A Blue More Precious than Gold

The Virgin Mary's robes are usually blue. We could look for a theological explanation, but there is a more material point of entry: the price tag.

Ultramarine pigment is made by grinding a stone called lapis lazuli. For a long time, the mines of Badakhshan in northeastern Afghanistan were almost its only source. Because the stone crossed the sea to reach Europe, it was called ultra marinus: from beyond the sea. The name itself records the distance it travelled.

During the Renaissance, this blue is said to have cost more than gold by weight. Painting commissions therefore specified how much ultramarine was to be used, and of what grade, alongside the fee. It was a contractual matter rather than an artist's free choice. The most expensive colour went to the most important figure. Mary's robes were blue partly because blue was expensive. The market quietly helped draw the outlines of the sacred.

In 1824, a French organization offered a prize for a method of producing synthetic ultramarine. Jean-Baptiste Guimet is said to have received it a few years later. There was no longer any need to grind the stone, and the price of blue collapsed. Anyone could afford it. We might be tempted to end here with 'technology democratized art', but let us pause. When blue became cheap, did it cease to be special?

In 1960, Yves Klein registered a vivid blue of his own formulation and filled canvases with that colour alone. Using a blue that had become affordable, he insisted once again: this blue is special. Is something precious because it is scarce, or because we decide it is precious? Blue has carried that question all this time. From beyond the sea, even now.