{"id":24135,"date":"2013-01-01T00:26:32","date_gmt":"2013-01-01T05:26:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/voxnova\/?p=24135"},"modified":"2013-01-01T00:26:32","modified_gmt":"2013-01-01T05:26:32","slug":"sacre-bleu-and-the-mother-of-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/voxnova\/2013\/01\/01\/sacre-bleu-and-the-mother-of-god\/","title":{"rendered":"Sacre Bleu and the Mother of God"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

We are pleased to present a second guest post by Leanne Ogasawara, who writes from Japan, where she is a freelance translator and writer.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"
Wilton Diptych<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When the German explorer Albert von Le Coq was at Kizil as part of his grand travels to \u201cborrow\u201d ancient artifacts in Central Asia (carving \u00a0frescos right off the walls in some cases!), he was stunned to come upon cave temples in what was by that time the middle of nowhere with murals of such beauty that he described them to be \u201cthe finest in all of Turkestan.\u201d<\/p>\n

These murals were of\u00a0astounding beauty. And most surprising of all was the blue pigment used in the paintings decorating the cave walls. He would write, \u201c<\/em>\u2026the extravagant use of a brilliant blue \u2013 the well-known ultramarine which, in the time of Benvenuto Cellini was frequently employed by the Italian painters, and was bought at double its weight in gold.\u201d<\/p>\n

A color likened to the brilliant blue of the heavens above; as Le Coq explains, this\u00a0ultramarine<\/a>\u00a0pigment was the same blue pigment so beloved by the Renaissance painters. How is it possible, he wondered, that the most expensive blue in the Renaissance painter\u2019s palate was also to be found in this remote spot in Central Asia?<\/p>\n

Made from ground up lapis lazuli,\u00a0Victoria Finlay, in her book,\u00a0Color: A Natural History of the Palette<\/a>, begins her chapter on blue with these words: \u201cOne day many years ago somebody told me that all the true ultramarine paint in the world came from one mine in the heart of Asia.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s true,\u00a0it seems that\u00a0all the ultramarine paint in the world was painstakingly derived from the lapis luzuli rocks mined from one place in northeast Afghanistan. Located not far from Bamiyan; from the Sar-e-sang mine in Afghanistan, donkeys transported the expensive pigment in rough sacks over an ocean of mountain ranges\u2013 East to Central Asia and beyond, and West to Venice and beyond.<\/p>\n

In Europe, the precious pigment was so expensive that it was worth more than gold, and the legendary painters of the Renaissance were forced to wait till their patrons provided them the pigment before they could apply the heavenly blue to Mary\u2019s robes (for by this time the color was symbolic of Mary).<\/p>\n

Finlay says in today\u2019s money, a pound would cost about $3,000.<\/p>\n

The color is truly heavenly\u2013 just look at the\u00a0Wilton Diptych<\/a>\u2014 shown above. That is all lapis lazuli from Afghanistan. It is the same color blue that was used at Kizil in what is now Western China and the same color blue that was used in painting the great Buddhist<\/a> statues that stood over the Bamiyan valley for 1400 years.<\/p>\n

The Queen of Heaven<\/a><\/p>\n

In Medieval Byzantium dark blue was the color reserved for an empress. It was also\u2013along with gold\u2013the costliest material of all and so was used in paintings of the Virgin Mary as an expression of devotion.The color became, therefore, a symbol of Mary, and this is where the term, la sacre bleu<\/em> comes from too\u2026<\/p>\n

Cennino Cennini, in\u00a0Il Libro dell\u2019Arte<\/a>, wrote that \u201c<\/em>Ultramarine blue is a color illustrious, beautiful and most perfect, beyond all other colors; one could not say anything about it, or do anything with it, that its quality would still not surpass.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even the great Michaelangelo was famously unable to finish his painting The Entombment<\/a>\u00a0because his promised shipment of ultramarine fell through.<\/p>\n

In the East too, lapis luzuli was treasured. Called\u00a0vairya<\/em> in Sanskrit, lapis luzuli was one of the Seven Buddhist treasures (\u4e03\u5b9d)\u2013along with gold, silver, pearls, agate, crystal, and coral. In Japanese, it is written\u00a0\u7460\u7483. Ruri is also used as a girl\u2019s name, signifying the beautiful gem-like quality of the color. In fact, one of the most beautiful women I ever met in my life had that heavenly name.<\/p>\n

My own favorite blue is Huizong\u2019s blue \u2014that shimmering lavendar blue<\/a> he longed to re-create in his imperial ceramic glazes\u2013like \u201cthe the color of the sky, in early morning after a rainshower\u2026\u201d\u00a0 That blue was the blue that would become a kind of longing in people \u2013existing more in people\u2019s imaginations and hearts than anywhere else. But Cellini\u2019s blue\u2013that lapis luzuli blue from Bamiyan\u2013 is perhaps the most treasured blue of all times. It was, after all, a color to designate a celestial Queen.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We are pleased to present a second guest post by Leanne Ogasawara, who writes from Japan, where she is a freelance translator and writer. When the German explorer Albert von Le Coq was at Kizil as part of his grand travels to \u201cborrow\u201d ancient artifacts in Central Asia (carving \u00a0frescos right off the walls in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2957,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[281,447],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-mary"],"yoast_head":"\nSacre Bleu and the Mother of God<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"We are pleased to present a second guest post by Leanne Ogasawara, who writes from Japan, where she is a freelance translator and writer. 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