Jean Corbechon, Livre des propriétés des choses

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.