Developed in Mesoamerica in the first millennium AD, it saw wide use in the region, most prominently in the art of the Maya civilisation. Maya blue is a synthetic turquoise-blue pigment made by infusing indigo dyes (particularly those derived from the anil shrub) into palygorskite, a clay that binds and stabilises the indigo such that it becomes resistant to weathering. Ī mural from a Han Dynasty tomb painted with both Han blue and Han purple Synthetic ultramarine was widely appreciated by the French impressionists, and Vincent van Gogh used both French ultramarine and cobalt blue for his painting The Starry Night (1889). The price of artificial ultramarine was less than eight hundred francs per kilogram. At the beginning of the 19th century, the price of a kilogram of lapis lazuli was between six and ten thousand francs. Processes were devised independently by Jean Baptiste Guimet (1826) and Christian Gmelin (1828) while Guimet kept his process a secret, Gmelin published his, and thus became the originator of the French synthetic ultramarine industry. In 1824, the Societé pour l'Encouragement d'Industrie offered a prize for the artificial production of the precious color. In 1814, a French chemist named Tassaert observed the spontaneous formation of a blue compound, very similar to ultramarine, in a lime kiln at St. Ultramarine became more widely used after its successful synthesis in the 19th century, which reduced its price substantially. Pietro Perugino, in his depiction of the Madonna and Child on the Certosa de Pavio Altarpiece, painted only the top level of the Virgin's robes in ultramarine, with azurite beneath. Johannes Vermeer used ultramarine only for the most important surfaces where he wanted to attract attention. It was often reserved for special purposes, such as painting the robes of the Virgin Mary. It was the most expensive blue used by Renaissance artists. It was transformed into a pigment by the Afghans beginning in about the 5th century, and exported by caravans to India. It was produced from lapis lazuli, a mineral whose major source was the mines of Sar-e-Sang in what is now northeastern Afghanistan. Ultramarine was historically the most prestigious and expensive of blue pigments. Since the late 18th and 19th century, blue pigments are largely synthetic, manufactured in laboratories and factories. The raw material of the earliest blue pigment was lapis lazuli from mines in Afghanistan, that was refined into the pigment ultramarine. Blue pigments are natural or synthetic materials, usually made from minerals and insoluble with water, used to make the blue colors in painting and other arts.
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