Ultramarine: The Blue That Cost More Than Gold

Ultramarine is made from lazurite, the brilliant blue mineral in the semiprecious stone lapis lazuli. Almost all the ultramarine in the history of art came from a few mines high in what is now north-east Afghanistan.¹

Some of the stone reached Europe by boat, but most of it traveled overland along the Silk Road. Hence the name: ultramarine literally means “beyond the sea”.¹

Getting from rock to paint was slow, skilled work. The rarity of the stone and the time it took meant that ultramarine became the most expensive pigment a painter could buy.¹

The price shaped paintings. Around 1500, Michelangelo began The Entombment, then left it unfinished when he returned to Florence. One figure is missing: the Virgin, whose mantle was traditionally painted in ultramarine. The National Gallery in London, which owns the panel, suggests he would have needed the costly blue to complete her.²

That tradition explains why so many Virgins in old paintings wear blue: it was the most precious color a painter could give her.^{1, 2}

Johannes Vermeer painted only a few pictures a year and had a large family to feed, yet he used ultramarine lavishly. The Mauritshuis notes that his Woman Reading a Letter at the Rijksmuseum is full of it, from the dress to the shadows of the background.¹

In Girl with a Pearl Earring, the famous blue headscarf is painted with high-quality ultramarine, as a 2020 scientific study confirmed. Vermeer even mixed it into the shadows of her yellow jacket.^{1, 3}

In 1824, a French society for the encouragement of industry offered a prize of 6,000 francs to whoever could make ultramarine artificially, at a reasonable cost.⁴

The prize went in 1828 to Jean-Baptiste Guimet. Chemists in France and Germany learned to make the pigment in the late 1820s, and the blue that once cost more than gold became an everyday color.^{4, 5}

Use it as the accent. A deep blue canvas against warm white, linen or pale oak looks rich without making a room cold.

Repeat it once. Echo the blue of the art in one other object, a cushion, a vase, a book, and the room feels composed.

Mind the light. Blues can look quite different in daylight and in lamplight. Look at a piece in the room at night before deciding. For how old varnish can even turn a painted blue sky green, read The Mona Lisa.