🎨 Pigments & geology

Text 231w : https://www.thoughtco.com/pigment-definition-4141440 Pigment Definition and Chemistry

Video 12’13 : https://youtu.be/agMRddJPVOo?si=w4THZzFVjo1yGRSO The Most Expensive Color in History — Ultramarine Blue

For centuries, one blue pigment was worth more than gold. Made from a rare stone mined in the mountains of Afghanistan, ultramarine blue was reserved for the Virgin Mary, kings, and the wealthiest patrons of the Renaissance. In this episode of Origins Of Color, we explore the dark and fascinating history of Ultramarine Blue — how it was extracted through a strange and exhausting process, why artists and rulers fought over it, the human cost behind the mines, and how a synthetic version finally made the world’s most expensive color available to everyone.

video 8’46 : https://youtu.be/E557sp9murA?si=SQ2lTBE-Ztm0zKw0 https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1ETW6f8RMS/ How Lapis & Azurite influenced art history

Two blue geological materials. One is a mineral. The other is a rock. And for centuries, turning either of them into paint involved considerably more faffing about than simply smashing something blue with a rock. Azurite is a copper carbonate mineral whose appearance as a pigment depends heavily on particle size. Grind it differently, and you can noticeably change the resulting blue. Lapis lazuli presents almost the opposite problem. Because lapis is a rock containing several different minerals, grinding it gives you all of those minerals mixed together. Producing high-quality natural ultramarine therefore required an elaborate separation process to concentrate the valuable blue material. That difference affected far more than colour. Natural ultramarine made from lapis travelled enormous distances, required painstaking processing and could become spectacularly expensive. Azurite could also be valuable, but the two pigments had different preparation methods, optical properties, ageing behaviour and economic histories. And painters didn't necessarily choose one or the other. Technical examination of historic paintings has sometimes found natural ultramarine layered directly over azurite. So in this episode we're looking at what happens when geology becomes pigment — and how particle size, purification, international trade, chemistry and several centuries of ageing can all affect something apparently as straightforward as blue paint. Because apparently even blue requires paperwork.

Video 10’22 : https://youtu.be/cYIWwFN72zM?si=EZYvxdX7wBZ1AYII The Unbelievable Story of the Color Blue

For 6,000 years, Lapis Lazuli was the only way to make the color blue. It was literally worth more than gold. But the story of this stone isn't just about Art History—it's about the world's first global supply chain that stretched from the remote mountains of Afghanistan to the paintbrush of Michelangelo. In this video, we trace the "Blood Diamond" history of the color blue. From bankrupted Renaissance artists to the Soviet-Afghan war, this is how a single geological monopoly shaped empires, fueled insurgencies, and held the art world hostage for millennia.

November 18

Experiments about pigments