Starting from Egyptian blue in ancient times, pigments preferred by painters for sky blue have changed repeatedly. Here’s a brief history.
Rubens
How the grand-daughters of the Duchess of Devonshire posed for the triple portrait and referred back to any orgiastic scene of bacchanalian revelry.
On the morning of 22 August 1911, he arrived to paint the Mona Lisa, but it had vanished from the wall of the Louvre. Who had stolen it?
From sacred symbols in a mosaic of Theodora and the Adoration of the Lamb, to roadside watering holes, and the town’s fresh water supply.
From Veronese’s bravura brushstrokes to the crafted surface textures of lavish and heavy fabrics with Rembrandt.
From Jan van Eyck to Caillebotte and Claus, these paintings show the view beyond an open doorway, commonly as a means of incorporating a landscape.
A staple product of many pro painters in western Europe for over half a millennium, and required by every church and chapel.
Completes this tour of the painter’s palette, with well-known greens, then the essential blacks and whites. Examples from Michelangelo to Vincent van Gogh.
A trip round the painter’s palette, with outstanding examples of well-known colours in use. Starts with yellow, then to red and finally to blue.
Introduced to Europe from the New World in the 16th century, Queen Elizabeth I loved them, and Jan Brueghel the elder and his son included them in many of their paintings.
The Eclectic Light Company 