Abstract

Othello's colour has always been an interpretative key point. Starting from Shakespeare's Italian source, it can be considered in relation to elements of Renaissance aesthetics of the wonder or marvellous, becoming in the Shakespearian tragedy a deep cultural and symbolic connotation. Othello's face is a simulacrum of the complex relationships of the characters, inside the perception of an aesthetics of the otherness, between order and chaos. During the Romantic Age the construction of Othello's Myth involves a large reception of the play (from Hazlitt to Byron, Schlegel, Coleridge) including passages in the figurative arts (examples from Sabatelli, Delacroix, Colin) where the paintings represent moments of "visual criticism" showing a connection and an ideal dialogue with the dominant, romantic interpretative models.