“The occasion for [Marsilio] Ficino’s reasoning of green as the most pleasing color is a chapter in the second of his De Vita Libri Tres (1489) titled ‘The Conversation of the Old People Traversing the Green Fields under the Leadership of Venus.’. . . To Ficino’s way of seeing, green neither dilates the eye with too much light nor dulls the eye with too much darkness: rather, ‘the color green tempering most of all black with white, furnishes the one effect and the other, equally delighting and conserving the sight.’”

—Bruce R. Smith, The Key of Green, 2009.