Colour and Light in Ancient and Medieval Art

The myriad ways in which colour and light have been adapted and applied in the art, architecture, and material culture of past societies is the focus of this interdisciplinary volume. Light and colour's iconographic, economic, and socio-cultural implications are considered by established and emerging scholars including art historians, archaeologists, and conservators, who address the variety of human experience of these sensory phenomena. In today's world it is the norm for humans to be surrounded by strong, artificial colours, and even to see colour as perhaps an inessential or surface property of the objects around us. Similarly, electric lighting has provided the power and ability to illuminate and manipulate environments in increasingly unprecedented ways. In the context of such a saturated experience, it becomes difficult to identify what is universal, and what is culturally specific about the human experience of light and colour. Failing to do so, however, hinders the capacity to approach how they were experienced by people of centuries past. By means of case studies spanning a broad historical and geographical context and covering such diverse themes as architecture, cave art, the invention of metallurgy, and medieval manuscript illumination, the contributors to this volume provide an up-to-date discussion of these themes from a uniquely interdisciplinary perspective. The papers range in scope from the meaning of colour in European prehistoric art to the technical art of the glazed tiles of the Shah mosque in Isfahan. Their aim is to explore a multifarious range of evidence and to evaluate and illuminate what is a truly enigmatic topic in the history of art and visual culture.

Chloë N. Duckworth is Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, University of Leicester, UK. Anne E. Sassin is Honourary Research Fellow, Canterbury Christ Church University, UK.

Table of Contents Front matter i Preface xiii Acknowledgements xiv List of Contributors xv Introduction xxiii On Colour and Light Chloë N. Duckworth and Anne E. Sassin Chapter 1 Symbolic Use of Colour in Easter Island (Rapa Nui) in its Polynesian Context David Govantes-Edwards Chapter 2 The Colourful World of Metal Invention in the 5th Millennium BCE Balkans Miljana Radivojevic Chapter 3 Late Bronze Age Manipulation of Light and Colour in Metal Stephanie Aulsebrook Chapter 4 By the Dawn's Early Light: Colour, Light and Liminality in the Throne Room at Knossos Katy Soar Chapter 5 Tripping on the Fantastic Light: Reclaiming the Parthenon Marbles James Beresford Chapter 6 Divine Light through Earthly Colours: Mediating Perception in Late Antique Churches Vladimir Ivanovici Chapter 7 The Use of Colour in Romanesque Manuscript Illumination Andreas Petzold Chapter 8 Light and Colour in Portuguese Romanesque Churches: The Shaping of Space Jorge Rodrigues Chapter 9 Gold, Glass and Light: The Franciscan Vision in Representations of the Stigmata Éowyn Kerr-DiCarlo Chapter 10 Glints and Colours of Human Inwardness: Bartholomaeus de Bononia's De luce and Contemporary Preaching Francesca Galli Chapter 11 Light, the Dominicans and the Cult of St Thomas Aquinas Anthony McGrath Chapter 12 Tinted drawing: Translucency, Luminosity and lumen vitae Sharon Lacey Chapter 13 From Monochrome to Polychrome in Historical Persian Architecture: A Comparative Study of Light and Spatial Perception in Places of Worship Maryam Mahvash Chapter 14 From Texts to Tiles: Sufi Colour Conceptualization in Safavid Persia Idries Trevathan