The Noble, Beautiful, Most Perfect Blue

Note: The point of this particular issue of the Colorphilia newsletter is not to prove anything definitive about the ultramarine blue pigment. It's more to highlight that nearly everything we accept as a given about the origins of the ultramarine blue pigment in Europe is not exactly accurate.

Wikipedia provides the following introduction:

Ultramarine is a deep blue pigment which was originally made by grinding lapis lazuli into a powder. Its lengthy grinding and washing process makes the natural pigment quite valuable—roughly ten times more expensive than the stone it comes from. Between the 14th and 15th centuries, it was as expensive as gold in Europe.

The name ultramarine comes from the Latin word ultramarinus. The word means 'beyond the sea', as the pigment was imported by Italian traders during the 14th and 15th centuries from mines in Afghanistan. Much of the expansion of ultramarine can be attributed to Venice which historically was the port of entry for lapis lazuli in Europe.

If you were reading the Wikipedia entry, you may understand the following facts about Ultramarine Blue:

1. Ultramarine blue was imported as a pigment.
2. Its name indicates the port of entry to Italy was important.
3. The Venetians were the main importers of ultramarine blue.
4. The Venetians had a specific connection to the mines in Afghanistan.
5. Ultramarine blue only began being imported in Europe in the 14th century.

I ought to really end the newsletter here, because I don't know what else I could add to this. This all seems rather straightforward.

Because in reality, the more I research about origins of Ultramarine Blue in Europe, the less certain I am about anything.

The Title

In chapter 62 of his Il Libro Dell'arte, the late 14th century Italian Cennino Cennini wrote the following description:

Azurro oltre amarino si e uncolore nobile bello perfettissi...

Ultramarine Blue is a glorious, lovely and absolutely perfect pigment beyond all the pigments. It would not be possible to say anything about or do anything to it which would not make it more so. And because of its splendour I want to speak at length about it and describe to you in full how it is made...

ma togli lapis lazari...
First take lapis lazuli.
- Translation by Lara Broeke

The Name

The name is usually a good place to start.

Yes, ultramarinus is a Latin word which literally means "beyond the sea". But Oltremare, the Italian version of the word, had a very particular connotation. It was used to describe the so-called Crusader States which were set up in the Levant, or what we would call the Middle East. The four states were Edessa, Antioch, Tripoli, and Jerusalem, and were much larger than simply the cities of the same name. In some ways, the Kingdom of Jerusalem encompassed more than the modern state of Israel.

It was in Oltremare where both the Genoese and the Venetians set up trading colonies which outlasted both the Crusades and the Crusader States. Many books, specifically about the Venetians, seem to contrast Oltremare with Terraferma, which literally means "solid land", but is used to describe cities and republics that would be found in what we consider to be modern day Italy.

Given our understanding of the word "colony" with regard to other European countries, colony is somewhat of an overstatement. While researching books about the Genoese traders I was struck by the similarities with medieval Jews of the same period. It wasn't a colony of a king per se, rather it was an organized community of ex-pats who still identified as members of their original homeland. The Genoese banking system in Oltremare reminded me of the Hawala international trust-based transfer system predominately used by Indians and Muslims until today.

In Cennini's work, he also writes a lot of a lesser blue pigment, made from azurite (as opposed to lapis lazuli), which is referred to as "azurro della mangnia", or "the blue from Germany", which was the predominant origin of that pigment.

So when he wrote, "azurro oltra amarino", Cennini really meant "the blue from Oltremare", which is to say, from the colonies which were part of Crusader States where Genoese and Venetians had maintained communities, which they travelled to by sea, as opposed to places on the European continent which they may have travelled to by land, or Terraferma. [1]

How did it get from the mine to Italy?

This seems to be a distinction without a difference. What does it matter if ultramarine is a description of how the pigment arrived or if it is from a geographic area called Oltremare?

It seems like by describing the pigment as Oltremare, it means that it came from the geographic area called Oltremare.

This is a problem because Afghanistan, where everyone agrees that lapis lazuli was mined, was not technically part of what would be called Oltremare. Nor have I discovered anywhere that describes an Italian trading colony anywhere near Afghanistan during that time period.

This would mean that the Italian traders who dealt in lapis lazuli acquired the stones in the same way that anyone else would have, in Levantine bazaars and markets in the aftermath of the Crusades.

In an article which analyzes earlier uses of lapis lazuli in Lombardy and Rome, as well as the then dominant Egyptian Blue, which somehow fell out of use around the 13th century, the authors include the following lines.

While lapis lazuli was used as a decorative or precious stone in Sumerian and Egyptian antiquity, there is no evidence to testify to its use as a pigment in early times.

The trade route for the lapis lazuli mineral was very long, and it has been hypothesized that, until the eighteenth century, it came exclusively from the deposits at Badakshan (Afghanistan). Like the mineral, the very complex technology for its manufacture into a pigment also has its origin in the east.

The Italians didn't have anything to do with mining the lapis lazuli, but rather took advantage of the existing trade route from Afghanistan to the Levant. This feels like a point worth repeating and emphasizing.

And if they purchased it from other traders, who also sold it to the Persians and others who used it in their art, then, it logically follows that they didn't have any special direct source. They just happened to be in the correct markets and had sufficient financing in place to take advantage of a deal when it came across.

This is why it seemed to have trickled into Italy, and to the rest of continental Europe, until the 15th and 16th centuries. It was expensive because precisely because they didn't have a direct source.

So my question is why does every single article and book I've read assume that it was imported by the Venetians (which may very well be accurate), when it is just as likely that the Genoese imported it.

What exactly was imported?

This is the other problem I'm encountering.

I can understand the impulse to attribute it to the Venetians, because they apparently dominated the spice trade, which seems to include pigments and dyes as well.

But in his late 14th century book I started this newsletter with, Cennino Cennini gives detailed directions about how to make azurro oltre amarino (ultramarine blue) from lapis lazuli. Lapis is a semi-precious stone, which would be part of a different kind of trade, the mineral kind, and the Genoese bought a lot of gold.

In most cases that I know of, dyes and pigments were processed near the point of growth or discovery, but in this case, they seemed to have also been trading in the raw materials.

Two of the reasons for this were often:

• The preservation of secret processes
• Lower costs of shipping

A scholar of Italian Renaissance art with whom I had spoken was confused by my use of oltremare, saying that the term that he saw more frequently in bills and receipts was "lapis", ie. the unprocessed mineral. Which tracks with what Cennini writes in the introduction to his book, that part of the job of the painter the ability to "mull or grind" the pigments.

Review

• People write about the Venetian "port of entry", because they assume that the name simply indicated that the pigment came from "across the sea". So they feel the (inaccurate) need to highlight the port in question.
• The name indicated that it was imported was from the Oltremare region, as opposed to Germany.
• It was more likely imported by Italian traders who were based in Oltremare, since the 12th, maybe early 13th, century.
• The Italian traders were nowhere near the mines in Afghanistan, neither geographically nor in the supply chain.
• The lapis lazuli stone was likely imported as a mineral, and then processed into a pigment in Italy, before being exported to the rest of Europe.
• The Italian traders may have been Venetian or Genoese in origin. 

  While the argument can be made that the Venetians had more of the artistic use and dominated the spice trace, the Genoese did deal in mineral trade, and had access to a credit system which would allow them to make more speculative purchases.

Please note: these are all suppositions, based on my research. If anyone has access to any sources which contradict any these, or which definitely prove the Venetian-only sourcing, please let me know.

[1] As always I'm reminded of the "chai" if by land, and "tea" if by sea.