hinned with water, or of pink
sticking-plaister, excepting when it trends on the hue of wine-lees,
like that of the Saviour's sleeves.

And it is heaviest of all in the saints' cheeks. It looks glazed, like
the surface of pie-crust; it has the quality of raspberry syrup drowned
in white of egg.

These are in the main the only colours used by Angelico. A magnificent
blue for the sky and another vile blue, white, brilliant red, melancholy
pinks, a light green, dark greens, and gold. No bright yellow like
everlastings, no luminous straw-colour; at most a heavy opaque yellow
for the hair of his female saints; no truly bold orange, no violet,
either tender or strong, unless in the half-hidden lining of a cloak or
in the scarcely visible robe of a saint, cut off by the frame; no brown
that does not lurk in the background. His palette, as may be seen, is
very limited.

And it is symbolical, if we consider it. He has undoubtedly done in his
hues what he has done in the arrangement of the work. His picture is a
hymn to Chastity, and round the central group of Christ and His Mother
he has placed in ranks the Saints who best concentrated this virtue on
earth. St. John the Baptist, beheaded for the bounding impurity of an
Herodias; St. George, who saved a virgin from the emblematic Dragon;
such saints as St. Agnes, St. Clara, and St. Ursula; the heads of the
Orders--St. Benedict and St. Francis; a king like St. Louis, and a
bishop like St. Nicholas of Myra, who hindered the prostitution of three
young girls whom a starving father was fain to sell. Everything, down to
the smallest details, from the attributes of the persons represented to
the steps of the throne, of which the number is nine--that of the choirs
of angels--everything in this picture is symbolical.

It is permissible therefore to assume that he selected his colours for
their allegorical signification.

White: the symbol of the Supreme Being, and of absolute Truth, and
employed by the Church in its adornments for the festival of our Lord
and the Virgin because it signifies Goodness, Virginity, Charity, and is
the splendour, the emblem of Divine Wisdom when it is enhanced to the
pure radiance of silver.

Blue: because it symbolizes Chastity, Innocence, and Guilelessness.

Red: which is the colour adopted for the offices of the Holy Ghost and
of the Passion; the garb of Charity, Suffering and Love.

Rose-pink; the Love of Eternal Wisdom, and, as Saint Mechtildis