Blue with gold value
- Rome 1501. The artist Michelangelo Buonarrotti (1475-1564) left the city to return to Florence, where he left the Santo Entierro painting unfinished.
It is possible that the change of city was the cause of the rupture, but taking a look at the unfinished work it is quite obvious that it lacks a color: blue. The most precious color, and the most expensive, for the artists of the time, was the navy blue, and in the religious paintings they used it to color singular elements, mainly for the costumes of Jesus Christ and the Virgin. So the most widespread hypothesis is that young Michelangelo didn't want to pay for sea blue, but he didn't want to use the cheapest blue, and so he left the painting unfinished.
The painter Rafael (1483-1520) used a more economical solution: he painted the basic blue layers with cheaper azurite and only wasted the navy blue in the last layers and touches. But Michelangelo and other artists did not want to take measures of this kind, and, for example, Jan Vermeer (1632-1675), a Dutch man, buries his whole family once to get into the blue sea. There were also artists who tried to fill the blue of the sea with a more common anil in secret, but the revelation of deception brought with it the disqualification of the painter.
The blue sea did not come from the sea, but from the present Sar-i Sang mine in Afghanistan. Until the 18th century, this was the only source of obtaining Lapis Zuli, the main component of the navy blue. The shortage of raw material made the product more expensive, but also the long and painful process of obtaining the pigment. They crushed the lapis azuline into a fine powder; the powder was mixed with melted wax, oil and resin; to finish, the mixture was obtained by kneading with a solution of bleach. Pigment was produced in very small quantities, so navy blue was more expensive than gold.
In 1824, the Société d’Encouragement of France offered a remuneration of 6,000 pounds for anyone who invented a synthetic pigment to replace navy blue. French chemist Jean-Baptiste Guimet and German researcher Christian Gmelin presented their synthetic paintings and finally delivered the award to French. The blue sea of “France” is born and the blue sea of “always” is made. But for some it would never be the same. The natural blue sea is filled with minerals: calcite, pyrite, mica… These deposits make light refractory in many ways, so that the brushstrokes are always different, always unique.
Researchers at Johns Hopkins University have discovered several cylinders with inscriptions at the present Syrian Reservoir, the Tell Umm-el Marra. Experts believe that the signs written in these pieces of clay can be alphabetical.
In the 15th century a. The cylinders have... [+]
London 1928. At the Victoria and Albert Museum there was a very special painting: in the painting there is a black man, with wig and Levite, surrounded by books and scientific instruments. Thus it was catalogued in the Museum: “Unique satirical portrait representing a failed... [+]
Ethiopia, 24 November 1974. Lucy's skeleton was found in Hadar, one of the oldest traces of human ancestors. The Australian hominid of Australopithecus afarensis is between 3.2 and 3.5 million years old.
So they considered it the ancestor of species, the mother of all of us. In... [+]
A group of archaeologists from the University of Berkeley, California, USA. That is, men didn't launch the lances to hunt mammoths and other great mammals. That was the most widespread hypothesis so far, the technique we've seen in movies, video games ...
But the study, published... [+]
Zamora, late 10th century. On the banks of the Douro River and outside the city walls the church of Santiago de los Caballeros was built. The inside capitals of the church depict varied scenes with sexual content: an orgy, a naked woman holding the penis of a man… in the... [+]
Born 7 November 1924. A group of anarchists broke into Bera this morning to protest against the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera and to begin the revolution in the Spanish state.
Last October, the composition of the Central Board was announced between the displaced from Spain... [+]
Washington (EE.UU. ), 1807. The US Constitution banned transatlantic slave trade. This does not mean that slavery has been abolished, but that the main source of the slaves has been interrupted. Thus, slave women became the only way to “produce” new slaves.
So in 1845, in... [+]
A group of interdisciplinary researchers from the Free University of Berlin and the Zuse Institute have developed a complex mathematical model to better understand how Romanization spread in North Africa.
According to a study published in the journal Plos One, the model has... [+]
Japan, 6 and 9 August 1945, the United States launched an atomic bomb causing tens of thousands of deaths in Hiroshima and Nagasaki; although there are no precise figures, the most cautious estimates indicate that at least 210,000 people died at the end of that year. But in... [+]
While working at a site in the Roman era of Normandy, several archaeology students have recently made a curious discovery: inside a clay pot they found a small glass jar, of which women used to bring perfume in the 19th century.
And inside the jar was a little papelite with a... [+]
A team of researchers led by the Japanese archaeologist Masato Sakai of the University of Yamagata has discovered numerous geoglyphs in the Nazca Desert (Peru). In total, 303 geoglyphs have been found, almost twice as many geoglyphs as previously known. To do so, researchers... [+]
Born 2 October 1968. A few months earlier, the student movement started on June 22 organized a rally in the Plaza de las Tres Cultura, in the Nonoalco-Tlatelolco unit of the city. The students gathered by the Mexican army and the paramilitary group Olympia Battalion were... [+]
On the northern coast of Peru, in the deposit of Diamarca, mochica culture (c. 330-H. C. 800) have found a trunk room. This culture is known for its impressive architecture, vast religious imaginary and colorful walls full of details.
The room found confirms these... [+]
Tijarafe (Canary Islands), mid-14th century. When the first Catholic monks came to the area of the island of La Palma, the Awares, the local Aborigines, saw that they worshipped the sun, the moon and the stars.
And this has been confirmed by the archaeological campaigns carried... [+]