Ultramarine is the deep blue pigment ground from lapis lazuli, once worth more than gold. Learn its history, how artists used it, and why synthetic versions changed painting.
During the Renaissance, contracts for altarpieces sometimes specified where ultramarine would be used and who would pay for it. The pigment was so expensive that patrons itemized it separately from the artist's fee. A commission might stipulate that the Virgin Mary's robes would be painted in ultramarine, paid for by the church, while the rest of the painting used cheaper blues like azurite. The pigment came from a single source: mines in the mountains of Afghanistan, where lapis lazuli had been quarried for thousands of years. The stone traveled overland through trade routes to Venice, the gateway to Europe, and from there to painters' workshops across the continent. By weight, the finest ultramarine cost more than gold.
Ultramarine is a blue pigment made from lapis lazuli, a semi-precious stone whose primary coloring component is the mineral lazurite. The name comes from the Latin "ultramarinus," meaning "beyond the sea," a reference to its distant origin. The pigment is produced by grinding the stone, then separating the blue lazurite from the colorless and white impurities through a laborious washing and sedimentation process. The result is a deep, warm blue that is unusually stable and resistant to fading. Synthetic ultramarine, chemically identical to the natural pigment, was developed in the 1820s and replaced the natural version in most artists' palettes by the late 19th century.
This entry covers how natural ultramarine was made, why it was so expensive, which artists used it most memorably, and how the invention of synthetic ultramarine changed the economics of blue paint.
The process of extracting ultramarine from lapis lazuli is described in detail by Cennino Cennini in his early 15th-century craftsman's handbook, Il Libro dell'Arte. Cennini called it "a color illustrious, beautiful, and most perfect, beyond all other colors." He also warned that "one could not do anything with it except expensive things." The method he describes involves grinding the stone into a fine powder, mixing it with a paste of wax, resins, and oils, and then kneading this mixture under water. The blue lazurite particles settle out into the water, while the colorless minerals remain trapped in the waxy paste. The process is repeated multiple times, with each washing producing a lower grade of pigment. The first wash yields the purest, deepest blue. Subsequent washes produce progressively grayer, less saturated grades.
A 2025 study published in the International Journal of Architectural Heritage compared two historical methods of preparing natural ultramarine: the extraction method described by Cennini and the Chinese sedimentation method known as "Shuifei" (water flying). The researchers collected 21 natural ultramarine pigments produced by both methods and measured their color properties using colorimetry and polarized light microscopy. They found that the preparation process and the quality of the raw rock both significantly influence the final color, with the extraction method producing a more saturated blue when high-grade stone is used. The study is available at Taylor & Francis Online.
The reason the process is so laborious is that lapis lazuli is not a single mineral. It is a rock composed of lazurite (the blue component), calcite (white), pyrite (gold flecks), and various silicate minerals. The challenge is separating the blue lazurite from everything else without losing it. The wax-paste method works because lazurite is hydrophobic, meaning it is attracted to the oily wax mixture rather than to water. The impurities, being hydrophilic, stay in the water phase and are discarded with the paste.
Lapis lazuli has been used as a decorative material for at least 7,000 years. The earliest evidence comes from Mehrgarh in present-day Pakistan, around 5000 BCE, where the stone was carved into beads and amulets. It was used extensively in ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Indus Valley, primarily for jewelry and decorative objects rather than as a pigment. The earliest confirmed use of lapis lazuli as a painting pigment dates to the late 17th Dynasty in Egypt, around 1580 to 1550 BCE, where it has been identified on sarcophagi and funerary objects.
The pigment became central to European painting during the medieval and Renaissance periods. Its use was concentrated in religious art, where it was reserved for the most important figures: the robes of the Virgin Mary, the garments of Christ, and the skies of important altarpieces. A 2026 study published in Studies in Conservation examined 29 Persian and Islamic treatises spanning seven centuries (11th to 18th) and found that Persian artisans developed their own sophisticated extraction techniques, some of which differed significantly from European methods. The study, which is the first to systematically bring Persian primary sources into pigment research, is available at Taylor & Francis Online.
A 2025 study in the Journal of Cultural Heritage revealed that Raimondo di Sangro, Prince of Sansevero, produced artificial ultramarine in Naples before the well-known invention by Jean Baptiste Guimet. Analytical results from the blue frame on the high altar of the Sansevero Chapel Museum showed a synthetic pigment with an uncommon reflectance spectrum, distinct from both natural ultramarine and later synthetic versions. This finding pushes back the timeline for synthetic ultramarine production and suggests that experimental production was happening in Italy earlier than previously documented. Read the study at ScienceDirect.
The commercial breakthrough came in 1828, when Jean Baptiste Guimet patented a method for producing synthetic ultramarine on an industrial scale. Guimet's process heated a mixture of kaolin, sodium carbonate, sulfur, and silica in a kiln, producing a pigment chemically identical to natural lazurite. The synthetic version cost a fraction of the natural pigment and was soon being produced in factories across Europe. By the 1870s, natural ultramarine had largely disappeared from artists' palettes, replaced by the synthetic alternative that was affordable enough to use freely.
Giotto used ultramarine extensively in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, completed around 1305. The deep blue ceiling is painted in ultramarine, creating a sky of stars across the barrel vault. The robes of the Virgin Mary in the chapel's frescoes are also ultramarine, a deliberate choice to signal the importance of the figure and the wealth of the patron, Enrico Scrovegni. The pigment's stability is remarkable: after 700 years, the blue remains intense and unfaded, a testament to the lightfastness of lazurite.
Titian used ultramarine for the sky and the drapery in the Assumption of the Virgin (1516-1518), the altarpiece in the Frari Church in Venice. The painting is over 22 feet tall, and the ultramarine sky behind the Virgin is one of the largest expanses of the pigment in any Renaissance painting. Titian's use of ultramarine was strategic: he reserved it for the most important areas and used cheaper azurite for secondary blues.
Vermeer used natural ultramarine more generously than most painters of his era. In Girl with a Pearl Earring (c. 1665, Mauritshuis), the headscarf is painted with a combination of ultramarine and white lead. The pigment appears in unexpected places in Vermeer's work: in shadows, in the underpainting of walls, and mixed into greens. The 2020 restoration of The Milkmaid (c. 1657, Rijksmuseum) revealed that Vermeer used ultramarine in the underpainting of the bread and the basket, not just in the obvious blue areas. This liberal use suggests that Vermeer had access to a reliable supply of the pigment, possibly through his connection to the Dutch art market.
Michelangelo's unfinished Entombment (c. 1500-1501, National Gallery, London) contains ultramarine in the robe of the Virgin Mary. The painting was left incomplete, possibly because Michelangelo ran out of ultramarine and could not afford to obtain more. The National Gallery's technical analysis of the painting shows that the blue areas were painted with high-quality natural ultramarine, consistent with the patron's expectation that the most expensive pigment would be used for the Virgin.
Klein did not use natural ultramarine, but his work is inseparable from the pigment's history. In 1960, Klein patented International Klein Blue (IKB), a specific shade of ultramarine blue suspended in a clear synthetic resin that preserved the matte, powdery quality of the raw pigment. Klein's obsession with ultramarine was rooted in its purity and intensity. His IKB 191 (1962) is a canvas covered entirely in ultramarine pigment bound in resin, a monochrome that reduces painting to color alone. The pigment he used was synthetic, but the choice of ultramarine specifically, rather than any other blue, was a deliberate reference to the pigment's historical weight.
Natural and synthetic ultramarine look similar to the naked eye: both produce a deep, warm blue with a slight reddish undertone. The difference is visible under magnification. Natural ultramarine contains angular, irregular particles of varying sizes, along with occasional impurities like pyrite flecks. Synthetic ultramarine consists of uniform, rounded particles of consistent size. Conservation scientists use techniques like Raman spectroscopy and X-ray fluorescence to distinguish them, which is how we know which paintings used the expensive natural pigment and which used the cheaper synthetic version.
In paintings from before 1830, any deep blue is likely natural ultramarine or azurite. You can tell them apart by hue: ultramarine is a warm, slightly purplish blue, while azurite is a cooler, greener blue. Ultramarine also ages better. Azurite can degrade to a greenish malachite over centuries, while ultramarine remains stable. If you see a 500-year-old painting where the blue still looks deep and warm, it is probably ultramarine.
A 2025 study published in Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry identified natural ultramarine in a blue pigment lump found at the Roman site of Volsinii (Bolsena, Italy), initially catalogued as Egyptian blue. Using ED-XRF, micro-Raman, and XRPD, researchers confirmed the pigment as natural lazurite, a rare and expensive material in Roman times. The finding suggests that ultramarine was traded and used in Roman wall painting, though sparingly due to its cost. Read the study at Springer Link.
Ultramarine belongs to the family of pigments used in oil painting and tempera. Its closest historical rival was azurite, a copper-based blue that was cheaper but less stable. In the 18th century, Prussian blue, the first modern synthetic pigment, provided another alternative, though its hue is darker and greener than ultramarine. Indigo, a plant-based blue dye, was used as a cheap substitute in paintings where the patron could not afford ultramarine. For a broader understanding of how pigments interact with binders and surfaces, read our entry on linseed oil, or explore our post on how to read a painting.
The best place to see natural ultramarine in its full intensity is the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, where Giotto's 700-year-old frescoes still glow with the pigment's depth. The National Gallery in London holds Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne (1520-1523), where the sky is painted in natural ultramarine of extraordinary quality. The Mauritshuis in The Hague holds Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring, and the Rijksmuseum holds The Milkmaid. For synthetic ultramarine, visit the Centre Pompidou in Paris or any major modern art museum with Yves Klein works in the collection.
If you want to understand why ultramarine mattered so much, stand in front of a Renaissance altarpiece and compare the blue robes of the Virgin to the blue areas painted in azurite. The difference is immediate. Ultramarine has a warmth and depth that no other blue pigment matches. For more on the materials of painting, read our entries on lead white and vermilion, or explore our guide to chiaroscuro and dramatic contrast to see how color and light work together in painting.
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