Timeline of nine blue pigments with swatches: Egyptian blue from about 3100 BCE, azurite (antiquity to the early 1700s), indigo (a plant dye used since antiquity), ultramarine from lapis lazuli, smalt (about 1400s to 1800s), Prussian blue (about 1706, often given as 1704), cobalt blue (1803-04, often given as 1802), cerulean blue (first made 1805) and synthetic ultramarine (1828).

Concept · The Painter's Colors

Blues

From the Middle Ages to 1700, painters had only a few blues: azurite, ultramarine, smalt (powdered cobalt glass) and indigo, a plant dye.

Each had a weakness. Ultramarine survives light and lime, so it works in fresco, but acid destroys it. Azurite can turn green, and smalt can lose its color in oil (see Fading and Darkening).

  • Violet pigments came late (cobalt violet 1859, manganese violet 1868). Before that, painters mixed purples, such as lake with ultramarine.

See

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