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Noble, simple, true ond apparent – following in the footsteps of Aristotle,
these way of distinguishing colours were the givens of the mediaeval worlds.
Newton changed all that. No place for nobility among the colours of the
spectrum he outlined in his Opticks. In Colour and Culture (Thames &
Hudson, £29.95, ISBN 0 500 27818 0), John Gage recreates the way in
which colour was seen from a practical-mix-that-shade point of view to the
cultural implications of colour – the purity of white, the wealth of red.
Thirty years of work make this a rich mine of information, showing for
example, how Newton’s ideas of complementarity prevailed, affecting not only
the world of light but the palette of the painter.