The Library include various sections pertaining to the theme of colour in subject areas as varied as painting and sculpture, costume, rhetoric, heraldry, alchemy, natural science, philosophy, psychology, festivals, and technology. These highlight the characterof the Warburg Library as a Library of problems rather than a mere collection of books.
Ancient to Modern Art
CHH 115 includes medieval anthologies of colour recipies.
CHH 117 includes Heraclius on colour, among the written sources of medieval art.
CHH 135 includes medieval recipes on colour for manuscript illumination.
While the theme of colour is present in sixteenth-century Italian art theory, it first becomes the subject of a debate in France from the 1670s onwards. The main sources of the debat du coloris are shelved at CBH 785; the main studies are shelved at CIC 220 with studies on French art theory.
The main section on colour in art begins at CA0 560 as part of a broader section dedicated to art historical problems including: psychology of art, style, space, perspective, colour, and followed by symmetry, proportion and rhythm.
CFN 20 includes publications on artists' pigments and CFN 60 on grisaille.
The general section on sculpture includes a subsection on polychromy (CFO 143). Since Spanish sculpture is mostly polychrome, the section on Spanish Sculpture, CLO, is by default one on colour in sculpture.
Representation of colour and race is the subject of COC 55, a subsection of the holdings on the representation of the human figure. More on issues related to race and slavery can be found in the Law section at DKD.
Colour features in the collections dedicated to costume (COD): for example, sumptuary laws legislated not only on the shape, but on the colour of dress (see COD 375). More material on the art and industry of dyeing is shelved in the section on technology located on the fourth floor (DFF 197).
Selected Publications & Resources
The Mediaeval painters' materials and techniques by 
The Diversity of Dyes in History and Archaeology by Language, Literature, Survival of Classical Literature
The section about medieval poetics and rhetoric at EAN 100 includes material devoted to the pervasive theme of rhetorical figures and colours. Further material can be found in the Glosa super Graecismum Eberhardi Bethuniensis capitula I-III : de figuris coloribusque rhetoricis.
The main texts on rhetoric, however, are shelved on the 4th floor under sources of Greek history (HKE) and Roman history (HPH 599 ff).
The NOH section, on pictorial symbols, includes some texts on the meaning of colour in heraldry.
NOA 152 features a study on the meaning of colours and flowers in the Italian Renaissance.
Religion, Science, Philosophy
Colour plays an important role in the process of the transmutation of metals in alchemy, e.g. see Alchemy and colour (FGF 40).
There is no colour without sight and no concept of sight without optics. The main section of studies on optics is classmarked FFF 185. It is followed by a section on light and on the rainbow under classmark FFF 187. Many other sources and studies on optics feature in various sections of the Library. These texts can be harvested by keyword searches such as optic* or the subject search Optics -- Early works to 1800.
The section on botany at FOM includes literature on cochineal, an insect from which the crimson-coloured natural dye carmine is derived.
BKF 250 includes some studies on colour in Greek and Roman religion.
Ancient, medieval and early modern philosophy include definitions of perception and sensation. Aristotle's treatise on the soul considers colour the main object of sight. Editions of a book on colour, formerly attibuted to the philosopher, are shelved at AKH 248. Studies on colour in Hildgard of Bingen can be found at ABB 755. Telesio wrote a small treatise on colour (see his Varii de naturalibus...) and so did Francis Bacon (Colours of Good and Evil, in vol. VII of the Complete Works).
Selected Publications & Resources
Social & Political History
The main section on psychology and perception includes several collections dealing with related aspects of colour:
DAD 220 - DAD 221 focus on the phenomena of synesthesia.
DAD 225 - DAD 230 approach the question of colour from the angles of the psychology of perception and cultural history of the senses.
The section on music includes a sub-section on music in painting. Colours also exist in sound as confirmed by concepts such as coloratura. See also Olivier Messian's Traité de rythme, de couleur, et d'ornithologie (1949-1992).
Festivals and tournaments provided many opportunities for the display of heraldic colours.
The section on technology include books dealing with the art of dyeing and weaving (DFF 197).
The section on law includes a collection dedicated to issues related to colour, race and slavery (DKD). See also COC 55 for the iconography of the Black in Western Art.
Selected Publications & Resources
