[7][8][9] Violet has a long history of association with royalty, originally because Tyrian purple dye was extremely expensive in antiquity.
During the Middle Ages, violet was worn by bishops and university professors and was often used in art as the color of the robes of the Virgin Mary.
[11] In Chinese painting, the color violet represents the "unity transcending the duality of Yin and yang" and "the ultimate harmony of the universe".
[13] One European study suggests that violet is the color people most often associate with extravagance, individualism, vanity and ambiguity.
[citation needed] The reason why to (typical trichromat) humans violet light appears slightly reddish compared to spectral blue (despite spectral red being at the other end of the visible spectrum) is, according to the opponent process hypothesis of color vision, that the S-cone type (i.e. the one most sensitive to short wavelengths) contributes some red to the red-versus-green opponent channel (which at the longer blue wavelengths gets counteracted by the M-cone type).
Objects reflecting spectral violet appear very dark, because human vision is relatively insensitive to those wavelengths.
[citation needed] The earliest violet pigments used by humans, found in prehistoric cave paintings, were made from the minerals manganese and hematite.
Manganese is still used today by the Aranda people, a group of indigenous Australians, as a traditional pigment for coloring the skin during rituals.
The most famous violet-purple dye in the ancient world was Tyrian purple, made from a type of sea snail called the murex, found around the Mediterranean.
In western Polynesia, residents of the islands made a violet dye similar to Tyrian purple from the sea urchin.
In Central America, the inhabitants made a dye from a different sea snail, the purpura, found on the coasts of Costa Rica and Nicaragua.
The Mayans used this color to dye fabric for religious ceremonies, and the Aztecs used it for paintings of ideograms, where it symbolized royalty.
It was known to the ancient Greeks and Hebrews, was made from a Mediterranean lichen called archil or dyer's moss (Roccella tinctoria), combined with an ammoniac, usually urine.
Cudbear was developed by Cuthbert Gordon of Scotland: production began in 1758, The lichen is first boiled in a solution of ammonium carbonate.
Mauveine, also known as aniline purple and Perkin's mauve, was the first synthetic organic chemical dye,[24][25] discovered serendipitously during an attempt to make quinine in 1856.
They have strong resistance to sunlight and washing, and are used in oil paints, watercolors and acrylics, as well as in automobile coatings and other industrial coatings.Violet is one of the oldest colors used by humans.
The ancient Egyptians made a kind of violet dye by combining the juice of the mulberry with crushed green grapes.
The Roman historian Pliny the Elder reported that the Gauls used a violet dye made from bilberry to color the clothing of slaves.
[27] Violet and purple retained their status as the color of emperors and princes of the church throughout the long rule of the Byzantine Empire.
Cobalt violet appeared in the second half of the 19th century, broadening the palette of artists with its range of purple colors.
In his painting of his bedroom in Arles (1888), he used several sets of complementary colors; violet and yellow, red and green and orange and blue.
In a letter about the painting to his brother Theo, he wrote, "The color here...should be suggestive of sleep and repose in general....The walls are a pale violet.
Used to dye clothes, it became extremely fashionable among the nobility and upper classes in Europe, particularly after Queen Victoria wore a silk gown dyed with mauveine to the Royal Exhibition of 1862.
[citation needed] In a European survey, three percent of respondents said violet is their favorite color, ranking it behind blue, green, red, black and yellow (in that order), and tied with orange.
[35] The Invocation of the Violet Flame is a system of meditation practice used in the "I AM" Activity and by the Church Universal and Triumphant (both Ascended Master Teaching religions).
In the Roman Catholic church, violet is worn by bishops and archbishops, red by cardinals and white by the Pope.
[36] After the Vatican II Council, which modified many of the rules of the Catholic church, priests began to wear violet robes when celebrating masses for the dead.
[39][40] For this reason, the postage stamp issued in 1936 to honor Susan B. Anthony, a prominent leader of the suffrage movement in the United States, was colored the reddish tone of violet sometimes known as red-violet.
In 1908, Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, co-editor of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) newspaper, designed the color scheme for the suffragette movement in Britain and Ireland, with violet for loyalty and dignity, white for purity and green for hope.
In one poem, she describes a lost partner wearing a garland of "violet tiaras, braided rosebuds, dill and crocus twined around" her neck.