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This study is premised on the idea that human responses to color are historically and culturally specific. Illuminations of the Apocalypse in mid-tenth- through early twelfth-century Beatus manuscripts are analyzed for patterns of color use. These patterns suggest that color functioned differently than twentieth-century viewers might expect. Links between the text of Revelation and the colors chosen by the illuminators may be evidence that the illuminations were used mnemonically. Although they appear to us as the antithesis of illusionism, some of the colors in these manuscripts were chosen with reference to the natural world. Colors could carry symbolic meanings which varied according to context, and they could be tied to ideas about light and darkness, not only to hue. An aesthetic system which prized complex and systematized chromatic variety informed the painting of these illuminations. These and other patterns show that color provides a significant point of access for historical readings of Beatus illuminations.
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