Kermes and cochineal; woad and indigo. Repercussions of the discovery of the new world in the workshops of european painters and dyers in the modern age

Abstract

Kermes and woad were two of the most important colourings employed in Europe for painting and dyeing in particular from very early times. The discovery in the first half of the twentieth century of traces of kermes in the Couches-du-Rhone cave in the south of Provence (France) dates the knowledge and use of this colouring back to the Neolithic period, coinciding with the start of agriculture, the domestication of animals and the sedentarisation of man. There is similarly no doubt that woad was highly appreciated and widely employed as a colouring and pigment in all ancient Mediterranean cultures and was, indeed, commented upon by various Roman historians such as Vitruvius (1st c. BC), Pliny the Elder (1st c. BC) and Dioscorides (1st c. AD). During the Classical Period and the Middle Ages the use of these dyes was combined with others which provided the same colours in acceptable or even superior qualities, as was the case of the native indigo or the carmine that reached the port of Venice from the East. However, none of these colourings managed to eclipse the importance of kermes and woad in Europe since ancient times. This ongoing presence only became seriously threatened by the entry of cochineal carmine and indigo that started to be imported from the New World in the sixteenth century.