Humble Servant
07-24-2002, 10:27 AM
Here's the link to the classic column, "Could Early Man See Only Three Colors?" (Http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_168b.html)
The column quotes Lazarus Geiger, a [Victorian?] naturalist[!], as follows:Democritus and the Pythagoreans assumed four fundamental colours, black, white, red, and yellow....Nay, ancient writers (Cicero, Pliny, and Quintillian) state it as a positive fact that the Greek painters, down to the time of Alexander [323 BC], employed only these four colours.I'm wondering whether the Berlin/Kay book cited (or any smart Doper knows) the actual Cicero, Pliny and Quintillian passages Geiger is referring to. I learned in college art history that relatively recent archaeology had determined that lots of Greek temple statues were originally painted, often in vivid color. Maybe the ancient authors were just talking about pottery painting/glazing, where the use of red/black was the height of aesthetics.
Or maybe I'm losing my marbles, and only the Romans painted their marbles.
Anyway, Geiger's reference sounds odd to me--why would the ancient wrtiers say that painters ONLY used these colors? Surely the process of mixing paint pigment would result in many different shades, intentional or not. Is this just an example of how the lack of ancient color vocabulary has confused translators?
The column quotes Lazarus Geiger, a [Victorian?] naturalist[!], as follows:Democritus and the Pythagoreans assumed four fundamental colours, black, white, red, and yellow....Nay, ancient writers (Cicero, Pliny, and Quintillian) state it as a positive fact that the Greek painters, down to the time of Alexander [323 BC], employed only these four colours.I'm wondering whether the Berlin/Kay book cited (or any smart Doper knows) the actual Cicero, Pliny and Quintillian passages Geiger is referring to. I learned in college art history that relatively recent archaeology had determined that lots of Greek temple statues were originally painted, often in vivid color. Maybe the ancient authors were just talking about pottery painting/glazing, where the use of red/black was the height of aesthetics.
Or maybe I'm losing my marbles, and only the Romans painted their marbles.
Anyway, Geiger's reference sounds odd to me--why would the ancient wrtiers say that painters ONLY used these colors? Surely the process of mixing paint pigment would result in many different shades, intentional or not. Is this just an example of how the lack of ancient color vocabulary has confused translators?