Color in Painting
Sassoferrato
The Virgin in Prayer
1640–50
Oil on canvas, 73 × 57.7 cm. The National Gallery, London
Veil, dress and mantle supply nearly the whole palette: a creamy white, a rose red and an intense blue. The blue is ultramarine, the strongest color on the canvas.
- Set against a background close to black and lit from one side, the blue looks brighter still.
- In a 2014 National Gallery talk, curator Caroline Campbell linked ultramarine's intense blue to the meaning of devotional pictures like this.
- According to the National Gallery, the mantle was once covered with cobalt blue, a softer color more to Victorian taste; taking that layer off uncovered the ultramarine.
The same pigment could carry a worldly meaning: in Pierre Mignard's 1691 portrait of the Marquise de Seignelay, also in London, a lavish ultramarine robe displays her wealth.
Concepts
Image: Wikimedia Commons · Public domain