June 4th, 1859 – the battle lasted as long as the light. Half a million Austrian, French, and Piedmontese in a disheveled fight in the Second War of Italian Independence. But those left standing did not take any special notes of the way the blood looked in writing the histories of the day. Maybe it did not look different, nothing special reflected back.
Some man from the nearby village remembered in his daily efforts of forgetting the color of the ground near the battle. He remembered only semi-consciously as he walked near the site collecting materials, indigo and moss, for the dyes he would make. That day he found a greenish rock on the ground and the texture seemed right to him. The rock would be called fuchsine in years to come but then it was only a rock found near the other supplies for dye making.
It, the oxidation of aniline and the toluidines that remove lime-green wavelengths from white light. A subtractive primary color, definition based on lack.
He stirred the mixture in boiling water pushing the fabric with a long stick. The man’s motion as basic as walking by his advanced age. His body deformed by years of this movement, or maybe just reformed.
What he found on the field was a different kind of red to color fabrics. The field that would always be a battlefield in minds and words after the war. A purplish red that seemed like a dark bright pink.
The green rocks under the blood of the fallen made it look blood red. The ground had turned the magenta that spilled from the bodies into something else to the eye.
Transmitting back a red light and a blue light, mixed on your retina. Made both of what is and is not reflected back. Some things reflect and some things are better kept.
It seems difficult for some to match the name to the color.
Near the time it was discovered it made it into London high society. Then later in that century it comes in the daily paper. In a different century Crayola puts it in boxes of 48.
The color was named after the city but also after the battle of the same year, a try for the color of the blood that day.
#FF0090 of RGB alias 225-0-144