Medieval and Renaissance European painters worked within real material constraints — the most expensive pigments, especially natural ultramarine, were often reserved for the most important subjects in a painting, making pigment choice itself a signal of what mattered most.
Natural ultramarine, ground from imported lapis lazuli, was so expensive that Renaissance painters and patrons often specified it by contract for only the most important figures in a commissioned painting, commonly the robes of the Virgin Mary.
Art and design · Europe · medieval to Renaissance
Illuminated manuscripts of the medieval period made extensive use of ultramarine, gold leaf and other costly materials, reflecting the value placed on religious texts.
Art and design · Europe · medieval period
Sumptuary laws in various medieval and early modern European states restricted certain colours and fabrics (including some purples and rich reds) to particular social ranks, tying colour directly to legally enforced status.
Clothing and status · Europe · medieval to early modern
A painter in this period bought colour as a set of materials with very different prices. Ultramarine, extracted from lapis lazuli mined in north-eastern Afghanistan, was the most expensive of the blues; azurite was the workaday blue and stayed in use until about the start of the 18th century; smalt, a ground cobalt glass, appears in European paintings from the 15th century. Choosing which blue went where was therefore a decision about importance as much as about appearance. A single panel can show the whole hierarchy: the Wilton Diptych contains natural ultramarine, azurite and indigo together, beside gold and silver leaf. 1, 2, 3, 4
| When | Where | What happened | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|
| About 1300 | — | Lead-tin yellow makes its first appearances in paintings; it was used most often in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries. | 5 |
| 1363 | England | Parliament passed the Statute Concerning Diet and Apparel, setting out the style of dress allowed to people of each class — one of a series of Acts of Apparel passed over the following two centuries. | 6 |
| About 1395–9 | England or France | The Wilton Diptych was painted for Richard II in egg tempera with gold, silver and part-gold leaf and a wide range of pigments. | 7, 4 |
| 15th and 16th centuries | Northern Europe | Grisaille — painting in grey or another single colour, modelled by tone alone — was especially popular for the outsides of the shutters of polyptychs. | 8 |
| 1520–23 | — | Titian painted the orange drapery of the bacchante with cymbals in Bacchus and Ariadne mainly in realgar, with highlights in orpiment. | 9 |
| About 1750 | — | Lead-tin yellow seems to drop out of use altogether; it was identified again by researchers only in 1941. | 5 |
Claim: Ultramarine cost more than gold.
Evidence: Supported only in a qualified form. The National Gallery calls it the most expensive of blue pigments and says it was 'once' more precious than gold. That describes the finest grades at particular times, not a fixed exchange rate: the Gallery's own exhibition stressed how widely blue pigments varied in quality. 1, 10
Historical claims above are scoped to a specific period, region or culture where relevant — none are presented as a single universal fact. See methodology.