![]() ![]() before he turned to ‘science’ (including alchemy) and set up a laboratory in his own house in Stalbridge. 5 Significantly, in his Principall Navigations (1589), Hakluyt disclosed “an itemized list of secrets (.)ĥ If Grew was first and foremost interested in plant physiology, Plot was an antiquarian and a great admirer of Pliny’s Natural History while Boyle first embarked on a literary career before the mid-17 th century – i.e.4 Carla Mazzio therefore duly observes that “‘science,’ to Shakespeare’s ears and eyes, would have en (.).It is a well-known fact that, for example, heraldry changed the names and the meanings of colours, and today, both stained glass windows and manuscript illuminations testify to the rich symbolism of the vivid medieval palette.Ĥ But what happened after that? As the issue of polychromy, dyes and pigments in the early modern world is only beginning to be investigated thoroughly, Anna Marie Roos rightly calls attention to the pioneering work of some of Newton’s predecessors: As Newton’s readers discovered that the seven colours of the spectrum were red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet, and that each colour could merge into the next to generate more nuanced hues, they were confronted with an entirely new vision of the natural world.ģ Yet, recently, some scholars have followed in the footsteps of Michel Pastoureau so as to argue that, in the Middle Ages, conceptual schemes of colour configuration already existed and were no less important than Newton’s experiments to understand the wide range of colour symbolism which is still relevant nowadays. His Optiks (1704) was one of the most influential scientific works of the era. Newton began to work on optics in 1666, when he found out that colours could be recombined to produce white light. ![]() As a matter of fact, in the history of colours, the mid- 17 th century represents both a revolution and a starting point. 2 See for example his treatise entitled Siris: A Chain of Philosophical Reflexion and Inquiries (1744 (.)Ģ So, Elizabethan England was apparently hostile to vivid hues, and the traditional views are indeed that it was essentially in the 18 th century that the question of colours aroused fresh interest in the wake of Bishop Berkeley’s reflexions on colours 2 and, above all, of Isaac Newton’s innovative ideas on the colour spectrum. ![]()
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