Name: The Most Expensive Pigment in the World - The Use of Ultramarine in Art History
Uploaded: 2024-10-27T12:51:54.000Z
Duration: 8 min 35 s
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Participle clauses with adverbial meaning

The deep blue color pigment that you see in the Girl with the Pearl Earring by Johannes Vermeer is known as ultramarine.

Relative clauses (Restrictive vs. nonrestrictive)

For a long time, this was the most expensive pigment that artists could use, even more valuable than gold.

Artists like Johannes Vermeer, Michelangelo, and Titian loved to use this pigment in their work.

And in this video, I will discuss the exclusivity and special meaning of this color.

This painting of the Blessed Virgin Mary, painted in 1654 by Sasso Ferrato, perfectly illustrates the unique results that can be achieved by applying ultramarine to the canvas.

It is the incredible luminosity and the shininess that sets it apart from all other colors.

But this spectacular effect came at a price.

Let me start by explaining why it is so expensive.

For a long time, ultramarine was made by grinding lapis lazuli into a powder.

Only in 1826, a synthetic version of ultramarine was invented, after which its use became more economical and it lost its exclusivity.

Ultramarine comes from the Latin word ultramarinus, which means beyond the sea, referring to the origin of the semi-precious lapis lazuli rock, which was imported from a remote valley in the mountains of northeast Afghanistan, where it was already used in the 6th century for wall paintings.

It was not only hard to obtain the lapis lazuli rock, but it was also the most difficult pigment to grind by hand.

The highest quality mineral was necessary to properly grind the stone to form the basis of the ultramarine pigment.

Before giving you a quick idea of what was necessary in the 15th century to turn lapis lazuli into ultramarine, let me ask you to As you can see, the lapis lazuli rock does contain the blue color, but the challenge was to extract the pure blue from the rock.

To do that, the lapis lazuli rock was heated in fire, cooled rapidly in water, ground in a bronze mortar, after which the resulting powder was sifted through a strainer, mixed with pine resin, wax, and linseed oil.

This resulted in a paste that was kneaded for several days until the precious blue was ready for extraction.

It was then mixed with some other materials, kneaded extensively again, and this process was repeated several times until the bright blue residue, known as ultramarine, could be extracted cleanly.

This exclusive pigment became especially popular during the Renaissance, and it was often used for the most important elements in a painting.

In the first half of the 15th century, Fra Angelico was a big fan of ultramarine, which we can see, for example, in his Deposition of Christ from 1432.

He used it so frequently compared to other artists that the pigment became known as Fra Angelico blue.

And during this period, the pigment was almost exclusively used in Italy, as it was imported through the port of Venice.

The presence of ultramarine in Renaissance paintings from countries north of Italy is much more sparse.

During the early Renaissance, a painter s handbook described ultramarine as noble, beautiful, and perfect beyond all other colors.

The price of an ounce of this lapis lazuli rock was for centuries similar to the price of an ounce of gold.

But on top of that, the artist had to factor in the cost of turning the lapis lazuli into the ultramarine pigment, which was as explained a very laborious process.

So the price of one ounce of this precious pigment was roughly equivalent to the yearly rent an average person would pay for their house in a city like Florence.

During the early Renaissance, ultramarine was the mother of Jesus.

We can see that clearly in this painting by Masaccio from 1426, showing the Virgin and Child, and also in this work by Pietro Perugino from the year 1500, showing the Virgin Mary with Jesus and some angels.

Before the Renaissance, ultramarine was already used occasionally, maybe most noticeably so in the right panel of the famous Wilton diptych, which was created by the end of the 14th century.

The unknown artist of this panel has lavishly used the expensive pigment to paint the robe of the Virgin Mary holding Jesus, as well as for the garments of the 11 angels surrounding them.

We can also see ultramarine in the sky of some of the frescoes painted by Giotto in the beginning of the 14th century, including this scene showing the arrest of Jesus.

Ultramarine was not only a spectacular color to include in a painting, it also gave an immediate sense of exclusivity to a painting, as artists, commissioners, patrons, and collectors were well aware of the cost of this pigment.

A good example of this is the famous painting of Bacchus and Ariadne by Titian, who used the pigment for two cloaks and part of the sky.

This is different from some of the examples of the Virgin Mary that we saw earlier.

Here the color is not used to emphasize an exclusive element in the painting, but rather to create a wow effect, as it clearly stands out from the other colors in the composition.

And Michelangelo also used large quantities of this color for the background of his famous Last Judgment fresco in the Sistine Chapel.

A century later, Johannes Vermeer chose a different approach.

Thanks to the support of a wealthy collector, Vermeer was able to use more ultramarine paint than his colleagues, but he did not just use it to show off its shininess or exclusivity.

Vermeer was a perfectionist and a very refined artist, so he used the ultramarine in more subtle ways.

For example, he sometimes mixed it with other colors to create accurate shadows in his paintings, like we can see in this lady standing at the virginal.

And this painting also provides a good moment to say that however expensive the pigment was, it did not guarantee its luminosity would last over time.

For example, Vermeer used ultramarine for the cushion of the chair in the foreground, but it would have been much more vivid back in the day, as scientific research has shown that the color has degraded and become paler over time.

And for Vermeer s a young woman seated at the virginal, it was used in the curtain, the dress of the woman, and in small quantities to highlight the arms of the woman.

Sometimes, he used it just as underpaint, like for particular sections of The Girl with the Wineglass.

It is hard to see, but Vermeer used the expensive ultramarine as underpaint for the shadows in the red satin dress here.

As you could see throughout this video, the special effects and the exclusivity of ultramarine has contributed to many masterpieces over time.

And the works shown here are of course only a minor subset of all great works that contain this precious pigment.

I would love to hear in the comments below if you are familiar with any other paintings you love that contain this pigment.

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