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to painting that the most beautiful colours are less valuable than a clear out-
line; thus colour has only a local and limited significance. Insofar as medieval 
thought remained dominated by Aristotelianism, this attitude was influential. 
In the 13th century Thomas Aquinas wrote that ‘beauty’ consists of order, ra-
tionality and integrity. Line conveys rationality and is therefore more impor-
tant than colour. This view, in various forms, recurred often in subsequent 
centuries. By contrast, Plotinus, the Neo-Platonist philosopher of the 3rd cen-
tury AD, pointed the way to a medieval metaphysics of light by asserting the 
divine nature of colour and brightness. Along these lines, light was seen in the 
later Middle Ages as a metaphor for divine grace, claritas as a constituent of 
beauty. There was an emphasis on splendor as seen in the light on polished 
surfaces; this was reflected in artistic practice in the extensive use of gold in 
panel paintings. However, the late 13
th
-century treatises of Roger Bacon 
(1214–1292) and John Pecham (1292) on optics posit a more scientific view 
of colour that seems in many ways to forecast Giotto’s practice in the follow-
ing decades. Giotto’s modulation of colour by light, his sense of everyday re-
ality and his restraint demonstrate a clear movement away from the meta-
physical to the observed. His limited, sober range of colours clarifies the nar-
rative content and differs greatly from the strident rainbow effects of many of 
his contemporaries. Colour for Giotto identified specific substances rather 
than being ‘beautiful’ in itself.
The first important treatise on painting during the Italian Renaissance was 
Alberti’s “De picture”, written in Latin in 1435. This concurred with Masac-
cio’s practice insofar as Alberti treated colour under the heading ‘reception of 
light’ rather than as a divine radiance or as an element in the creation of deco-
rative pattern. In the Italian version of the text (1436), however, he established 
a colour system based on four primaries: red, blue, green and grey.
It can be held that from the Renaissance onwards painters in Europe in-
creasingly used colour to amplify tonal differences rather than for its signifi-
cance in itself; hence the development of chiaroscuro from Leonardo to 
Caravaggio and Rembrandt. Leonardo, in his “Trattato della pittura”, wrote 
that ‘what is beautiful’ in colour ‘is not always good’; for example, the painter 
needs to sacrifice bright colour to suggest brightness, which is most readily at-
tained through contrast with darker tones. The softness and gentleness of Leo-
nardo’s tonal contrasts – his characteristic sfumato – and the employment of 
aerial perspective also involved an avoidance of strong colour contrasts. He 
stated specifically, following Alberti, that the ‘illusion of relief’ is more im-
portant than colour.
Giorgione’s work in Venice can be said to have initiated an approach to 
colour at least as important as Leonardo's. As Jan van Eyck had done nearly a 

116
century earlier, he painted with rich colours on light grounds; but additionally, 
by uniting intense local colour with chiaroscuro and maintaining an equality of 
emphasis that avoids sudden or dramatic contrasts of colour and tone, he gave 
to the forms in his painting an ‘inner light’, as in the “Tempest” (1507; Ven-
ice). Such an approach was echoed not only in the work of Titian but also 
much later in Vermeer and even in Chardin. 
During the late 16th century and beyond a common concern of critical 
theory was the contrast between ‘design’ and colour. Vasari, writing in Flor-
ence in the late 16th century, regretted that Titian did not study disegno more; 
in contrast he celebrated Raphael as having ‘brought invention, colouring and 
execution to perfection’. Venetian artistic theory of the same period put much 
greater stress on colour.
Poussin stated that the aim of painting is to delight. This is perhaps sur-
prising, given that his work was the principal influence for those who advo-
cated disegno in later 17
th
-century academic doctrine in France. On the other 
hand, the advocacy of colore was upheld by the Rubénistes,
who had their 
chief spokesman in Roger de Piles.
In his “Dialogue sur le coloris” (1673) he 
expressed the view that colour was particularly characteristic of painting as 
distinct from other arts, a view that was revived in the 20th century by artists 
concerned with asserting the autonomy and particularity of painting, as com-
pared, for example, with sculpture. De Piles criticized Poussin for neglecting 
colour and admired Rubens as the ultimate master in terms of the imitation of 
nature.
At the time de Piles was writing, Isaac Newton was using the prism to 
demonstrate (1666) the polychromatic composition of white light: but the new 
scientific understanding of pure light did not immediately impinge on debate 
among painters. The controversy between Poussinisme and Rubénisme was 
reopened a century later, between the adherents of Neo-classicism and the phi-
losophers, theorists and painters who were associated with Romanticism. Jo-
hann Joachim Winckelmann, in his “Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums” 
(1764), upheld the views of colour’s being ‘sensual’ and beauty's consisting 
not of colour but of shape. Kant took a similar view, placing design above 
colour, and stressing that colour ‘belongs to the stimulus’ of the senses. At the 
same time, however, Goethe, Hegel and particularly the German painter and 
theorist Philipp Otto Runge
held somewhat different beliefs, which were re-
vived in the 20
th
century. Goethe, although writing as a scientist, emphasized 
the ‘symbolism of colour, which comes from nature and is addressed to the 
eye and to feeling; thus colour sensations are endowed with meaning and emo-
tion. Hegel believed that painting becomes more ‘spiritual’ through colour, 

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and Runge insisted that colour is more than a sensual impression: he empha-
sized its ‘mystical’ significance. 
Newnan G. Colour // The Dictionary of Art / еd. by J. Turner. Vol. 7: Grove’s Diction-
aries Inc. New York, 1996. P. 626–629. 

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