Title: Light and colour in Byzantine art /
Authors: James, Liz
Publisher: Oxford University Press ; Clarendon Press,
Year: 1996
Subjects: Art, Byzantine; Color in art
Abstract: This is the first book to investigate the issue of light and colour in Byzantine art. Liz James argues that in neglecting colour, we have not fully understood Byzantine art. She contrasts modern perceptions of colour with ancient Greek and Byzantine ones in order to demonstrate that while we associate colour with hue, the Byzantines emphasised the relative lightness or darkness of a colour. This emphasis affected both the Byzantines' use of a colour within a work of art, and their conceptual view of a colour. In examining the physical evidence, combined with Byzantine colour vocabulary and Byzantine descriptions of colours, Liz James opens up the issue beyond the purely art historical into a study of art in its historical and perceptual context.
Contents: 1. Colour in Art -- 2. The Materials of Colour -- 3. Colour and the Byzantine Inheritance -- 4. Colour Words in Byzantium -- 5. The Colour of the Rainbow -- 6. The Rhetoric of Colour: The Church of the Holy Apostles -- 7. The Perception of Colour in Byzantium.