painted a certain way does not mean that people wore those colors. Maybe they did, but to back it up, we need more input than just pieces of art -- surviving textile fragments, textual descriptions, etc. Anahita _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list h-costume@mail.indra.com http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
