A Red Like No Other: How Cochineal Colored the World

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≈ Opposite F i g u r e

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Firefighter’s hooded cape (shōbō zukin) Japan, eighteenth–nineteenth century, Edo period Wool with gold- and silk-thread embroidery and appliqué 36½ x 23 in.

John C. Weber Collection

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Firefighter’s ceremonial coat (kajibanten) Japan, eighteenth–nineteenth century, Edo period Wool with gold- and silk-thread embroidery and appliqué 38 x 48 in.

John C. Weber Collection

Based on evidence from items scientifically analyzed to date, the majority of red Dutch trade fabrics were dyed with lac, a dyestuff readily available through Southeast Asian trading partners. The dye for the woolen fabric in this particular set of garments, however, is cochineal, likely acquired through the robust inter-European trade between Spain and the Netherlands.

The coat (kajibanten) was likely used only for ceremonial purposes; a more robust coat, often made of leather, would be worn for actually fighting a fire. The hooded cape (shōbō zukin) covered all but the firefighter’s eyes, offering additional protection.

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ambassador and his party finally reached their destination after over four years of travel and presented the Habsburg gifts at the Safavid court in Qazvin on July 16, 1618, the only object known to elicit any reaction was a large crystal chest with gold columns, which Shah ‘Abbas admired “as a rare and valuable thing.”6 The seemingly indifferent Safavid reception of cochineal raises two separate issues about the dyestuff: one concerning its presence or availability in Iran prior to 1618, and the other regarding the possible use or disposition of the 750 pounds brought by Don García.

As in other visual traditions, the color red was ubiquitous within works of Islamic art, including those created in Iran during medieval and early modern times, and with multiple compositional treatments, aesthetic effects, and symbolic associations.7 As described in treatises from as early as the eighth to tenth centuries and as confirmed by twentiethcentury scientific analysis, Persian artists and artisans used many different natural and synthetic substances of regional origin for their red colorants. The pigments and dyes created a wide range of shades and tones, each known by a distinctive name. Insects that were particularly prized for producing a deep and bright crimson color included various aphid species of the Coccus genus, such as Porphyrophora hameli, indigenous to Azerbaijan and Armenia, and Kermococcus vermilis (or Kermes vermilio), whose expanse stretched from the Mediterranean across the Fertile Crescent and into the Iranian plateau.

Exactly when Dactylopius coccus (cochineal)—with its capacity to create even more brilliant red dyestuff than 74

kermes—entered the Persian dye repertoire has yet to be firmly established. It is generally understood, however, that grana cochinilla was being imported into Iran through trade routes from the Levant during the sixteenth century. Iran’s potential as an important market for cochineal was underscored by recurring references to the detrimental effects on trade created by ongoing warfare between Ottoman Turkey and Safavid Iran and to the anticipated commercial advantages of peace in correspondence between merchants in Italy and Spain dating from 1580 to 1582.8 Likewise, Spanish documents from the last quarter of the sixteenth century mention Persia (Iran) among the countries where grana was held in high esteem, and an English source of 1618, the same year Shah ‘Abbas received Philip III’s gifts, reported that Iran was getting cochineal from Turkey and Barbary (North Africa) and exporting it to India.9 Thus the five barrels brought by the Habsburg delegation hardly would have constituted a novelty at the Safavid court. In short, the gift may have held greater significance for its donor than its recipient.

As for the use of cochineal in Safavid Iran, recent conservation testing has confirmed that American, as well as Armenian, cochineal was the source for bright red motifs, including animals, figures, and inscriptions, in selected silk textiles and carpets from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (figures 1a and 1b).10 Analysis of sixteenth-century Persian paintings also might help determine a more precise time frame for the appearance of American cochineal in Iran. It is tempting to suppose that red textiles attributable to the reign of Shah ‘Abbas were dyed with the Dactylopius coccus received from Philip III. And if such a fanciful notion can obtain, it is equally tempting to imagine that the Persian verse “There has never been a garment of such beauty,” on one of the silks now known to have been woven with cochineal threads (figure 2), was inspired by the cloth’s perfect red.11 On the other hand, given the apparent Safavid practice of recycling or redistributing gifts,12 it is just as likely that the five Habsburg barrels were never even opened in Iran and instead were consigned straightaway for export to India.13 Thus one monarch’s costly gift may have become another’s commercial commodity, thereby bringing cochineal’s intercultural circulation full circle.

Opposite F i g u r e 7 . 2 Textile (panel) depicting a scene from Nizama’s Khamsa, Iran, Islamic, sixteenth–seventeenth century. Silk, metal-wrapped thread; double-weave, 25¾ x 14⅜ in.; 8 pounds.

Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fletcher Fund, 1946 (46.156.7). © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image source: Art Resource, NY.

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E M P I R E A N D E X P LO I T A T I O N : C O C H I N E A L A N D G LO B A L T R A D E

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A Pigment’s Power

Red in the Portraiture of the Spanish and British Empires M ichael A . B rown

in painted portraiture throughout the early modern Atlantic world is the predominance of the color red in garments worn by portrait subjects and in the drapery that typically frames such compositions. Many other colors appear repeatedly in portraits: black depicts the clothing of widows as well as Spanish subjects during periods when sumptuary laws forbade the wearing of bright colors, while white represents clothing worn by members of various Catholic religious orders. But throughout history, variants of red, from purple to burgundy to scarlet, are inextricably linked to royal identity.

One of the remarkable shared traits

In the early modern period (1525–1800) global trade, market economies (especially in the Netherlands), and the vast imperial reach of Spain and Britain provided access to American cochineal and transformed its brilliant dye into liquid gold. As a wealthy mercantile class emerged, red became its color of choice. Famously, it was also the choice of the British military, fraught with imperial and Christological symbolism, as in the crimson, pietà-like composition of Benjamin West’s Death of General Wolfe at Quebec (figure 1).

Just as the wearing of red was variously dictated by legislated proscription, royal privilege, or military protocol, its prominence, as well as its frequent association with cochineal, in the painted portraiture of early modern Spain, its North and South American colonies, and the fledgling United States and Canada, was a consciously chosen indicator of power and social status. As such, from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century in the Atlantic world, red never went out of fashion.

F i g u r e 2 0 . 1 Diego de Velázquez, King Philip IV of Spain, 1644. Oil on

canvas, 52⅜ x 38½ in. The Frick Collection, New York, 1911.1.123. © The Frick Collection.

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T h e R oya l R e d

Like the kings, queens, cardinals, military commanders, presidents, and princes who wore—and wear—it, the color red is bound to the history of empire and the economies of global trade networks. While the discovery and export of cochineal were among the most economically significant consequences of the sixteenth-century Spanish conquest of Mexico, red has been linked to royalty since ancient and biblical times. From the purple cloaks worn in the mosaic portraits of Emperor Justinian and Empress Theodora in San Vitale, Ravenna, to the burgundy silk velvet saddle and sash in Titian’s Charles V on Horseback, various shades of red have served to signify royalty for centuries.

Red also reached beyond the royalty of empire to depict both Christian and indigenous nobility, establishing Christological and royal connotations of the color that would inform its use in portraiture of the early modern period. In examples throughout the history of art, red is the color of the robe used by Roman soldiers to cloak Jesus as “king of the Jews,” as memorably seen in El Greco’s monumental painting Disrobing of Christ (figure 2).

In the painting, now in situ in the Cathedral of Toledo sacristy (where the clergy dress), El Greco’s red dominates; it takes on greater significance in proximity to portraits of bishops in red vestments hanging nearby and the actual red vestments kept in the room. In this context, red is understood to signify not only royalty and sanctity but also sacrifice.

It must not have been coincidental that facing his execution, the Inca king Túpac Amaru consciously chose to dress in a crimson doublet and mantle dyed in American cochineal, imported from Spain according to royal legislation.1 Amaru also wore the royal Inca mascaypacha (headdress), with a red tassel signifying his imperial status, which can be seen in numerous postconquest portraits of Inca rulers. The choice

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a pri z ed pigment : cochineal in e u ropean art

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fabric that may have been unraveled. Defining the cloth contextually rather than by its particular physical properties, he concluded, “The term bayeta should be used for any cloth that was raveled to provide colored threads” in Native American and Spanish American weaving.26 Unraveling cloth to obtain usable threads for other projects is not unique to the Southwest (see Osborn on African unraveling, this volume).27 However, Pueblo, Navajo, and Spanish American weavers achieved remarkable feats of recycling— unraveling yarns from whole bayeta cloth and reweaving them into their own handwoven fabrics. Studies of raveled yarns in extant Native American and Spanish American blankets and garments have revealed suites of characteristics that shift nearly decade by decade through the nineteenth century. The variations reflect the ever-changing nature of the trade cloths themselves and were likely due to different trade sources, evolving industrial practices, and other historical and technological factors.

From empirical evidence, extant yarns unraveled from bayeta and rewoven into handmade southwestern textiles can be characterized by direction of spin (S or Z); relative quality (fine, medium, or coarse) and size; and use as singles or multiples (from pairs to as many as ten). Other factors include the worsted (straight, smooth) or woolen (fuzzy, spiraling) quality of spinning; dyes (cochineal, lac, a combination, or synthetics) and their penetration (solid or speckled); color saturation (deep or light); and tones (crimson, scarlet, pinks, and purples).28 How was the recycling of yarns and fibers actually accomplished? Although records have not revealed the specifics of how southwestern weavers unraveled bayeta fabrics, some probable techniques can be reconstructed through analysis of extant historic fabrics, logical speculation, and experimentation with new materials. For the recarding of fibers into multicolor specialty yarns, such as pinks and heathered grays, twentieth-century documentation of practices among southwestern weavers shows the way (see figure 9).

Cutting cloth into strips represents the most efficient, and least wasteful, approach to obtaining raveled yarns for weaving, and surplus wool fibers for carding, newly hand-spun yarns. It is logical that southwestern weavers unraveled imported bayeta cloth by cutting it into narrow strips and pulling the short ends from the fabric. This would automatically result in a hank of parallel threads that were relatively easy to handle as a weft bundle. The long raveled strands were used singly if their weight matched that of the weaver’s hand-spun wool yarns. Alternately, from two to as many as ten strands were incorporated into the weaving as a loose bundle of yarns. The short leftover strands removed from the cloth strip could be carded together with locally sourced white wool (or that of sheep of other colors) to produce a blended pink. They could also have been recarded and respun into solid red yarns.

Evidence is clear for Navajos cutting narrow pieces of imported fabric to create intact cloth strips for weaving, much like those used in rag rugs. This was also done by Spanish American weavers (see figure 9). H. P. Mera devotes a chapter to the subject of “cloth-strip blankets of the Navajo.”

Showing the original fabrics’ over-under structure of plain weave, or the diagonal texture of twill weave, these strips appear prominently in a number of handwoven Navajo blankets. Sometimes the edges of the cloth frayed, resulting in a chenille-like quality, which Wheat alternately called heavy terry cloth, Turkish towel, or tufted. Both Mera and Wheat discussed this technique as a relatively late phenomenon, restricted to the 1870s and 1880s, though neither author extrapolated the original way in which most, if not all, raveled yarns likely were obtained. Wheat verged on this notion when he analyzed one saddle blanket “in which [the] principal material consists of strips of raveled flannel with most [but not all] of the cross threads removed.”30 The prodigious efforts of Native American and Spanish American weavers to obtain red from foreign sources represent a fascinating story. Clearly, imported bayeta cloth provided a ready material for southwestern ingenuity. Today, cochineal-dyed yarns in historic southwestern textiles serve as critical diagnostics for dating undocumented textiles and identifying their cultural contexts (figures 12 and 13). Beyond technological feats, these labors emphasize the aesthetic appeal of red and the artistic intent of many nineteenth-century weavers.

Unraveling fuzzy wool yarns from whole cloth is a sticky process, particularly where the cloth’s surface has been brushed, fulled, or felted to any degree. Unraveling even a smooth cotton cloth to produce fringe along a hem attests to the ways in which warp and weft yarns bind together to thwart the unraveler. British textile writer Jessica Hemmings uses the term unpicked to describe the unweaving of cloth.29 Given ≈ F i g u r e 1 8 . 1 3 Navajo sarape with small poncho neck slit, Navajo Nation, Arizona or New Mexico, mid-Classic period, ca. 1865. Red raveled wool that each pass of weft through a loom’s warps is called a pick weft yarn (one–two S-spun strands) dyed with 100 percent cochineal, 72 x in weaverly jargon, this term for undoing the fabric is apt.

48 in.; slit length 4⅞ in. Private collection.

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rec y cled reds

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a n t h o n y va n d y c k « The Balbi Children, painted in Genoa, ca. 1625–1627 Oil on canvas 867⁄32 x 5929⁄64 in.

The National Gallery, London, NG6502 © The National Gallery, London/Art Resource, NY

Van Dyck’s relationship with cochineal probably began in his youth in Antwerp, where his father was a successful textile merchant with business contacts in Italy and where his teacher was Peter Paul Rubens, who was tied by marriage to the silk industry and used cochineal as a lake. In 1622 van Dyck was invited to Genoa by his father’s colleague Gio Agostino Balbi, whose wealth derived from the silk and wool industries, as is amply displayed in this portrait of his children. The portrait shows the children not only dressed in opulent silks and velvets but surrounded by them. Many are red, but some, such as the curtains, are green. The textiles are especially scintillating because of van Dyck’s use of cochineal glazes.b Indeed, as Ashok Roy of The National Gallery, London, observed: [The artist’s] method of painting for the children’s clothes, and particularly for the large hanging curtain, involves a more extensive glazing technique than is seen in his earlier work and, in fact, is not much used later. This presumably reflects an interest in Venetian methods of drapery painting for which glazes, particularly red lakes . . .

play such an important part. The background curtain to the right is a most elaborate piece of drapery painting and involves undercolours consisting of orange-toned pure vermilion mixed with white and red earth, and then further modeled in two contrasting paints, one based on deep blue indigo and the other on a rich crimson red lake, likely to have been prepared from cochineal. The final shimmering effect of the shot colours was achieved by glazing and scumbling with further red lake, red lake mixed with indigo, and pure indigo.c

r e m b r a n d t ( h a r m e n s z va n r i j n ) The Jewish Bride, 1667 Oil on canvas 4753⁄64 x 6535⁄64 in.

Rijksmuseum, on loan from the City of Amsterdam, A. van der Hoop Bequest, SK-C-216 Photo: Album/Art Resource, NY

In this portrait of a contemporary couple portrayed as historical figures from the Old Testament, Rembrandt followed a practice common among his European peers, applying a thick, dark red cochineal glaze over an orange-red vermilion to give depth and luminosity to the cloak of the bride.a

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v i n c e n t va n g o g h Shoes, 1888 Oil on canvas 18 x 2¾ in.

Metropolitan Museum of Art, purchase, The Annenberg Foundation Gift, 1992 (1992.374) Image © Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image source: Art Resource, NY

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pierre-auguste renoir » Madame Léon Clapisson, 1883 Oil on canvas 32 x 25¾ in.

Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection, 1933.1174 Art Institute of Chicago

Recent investigation of a section of canvas hidden by the frame of this portrait revealed a much more vivid purple-red coloration in the background than the subdued and translucent cool blue-gray tones of the exposed surface. This made clear that Renoir’s original palette was a much hotter one than was generally understood of the painter, as can be seen in this digitally recolored image of what the original must have looked like. Another surprise was that the pigment turned out to be carmine lake made from cochineal. Fugitive as it was, cochineal was thought to have been replaced by this time in European palettes by aniline, or synthetic, dyes.d Although few paintings from this period have been tested, one by van Gogh of his shoes, painted in 1888 and now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, has also tested positive for cochineal.e

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unknown

j o s é d e r i b e r a (1591–1652) »

Genealogical book Spain (probably Seville), late seventeenth century Vellum, paper, watercolor, gold leaf 123⁄16 x 8⅜ x 91⁄16 in.

Museum of International Folk Art, IFAF Collection, Gift of the Fred Harvey Collection, FA.1979.64.136

Naples, Italy, ca. 1625–1630 Point of the brush with carmine red ink, possibly from cochineal, squared in pen and brown ink 91⁄16 x 55⁄16 in.

J. Paul Getty Museum, 91.GA.56

Title page

It would not be a surprise to discover that within a century after cochineal’s arrival in Spain, its use was especially widespread in Seville, the port city where the dyestuff was off-loaded and traded. This illuminated book traces the lineage of the prominent Montes de Oca y Bohorquez family, who may have migrated from Seville to Mexico, where the book was acquired. Its palette of pink-tinged red ink has tested positive for cochineal, which may have been chosen because its high cost would have been a clear marker of the family’s social status.

An Oriental Potentate Accompanied

by His Halberd Bearer

Ribera trained as a painter in Valencia, in his native Spain, but had migrated to Rome by around 1611. He later moved to Spanish Naples, where he remained until his death. In early modern Europe, as in pre-Columbian Mexico, cochineal was the preferred ink base for many drawings and documents. The pale quality of the red ink in Ribera’s drawing is not necessarily due to fading but rather to the dilute solution of the lake pigment. This created a delicate effect deliberately sought by draftsmen and scribes.

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French designer Paul Poiret, with whom he agreed that the textile itself was more important than what was made from it. Poiret was licensed to sell Fortuny’s textiles in his shop in Paris before Fortuny opened his own store there in 1913.3 In 1925 Fortuny and Poiret,4 along with the young Italian designer Maria Monaci Gallenga, participated in the the famous Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs and Industriels Modernes in Paris, where Gallenga won the grand prize with a work inspired by the Venetian tradition of Fortuny.

His creative influence aside, Fortuny’s work was completely different from any of his design contemporaries. From the formal point of view of cutting and sewing, Fortuny designs were characterized by great simplicity and moderation, concepts at the forefront of changes in style. His creations were distinguished by the quality of the cloth, the originality of the colors, and the decorative repertory of motifs from all cultures and eras. For example, his idea of stamping fabric was inspired by the discovery of a fragment of stamped linen at an excavation on the island of Crete in 1906.5 Perhaps more than anything, his works displayed a singular interest in the Venetian Renaissance and its prominent representation of the color red.

Decadent and inspiring, Venice was traditionally linked to the trading and production of magnificent silk fabrics—many of them red—and to dyers with a high level of technical skill. In keeping with this tradition, Fortuny chose materials of the best quality, applying decoration using different printing techniques and tools—stamps, metal plates, rollers, batik, serigraph, pochoir, gelatin print, photographic imprint, and diamond point.

He employed all their variations and possibilities,6 modernizing some and inventing others, under the strictest conditions of secrecy and jealously guarding his patented techniques.7 He and his wife, dressmaker Henriette Negrin, produced their designs in the Pesaro Orfei Palazzo in Venice, their residence and the present-day Museo Fortuny. In 1919 he started a factory in an ancient convent on the island of Giudecca, where he produced textile designs for set decoration.

Opposite, top left F i g u r e s 2 9 . 2 Mariano Fortuny, pleated silk Delphos in purplish red, Spain, 1920–1930. Silk and glass paste; satin and blown-glass pleat, 535⁄32 x 3431⁄64 in. Museo del Traje, Madrid, CE088438, Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte. Full dress plus details of waistband and fit from sleeve to shoulder. Photo courtesy Museo del Traje.

Opposite, bottom left and right F i g u r e s 2 9 . 3 a – 2 9 . 3 b Mariano Fortuny, pleated silk Delphos in orange, Spain, 1920–1930. Silk and glass paste; satin and blown-glass pleat, 41 x 14⅝ in. Museo del Traje, Madrid, CE088439, Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte. Full dress and detail of fit from sleeve to shoulder. Photo courtesy Museo del Traje.

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Fortuny and Cochineal

A constant in Fortuny’s career was his meticulous study of color and its use on cloth, canvas, and paper, as well as the techniques of past masters, Titian and Tintoretto in particular. His large library in the Pesaro Orfei Palazzo holds numerous volumes about the processes of dyeing, color and its chemical composition, printing on textiles, and more.8 A strong indicator of the value he placed on his colors is found in the private appraisal of his estate done between 1939 and 1943; the estate included “coloring materials (many of which cannot be found in the marketplace).”9 In 1933 Fortuny marketed Tempera Fortuny,10 a paint collection with a varied repertory of colors, with which he was able to imitate the palette used by the majority of the Venetian masters, whose formulas he went on perfecting throughout his life. His friend René Piot took charge of advertising and distributing these colors to painters of the grandes écoles of Paris and in the United States. As Claudio Franzini noted in a 1999 biography of Fortuny, “they were numerous, his artist contemporaries, who consulted him and asked his advice about the composition and mix of colors: among them John Singer Sargent, Gustav Klimpt, Pierre Bonard, Emile Besnar, and Maurice Denis.”11 In an age in which new, mass-produced synthetic pigments were available, attractive, and used by many of the artists of the day, Fortuny used natural colors in an ongoing and widespread manner. Among them was cochineal, with which he bestowed upon his pieces a palette of unequaled tones of red.

Recently, a series of physical and chemical analyses of textiles and articles of clothing made by Fortuny has made it possible to detail with greater precision the way in which the so-called Magician of Venice worked, especially with cochineal. The studies prove his use of the dye not only by itself but sometimes in combination with other dyeing materials, some natural and some synthetic. Though, to a certain extent, the studies uncover Fortuny’s very personal touch as he dyed or painted his fabrics, the results do not destroy the sense of wizardry and mystery that the artist and his work inspire.

In 2013 the Museum of International Folk Art of Santa Fe, New Mexico, arranged for the analysis of samples from four items from the Mariano Fortuny Collection in the Museo del Traje (Costume Museum) in Madrid, Spain. The study12 (see Sanz Rodríguez, this volume) confirmed that in all the samples save one, the main component used by Fortuny for dyeing the textiles was carminic acid, the main colorant of cochineal. The study also confirmed the use of cochineal in combination with other natural dyes. The results are in keeping with a pioneering study by the Art Institute of Chicago,13

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a red re v i val : cochineal in the modern w orld

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