Pittura, luce, colore. Atti del IV colloquio AIRPA, Urbino 17-19 giugno 2021

This volume is the fourth of the series Collana AIRPA, publications by the Italian Association for Ancient Painting Research, and contains the contributions presented at the colloquium on the theme Painting, light, colour, organized on the 17th-19th June 2021 in Urbino (PU).
Painting experience cannot be understood without retrieving it, on a case by case basis, from the political, economic, social and cultural complexities that generated its ideas, uses, purposes and values; the artisan practices that managed its materials, selecting, manipulating and experimenting it on a variety of supports and with diverse techniques; the visual and perceptional dynamics that have accompanied its contextual use and the 'sensory enjoyment' within the architectural, real or imagined space; the restoration and transmission methods set in motion historically and which modern day diagnostics, both invasive and otherwise, give concrete proof of; the history of the culture that assessed and interpreted the resulting work; the exhibition strategies that ensure its current conservation and use. Painting experience can thus not be understood without reference to the light-colour dualism, this inescapable, fundamental nexus in all artistic expressions and especially in painting.
The essays in the first part of the volume (Painting, light, colour) examine the theme from various angles and from a multi-disciplinary perspective introduced by the five opening contributions, while those in the second (Reinterpretations and new data) cast light on various, novel or little known painting legacies, generating a rich and complex panorama that encompasses a range of space and time frames.