COCHINEAL

Over the course of three centuries, the cochineal dye, originally from the valleys of Oaxaca in central Mexico, was one of the most expensive and coveted sources of red in the Atlantic and Mediterranean worlds. A deep, intense carmine of great durability, cochineal worked its alchemy to colour the modern era. The choice of red for all luxury textiles, it suffused the state robes of royalty and nobility, military uniforms and folk costumes. The clothes of the Ottoman sultan were steeped in cochineal red, as were the togas of cardinals in Rome. And some of Europe’s most famous painters, from Tintoretto to Titian, from Rembrandt to Van Gogh, used cochineal to signal the dignity and opulence of their sitters and make their canvases flicker with life and fire. Properly speaking, the dye is the pulverised body of the cochineal insect, Dactylopius coccus. The insect produces carminic acid to defend itself against predators and spends most of its life feeding on cacti of the genus Opuntia. Fittingly, in Nahuatl, the dye is called nocheztli, meaning ‘blood of the prickly-pear cactus.