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The color Byzantium is a particular dark tone of purple. It originates in modern times, and, despite its name, it should not be confused with Tyrian purple ( hue rendering ), the color historically used by Roman and Byzantine emperors.
Tyrian purple (Ancient Greek: πορφύρα porphúra; Latin: purpura), also known as royal purple, imperial purple, or imperial dye, is a reddish-purple natural dye. The name Tyrian refers to Tyre, Lebanon, once Phoenicia.
The color byzantium is a dark tone of purple. The first recorded use of byzantium as a color name in English was in 1926.
Purple was the color worn by Roman magistrates; it became the imperial color worn by the rulers of the Byzantine Empire and the Holy Roman Empire, and later by Roman Catholic bishops. Similarly in Japan , the color is traditionally associated with the emperor and aristocracy.
Similarly, the sebastokrator wore blue boots with golden wire-embroidered eagles on a red background, while his saddle cloth was blue with four red embroidered eagles.
Byzantine blue is a color ranging from light celestial blue or lazuli to dark Egyptian blue.
Dark blue was widely used in the decoration of churches in the Byzantine Empire. In Byzantine art, Jesus and the Virgin Mary usually wore dark blue or purple. Blue was used as a background colour representing the sky in the magnificent mosaics which decorated Byzantine churches.
The early Byzantine Empire continued to use the (single-headed) imperial eagle motif. The double-headed eagle appears only in the medieval period, by about the 10th century in Byzantine art, [7] but as an imperial emblem only much later, during the final century of the Palaiologos dynasty .
Porphyry also stood in for the physical purple robes Roman emperors would wear to show their status because of its purple colouring. Similar to porphyry, purple fabric was extremely difficult to make, as purple required the use of snails to make the dye.
Han purple and Han blue (also called Chinese purple and Chinese blue) are synthetic barium copper silicate pigments developed in China and used in ancient and imperial China from the Western Zhou period (1045–771 BC) until the end of the Han dynasty ( circa 220 AD).