ABSTRACT
The chapter explores early medieval concepts of ornamentation and painting, with a focus on the relevant chapter in the Etymologiae (Etymologies) of Bishop Isidore of Seville (early 17th century). Isidore distinguishes between authentic and deceptive colours, acknowledging the value of beautification, yet condemning artifice that is divorced from truth and bodily reality. Drawing on late antique sources such as Origen and Cyprian, Isidore equates cosmetics and painting as forms of visual deceit that manipulate perception through surface illusion. By tracing the shared terminology and material history of colour—from the purple fucus pigment to rhetorical and pictorial ‘colouring’—the chapter demonstrates how Isidore transformed aesthetic and technical categories into moral ones. Rooted in the ascetic and misogynistic traditions of Christian thought, his critique redefined beauty as a sign of truth only when unadorned, opposing the art of cosmetics to divide creation itself.
