Tea at Trianon: Color of the Year

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Thursday, January 9, 2020

Color of the Year

From Architectural Digest:

When the color experts at Pantone first decided to name a color of the year 20 years ago, they knew they were taking a risk. Not only was the cultural conversation dominated by Y2K paranoia, but Pantone was hardly a household name. “The person on the street didn’t know what Pantone was,” recalls Leatrice Eiseman, the executive director of the company’s Color Institute. Common reactions, she says, included, “You mean the shampoo? The Italian bread?”

Two decades after the new millennium was painted Cerulean Blue, Pantone’s color forecasts are the reigning authority for a multitude of industries. To ring in yet another era, the company announced tonight that the Pantone Color of the Year 2020 is Classic Blue—a familiar, calming shade of azure. (Read more.)

Our Lady in Glory by Carlo Dolci

From Aleteia:

We’ll be seeing a lot of this Classic Blue shade in the coming months, in everything from shoes to wall paint to accent pillows to the graphics used in print and TV ads. And part of why the color is expected to have such a steadying effect is its pure familiarity. The blue of an evening sky is one of the first colors humans see. But reproducing that calm, uplifting blueness wasn’t always easy for painters and cloth dyers. There aren’t many natural sources for inks. The Egyptians were the first to create a bluish color, much lighter and a little yellower than 2020’s Classic Blue (which is made up of various percentages of red, green, and blue).

The first true blue pigment developed for painters was not available until the time of Fra Angelico, who made this color his own in breathtaking heavenly scenes accented with pure gold. “Fra Angelico blue,” as it came to be known, was also called ultramarine (“beyond the sea”). It was made by grinding a rare blue stone known as lapis lazuli, mined only in Afghanistan, into a powder mixed with fixatives. Lapis lazuli (Latin for “the stone of Lazuli,” where it was found) gave its name to the color blue in the Romance languages (azul in Spanish, azur in French) and to the azure color of the sky.

In Western Christian art, the blue of heaven became associated with the mantle of the Queen of Heaven. Wrapping Our Lady in the rare blue pigment became an artist’s way of paying homage, and an art patron or church’s way of sparing no expense in its devotion. (Read more.)