Black:  the colour of error and the void, the seal of death, and, according to Sister Emmerich, the image of profaned and wasted gifts.

Brown:  which, as the same Sister tells us, is synonymous with agitation, barrenness and dryness of the spirit, and neglect of duty; brown; which being composed of black and red—­smoke darkening the sacred fire—­is Satanic.

Grey:  the ashes of penance, the symbol of tribulation, according to the Bishop of Mende, the sign of half-mourning formerly used in the Paris ritual instead of violet in Lent.  The mingling of white and black, of virtue and vice, of joy and grief, the mirror of the soul that is neither good nor evil, the medium being, the lukewarm creature that God spueth out, grey can only rise by the infusion of a little purity, a little blue; but can, when thus converted to pearl grey, become a pious hue, and attempt a step towards Heaven, an advance in the lower paths of Mysticism.

Yellow:  considered by Sister Emmerich as the colour of idleness, of a horror of suffering, and often given to Judas in mediaeval times, is significant of treason and envy.  Orange:  of which Frederic 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.