En rouge et bleu: les couleurs des séraphins et des chérubins dans les arts figurés en Italie (XIIIe-XVe siècles)

In late medieval Italian figurative art, only seraphim and cherubim seem to be firmly associated with a colour among the angelic hierarchy: the seraphim with red, and the cherubim with blue, usually together. This chromatic association is so common that red and blue can be seen as iconographic attributes for seraphim and cherubim. If the biblical origin of the red seraphim is well known, that of the blue cherubim remains unexplained. Yet, this association was quite successful, as it is found beyond Italian territories. This talk investigates the origins of these chromatic associations by studying how the blue cherubim appeared along the older red seraphim.