par Dragon, Marie-Anne 
Référence 71st Annual Meeting of the Renaissance Society of America (22-03-2025: Boston)
Publication Non publié, 2025-03-22
Référence 71st Annual Meeting of the Renaissance Society of America (22-03-2025: Boston)
Publication Non publié, 2025-03-22
Communication à un colloque
| Résumé : | This paper examines the role and functions of colour in 16th and 17th-century European engravings of parrots and investigates the expertise of the colourists involved. One example is the depiction of the scarlet macaw and the red-and-green macaw in Conrad Gessner's Historiae animalium. In this case, colour is applied in strict accordance with the description provided by the accompanying text. Here, colour plays a documentary role, complementing the illustration. The colourist, therefore, doesn’t act as a conduit of new knowledge, but rather as a faithful interpreter of the text. A second case is represented by the colourised edition of Avium vivae icones by Adriaen Collaert. The original monochrome version depicts two parrots whose species are not specified by an annotation. These birds, although similar, could represent either an African Grey and an Amazon parrot, or two different species of Amazons. Here, the colourist provides new information through colour, deviating from Collaert's proposed morphology to depict other parrots of different genera, whose morphology does not match the monochrome engraving. This raises the question of whether the artist was aware of this transgression or simply intended to document his observation of parrots with different colours. |
