揭示色彩作为物质媒介的力量，解释的关键，以及社会和政治变革的中介这种对色彩的广泛研究阐明了五个世纪的欧洲绘画的实质，背景和意义。从15世纪中期到19世纪中期，绘画材料基本保持不变，但其使用的创新蓬勃发展。技术发现促进了新的视觉效果，政治条件促使创新，经济变革塑造了艺术家的战略，特别是随着贸易变得全球化。玛西娅·霍尔（Marcia Hall）探讨了米开朗基罗如何彻底打破他同时代人对颜色的协调使用，支持高度饱和的方法; 17世纪荷兰强大的艺术市场和对价格合理的图片的需求如何帮助推广精巧的彩色山水画;法国大革命期间政治与色彩如何纠缠在一起;现代艺术家如何将自己的色彩从具体表现中解放出来，将自己的角色从颜色的操纵者转变为为个人表达而闻名的梦想家。通过最新的保护研究中的见解，霍尔通过各种精彩细节和推进，如从波提切利和提香到梵高和康定斯基为例子，进行了引人入胜的分析。她坚持审视技术和材料作为理解艺术意义的重要性，为读者提供了新的视角去观赏这些绘画。

Revealing the power of color as physical medium, a key to interpretation, and a mediator of social and political change This expansive study of color illuminates the substance, context, and meaning of five centuries of European painting. Between the mid-15th and the mid-19th centuries, the materials of painting remained remarkably unchanged, but innovations in their use flourished. Technical discoveries facilitated new visual effects, political conditions prompted innovations, and economic changes shaped artists' strategies, especially as trade became global. Marcia Hall explores how Michelangelo radically broke with his contemporaries' harmonizing use of color in favor of a highly saturated approach; how the robust art market and demand for affordable pictures in 17th-century Netherlands helped popularize subtly colored landscape paintings; how politics and color became entangled during the French Revolution; and how modern artists liberated color from representation as their own role transformed from manipulators of pigments to visionaries celebrated for their individual expression. Using insights from recent conservation studies, Hall captivates readers with fascinating details and developments in magnificent examples-from Botticelli and Titian to Van Gogh and Kandinsky-to weave an engaging analysis. Her insistence on the importance of examining technique and material to understand artistic meaning gives readers the tools to look at these paintings with fresh eyes.