An apparatus receptive of illumination light from an illumination light source for providing a color image on a projection lens includes three displays responsive to a video signal for modulating incident lights to display respective component images, a first dichroic layer for separating the illumination light into a first component light and a first mixed light of different wavelength regions to give the first component light to one of the displays, a second dichroic layer for separating the mixed light into second and third component lights of different wavelength regions to give the second and third component lights to other two of the displays respectively, a third dichroic layer for synthesizing, out of the first, second and third information lights from the displays, the first and second information light, and a fourth dichroic layer for further synthesizing the light synthesized by the third dichroic layer with the third information light.