Bole (color)

For the red-brown clay used in gilding, see Armenian bole and Levant bole.
Bole
 
About these coordinates     Color coordinates
Hex triplet#79443B
sRGBB (r, g, b)(121, 68, 59)
HSV (h, s, v)(9°, 51%, 47%)
CIELChuv (L, C, h)(35, 39, 20°)
SourceISCC-NBS
ISCC–NBS descriptorModerate reddish brown
B: Normalized to [0–255] (byte)
14th-century gold-ground Italian painting where the gold leaf has worn away to reveal the red bole beneath

Bole is a shade of reddish brown. The color term derives from Latin bōlus (or dirt) and refers to a kind of soft fine clay whose reddish-brown varieties are used as pigments, and as a coating in panel paintings and frames underneath the paint or gold leaf. Under gold leaf, it "warms" the colour, which can have a greenish shade otherwise. However, bole in art is a good deal more red and less brown than the modern shade; it is often called Armenian bole. Although bole also means the trunk of a tree, these words are simply homographs that do not share an etymological origin.[1][2][3][4]

  1. ^ American Heritage Dictionary
  2. ^ "bole or bolus". Collins Dictionary.
  3. ^ "bole2". Oxford English Dictionary (Online ed.). Oxford University Press. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.)
  4. ^ "bole2". The New Oxford American Dictionary (3rd ed.). 2013.