Senso di colore e assenza di colori nell’architettura sacra medievale e nelle sue ‘rivisitazioni’ in Italia: qualche considerazione sulla facies esterna

As Michael Pastoureau says, the Middle Ages was the era of color, when many things had the “right to color”, things that will not be polychrome anymore in the modern and contemporary age, such as building facades and sculptures (he says so, but of course it is just a generalization), which will instead correspond to a purely monochromatic, often totally white, aesthetic. In truth the Middle Ages did leave us with some extraordinary examples of Cistercian buildings where color was programmatically refused (even the stained glass windows were realized in grisaille) which influenced modern and contemporary architects, such as Le Corbusier. But in effect in the Middle Ages the polychromatic appearance of buildings and sculptures is usually preferred. So, we can say that the Middle Ages continued and strengthened the relationship between form and color which characterized the temples and sculptures of Antiquity. Even though studies on polychromy in Medieval monuments have recently become more common, there is not yet a critical overall view that, based on the data of single case studies, tries to interpret the data and to answer the questions: what was the intent of the Medieval architect and how did he express himself