The Color of the Time. Planetary Memory in a Medieval Painting

Abstract

The Abbey of Novalesa, which is in the Susa’s Valley near Turin (Italy), is an important monument of Medieval art. Among the chapels of the Abbatial complex, the most interesting one is the one devoted to St. Eldrado. In a painting on the left wall, we find St. Eldrado dying, while, on an higher part, we see a portion of blue sky containing eight shining stars subscribed by different colored bracelets; from the central star starts a cone of light that ends at the Saint’s head. There is a strictly relationship among colors and planetary stars, of which this fresco is a late testimony: a star is red, while the others chromatically change turning from clear green to yellow. This chromatic change is typical of a very ancient symbolic
tradition, which crossed the whole Near East and that can be found in the Platonic theory of colors. That deals with the idea that the stars are the characters of a mysterious celestial writing, a sort of “book”, represented by the entire celestial archway. A thing that sometimes can be understood as the special way how the past, the present and the future of the whole universe are described. And the planets have a crucial role into this.