White

As a pigment, white is often thought to represent an absence colour, but it is without doubt an important colour in its own right, just like red, blue, green, or yellow and, like them, white has its own intriguing history. In this richly illustrated book, Michel Pastoureau, a celebrated authority on the history of colours, presents a fascinating visual, social, and cultural history of the color white in European societies, from antiquity to today.

Illustrated throughout with a wealth of captivating images ranging from the ancient world to the twenty-first century, White examines the evolving place, perception, and meaning of this deceptively simple but complex hue in art, fashion, literature, religion, science, and everyday life across the millennia. Before the seventeenth century, white’s status as a true colour was never contested. On the contrary, from antiquity until the height of the Middle Ages, white formed with red and black a chromatic triad that played a central role in life and art. Nor has white always been thought of as the opposite of black. Through the Middle Ages, the true opposite of white was red. White also has an especially rich symbolic history, and the colour has often been associated with purity, virginity, innocence, wisdom, peace, beauty, and cleanliness.

With its striking design and compelling text, White is a colourful history of a surprisingly vivid and various colour.

About the Author

Michel Pastoureau is a historian and emeritus director of studies at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes de la Sorbonne in Paris. A renowned authority on the history of colors, symbols, and heraldry, he is the author of many books, including Blue, Black, Green, Red, and Yellow (all Princeton). His books have been translated into more than thirty languages.