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PRESENTATION
In recent years, the research of the chromatic reality of the Middle Ages has received increasing attention from specialists in different academic disciplines. Fortunately, the vision of a dark and monochrome Middle Ages –propagated by nineteenth-century historiography– is gradually being banished from the collective imagination thanks to important actions for the transfer of scientific knowledge in the media, informative books, and fiction creations. A large number of medieval artworks that are preserved today in museums, cathedrals, or churches bring us to the present time important data about the technical composition or the material creation processes associated with colors. Likewise, the understanding of the different dimensions of medieval colors has important implications that go beyond the purely material and are connected with the sensory experience of medieval men, true colorful souls whose life experience connects the use of certain colors with emotional and sensory values.
TOPICS OF PAPERS
The Conference The Traces of the Colorful Souls: Visual & Material Arts in the Chromatic Middle Ages aspires to become a meeting point and a forum for reflection on medieval colors and their importance in the life of the time (Art History, Aesthetics, Technology, Sensory Studies, Philosophy, Restoration, Artistic Technology, Linguistics, Psychology, Optics, etc.) trying to promote a more complete vision of the colorful souls of the Middle Ages. For this reason, a series of thematic lines are proposed around which different conferences and free communication sessions will revolve, all having as their central concept color in the Middle Ages:
The material dimension of medieval colors, evoked through the study of pigments, materials, dyes, and chromatic elements that served to give color to different artifacts and works.
The artistic and documentary dimension of medieval colors, traceable through documentary sources, treatises, artist’s books, as well as evidence of chromatic uses in the diversity of the arts.
The technical dimension of medieval colors, materialized in the plurality of uses in numerous artistic media and supports, such as illuminated manuscripts, polychrome in stone, wood, panel, or canvas, as well as the study of color in the diversity of the sumptuary arts, such as stained glass, enamels, ceramics, mosaics or textiles.
The symbolic dimension of medieval colors, reflected in the social and extra-semantic uses and values conferred on the chromaticism of spaces, clothes, and objects for daily or festive use, both in the sacred space and in every day or court environment.
