Luxury blue paint pigment catalyses its own ‘disease’ | Research | Chemistry World

Luxury blue paint pigment catalyses its own ‘disease’ | Research | Chemistry World



Vermeer’s The Milkmaid, c.1658-60 (Art Images via Getty)

How paintings got the blues — and lost them

A blue pigment popular with Renaissance artists catalyses a chemical reaction that dulls the intensity of paint colours. ‘Ultramarine sickness’ has long been known to affect paints that include this pigment, but researchers now say that the pigment itself could speed up the oxidation of the oil component of the paint. “If you look at the structure of ultramarine it makes complete sense it has catalytic activity, as it is a zeolite and analogous to commercial catalysts,” says chemist Katrien Keune. Until the early 1800s, ultramarine was made from lapis lazuli found in the mines of Afghanistan, which was pricier than gold. A synthetic version seems to have less catalytic activity.

Chemistry World | 4 min readSource: Journal of Cultural Heritage paper