Book 19: On colours, smells, tastes
Texts and Images
The final book, a type of appendix with 149 chapters, is dedicated to a wide range of subjects including colours, smells and tastes. Many unrelated topics are brought together here, as if to suggest that the author had difficulty integrating these subjects into the previous chapters, but wished to include them regardless. Chapters cover colours and their application by artists, eggs, perfume, numbers and number symbolism, geometry, weights and measures and music. The book opens with an image of a master lecturing outdoors to scholars who observe a rainbow.
Master lecturing while men observe a rainbow (Book 19: On colours, smells, tastes)
Seated at a lectern with an open book, the master instructs three men. While one faces forward, concentrating on the lesson, two turn away to observe a rainbow, a phenomenon discussed in the text. Apart from a slim band of red and a larger band of yellow, the individual colours of the rainbow are not distinguished. Figures in the border include hybrid creatures and a dragon.