To prevent contrast of a projected picture from being degraded when projecting the picture to a screen by a liquid crystal projector.

Red illumination light reflected by a mirror 19 is linearly polarized by a polarizer 26R and is applied to the rear surface side of a transmission type liquid crystal element 11R. While passing through the liquid crystal element 11R, the illumination light is made to contain elliptically polarized light and is emitted from a light-emitting surface of the liquid crystal element 11R. A retardation compensator 27R consisting of structural double refractive body made of inorganic material adjusts the phase of light emitted from the liquid crystal element 11R and the elliptically polarized light is modulated into linearly polarized light and is made incident on a polarizer 28R. The polarizer 28R permits the linearly polarized light of which the vibration face is fitted to that of the polarizer to pass and makes the linearly polarized light incident on a synthetic prism 24. Likewise in a green channel and a blue channel, the retardation compensation is performed and a picture made by compositing the respective color light rays is projected to the screen 3 by a projection lens 25.