Architectural drawings were limited to mostly monochrome in Europe until color appeared in the 17th century. Over the next 200 years, the use of color in architectural plans gave rise to a new category of creator: the painter-architect. Inessential Colors: Architecture on Paper in Early Modern Europe by Basile Baudez (Princeton University Press) explores the reasons for color’s introduction in architectural drawing, and its various functional and decorative uses throughout this period.1

Architectural drawings from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance were executed in a restricted palette of black and, in rarer cases, red inks. In Italian debates between the importance of color versus design, influential thinkers like Alberti and Vasari cautioned against the use of color, which they said could corrupt a drawing’s purity and truth. Architects occupied a more amorphous professional category at the time and were eager to comply with a black and white standard.

....

• 1. “Almost nothing has been written on the history of the use of color in the representation of architecture, either by architectural historians or by historians of color,” Baudez writes. His meticulous, methodical study will likely appeal more to scholars than to the general public, but no matter the audience, this extensively researched, richly illustrated book sheds new light on this overlooked aspect of architectural history and practice.