This week students in Ontario completed their school year. Some graduated onto bigger things (like high school), others moved up another rung in the grade ladder, but most were likely just glad to finally be rid of pencils, books, and “teacher’s dirty looks.”
While I was always glad to see the end of school, endings for me always have a ring of sadness to them in a way that beginnings don’t. So while I loved summer, I loved the first day of school. New jeans, a sharp haircut—possibility. But one of the greatest pleasures of the first day of school was a new box of Crayola pencil crayons. A box of eighteen, twenty-four, or if Zellers had a sale, thirty-six magical hues with snappy and chic names—“vermillion,” “cerulean,” “indigo”—was just the greatest thing. My favourite colour was “ultramarine.”
Ultramarine was one of the most expensive—and therefore admired colours—in the world until 1828, when the French Government awarded a prize to Christian Gmelin for successfully synthesizing an alternative. Until then, ultramarine was derived from lapis lazuli, a semi-precious stone mined in Afghanistan. Its Latin name denotes its provenance: it had to be shipped in from “beyond the sea.”
Unlike most pigments derived from stone, one couldn’t simply grind lapis into the lustrous colour one wanted. Powdered lapis was dull and grey so alchemists developed a lengthy and intensive regimen of purifying the powder to make the desired pigment.
During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, ultramarine was considered the greater than gold—“most perfect, beyond all other colours; one could not say anything about it, or do anything with it, that its quality would not still surpass”—according to Cennini (15th c.). For this reason, it was reserved for only deserving subjects, like the Virgin Mary. She was often shown in sumptuous ultramarine gowns, like this famous painting by Van Eyck (1434, above). Art historian Daniel Thompson suggests that “the costliness, the permanent intrinsic value of the blue from lapis put it in a class with gems, to be worn proudly or offered humbly as a worthy gift.”
In the premiere production of R. Murray Schafer’s The Children’s Crusade a couple of weeks ago, the Virgin Mary makes an appearance. She appropriately wears a beautiful ultramarine cloak. I’m sure the dye to make it was pretty cheap. But it still looked rich as could be.
While I was always glad to see the end of school, endings for me always have a ring of sadness to them in a way that beginnings don’t. So while I loved summer, I loved the first day of school. New jeans, a sharp haircut—possibility. But one of the greatest pleasures of the first day of school was a new box of Crayola pencil crayons. A box of eighteen, twenty-four, or if Zellers had a sale, thirty-six magical hues with snappy and chic names—“vermillion,” “cerulean,” “indigo”—was just the greatest thing. My favourite colour was “ultramarine.”
Ultramarine was one of the most expensive—and therefore admired colours—in the world until 1828, when the French Government awarded a prize to Christian Gmelin for successfully synthesizing an alternative. Until then, ultramarine was derived from lapis lazuli, a semi-precious stone mined in Afghanistan. Its Latin name denotes its provenance: it had to be shipped in from “beyond the sea.”
Unlike most pigments derived from stone, one couldn’t simply grind lapis into the lustrous colour one wanted. Powdered lapis was dull and grey so alchemists developed a lengthy and intensive regimen of purifying the powder to make the desired pigment.
During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, ultramarine was considered the greater than gold—“most perfect, beyond all other colours; one could not say anything about it, or do anything with it, that its quality would not still surpass”—according to Cennini (15th c.). For this reason, it was reserved for only deserving subjects, like the Virgin Mary. She was often shown in sumptuous ultramarine gowns, like this famous painting by Van Eyck (1434, above). Art historian Daniel Thompson suggests that “the costliness, the permanent intrinsic value of the blue from lapis put it in a class with gems, to be worn proudly or offered humbly as a worthy gift.”
In the premiere production of R. Murray Schafer’s The Children’s Crusade a couple of weeks ago, the Virgin Mary makes an appearance. She appropriately wears a beautiful ultramarine cloak. I’m sure the dye to make it was pretty cheap. But it still looked rich as could be.
No comments:
Post a Comment