Egyptian Blue

 

Actually Egyptian blue is the first synthetic pigment invented by man.

The ancient Egyptians valued blue very highly and sought to represent it in a variety of forms.

The deepest blue, imitating lapis lazuli, was probably the most sought after. The symbolism embedded in the blue glazing is associated with the Nile, the sky, or the home of the gods.

In terms of chemical composition, Egyptian blue is calcium-copper silicate.

To create a pigment, three main components are required – calcite, quartz sand and a source of copper. In this role, the copper minerals azurite and malachite or copper shavings were commonly used. A flux was added to the mixture of components, which lowered the melting point, after which the mixture was heated to 800–900 ° C and Egyptian blue was formed.

Initially, Egyptian blue pigment, justifying its name, was produced in the area of ​​modern Egypt, but already in the third millennium BC, it began to spread throughout the Mediterranean, replacing the more expensive lapis lazuli and less saturated and persistent azurite.The pigment began to gradually disappear from the palettes of artists. This was partly due to the fact that Vitruvius mentioned the recipe for Egyptian blue pigment in his treatise De Architectura and indicated it incorrectly. He simply omitted the third component of the chemical reaction.

Egyptian blue was also used in the painting of the 11th-century altar in the church of Sant Pere in Tarras, Catalonia, Spain. This was a rather unexpected find because no information on the production of this pigment in Catalonia in the Middle Ages or other uses in local church painting existed.

But until the early 19th century, the prevailing opinion was that Egyptian blue pigment was a lost ancient technology.

n 2001, Egyptian blue pigment was discovered in 16th-century frescoes in Bologna.

In 2011, when examining the frescoes of the Roman Church of St. Margaret, by Ortolano, also from the 16th century, Egyptian blue was identified by its very strong luminescence in the infrared range.

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