Secret history of color: blue

Plus our guest curators’ favorite blue picks💙

Homer didn’t have a word for it. Yves Klein invented his own shade of it. Vermeer died broke in devotion to it. Blue is the rarest color in nature. And we’ve spent centuries trying to capture it. Today, we’re diving into its secret history (!)…from the accidental discovery of Prussian Blue to Phoebe Philo’s Yves Klein moment at 2017 Celine.

Every art lover can remember their first formative show - mine was because of the color blue. When I was in high school, my little midwestern self visited my cool older cousin in NYC and lives were changed - I ate food on “small plates,” took pics on a rooftop, and had my first whiff of Palo Santo (this was 2014 Greenpoint after all). But the real revelation? When I went to the MoMa to see Matisse’s Blue Nudes. I’ve been obsessed with that color ever since. Today, we’re doing a deep dive into my first love.

My blue-board. If I could have, I wanted to major in color. There are jobs! When I was at J.Crew, there was a color library with a color librarian. In lieu of both a color degree or a live-in librarian, I have just committed myself on a life-long research project on color - collecting the most special unusual and little-known facts about certain shades & their origin stories.

WHEN DID BLUE BECOME EVERYONE’S FAVORITE COLOR?

My love of blue isn’t exactly unique. Last week, T Magazine asked, “Why Are We So Obsessed With Blue?” Elsa Peretti’s blue-clad bedroom at Can Noves has been all over my IG feed. Silky cerulean fabric swatches are already pinned to the Alex Mill 2026 design boards. But our adoration for the hue is actually pretty recent—blue is one of the most elusive colors in history.

Blue everywhere around the Alex Mill office. We are lucky! It wasn’t always this way! For most of history, it was the rarest and most expensive color to make. It wasn’t even named until the 1st century (tysm Roman Empire). Before that? Crickets - the Greeks didn’t even bother. Homer famously didn’t have a name for it (in the Odyessy, he called the sea “wine-dark”).

Historically, blue was almost a myth. It’s the least occurring color in nature (you can’t exactly scoop it from the sky) and for most of human history…it wasn’t even there. It was the last major color to be named in language – after black/white, red, yellow, green - because people couldn’t describe what they’d barely seen. And once we figured out how to make it?! Prepare to go broke. Blue was so expensive that it was reserved for the royal and the divine.

It took centuries for it to go from rare and unnamed to one of the most ~iconic~ colors of today. I’m breaking it down into the three paint pigments (and famous works) that changed everything: Ultramarine, Prussian Blue, and IKB.

Joan Miró’s This Is The Color Of My Dreams (1924-1927). Rather fitting for our next section - blue used to be so expensive that it quite literally was a dream.

1. ULTRAMARINE BLUE: more costly than gold

If you were a Renaissance painter, ultramarine was your wildest dream - and biggest financial mistake. Michelangelo couldn’t afford it. Rafael reserved it for his final coat. Vermeer refused to paint without it - and proceeded to put his family into debt.

Back it up: Ultramarine was the first luxury pigment. Egyptians had been mining lapis lazuli since 5000s BCE - but it wasn’t until the 6th century AD that the Byzantines made it into paint. The process was excruciating & secretive - and therefore costly - involving grinding the stone into dust, soaking it and kneading it into a paste. Add in the travel costs to transport it?! We’ve racked up a bill.

Ultramarine in Vermeer’s Woman in Blue Reading a Letter (1662-1665). Look at her little outfit! How pretty. “Ultramarine” literally means “beyond the sea” in Latin -it’s above all other blues. Get this - artists would write lapis lazuli clauses into their contracts - requiring patrons to reserve part of the funds to buy pigment from Venice (the nearest, cheapest stop off the Silk Road).

By the time it made its way on the Silk Road & into the hands of Renaissance painters, it literally cost more than gold. A couple key works (with some pretty great backstories) that use it.

Michelangelo’s The Last Judgement (1536-1541)

Look at the blue painted in the background of The Last Judgement vs the blue used for the holy Mother Mary’s robes. Can you spot a difference? Rose fact🌹Before ultramarine came onto the scene, Mary’s robes were mostly neutral or pinkish. Our association with her & divine blue robes = all thanks to ultra.

Since ultramarine was so expensive, it was reserved for big budget gigs - the church, royalty, & our girl Mother Mary’s robes. When Michelangelo was painting The Last Judgement, he ran out. Patrons couldn’t cough up the funds (Renaissance men dealing with surprise bills - they’re just like us). So, he settled for a cheaper blue - you can see above how Mary’s blue is a little more dull than the ultramarine background.

Close up on The Last Judgement’s ultramarine background. I could drink this shade. Michelangelo was committed to it too. Rumor has it, he left Mary’s robes in The Entombment blank rather than compromise with a lower-quality pigment. It’s left unfinished in London’s National Gallery. The drama!

Johannes Vermeer’s The Milk Maid (1657-1658)

Once I heard Vermeer’s paintings described as “tiny jewel boxes” and haven’t stopped thinking about that since. His work is incredibly small-scale with fantastic details. The Milkmaid is one of my favorite paintings. BTW Vermeer was working all while having 15 kids. How did he have the time?

Jan Vermeer painted about 35 paintings and almost every. single. one. uses ultramarine blue. Was Vermeer rich?! Connects to royalty?! No! He loved the pigment so much that he refused to paint without it - so much so that when he died he left his family in large debts.

Details💙My favorite part of Vermeer’s use of ultramarine is…well…how much he used it. Based on how much the pigment costs, you’d think it would be reserved for the star of the show - but no. Ultramarine shows up in the most minutia of details. The underpinnings of a woman’s clothes, an ordinary tablecloth, a slip of a shadow. It wasn’t even reserved for blue-colored objects - he mixed it into green foliage, black tiles, ivory vases. You have to respect his commitment. The man had morals! They were just…blue.

2. PRUSSIAN BLUE: an accident that changed art

If not for a little lab spill in 1704, blue might not be our favorite color.