Colors and cultures in the Andes

GABRIELA SIRACUSANO

Colors between two worlds. The Florentine codex of Bernardino de Sahagun

Villa I Tatti The Harvard University Center for the Italian Renaissance Studies

Lugar: Milan; Año: 2011; p. 367 - 377

When we think about color in cultures and in history, it is impossible to avoid being thrown into a huge universe of practices, knowledge, and beliefs that exceed the pure meaning of the word. Scientific explanations for its optical nature, testimonies about methods for extraction of colorant substances, economic and political interventions in their production and distribution, social demands that linked artistic materials to the organization of manual labor in artistic workshops and ateliers, experimentation and creativity in old recipes, the weight of religious conventions related to coloring certain iconographies, expensive pigments and dyes functioning as a metonymic element for the expression of power, alchemical and hermetic meanings, condemnations of certain ?heretical? and ?supernatural? uses of colors, or the usefulness of many of these same substances for healing the body?these are some of the aspects that are present in European tradition.