photoreceptors. Colorants John Gage's The Fortunes Of Apelles provides a summary of the history of primary colors as pigments in painting and describes the evolution of the idea as complex. Gage begins by describing Pliny The Elder's account of notable Greek painters who used four primaries. Pliny distinguished the pigments (i.e., substances) from their apparent colors: white from Milos (ex albis), red from Sinope (ex rubris), Attic yellow (sil) and atramentum (ex nigris). Sil was historically confused as a blue pigment between the 16th and 17th centuries leading to claims about white, black, red, and blue being the fewest colors required for painting. Thomas Bardwell, an 18th century Norwich portrait painter, was skeptical of practical relevance of Pliny's account. Robert Boyle, the Irish chemist, introduced the term primary color in English in 1664 and claimed that there were five primary colors (white, black, red, yellow, and blue). The German painter Joachim von Sandrart eventually proposed removing white and black from the primaries and that one only needed red, yellow, blue, and green to paint "the whole creation". Red, yellow, and blue as primaries became a popular notion in the 18th and 19th centuries. Jacob Christoph Le Blon, an engraver, was the first to use separate plates for each color in mezzotint printmaking: yellow, red, and blue, plus black to add shades and contrast. Le Blon used primitive in 1725 to describe red, yellow, and blue in a very similar sense as Boyle used primary.{{rp|6|quote=In 1725, however, he published a slender volume entitled Coloritto, in which he sets out the principle of trichromatic color mixing (Figure 1.4). It is interesting that he gives the same primaries in the same order (yellow, red, and blue) as does the anonymous author of the 1708 text, and uses the same term for them, couleurs primitives'}} Moses Harris, an entomologist and engraver, also describes red, yellow, and blue as "primitive" colors in 1766. Léonor Mérimée described red, yellow, and blue in his book on painting (originally published in French in 1830) as the three simple/primitive colors that can make a "great variety" of tones and colors found in nature. George Field, a chemist, used the word primary to describe red, yellow, and blue in 1835. Michel Eugène Chevreul, also a chemist, discussed red, yellow, and blue as "primary" colors in 1839. Color order systems Historical perspectives on color order systems ("catalogs" of color) that were