Chromatic Space – Style – Civilization
Chromatic Space – Style – Civilization

Summary/Abstract: The whole Middle Ages based its aesthetics mainly on the psychological effects searched through joining masses, volumes, colours meant to create symbolic spiritual associations both in the Eastern basilicas and in the Western cathedrals. In the chromatic sphere, such a symbolism was often invoked – with stable echoes, up to the modern age, in iconography or in the heraldic – since the theologians of the 9th century knew that any beam of light passing through a glass surface became the embodiment of Incarnation (it was noticed the effect the translucent glasses had on the fresco, conferring green and yellow nuances), while the papacy of the beginning of the 13th century officialized through Innocent III the “liturgical” colours, each symbolizing a virtue: the white of purity, the red of divine love, the green of hope, the violet of penitence. In fact, this was the scholastic extension and legalization of an ancient colour symbolism that neither the antic Orient nor the Greek and Roman world ignored and that covered in time and space vast areas.

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