- This event has passed.
Renaissance Colour Symbolism & Literature
28 October @ 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm
Ready to take your next journey of Discovery? The Renaissance: Journeys of Discovery at BRLSI is a year-long programme of talks and events exploring the many joys, discoveries and something of the broader cultural legacy of a movement still making waves in the 21st century. Brunelleschi, Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Martin Luther, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Machiavelli, Hieronymus Bosch, if you love culture then you’ll love BRLSI’s new talks series!
And if you love art especially, an illustrated talk will present a survey of 16th-century interpretations and meanings of colours, based on contemporary art and literature.
Primary sources include paintings by Botticelli and Giorgione, as well as books by the Sicily Herald (1495), Gilles Corrozet (1527), Antonio Telesio (1528) and Fulvio Morato (1535), all recently translated into English by the speaker. They promote the belief that colour was a divine gift that possessed active, mystical powers – a belief that disappeared from European literature between 1600 and 1850 but was revived by Symbolists and Theosophists.
Roy Osborne MA is an artist, educator and author. After publishing Lights and Pigments: Colour Principles for Artists in 1980, he became a prominent colour theorist, lecturing and teaching at over 200 art institutions worldwide. His current publications include Renaissance Colour Symbolism: Primary Sources; The Color Coursebook for Artists Teachers & Students and Books on Colour 1495-2025: History & Bibliography. In 2003 he was awarded the Turner Medal of the Colour Group (Great Britain) and in 2019 was awarded the Colour in Art, Design and Environment Medal of the International Colour Association.
