Ultramarine's extreme cost shaped medieval and Renaissance compositional choices

Ball explains that the deep blue pigment ultramarine, made from ground lapis lazuli imported at great expense from what is now Afghanistan, was for centuries among the most costly pigments available to painters, sometimes rivaling gold in price per equivalent weight. This scarcity had direct compositional consequences: patrons and church commissions frequently specified ultramarine explicitly for the Virgin Mary's robes as a mark of devotional and financial investment, and painters had to plan their use of the pigment carefully, often reserving it for the most symbolically important elements of a composition rather than using it freely. Ball argues this means the visual hierarchy of many medieval and Renaissance paintings, where certain figures or garments draw disproportionate attention through vivid blue, partly reflects material economics as much as pure artistic intention, since a painter simply couldn't afford to use the pigment lavishly regardless of aesthetic preference. Takeaway: the visual hierarchy of many old paintings reflects pigment cost as much as pure artistic intention.