The Colour of Heaven

Greek, Dutch, UK & Italian editions of The Colour of Heaven

No one noticed the child.

He had been left in a small boat which now sailed out towards the lagoon, following nothing but the slap and tide of each narrow canal.

It was Ascension Day in the year twelve hundred and ninety. The people of Venice were parading through the streets, hoisting crimson pennants and bright yellow banners in celebration. Tailors dressed in white tunics with crimson stars, weavers in silver cloth tippets, and cotton-spinners in cloaks of fustian, mingled with blacksmiths, carpenters, butchers, and bakers, singing and shouting their way towards the Piazza San Marco. 

The square was filled with showmen, swindlers, soothsayers and charlatans; jesters, jugglers, prophets and priests. Alchemists cried out that scrapings of amber gave protection from the plague, and that an emerald pressed against naked flesh could preserve a woman from apoplexy. A dentist with silver teeth sold a special compound which he vowed would improve the value of all metal; a barber displayed a gum to make bald men hirsute; and a naked Englishmen sold pine seeds which were said to guarantee invisibility as surely as the talisman of Gyges.

But no one had noticed the baby.

Teresa could have ignored him, another abandoned child due for an early death at The Foundlings Hospital; but once she had seen him the shock of love took hold.

THE STORY

The novel is set mainly in Italy, from 1295 until 1315. An abandoned child is taken in by Theresa, the wife of a glass-maker on the island of Murano in the Venetian lagoon.

The baby, Paolo, grows up short sighted but has a distinct way of looking at the world.

He befriends a painter and sets out on The Silk Route with two friends - Jacopo, a Jew, and Salek, a Muslim -  all children of Abraham, in search of the perfect colour blue, the colour of heaven.

They travel in search of understanding, sight, love and meaning.

The novel is, of course, a parable.

THE IDEA

I’ve always been fascinated by the depiction of heaven – how artists take pigments from the earth, real earth, and attempt to depict the divine; and I’ve always been fascinated by the colour blue: not only for its beauty and variety but also because it has so many associations; the colour of constancy, and the colour of sorrow or anguish, the colour of plagues and of things hurtful: the clear sky, the sea, indefinite distance, and the unknown.

In the Renaissance the most valuable blue was ultramarine- oltramarino – from beyond the seas. It was made from semi-precious stone lapis lazuli, found only in Chile, Zambia, a few small mines in Siberia and most importantly in Afghanistan. Marco Polo referred to these mines in 1271 ‘There are mountains likewise in which are found veins of lapis lazuli, the stone which yields the azure colour ultramarine, here the finest in the world. The mines of silver, copper, and lead are likewise very productive. It is a cold country.’

The colour was the ultimate extravagance, more expensive than gold, and was adopted for the most luxurious details of a painting, particularly the mantle of the Virgin.

It is this colour that Simone Martini, the Sienese painter in the novel, is determined to find after he has been commissioned to paint a Maesta, a Virgin in Glory, for the Town Hall in Siena. 

In the 12th and early 13th centuries paintings were like icons, images of divine figures on panels and altarpieces against rich gold backgrounds glimmering in the candlelight. Painting a landscape behind the Virgin, and then eventually depicting her Coronation in heaven, opened up the distance and then, with the discovery of perspective, gave depth to the image.

This opening up of distance led to a new way of seeing, one could see detail close to but also depth; and I was very startled to discover a strange coincidence which might add further meaning to this new way of looking at painting, at the world, and at the divine.

For at almost exactly the same time as the colour ultramarine began to arrive in Tuscany and in Venice, so too did spectacles.

Working lives could be lengthened, the world could be seen more clearly, and distant objects could now be in focus.

And so my novel is about how we see the world: the ground beneath our feet and the heavens above. Two ways of seeing.

I also think we live lives in two different time frames- as if we are going to live forever, and as if we were going to die each day.

The attraction of something beyond ourselves, of something profound, appeals I think to our sense of yearning, our longing to be better, our need for transcendence.

For whether we believe in heaven literally, or metaphorically, I think we live a diminished life if we cannot imagine it or if we cannot appreciate it as a concept. Even as a poetic idea, rather than a discernable reality, it is part of our search for meaning, for transcendence, and for significance. It reflects our thoughts on both the past- those who have lived before us- and the future- the contemplation of our own mortality.

SHOULD I READ IT?

Here’s part of the review by Sally Vickers, author of Miss Garnett’s Angel, which appeared in The Times:

“James Runcie writes with an exuberant and accurate feel for the physical stuffs of life. The book has a winning charm – an atmosphere of The Arabian Nights or a benevolent fairy tale.”