Colour

According to Hebrew tradition, man’s first name, they are called “cones”. In addition there are  Adam, stands for “red” and “living”. Manlio Bnisantin, The History of Colors

Horns gave you gold for your flesh, excellent colors for the extremities of your limbs; (…) fortified your flesh with vermilion, so that you can live, so that you can live for ever, so that you can grow younger, so that you can grow younger for ever. The Egyptian Book of the Dead

What is the essential nature of cloudiness? For red or yellow transparent things are not cloudy; white is cloudy. Is cloudy that which conceals forms, and conceals forms because it obliterates light and shadow? Isn’t white that which does away with darkness? We speak of course of “black glass”, yet you see a white surface as red through red glass but not as  black through ‘black” glass. People often use tinted lenses in their eye-glasses in order to see clearly but never cloudy lenses. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarks on Color

But one would not believe that Rembrandt was not yet content with the darks he had reached with his own palette. And we are told, in fact, that one day, in a fit of anger at not being able to get a more intense black than the maximum obtained with his colors, with a formidable blow he rammed his fist straight through the canvas he had been working on, and on seeing the gash that stood out in a stronger black against the painting, exclaimed: There that’s the kind of black I needed to achieve the effect I wanted! Gaetano Previati, I Princip Scientifici del Divisionismo

The god Merkart, walking along the beach in the company of his dog, noticed that the animal’s muzzle had turned red. His curiosity aroused, the god was able to ascertain that the color came from certain mollusks abandoned on the beach, which the dog had been sniffing. Then the god Merkart, to please his lover, the nymph Tyros, thought he  would give her a present of a tunic dyed by his own hands with the vivid color of these marine gastropods, transforming himself into the first purple-dyer. Sabatino Moscati, 1 Fenici

The physical world is colorless. It consists of colorless matter and colorless energy. Living beings with an intact visual system can orient themselves by certain energy rays… The retina of the normal human eye contains three types of cells which are sensitive to three different radiations of various wavelength sectors; they are called “cones”. In addition there are “rods”, cells that apparently can perceive only ferences in brightness. These cells are tiny antennas, of which there are about 15,000 on one square millimeter of retina. Harold Keuppers, The Basic Law of Color Theory

It is dawn and a woman is lying in bed after her lover has taken his leave. She is covered up to her head with a light mauve robe that has a lining of dark violet; the color of both the outside and the lining is fresh and glossy. The woman, who appears to be asleep, wears an unlined orange robe and a dark crimson skirt of stiff silk whose cords hang loosely by her side, as if they have been left untied. Her thick tresses tumble over each other in cascades, and one can imagine how long her hair must be when it falls freely down her toack.

A white coat worn over a violet waistcoat.
A rosary of rock crystal.
Wistaria blossoms.
Plum blossoms covered with snow.
A pretty child eating strawberries.

A woman with ugly hair wearing a robe of white damask.
Holleyhock worn in frizzled hair.
Ugly handwriting on red paper.
A woman of the lower classes dressed in a scarlet divine trouser-skirt.
The sight is all too common these days.
Sei Shonagon, The Pillow Book