Art in colours - BBC Culture

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Art in colours

Judas Repentant, Returning the Thirty Pieces of Silver by Rembrandt (Credit: Alamy)

The colour of betrayal

By Kelly Grovier

(Credit: Wikimedia)

The colour of debauchery

By Kelly Grovier

(Credit: Wikimedia)

The murky history of the colour yellow

By Kelly Grovier

lmmaculate Conception by Baltasar de Echave (Credit: Museo Nacional de Arte de Mexico)

The rare blue the Maya invented

By Devon Van Houten Maldonado

(Credit: Wikimedia)

The disgusting origins of purple

By Kelly Grovier

The Arnolfini Portrait (Credit: Getty Images)

The colour that means life and death

By Kelly Grovier

The shady past of the colour pink

By Kelly Grovier

(Credit: Alamy)

The pigment made of human remains

By Kelly Grovier

Kazimir Malevich painted his Black Square in 1915 – in 2015 microscopic examination revealed a racist joke within (Credit: Alamy)

The artwork that hid a racist message

By Kelly Grovier

Flaming June (Credit: Museo de Arte de Ponce. The Luis A. Ferré Foundation, Inc.)

The colour that comes from volcanoes

By Kelly Grovier

An array of colourful tiles stretches across these shapes, foreshadowing today’s colour charts (Credit: Yale University Art Gallery)

The painting that revolutionised colour

By Kelly Grovier

Saint Jerome as Scholar by El Greco, 1610 (Credit: Alamy)

The insect that painted Europe red

By Devon Van Houten Maldonado

(Credit: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco)

When the Parthenon had dazzling colours

By Natalie Haynes