Bibliography: p.303-323. - Includes index.

1. Classical inheritance -- Archaeology and philology -- Greek theories of color -- Splendor and motion -- 2. Fortunes of Apelles -- The four-color theory -- The problem of mixture -- Apelles in the Renaissance -- Dürer and Titian -- The idea of the primaries -- Apelles in the studio -- 3. Light from the East -- Monumental mosaics -- Meaning in mosaic -- Light and liturgy -- Realism and movement -- The colors of Divine Light -- The colors of Islam -- 4. A Dionysian aesthetic -- The new light -- Suger's aesthetics -- The blues of St-Denis -- From glass-staining to glass-painting -- Workmanship versus materials -- The secularization of light -- Dante on the psychology of light -- 5. Color-language, color-symbols -- Basic color terms -- The colors of heraldry -- Secular and sacred in color-meaning -- Post-medieval preceptions of heraldic blazon -- 6. Unweaving the rainbow -- From titian to Testa -- The Romantics -- Prismatics and harmony -- Twentieth-century epilogue -- 7. Disegno versus colore -- Alberti and Grey -- Ghiberti and perception -- Color-symbolism in the Quattrocento -- The importance of materials -- Leonardo da Vinci -- Venetian color in the sixteenth century -- 8. Peacock's tail -- Color indicators -- Leonardo on alchemy -- Alchemical gendering in Jan van Eyck -- Alchemy in the Sistine Chapel -- Spiritual metaphors in metallurgy -- 9. Color under control : the reign of Newton -- The colors of light -- Darkness visible -- The problem of color-scales -- Newton's Opticks and the uses of classification -- Color-space from Newton to Seurat -- 10. The palette : "mother of all colors" -- The palette as system -- The well-tempered palette -- Delacroix's palettes -- The palette as painting -- 11. Colors of the mind : Goethe's legacy -- Color as perception -- The impact of Goethe -- The morality of color -- "Painting is recording colored sensations" -- From Matisse to abstraction -- 12. The substance of color -- Venetian secrets -- Technology and ideology -- The impact of synthetic colors -- Time the painter -- Color as constructive material -- 13. The sound of color -- The Greek chromatic scale -- Medieval and Renaissance color harmonies -- Arcimboldo's color-music -- Music and color in the seventeenth century -- Castel's ocular harpsichord -- The Romantics -- Sonority and rhythm -- Moving color -- 14. Color without theory : the role of abstraction -- The grammar of color -- De Stijl -- Color at the Bauhaus -- Empiricism in Italy and France -- Empiricism as theory -- The materials of abstraction.

This book looks at color in Western culture from the ancient Greeks to the late twentieth century. Gage describes the first theories of color articulated by philosophers from Democritus to Aristotle and the subsequent attempts by the Romans and their Renaissance disciples to organize color systematically or endow it with symbolic power. Topics include the place of color in religion, Newton's analysis of the spectrum, Goethe's color theory, and the theories and practices that have attempted to unite color and music.