Colour and light in ancient and medieval art / edited by Chloë N. Duckworth, Anne E. Sassin.

"An Ashgate book"--Cover.

"The origin for this book lies in a session at the 40th Anniversary Conference of the Association of Art Historians, held in the Royal College of Art, Kensington, London, on the 10th-12th April 2014, at which several of the authors who have provided papers for this volume presented"--Acknowledgements.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

On colour and light / Chloë N. Duckworth and Anne E. Sassin -- 1. Symbolic use of colour in Easter Island (Rapa Nui) in its Polynesian context / David Govantes-Edwards -- 2. The colourful world of metal invention in the 5th millennium BCE Balkans / Miljana Radivojević -- 3. Late Bronze Age manipulation of light and colour in metal / Stephanie Aulsebrook -- 4. By the dawn's early light: Colour, light and liminality in the throne room at Knossos / Katy Soar -- 5. Tripping on the fantastic light: Reclaiming the Parthenon Marbles / James Beresford -- 6. Divine light through earthly colours: Mediating perception in Late Antique churches / Vladimir Ivanovici -- 7. The use of colour in Romanesque manuscript illumination / Andreas Petzold -- 8. Light and colour in Portuguese Romanesque churches: The shaping of space / Jorge Rodrigues -- 9. Gold, glass and light: The Franciscan vision in representations of the stigmata / Éowyn Kerr-Dicarlo -- 10. Glints and colours of human inwardness: Bartholomaeus de Bononia's De luce and contemporary preaching / Francesca Galli -- 11. Light, the Dominicans and the cult of St. Thomas Aquinas / Anthony McGrath -- 12. Tinted drawing: Translucency, luminosity and lumen vitae / Sharon Lacey -- 13. From monochrome to polychrome in historical Persian architecture: A comparative study of light and spatial perception in places of worship / Maryam Mahvash -- 14. From texts to tiles: Sufi colour conceptualization in Safavid Persia / Idries Trevathan.

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. 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.