Caspian Blue - History of Blue - Blue in The European Renaissance

Blue in The European Renaissance

In the Renaissance, a revolution occurred in painting; artists began to paint the world as it was actually seen, with perspective, depth, shadows, and light from a single source. Artists had to adapt their use of blue to the new rules. In medieval paintings, blue was used to attract the attention of the viewer to the Virgin Mary, and identify her. In Renaissance paintings, artists tried to create harmonies between blue and red, lightening the blue with lead white paint and adding shadows and highlights. Raphael was a master of this technique, carefully balancing the reds and the blues so no one colour dominated the picture.

Utramarine was the most prestigious blue of the Renaissance, and patrons sometimes specified that it be used in paintings they commissioned. The contract for the Madone des Harpies by Andrea del Sarto (1514) required that the robe of the Virgin Mary be coloured with ultramarine costing "at least five good florins an ounce." Good ultramarine was more expensive than gold; in 1508 the German painter Albrecht Durer reported in a letter that he had paid twelve ducats- the equivalent of forty-one grams of gold - for just thirty grams of ultramarine.

Often painters or clients saved money by using less expensive blues, such as azurite smalt, or pigments made with indigo, but this sometimes caused problems. Pigments made from azurite were less expensive, but tended to turn dark and green with time. An example is the robe of the Virgin Mary in The Madonna Enthroned with Saints by Raphael in the Metropolitan Museum in New York. The Virgin Mary's azurite blue robe has degraded into a greenish-black.

The introduction of oil painting changed the way colours looked and how they were used. Ultramarine pigment, for instance, was much darker when used in oil painting than when used in tempera painting, in frescoes. To balance their colours, Renaissance artists like Raphael added white to lighten the ultramarine. The sombre dark blue robe of the Virgin Mary became a brilliant sky blue. Titian created his rich blues by using many thin glazes of paint of different blues and violets. which allowed the light to pass through, which made a complex and luminous colour, like stained glass. He also used layers of finely ground or coarsely ground ultramarine, which gave subtle variations to the blue.

• Giotto was one of the first Italian Renaissance painters to use ultramarine, here in the murals of the Arena Chapel in Padua (circa 1305).

• Throughout the 14th and 15th centuries, the robes of the Virgin Mary were painted with ultramarine. This is The Virgin of Humility by Fra Angelico (about 1430). Blue fills the picture.

• In In the Virgin of the Meadow (1506), Raphael used white to soften the ultramarine blue of Virgin Mary's robes to balance the red and blue, and to harmonize with the rest of the picture.

• Giovanni Bellini was the master of the rich and luminous blue, which almost seemed to glow. This Madonna is from 1480.

• Titian used an ultramarine sky and robes to give depth and brilliance to Bacchus and Ariadne (1520-1523)

• In this painting of The Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints an early work by Raphael in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the blue cloak of the Virgin Mary has turned a green-black. It was painted with less-expensive azurite.

• Glazed Terracotta of The Virgin Adoring the Christ Child, from the workshop of Andrea della Robbia (1483)

• The Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry was the most important illuminated manuscript of the 15th century. The blue was the extravagantly expensive ultramarine, whose fine grains gave it its brilliant colour. It shows the Duc Du Berry himself seated at the lower right. His costume shows that blue had become a colour for the dress of the nobility, not just of peasants.