Bone black has been used since prehistoric times — charred bone fragments appear in the earliest cave art. The ancient Greeks and Romans used "ivory black" made from charred elephant tusks. Modern "ivory black" is made from bones for ethical and economic reasons — the chemical composition is identical. It is slightly warmer and more transparent than carbon or lamp black.

Warm, deep, and complete. Ivory black is the most transparent and warm of the blacks — it creates shadows that feel inhabited rather than void. Rembrandt's use of ivory black in his shadow passages creates a darkness that seems to contain rather than eliminate light. Associated with depth, seriousness, and the particular quality of darkness that invites rather than repels.

Goya's "Black Paintings" — created directly on the walls of his house ("La Quinta del Sordo," House of the Deaf Man) in his final years — represent one of the most intense explorations of black in Western art. Made with ivory and lamp blacks, they depict nightmarish subjects with visceral darkness. Goya was deaf, isolated, and possibly suffering from neurological disease — the paintings represent a private communication with his own darkness, never intended for public viewing.