Review: Inessential Colors: Architecture on Paper in Early Modern Europe

Abstract

Book Review| September 01 2023 Review: Inessential Colors: Architecture on Paper in Early Modern Europe Basile Baudez Inessential Colors: Architecture on Paper in Early Modern Europe Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2021, 278 pp., 172 color illus. $65 (cloth), ISBN 9780691213569 Martin Olin Martin Olin Nationalmuseum, Stockholm Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (2023) 82 (3): 336–338. https://doi.org/10.1525/jsah.2023.82.3.336 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Martin Olin; Review: Inessential Colors: Architecture on Paper in Early Modern Europe. Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 1 September 2023; 82 (3): 336–338. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/jsah.2023.82.3.336 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentJournal of the Society of Architectural Historians Search It is only in the past ten or fifteen years that architectural drawings have been reproduced in color (and exceptions are still frequent). The public has gradually become aware of the beauty of brilliant watercolors, subtle washes, and red chalk details in plans and elevations from the Renaissance to the nineteenth century. But do these colors have functions and meanings beyond the decorative? In Inessential Colors, Basile Baudez argues that the colors in architectural drawings serve three purposes: to imitate the world, to act as conventional signs for building materials and functions, and to move and delight—to affect—the viewer. Faint blue and pink washes reveal that Jacques Androuet du Cerceau intended the Château de Blois to have a slate roof and walls with visible brickwork. Such a drawing thus conveyed information about a project to a patron who might otherwise have had to inquire verbally about the roofing and... You do not currently have access to this content.