About the colour of tabernacles until the beginning of the counter-reformation

Abstract

This article offers some reflections on the role of colour in the design and meaning of tabernacles or Sacrament houses, being highly symbolic church furnishings that served to store the Eucharist. The observations are partly based on written records and partly on selected examples from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century found in Spain and other parts of Western Europe. The first section considers gilding —an essential and prescribed procedure— and polychrome brushwork found in wooden tabernacles; the second part looks at the omnipresence of the white colour in tabernacles of stone, focusing on its characteristics, backgrounds and meanings; and the third part is devoted to the interiors of the tabernacles, largely inaccessible spaces where suggestive artistic programmes were developed, always designed toward the interior and not to any human spectator.