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.