Yellow: considered by Sister Emmerich as the colour of idleness, of a horror of suffering, and often given to Judas in mediæval times, is significant of treason and envy.
Orange: of which Frédéric Portal speaks as the revelation of Divine Love, the communion of God with man, mingling the blood of Love to the sinful hue of yellow, may be taken to bear a worse meaning with the idea of falsehood and torment; and, especially when it verges on red, expresses the defeat of a soul over-ridden by its sins, hatred of Love, contempt of Grace, the end of all things.
Dead leaf colour: speaking of moral degradation, spiritual death, the hopefulness of green for ever extinct.
Finally, violet: adopted by the Church for the Sundays in Advent and in Lent, and for penitential services. It was the colour of the mortuary-shroud of the kings of France; during the Middle Ages it was the attribute of mourning, and it is at all times the melancholy garb of the exorcist.
What is certainly far less easy to explain is the limited variety of countenance the painter has chosen to adopt. Here symbolism is of no use. Look, for instance, at the men. The Patriarchs with their bearded faces do not show us the almost translucent texture, as of the sacramental wafer, in which the bones show through the dry and diaphanous parchment-like skin, or like the seeds of the cruciferous flower called Monnaie du Pape (honesty); they have all regular and pleasant faces, are all healthy, full-blooded personages, attentive and devout. His monks too have round faces and rosy cheeks; not one of his Saints looks like a Recluse of the Desert overcome by fasting, or has the exhausted emaciation of an ascetic; they are all vaguely alike, with the same solidity and the same complexion. In fact, as we see them in this picture, they are a contented colony of excellent people.
At least, so they appear at a first glance.
The women, too, are all of one family; sisters more or less exactly alike; all fair and rosy, with light snuff-coloured eyes, heavy eyelids, and round faces; they form a train of rather an insipid type round the Virgin with her long nose and bird-like head kneeling at the feet of Christ.
Altogether, among all these figures we find scarcely four distinct types, if we take into consideration their more or less advanced years and the modifications resulting from the arrangement of their hair, their being bearded or shaven, and the pose of the head, front face or profile, which distinguishes them.
The only groups which are not of an almost uniform stamp are the angels, sexless youths for ever charming. They are of matchless purity, of a more than human innocence in their blue and rose-pink and green robes sprigged with gold, with their yellow or red hair, at once aerial and heavy, their chastely downcast eyes, and flesh as white as pith. Grave, but in ecstasy, they play on the harp or the theorbo, on the Viol d'Amore or the rebeck, singing the eternal glory of the most Holy Mother.
Thus, on the whole, the types used by Angelico are not less restricted than his colours.