A Little Book on Colors

...Purpureus. For Horace called swans Purpureos, and Albinovanus called snow itself purpuream. Blatteus is also found used for Purpureus. One must not pass over the color very similar to dried vine leaves, and for that reason called in Greek Xerapelinus. The Latins use this word, for a certain kind of vine reddens in the already mature autumn with leaves as if bloodstained, whence the name was given to the color. Everyone now calls the dried leaf a rose. Some have called atrabapticas garments dyed with that color, because the purple would turn black in it. Concerning that matter, I have woven a short fable into these verses of my own:

While Lycurgus was cutting the unoffending vine, he fell
By his own act, and died a grim death.
Whence the vine, formerly green, reddens, sprinkled with the blood
Of the foe, on an uninjured stalk, and avenging the sin.

ROSEUS (ROSY) CHAP. IX.

IncarnatusThe most pleasant of all colors is Roseus, and it is most similar to the human body, if it is beautiful. Therefore poets call the face, neck, nipples, and fingers rosy, that is, white, with the redness of blood deeply diffused with charm; and that color is properly what common speech calls Incarnatus (flesh-colored), for it reflects most strongly the radiance of all, both the boy and the virgin’s rose—I do not mean the Milesian [rose], which seems to burn too much with purple, nor again the white one: but the one that has taken on beauty from both, and because it imitates the human body, which the vernacular tongue calls carne (flesh), it has named that kind of rose Incarnatus. Cicero called this color Suauis (sweet).