Page:Architectural Review and American Builders' Journal, Volume 1, 1869.djvu/239

 1868.] Symbolical Coloring. 195 before or since ; she fairly typified her I own essence in the jewel-like ornaments of her impressive fanes. She had mani- fested buried truth and beauty, as her Head had manifested GOD'S love for the world, never failing ; but sorely ob- scured by the crimes and traditions of men. The speech of the rainbow, apart from the promise of its sweeping entirety, although always of the same nature and generally of the same import, has had a number of dialects. Three of these tint-tongues constitute its European manifestations as paramount, at different and succeeding times, among the priest- hood, the nobility and the people. The large windows of the Christian churches, like the full hieroglyphics of Egyptian temples, have at least a double meaning, the ostensible and the secret : the one is for the uninitiated ; and the other imparts, to the select few, the in- most secrets of the mystic creeds. The hierarchal era continued down to the renaissance, when the symbolic expres- sion of colors was extinct ; and, as their divine speech was forgotten, rapidly ceasing to be a science, painting soared in skill, sentiment, emotion and effect, while it fell in profound significance ; and became merely an art. The aristocratic color-dialect was mainly coeval with the hierarchal, yet out lasted it for generations. Symbolical coloring changed not its terms, but its definitions, and was well fostered at court, under the name of heraldry ; the painter- stainer* adopting what the painter had disdainfully cast aside. Yet modern painting still adheres to symbolism in church pictures. White drapery is ap- propriated to GOD, red to Christ, blue to the Virgin Mary, and green to Saint John. The solar spectrum, as displayed >j the prism in decomposing a ray of sun- light, contains seven colors, namely — painter, has no reference to the expert wood-grainers and marblers of the present day. violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red. Of these, three are primitives— blue, yellow, and red. Violet is composed of red in excess, with blue ; indigo proceeds from blue in excess, with red ; green is a compound of blue and yellow, and orange a mixture of yellow and red. With red we again turn around, in the same invariably cir- cling order, so that the primaries and secondaries, forming a mystic seven, are a glorious emblem of eternity ; an em- blem which, whether we regard the ma- jestic curve, or the gorgeous gradations of its bands, is redoubled in the rain- bow. Depending upon pigments, painting- admits practically as colors two rejected by natural philosoph}^ namely, white and black, which, combined in different proportions, produce the endless variety of grays, these latter not known in original symbolical coloring. White, mixed with either of the primary or secondary colors, produces tints, while black, mixed with either, produces hues. The commingling of all the colored rays of the solar spectrum, or proportionately of the rays of the three primaries, pro- duces white light ; but the commingling, in the same proportions, of the three ma- terial pigments representing these three primaries, produces darkness, or black. The antique artists, in flat coloring — the very system which belongs to our sub- ject, obtained a perfect harmony in the use of the three primitives for decoration by the skilful addition, either through- out the picture or in the border, of the proportional quantities of unmixed white and black. The early color theory is not in per- fect accordance with modern scientific demonstration ; but, as to the ancients it stood for truth, by it we must explain their color symbols. White represents light, and black darkness ; but, as light exists only through fire, the natural apparent rep- resentative of which is red, symbolism starts with two primitive colors, red and
 * This term, meaning, mechanically — copying herald-