The Storm of Colour

Jane Rankin-Reid: Everyone of your characters’ outfits are described in beautifully observed colours. From Sybille Fugger’s creamy white satins, to the particularly rich crimson shade of her cloak. So too the surfaces of the paintings you’ve detailed. What has cultivated this acute scrutiny in you as a writer?

Damin Dibben: “The idea of someone searching for a colour was entrancing. The initial starting point for this story was seeing the Giorgione exhibition at the Royal Academy and hearing Anish Kapoor talking about copyrighting the Vantablack colour. I was also thinking about Yves Klein’s International Klein Blue. All this led to me becoming fascinated with the love of lapis lazuli colour in Renaissance life and the way it could make a painting majestic and how people would almost kill for it. I was entranced by the idea of mining minerals that are so rich in themselves with such a brilliant life hidden in them. I realised there hadn’t been a novel concentrating on colour. I became obsessed with it. Its extraordinary how people have such an emotional reaction to colour, without even realising. You can see something, whether it’s a jewel, or the colour of a chair even and you just sort of swoon, your heart kind of leaps…”

JRR: Your writing observes the intense processes of viewing paintings. The experience is physical and atmospheric. “(F)or Zorzo the test is how a piece makes you feel: if it quickens your heart, opens your eyes or chills your blood; if it makes you want to go out drinking, or sends you home to brood in the dark. Michelangelo’s work makes a person do all these things at once…” Your illusory references to the mysterious sought-after new colour’s ‘unimaginable’ shade evokes unexplored realms in the perception of colour. Can tell us something about the idea of ‘imagining’ in the observation of colour?

DD: I had the idea and when I really started looking closely I stopped taking colour for granted. I became really intrigued by how colour makes you feel. The more you write about colour, the more you see it. You look into someone’s face and think ‘how would I describe this colour?’ At art school we learned about complementary colours and what their shadows are, their opposites. When I began this story, I started to see colour’s hidden dimensions and how everything is constantly at play in the mind’s eye.

JRR: It’s unusual to meet a writer quite so obsessed with colour. Colour is everything in this story. You’ve gone so far as to describe Michelangelo’s skin colour after lying under the frescoes he was painting.

DD: Yes, almost every scene is a colour, often reflected in what colour the character Sybille is wearing. For me, colour design is as sharp as everything else in films, for instance. In Hitchcock’s ‘Vertigo’, when James Stewart first takes Kim Novak out to dinner in a red room, she is wearing a vivid green dress. You can see the director’s glee in getting the red and green colours into the story telling. Her character is powerful in her initial presentation then she fades in colour. All the colour design in Hitchcock’s films is as sharp as anything. I was trying to write a book in that manner but it also reads very much like a film.

JRR: Does fashion have an influence on our perception of colours? How much are we projecting back into our perception of a shade?

DD: It is fascinating how colours come in and out of fashion. The idea of having a ‘colour of the year’ is interesting. Black was the most expensive colour in the Renaissance. Merchants wanted to see themselves clothed in it in their portraits. It was an exciting time for painters. Oil paint was only thirty years old; its depths and lustres offered artists huge new areas of experimentation. At the same time, printing presses were just beginning to operate. The theatrics of everyday existence were being brought to life at an astonishing pace.

JRR: How did you choose ‘prince orient’ as the name for the mysterious highly sought after colour at the centre of ‘The Colour Storm’?

DD: At first, it was enticing to create the mystery of an unseen colour as an identity in the story. Then I realise the majesty of the unseen colour’s identity, hence naming it ‘prince royal’.

JRR: “After all these years, Zorzo is still surprised, and gratified, by the notion of a painter being famous. When he was growing up, the idea would have been absurd…” The ideal of an artist wanting to make a mark upon history is paramount in this story. Also, the concept of artists’ recognition in society. Can you tell me something about how you’ve crystalized this ethos?

DD: We love Giorgione because he cares about everyone around him. To me, the stories of Renaissance painters tell us how hard and grubby their worlds were. They had to sell themselves constantly, their skills are what gave them a level of success. But to me, Zorzo’s success is fragile, without prominent commissions, he could disappear at any time. Leonardo da Vinci was the only one having any fun!