In glorious technicolour

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