The colors of the Virgin: Romanesque polychrome wood sculptures in Italy and a question about azurite

This essay focuses on the techniques and materials of polychromy used in Medieval wooden sculpture in Italian public and private collections, a subject still little studied by scholars, primarily because these works are very often in a poor state of condition and rarely reflect their former original splendor, then because they are often cult objects and, for this reason, 'untouchable.' Consequently, these statues continue to be investigated by traditional methods, stylistic, and, more rarely, iconographical. Collecting and reporting the results of the scientific analysis of several polychrome statues representing the so-called Sedes Sapientiae (for example, the Madonna of Acuto), the essay establishes a relationship between the nature of pigments, iconography, and the symbolism of colors. Special attention is paid to the azurite, whose use in wooden sculpture is backdated here and is the starting point to try to demonstrate, based on some case studies, the existence of color-based hierarchies in the Middle Ages.