A blue more expensive than gold − ultramarine
5/27/202652 min
Travel with us beyond the sea to look at ultramarine, a pigment that was once even more precious than gold.
In this episode, writer Victoria Finlay joins Beks for a discussion on how researching ultramarine took her to Afghanistan. She journeyed to the blue mines where you can find lapis lazuli, the semi-precious stone ultramarine comes from. Along the journey, we pause to look at some of the National Gallery’s paintings – including one noteworthy for its lack of ultramarine...
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Victoria has written several books about colour - including 'Colour, Travels through the Paintbox' and 'The Brilliant History of Color in Art' - which involved travelling across the globe to the very places that ancient pigments and dyes came from. Her most recent book is about the hidden histories of fabric.
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You can email us with any questions via podcast@nationalgallery.org.uk
Find out more about the podcast on our website: www.nationalgallery.org.uk/podcast
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Paintings mentioned:
English or French (?), ‘The Wilton Diptych’, About 1395-9 https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/english-or-french-the-wilton-diptych
Michelangelo, ‘The Entombment (or Christ being carried to his Tomb)’, About 1500-1 https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/michelangelo-the-entombment-or-christ-being-carried-to-his-tomb
Sassoferrato, ‘The Virgin and Prayer’, 1640-50 https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/sassoferrato-the-virgin-in-prayer
Titian, ‘Bacchus and Ariadne’, 1520-3 https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/titian-bacchus-and-ariadne
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, ‘The Umbrellas’, About 1881-6 https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/pierre-auguste-renoir-the-umbrellas
Claude Monet, ‘Irises’, About 1914-17 https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/claude-monet-irises
Paul Cezanne, ‘Hillside in Provence’, About 1890-2 https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/paul-cezanne-hillside-in-provence
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Further reading:
Victoria Finlay, ‘Color: A Natural History of the Palette’, 2002
Victoria Finlay, ‘Colour: Travels through the Paintbox’, 2002
Victoria Finlay, ‘The Brilliant History of Color in Art’, 2014
Victoria Finlay, ‘Fabric: The Hidden History of the Material World’, 2021
Cennino Cennini, ‘Il Libro dell Arte’, produced late 14th-century [Book]
Find out more about Ultramarine in our ‘Chemistry of Colour’ YouTube series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EzUlnRtDGM
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Episode credits:
Guest: Victoria Finlay
Host and executive producer: Beks Leary
Producer: Harry Rosehill
Researcher: Hannah Rogers
Technicians: Ian Warren and Tom Gulliver
Video Producers: Jeanne Kenyon and Alessandro Sorenti
Editor: Paul Frankl
Theme music: Theo Elwell
Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsBex Leary· Host0:00
[gentle music] "A colour illustrious, beautiful, and most perfect beyond all other colours. One could not say anything about it, or to do anything with it, that its quality would not still surpass." That is from Cennino Cennini, which we will get onto a little bit later. Welcome to Stories in Color, a podcast from the National Gallery in London, searching for histories of how color has changed the world. Today, we're looking at a pigment that's been more precious than gold, come to symbolize the holiness of the Virgin Mary, and been so revered it was specified in Renaissance artists' contracts. I'm Bex Leary from the digital department here at the gallery, and I'm joined by Victoria Finlay. Welcome back to the podcast, Victoria.
Victoria Finlay· Guest0:56
Thank you very much.
Bex Leary· Host0:57
Lovely to have you on the podcast again. So Victoria has written two books about color: Color: Travels Through the Paint Box and The Brilliant History of Color in Art, which involved traveling to some of the more extraordinary places that ancient pigments and dyes came from, including Afghanistan for blue, inspired in part by two of the paintings in the National Gallery. She's also more recently written a book about the hidden stories of fabric. So today we've set up that we're looking at this very, very precious