Blue, the Rarest Pigment and the Colour of Heaven

Blue is the colour of the sky and the deep sea, and its symbolism is dominated by distance, depth, calm and the transcendent. A striking historical fact underlies its prestige: a true, stable blue pigment was hard and costly to make, and ultramarine, ground from lapis lazuli imported from Afghanistan, was for centuries more expensive than gold, which is why medieval and Renaissance painters reserved it for the robe of the Virgin Mary, whose blue mantle became one of the most recognisable colour codes in Western art.

In many cultures blue is protective: the blue eye-bead against the evil eye runs from the eastern Mediterranean across the Islamic world. In Hindu iconography a blue skin marks Vishnu, Krishna and Rama, the divine associated with the infinite of sky and ocean. Blue is now the most commonly named favourite colour worldwide, a modern preference. In the twentieth-century chakra scheme blue is placed at the throat.