The most interesting discoveries often occur at the confluence of disciplines. This book is not the history of costume, the history of painting, or the history of manners, but all at once, seen through the prism of a curious question: the relationship of Europeans to the color green from antiquity to the present day.
The fate of green has not been easy most of the time for technical reasons. Until very recently, people were unable to obtain a stable green dye, and this affected dyers and painters alike. This problem has survived almost to the present day: it is worth revisiting some old color film or family album photos, even taken in the 1980s, to marvel at what time has done to green: most often it has become ginger, brown, at best, greenish-gray.
Pastoureau was born in Paris on 17 June 1947. He studied at the École Nationale des Chartes, a college for prospective archivists and librarians. After writing his 1972 thesis about heraldic bestiaries in the Middle Ages, he worked in the coins, medals and antiquities department of the French National Library until 1982.
As luck would have it, getting a good green has always had side effects: for example, the paint could be so toxic that it would corrode the primer and the smears of other paints placed next to it; clothes made of fabric dyed in this way were, of course, dangerous to wear. Getting green by the usual way of mixing blue and yellow was long condemned for moral reasons: mixing the components created by nature was considered a devilish trick - this superstition was inherited by medieval Europe from the biblical times and the era of battles with barbarians. Incidentally, all artisans who mixed the elements were looked down upon in old Europe - the apothecaries also took a beating.
The instability of green as a dye or paint knocked green out of the ranks of popular colors for a long time, and the way green fabric or signage quickly shed evoked an unwitting analogy with the greens of nature, also unstable: the young spring greens darkened, burned out, turned yellow so quickly. In the north of Europe, grass and leaves died after living for several months, while in the south, grass that was not watered would become a pale yellow straw as early as June.
Green was seldom put on coats of arms, flags and shields: the emblems of their own and others were not to burn out, but had to be clearly visible against the background of the forest, behind the trees, among the distant hills - nature with its kingdom of green played a cruel joke with her favorite color, not to give it to people for use.
But even in spite of all that, the color green could not be disliked at all. At times it came into fashion, began to symbolize love itself (yes, that's right, not red), became the heraldic color of beloved heroes, emperors and kings, and hymns were composed to it. Later it was again the color of infidelity, adultery, witchcraft, and even death. And then again - the color of youth, luck, and - long before dollars - money. Green's fate and reputation were as fickle as he was.
As is almost always the case in French non-fiction, every page of this little book is full of discoveries and fascinating facts, sometimes related not so directly to the color green.
Pasturo's work, for example, reveals the following: how the German word lindern (lightness as well as ease, soothe, soften, quench) was derived; how green became the color of Islam (possibly due to the Christian Crusades); why the Latin words "man" (vir), "spring" (ver), "strength" (vis) and perhaps even "virtue" (virtus) were all cognates (hint: through the Latin word for "green" - viridis); how girls of the early Middle Ages could signify their unmarried status and in what form this tradition has survived in France to this day; how one could profess love without words; where one should spend the night to conceive a firstborn; how paganism penetrated to the heart of the European Middle Ages long before the Renaissance and what the word "minnesinger" (German troubadour) literally means; why in ancient Rome only rich women occasionally wore green, and why strict conservatives blamed these fashionistas for their lack of patriotism; what the good French King Henry IV's nickname Vert Galant really meant (something like "green suitor," though the original interpretations were slightly different. .. ); what a rigged loss of the Green team at a match in Byzantium once led to (popular unrest, the fire of Constantinople and the death of over 30,000 people); how the old English song "Green Sleeves" was born and what a Count of Savoy had to do with it; how, when and why the green got the nickname of the color of hope; how Viking PR worked to attract settlers to Greenland; in what the ancient Germans excelled the Greeks and Romans (the Nazis will one day cheerfully remember this); how the medieval nobility celebrated May Day; why green became the color of gambling and billiard tables; what cannot be served and what cannot be said at modern weddings in Western France; and how Count d'Artois, the future Charles X, stopped the color green from becoming the emblem of the Great French Revolution.
Also, why the French equivalent of the Russian mat is called "green language"; how warm were houses and castles in the Middle Ages; why blue was once considered a warm color; with what color Europe's most famous and popular lovers, Tristan and Isolde, were associated; and how poets saw Tristan's coat of arms, unlike any real noble coat of arms; how avant-garde artists, beginning with Wassily Kandinsky, felt about the green and with whom Kandinsky compared the green; why the portrait in Western painting had reached perfection long before the landscape (incidentally, this also applies to icon painting); how and why the performers of the role of Judas died mysteriously in medieval mysteries; why green became unhappy for the French theater, and what role Molière played in creating this superstition-his comedies, his remarks on the costumes of the characters, and his own death; what fantastic way the green vipers were believed to have multiplied, how bashful the toads were and how remorseful the crocodiles were; why aliens, alluring and terrifying, were called "green men"; why a dyer whose vat of yellow paint was found in his workshop could lose his job and his right to practice his trade; where, when and to what extent it was dangerous to wear green and have green eyes - and even, finally, whether Napoleon was poisoned by the English.
And finally, how did green become a "permissive" traffic light? It turns out that it all started centuries before traffic lights - at a time when red symbolized power and prohibition, and green was generally understood to be the antithesis of red on the traditional color scale.
And all of this is only a small part of the questions the book poses and answers.
For all this, the book is not without its shortcomings: unfortunately, Pasturault's language is dry for such an entertaining subject - while he is certainly much more lively and poetic than Le Goff, he is inferior in poetry to many authors of French-language historical and cultural nonfiction. Stranger things have happened. For example, a phrase referring to churches disfigured by Protestant purist fanatics-"As a result, the Christian temple inside becomes austere and almost devoid of color, like a synagogue"-suggests that Pasturo has never seen a single synagogue. Similarly, the words "In Italy, for example, the pharmacy sign is a red cross" suggest that the author has not been to Italy: the emblem of the pharmacy in Italy is the same green cross as it is everywhere else. Such bloopers are also bad because they undermine the credibility of other claims and facts.
Nevertheless, on the whole, the book is good. It is also good because it not only entertains, but also encourages independent research and reflection. For example, the story of how green was despised by the first Protestants, who declared it the color of the figurines, brings to mind the magnificent portrait of Thomas More, a consistent and steadfast fighter against the Reformation, executed for his position and numbered among Catholic saints: perhaps it is no accident that Holbein depicted him against the background of a magnificent curtain in such a rich, magnificent green color. The color is so vivid and strong that it essentially determines the gamut of the entire portrait, as if flooding the canvas with vivid green light. After reading Pasturo, such details no longer seem coincidental.
The discussion of how the color ignored by heraldry found its way onto the flags of some European countries also suggests curious thoughts: for example, on the flag of Ireland the green stripe symbolizes Catholicism, the orange one symbolizes Protestantism, and the white one symbolizes the peace that should reign between Irish people of different faiths. Knowing this detail, one begins to perceive in a new way the unconditional love of the Irish for the color green, which has become the national color, now it is almost a hint: a real Irishman can only be a Catholic!
As for how the green stripe got the Italian flag, there is only vague speculation in the book. But I may have a version. Italy gained its independence and its flag after a century of wars of liberation, the Risorgimento, and if the undisputed leader of Italy on the battlefield was Garibaldi, the main poet of national rise and resistance was undoubtedly Verdi.
The motto "Long live Verdi!" (Viva Verdi!) could be heard and seen on the walls more often in that passionate era than the phrase "Long live Garibaldi! - After all, being a passionate opera fan was something the Austrians could not forbid. But most importantly, the Italians, with their penchant for dangerous and childish play, couldn't help but love the fact that the great patriotic composer's last name perfectly matched the abbreviation of the banned slogan "Viva Vittorio Emmanuele, King of Italy!" (Viva Vittorio Emmanuele, re d'Italia!) - and thus the slogan Viva Verdi! became a way of simultaneously showing delight in Troubadour or Nabucco and under the noses of the Austrians to glorify the dream of the kingdom of Italy. Perhaps the green color on the Italian flag was a tribute to both Verdi and this game with the Austrians, because verdi is Italian for "green" (plural).
The very fact that the book encourages you to think about such things by solving various historical puzzles is, in my opinion, unequivocal evidence that it, like Pasturo's other works, is worth reading.
Still, I certainly missed a lot in this short book. For example, I would have liked to have read something about the greens in the works of the Florentine della Robbia, about whether the "greens" in Coro's landscapes were always so brown, or whether what we see today is the lovely and yet terrible result of a disaster requiring immediate restoration, and something about restoration plans as well. But one cannot wish for too much. In any case, I intend to continue my acquaintance with Michel Pastouraud's books about the adventures of paint in history.
P.S. For me, the most valuable thing in this book was an even deeper understanding than before of how much painting depends on technology - and, even more incredibly, how much it doesn't depend on it: for several centuries of true greatness in painting date back to a time when painters had no proper paints, suffered with grinding minerals in some kind of pots and were never sure that the colors they put on a board or canvas would keep their hues at least for several more years.
Today painters have any lasting hues at their disposal, but Memling, van der Weyden, Ghirlandaio, and Giorgione are impossible.
This article was sponsored by Nariman Yasinov
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