In 1520, Spanish conquistador Hernán  Cortés gushed about the red textiles   he came across in the so-called “new” world.

He called the outfits given to him  by Emperor Montezuma the Second so   colorful and finely made “that in all  the world there could be none like them.” But, he was wrong. About a lot of things, including  the rareness of the red.

The color came from tiny cochineal  insects: dried, pulverized, and strained   into the reddest dye in the world. To the indigenous people of the region,  this technique was nothing new — the   Cochineal trade was an integral part of  the vibrant Central American economy. But to Europeans, this was earth-shattering.

Ships started carrying tons of the dried bugs  which quickly became worth as much as silver. Cochineal dyes are just one example of the many   ways that global trade and art  feed off and impact one another. Hi!

I'm Sarah Urist Green, and  this is Crash Course Art History. [THEME MUSIC] Long before Spanish ships  linked Europe with the Americas,   the Silk Road connected people across Asia. This vast trade network wasn’t actually  one road and wasn’t just for trading silk. In its heyday, between 200 and 900 C.

E.,  hundreds of cultures were swapping textiles,   carpets, jewelry, and treasures  of the more intangible kind. Like, check out this mural, which tells the story  of a guy who notices a goose laying golden eggs. He kills the goose, hoping to steal the gold,   but he comes to learn that tough lesson that  a dead goose can’t lay more golden eggs.

Our protagonist is then shown making the universal gesture for “What was I thinking?” The story is one of Aesop’s fables,  dating back to ancient Greece. But the mural is located in the ancient  town of Panjakent, in what’s now Tajikistan. Which means ol’ Aesop's story traveled roughly   four thousand kilometers — or over  two thousand five hundred miles.

So, as both stories and stuff flowed  on the Silk Road, repeated elements,   themes, and patterns — or, motifs — started showing up in art made many miles apart. Like, here’s a statue of the Buddha from 2nd or 3rd century Gandhara, part of what’s now Pakistan. Notice how he’s shifting his  weight onto one leg, cool and   relaxed, the kind of pose I strike when I’m trying to disguise my impatience in line at the DMV.

That stance is called contrapposto. We can see Classical Greek artists first  sculpting this pose around the 5th century B. C.

E. Whereas earlier artists had represented figures with their weight balanced equally on both legs,   the Greeks captured how shifting your  weight to one side affects the whole body. They also liked to show off their material mastery   by sculpting draping fabrics  — like we see here on Buddha.

So, the subject itself —the Buddha  — represented Indian influences,   while the pose and the clothing were inspired by the Greeks, and the artwork was made in Pakistan. When multiple cultures blend like this to  create something new, we call it syncretism. And once you start noticing  it, you’ll find it everywhere.

It’s even in visual patterns that convey  symbolic meanings, which we call iconography. Like, Gandhara artists also wrapped Greek influences into their depictions of Vajrapāni,   one of the Buddha’s followers-slash-bodyguards. To convey Vajrapāni’s strength,   they used iconography associated with  another powerful strongman—Hercules.

Exhibit

A: Here’s Hercules, wearing the  skin of the lion he wrestled to death. And here’s Vajrapāni, in the same getup. Exhibit

B: Here’s Vajrapāni, waving an  indestructible weapon called a Vajra. And here’s Hercules carrying a very similar club. Also, the name Vajrapāni  means “thunderbolt-bearer,”   which you could also use to describe  Hercules’s mythological dad, Zeus. So, details from clothing to poses to  props can all be evidence of syncretism,   as cultures swap ideas and influence each other.

But, artistic influences didn’t  only flow in one direction,   and they weren’t always the  result of peaceful collaboration. They also arose from conflict— like  the Crusades, a string of religious   wars fought between Christians and  Muslims starting in the 11th century. As Islam grew more popular,  Western European Christians   tried—violently—to halt the faith’s spread  and to claim Jerusalem for Christianity.

These wars raged for almost two hundred  years and led to untold numbers of deaths. But they also resulted in  a mass exchange of artwork   and materials between the Middle East and Europe. One striking example can be found  in lapis lazuli, a deep blue   rock mined for centuries  in what’s now Afghanistan.

When this brilliantly colored stone made  its way to Western Europe for the first   time during the Crusades… it blue people’s minds. Get it? Blue?

The stone itself was a hot commodity,  making its way into gaming boards,   vases, and tiny medallions of people’s faces. But there was more to the lapis lazuli craze. When crushed into a powder, the stone created the bluest of blue pigments called ultramarine,   which was literally worth its weight in gold.

Just look at the way ultramarine steals   the show on the ceiling of the  Arena Chapel in Padua, Italy. Painted by the artist Giotto in 1305, the  chapel is covered with scenes from the Bible. Each is framed by the illusion of  marble architecture using trompe   l'oeil — or “trick of the eye” — techniques.

And it’s all happening under a deep blue starry  sky, thick with über-expensive ultramarine. To achieve the signature look, Giotto applied the pigment to a wall coated in wet plaster   so that the materials fused together and became a part of the structure itself. This type of painting, called buon  fresco, proved to be very durable;   it has lasted for over seven hundred years!

At the time, commissioning art  for the Catholic Church was a   way for the wealthy to seek redemption from sin. So this chapel was one very  big atonement for the Italian   banker Enrico Scrovegni and his family’s greed. He bankrolled it in an effort to convey  his status and piety all at once.

So it’s giving, “I love  God...and I’m filthy rich.” And the painting includes a  portrayal of Scrovegni himself. There he is, kneeling and humbly presenting  the Arena Chapel in miniature as an offering. I wonder if he paid for a second  chapel to atone for his pride?

Anyway, after the Crusades ended, ultramarine  remained popular among European artists. But it became increasingly difficult to purchase. In 1508, German painter Albrecht Dürer  was working on the Heller Altarpiece,   which depicts the Virgin Mary’s ascent to heaven.

Mary was often shown wearing blue, a color  meant to convey her purity and importance. So Dürer needed that ultramarine. To his patron, he wrote: “If you wanted to buy   a pound of ultramarine you could  hardly get it for 100 florins...” Or about $20,000 by today’s standards.

But Dürer found a way. Although the colors on his altarpiece  have faded, this copy gives a sense of   what Dürer’s version would have looked like  in its original, blue-beyond-blue glory. And that remarkable use of color brings us back to the cochineal red dye that  I mentioned at the start.

Before Europeans learned about cochineal dye,   they had been combining things like  rotten olive oil, cow poop, and blood. It was a lot of smells to suffer through for  a color that usually faded to muddy brown. But once it became a global commodity,  cochineal red was everywhere.

The dye started being used in luxury textiles,  like these robes for Spanish priests. And it was used in artwork, like in  this portrait by Cristóbal Lozano. Eventually, much like the bugs themselves,  the global cochineal trade dried up.

Artificial red dyes hit the market  in the late 19th century that were   longer-lasting and more budget-friendly. But even that didn’t spell  the end for cochineal red. To this day, traditional weavers in Oaxaca,  Mexico, work with yarn bathed in the stuff.

And contemporary Mexican artist Elena  Osterwalder experiments with the dye in her work. She builds installations out of  amatl — a type of traditional   bark paper — dyed with pigments from  flowers, plants, and cochineal insects. From this blend of old influences and new, she  fuses knowledge from the past with the present.

And the result is an immersive sea of red. Break apart what art is made of, and you’ll  often find some very well-traveled ingredients. Materials from one place wind up in another.

Motifs move. Ideas mix. And influences flow, so that artists  from different regions find themselves   responding to each other’s work  without ever meeting face-to-face.

A statue in Pakistan reflects Greek postures,   and Italian chapels are painted  with Middle-Eastern pigments. Trade networks have linked people  across oceans and continents. And art reflects what groups have  exchanged — not along a one-way road,   but through a network coursing in many directions.

In our next episode, we’ll look at  the boundaries around who gets to   call themselves an artist, and  who is considered an outsider. I’ll see you then. Thanks for watching this episode  of Crash Course Art History,   which was filmed at our studio in  Indianapolis and was made with the help of all these amazing people.

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