The art of painting rainbows—between color science and painter's practice

Abstract

We present the first quantitative analysis of representing rainbow colors in historical paintings from Antiquity to the twentieth century. Using high‐resolution photographs of art works we determined and analyzed percentages of areas from painted rainbows covered by different color categories. Our results are the first to quantitatively show that up to the nineteenth century, painters generally did not follow contemporary color theories when painting rainbows. The only evidence of an influence from color theory on painted rainbows is the use of a color scheme consisting of three primary and three secondary colors as described by d'Aguilon (1613) and others. For painting rainbows, this scheme was used for the first time in the early nineteenth century, rising to 6% of all paintings created during that century, and reaching 24% in the twentieth century. We conclude that in the vast majority of paintings, individual color choices by the painter were decisive. Additionally, we identified a few weak trends: (1) color combinations in painted rainbows over time gradually become slightly more similar to the color proportions in natural rainbows; (2) from the Renaissance onward, circa 35%–40% of the painted rainbows consist of orange, yellow and green, sometimes with white as well. This trend may originate from Antiquity; (3) Already from Antiquity a white band was used as an artistic but unrealistic device to create the impression of a luminous arc. This trend reached its maximum in popularity in Baroque, but it is still used in many painted rainbows up to the twentieth century.

Optimization of Color Matching and Conveyance of Picture Information in Chinese Oil Painting under the Background of Big Data

“…In the creation of realistic paintings, it is necessary to observe the thing itself more accurately and objectively, that is, the objective existence of the hue, which requires high requirements for the color of the picture.Kirchner, E and Koken, P found that about 35%-40% of the painted rainbow in the Renaissance period consisted of orange, yellow and green, and the color combinations of painted rainbows, over time, gradually approached the color of natural rainbow ratio, indicating that modern painters have been able to accurately express the colors of the objective world and the exact hue [12]. Tang, J used digital image processing technology to optimize the color matching of oil paintings, improved the Canny algorithm for edge detection of oil painting images, and then improved genetic algorithms for segmentation of oil painting images in order to complete the calibration of the color of oil paintings images [13].…”