PIGMENTS

Until the middle of the last century, when it was discovered that aniline dyes were being made from coal tar, most of the dyes were obtained from natural species in plants or animals called carmine lakes. . There are two varieties of lake carmine, both produced from insects, cochineal lake and lake kermes, and both are used as dye and lake.
Lake Cochineal comes from the cochineal, native to the New World, which was used by the Aztecs to dye and paint and was brought to Europe in the sixteenth century after the Spanish conquest.