Black. The History of Color

This monograph is a continuation of the large-scale project of the French historian Michel Pastureau - the history of color in Western European societies, from Ancient Rome to the 18th century, which he began with a study of the relationships of Europeans with the color blue. This time, the focus of Pastureau is one of the most mysterious and controversial colors with a rather complicated fate - black. The author undertakes a real detective investigation into the adventures, and often misadventures, of the color black in Western European culture. The color of primordial darkness, the Black Death, and the Black Knight, in the Middle Ages it transferred to the garments of monks, soon dominated Protestant wardrobe, became the favorite color of lawyers and merchants, during the Romantic era it turned out to be an integral attribute of melancholic attire, and later a marker of elegance and chic and at the same time an indispensable attribute of the everyday life of the townsman.