In glorious technicolour

Our cathedrals were once filled with colour, argues Simon Jenkins. Isn’t it time we brought it back?

- Simon Jenkins

IMAGINE a visit to the National Gallery in which every picture you see is black and white. The faces, the landscapes, even the dramas are all clear. They are simply devoid of colour. Fine, you might say, but something is missing. That is how I react to a medieval cathedral. Mostly, they are colourless. The vibrancy in which their creators bathed them has been stripped away by time and fashion. Gone are the visual textures intended to lift the eyes of worshippers and pilgrims from their drab surroundings, dazzling them with a polychrome Heaven. In their place, all we get is a dull, mostly limestone buff.

As displays of the culture of Europe in the Middle Ages, nothing compares with the great cathedrals. They are true wonders of the world. They tower over the Continent, from mighty Durham to serene Chartres, from Cologne’s battling buttresses to Seville’s exquisite vault, the last ordered to be so vast ‘that men will think us mad’. Nowhere equalled the reckless engineering of Beauvais. Lincoln in its prime was taller than the great pyramid of Cheops. Yet few of these buildings appear as they did to those who made them because all have lost their colour.

Colour in piers, ribs and murals naturally faded with the decline of Catholic supremacy from the 16th century onwards. For worshippers, churches were no longer the exclusive illustrators of the Bible story. It is hard for us to imagine how coloured west fronts and interiors must have looked to those who never saw painted images anywhere else in their lives.