Bleu (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rhapsody_in) wrote2013-04-26 10:45 am
rhapsody_in) wrote2013-04-26 10:45 am
Entry tags:
Interlude in Blue
Interlude in Blue #1: Sacré Bleu
The cloak of the Virgin Mary is blue. Sacred blue. It was not always so, but beginning in the thirteenth century, the Church dictated that in paintings, frescoes, mosaics, stained glass windows, icons, and altarpieces, Mary's cloak was to be colored blue, and not just any blue, but ultramarine blue, the rarest and most expensive color in the medieval painter's palette, the source mineral, more valuable than gold. Strangely enough, in the eleven hundred years prior to the rise of the cult of the Virgin, there is no mention in Church liturgy of the color blue, none, as if it had been deliberately avoided. Prior to the thirteenth century, the Virgin's cloak was to be depicted in red - color of the sacred blood.
Medieval color merchants and dyers, who had been geared up for red since the time of the Roman Empire, but had no established natural source for blue, were hard-pressed to meet the demand that rose from the color's association with the Virgin. They tried to bribe glassmakers at the great cathedrals to portray the Devil in blue in their windows, in hope of changing the mind-set of the faithful, but the Virgin and Sacré Bleu prevailed.
The cult of the Virgin itself may have risen out of an effort of the Church to absorb the last few pagan goddess-worshippers in Europe, some of those the remnants of worshippers of the Roman goddess Venus, and her Greek analogue Aphrodite, and the Norse, Freya. The ancients did not associate the color, blue, with their goddesses. To them, blue was not even a real color but a shade of night, a derivative of black.
In the ancient world, blue was a breed of darkness.
Interlude in Blue #2: Making the Blue
For as long as there have been painters, there have been color men. For years it was thought that the true painter, a master painter, would gather his own pigments, the earths, ochres, insects, snails, plants, and potions that went into making color, and combine them in his studio. But the truth is, the ingredients for colors were often hard to find, difficult to prepare, and rare. To be a master, a painter needs to paint, not waste the light by searching for and preparing pigment. It was the color man who delivered the rainbow into the hands of the artist.
Ultramarine, true blue, the Sacré Bleu, is made from crushed lapis lazuli, a gemstone, and for centuries, it was rarer and more valuable than gold. Lapis lazuli is found in one place in the world, the remote mountains of Afghanistan, a long, dangerous journey from Europe, where the churches and palaces were being decorated with the Blessed Virgin wearing a Sacré Bleu gown.
It was the color men who sought out the lapis and pulled the color from the stone.
First they pounded the lapis with a bronze mortar and pestle, then that powder would be sifted until so fine the grains were not visible to the naked eye. The dull bluish-gray powder was then melted into a mixture of pine rosin, gum mastic, and beeswax. Over a period of three weeks, the putty would be massaged, washed with lye, strained, then dried, until all that was left was pure, powdered ultramarine, which a color man could sell as dry pigment, to be mixed by the artist with plaster for fresco, egg yolk for tempera, or linseed or poppy oil to use as oil paint.
There are other blues, blues from plants, indigo and woad, which fade with time, and inferior blues from minerals like copper and azurite, which can go black with time, but a true blue, a forever blue, ultramarine, was made in this exact way. Every color man knew the recipe, and every color man who traveled Europe from painter to painter with his wares could swear to his clients that this was the process he had used.
Except one.
Interlude in Blue #3: A Frog in Time
A substance's color is generated by the absorption of light hitting it and the material's resonant frequencies. That is, when a material's molecules resonate with a certain frequency of light, the light rays are absorbed. When they do not resonate, the rays are either reflected or pass right through it. Only the reflected rays reach our eye and determine color. Natural pigments, like lapis lazuli, from which the Sacré Bleu is made, show their color by the absorption of light. Absorption of light literally transforms the orbit of the electrons in the atoms of the pigment. In short, the color doesn't actually exist, physically, as we experience it, until it is exposed to light waves. Light makes it appear, changes the surface physically.
Theoretically, if all of the light passed through a substance, an object could be invisible to the eye.
Strangely enough, truly blue pigment exists in no vertebrate creature on Earth. The fish scales, butterfly wings, peacock feathers that appear to be blue are what is called structural color, where surfaces are composed of microstructures that scatter very short wavelengths of blue light - refraction - the reason the sky appears blue without blue pigment.
There are, however, unconfirmed reports of a blue tree frog in the Amazon river basin. The frog has been spotted on three occasions by Western biologists, but when any attempt was made to capture or photograph the creature, it appeared to the scientists to vanish.
Native legends tell of a shaman who found one of the blue frogs dead and made an arrow poison with its skin. When he shot a monkey with the poisoned arrow, it disappeared, or so he said. But a boy from the shaman's village remembered finding a dead monkey at the edge of the village the month before, slain with an arrow exactly like the one the shaman had used, even though the shaman had not been hunting that earlier time. Somehow, the blue arrow poison had transported the animal across time.
Many Indians report that they have seen the blue frog of the Amazon vanish before their eyes, and even with a thorough search of the area have never gotten a second glimpse of the frog. What they neglected to consider was not where to search, but when.
Interlude in Blue #4: A Brief History of the Nude in Art
"Hey, have a look at these!" said the muse.
The cloak of the Virgin Mary is blue. Sacred blue. It was not always so, but beginning in the thirteenth century, the Church dictated that in paintings, frescoes, mosaics, stained glass windows, icons, and altarpieces, Mary's cloak was to be colored blue, and not just any blue, but ultramarine blue, the rarest and most expensive color in the medieval painter's palette, the source mineral, more valuable than gold. Strangely enough, in the eleven hundred years prior to the rise of the cult of the Virgin, there is no mention in Church liturgy of the color blue, none, as if it had been deliberately avoided. Prior to the thirteenth century, the Virgin's cloak was to be depicted in red - color of the sacred blood.
Medieval color merchants and dyers, who had been geared up for red since the time of the Roman Empire, but had no established natural source for blue, were hard-pressed to meet the demand that rose from the color's association with the Virgin. They tried to bribe glassmakers at the great cathedrals to portray the Devil in blue in their windows, in hope of changing the mind-set of the faithful, but the Virgin and Sacré Bleu prevailed.
The cult of the Virgin itself may have risen out of an effort of the Church to absorb the last few pagan goddess-worshippers in Europe, some of those the remnants of worshippers of the Roman goddess Venus, and her Greek analogue Aphrodite, and the Norse, Freya. The ancients did not associate the color, blue, with their goddesses. To them, blue was not even a real color but a shade of night, a derivative of black.
In the ancient world, blue was a breed of darkness.
Interlude in Blue #2: Making the Blue
For as long as there have been painters, there have been color men. For years it was thought that the true painter, a master painter, would gather his own pigments, the earths, ochres, insects, snails, plants, and potions that went into making color, and combine them in his studio. But the truth is, the ingredients for colors were often hard to find, difficult to prepare, and rare. To be a master, a painter needs to paint, not waste the light by searching for and preparing pigment. It was the color man who delivered the rainbow into the hands of the artist.
Ultramarine, true blue, the Sacré Bleu, is made from crushed lapis lazuli, a gemstone, and for centuries, it was rarer and more valuable than gold. Lapis lazuli is found in one place in the world, the remote mountains of Afghanistan, a long, dangerous journey from Europe, where the churches and palaces were being decorated with the Blessed Virgin wearing a Sacré Bleu gown.
It was the color men who sought out the lapis and pulled the color from the stone.
First they pounded the lapis with a bronze mortar and pestle, then that powder would be sifted until so fine the grains were not visible to the naked eye. The dull bluish-gray powder was then melted into a mixture of pine rosin, gum mastic, and beeswax. Over a period of three weeks, the putty would be massaged, washed with lye, strained, then dried, until all that was left was pure, powdered ultramarine, which a color man could sell as dry pigment, to be mixed by the artist with plaster for fresco, egg yolk for tempera, or linseed or poppy oil to use as oil paint.
There are other blues, blues from plants, indigo and woad, which fade with time, and inferior blues from minerals like copper and azurite, which can go black with time, but a true blue, a forever blue, ultramarine, was made in this exact way. Every color man knew the recipe, and every color man who traveled Europe from painter to painter with his wares could swear to his clients that this was the process he had used.
Except one.
Interlude in Blue #3: A Frog in Time
A substance's color is generated by the absorption of light hitting it and the material's resonant frequencies. That is, when a material's molecules resonate with a certain frequency of light, the light rays are absorbed. When they do not resonate, the rays are either reflected or pass right through it. Only the reflected rays reach our eye and determine color. Natural pigments, like lapis lazuli, from which the Sacré Bleu is made, show their color by the absorption of light. Absorption of light literally transforms the orbit of the electrons in the atoms of the pigment. In short, the color doesn't actually exist, physically, as we experience it, until it is exposed to light waves. Light makes it appear, changes the surface physically.
Theoretically, if all of the light passed through a substance, an object could be invisible to the eye.
Strangely enough, truly blue pigment exists in no vertebrate creature on Earth. The fish scales, butterfly wings, peacock feathers that appear to be blue are what is called structural color, where surfaces are composed of microstructures that scatter very short wavelengths of blue light - refraction - the reason the sky appears blue without blue pigment.
There are, however, unconfirmed reports of a blue tree frog in the Amazon river basin. The frog has been spotted on three occasions by Western biologists, but when any attempt was made to capture or photograph the creature, it appeared to the scientists to vanish.
Native legends tell of a shaman who found one of the blue frogs dead and made an arrow poison with its skin. When he shot a monkey with the poisoned arrow, it disappeared, or so he said. But a boy from the shaman's village remembered finding a dead monkey at the edge of the village the month before, slain with an arrow exactly like the one the shaman had used, even though the shaman had not been hunting that earlier time. Somehow, the blue arrow poison had transported the animal across time.
Many Indians report that they have seen the blue frog of the Amazon vanish before their eyes, and even with a thorough search of the area have never gotten a second glimpse of the frog. What they neglected to consider was not where to search, but when.
Interlude in Blue #4: A Brief History of the Nude in Art
"Hey, have a look at these!" said the muse.