Origins of Color (Trade & Exchange)
November 9, 2025 – Los Angeles: This Crash Course Art History video explores how the history of art is intertwined with global trade and exchange, where materials, motifs, and ideas traverse vast distances, often resulting in entirely new forms of cultural expression. This is perhaps most visible in the vibrant pigments and dyes that color the world’s most iconic masterpieces.
Cochineal: The Red Gold of the New World
The journey of color from one continent to another is dramatically illustrated by the cochineal dye. In the early 16th century, Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés was astonished by the brilliant red textiles of the Aztec Empire. This color came from the dried, pulverized cochineal insect, a source of the deepest, most permanent red dye in the world. To Europeans, whose local red dyes were often made from smelly, fading mixtures, this was a revelation. Cochineal quickly became a global commodity, traded by the ton and valued as highly as silver, coloring luxury textiles for Spanish priests and appearing in European portraiture.
The Silk Road and Syncretism
Long before the transatlantic exchange, the vast network known as the Silk Road facilitated a profound mixing of cultures across Asia between 200 BCE and 900 CE. More than just a route for silk, it was a channel for trading textiles, jewelry, and intangible treasures like stories, such as the fables of Aesop, which traveled thousands of miles.
This exchange led to syncretism, where multiple cultures blend to create something new. A key example is the art of Gandhara (modern-day Pakistan), where statues of the Buddha from the 2nd or 3rd century CE exhibit distinct Greek influence. The Buddha’s relaxed, weight-shifted posture, known as contraposto, and the realistic draping of his robes were inspired by Classical Greek sculpture, blending seamlessly with the Indian subject matter. Similarly, the artists of Gandhara used the iconography of the Greek hero Hercules (lion skin and club) to convey the power and strength of the Buddhist bodyguard Vajrapani.
The Color of Conflict: Ultramarine and the Crusades
Artistic exchange was not always peaceful; it often arose from conflict. The Crusades, a series of religious wars starting in the 11th century, spurred a massive exchange of materials between the Middle East and Europe. This is how the precious rock lapis lazuli made its way from mines in what is now Afghanistan to Western Europe.
Crushed into a powder, lapis lazuli created Ultramarine, the bluest of blue pigments, which became literally worth its weight in gold. This luxurious material was a sign of wealth and piety, notably covering the deep blue starry ceiling of Giotto’s Arena Chapel in Padua, Italy (1305). The banker Enrico Scrovegni commissioned the chapel as a grand atonement for his family’s greed, using the incredibly expensive ultramarine to convey his status and devotion. So difficult was the pigment to acquire that, in 1508, the painter Albrecht Dürer lamented its cost, noting a pound could hardly be bought for 100 florins—about $20,000 by modern standards.
Ultimately, the origins of color reveal that art is a global tapestry. Materials from one place inevitably wind up in another, and artistic motifs move and mix across oceans and continents, allowing artists to respond to one another’s work without ever meeting face-to-face.