Ultramarine blue was once literally worth more than gold

Finlay traces the extraordinary cost of historic ultramarine pigment to its origin in lapis lazuli, a semi-precious stone mined almost exclusively in a remote, difficult-to-reach region of what is now Afghanistan for centuries. Extracting usable pigment from the raw stone required a laborious purification process, and the combination of remote sourcing, dangerous mining conditions, and painstaking refinement made the resulting blue pigment genuinely comparable in value to gold by weight during parts of European history.

This extraordinary cost explains why ultramarine was historically reserved almost exclusively for the most important figures in religious paintings, such as the robes of the Virgin Mary, since patrons commissioning artwork were effectively broadcasting their wealth and piety through the sheer expense of the pigment used. Finlay's visit to the mining region underscores how little has fundamentally changed about the difficulty of extraction even in the modern era.

Takeaway: a color's symbolic importance in historical art often directly tracked its material cost and scarcity, not just its visual appeal — expense itself carried meaning.