Notes: 28)
Bruno (Form
and Color) argues that to contain
all the elements necessary to
reproduce nature,
the palette would have to have contained
'the
complements red, yellow, blue, plus white
and black'. In the end he
compromises by saying
that all is
well if by black Pliny meant a bluish-black,
and notes the possibility
that in the minds of the
ancients
'blue and black pigments were
somehow
connected' (p. 86). His statement
that 'the large
majority of our extant examples of ancient paintings
show the presence of blue' (p. 76) is far from the
truth if
evidence from the Fayum portraits
is taken
into account. See also
Gage, Colour and Culture,
pp.29-30.