'Maya blue': The mystery dye recreated two centuries after it was lost

Maybe this is partly because of Islamic aniconism.

Hands are typically an excellent gray reference for photography, ensuring that the captured photos represent the color accurately given the photographer’s platform constraints. Hands also help the human brain correct for variations in lighting, color profiles, monitor calibration, and so on. Showing the dye color on skin ensures the highest fidelity conveyance of the hue to the reader possible without control over how it’s viewed. Other examples of the pigment’s use would be abstract and “just another blue”; by showing in this way, it’s possible to see that it’s an uncommon and high-key blue.

It’s also extremely unusual to see a skin-safe saturated dye in this shade; most powdered sources of blue and white, which would necessarily be blended to reach these shade, would be highly toxic. So, for pigment historians and aficionados, these photographs are eerie and compelling. This is what working with pigment used to be like, before we understood how much of it was toxic and deadly to the people working with and wearing it. You could just dip your hands in the forbidden color and admire them. It’s very cool to see and I’m glad they used hands as the focus.

(There may also be cultural reasons why the dye is shown here on skin; I haven’t yet studied mesoamerican cultures and body painting, but others who are more familiar should chime in.)

Blue pigments were just rare. There are very few natural ones and historically the synthetics have been costly and hard to produce, Han blue, Egyptian blue, Fra Angelico blue from lapiz... The later was so expensive it was mainly reserved for Mary's robes, so perhaps the spiritual association was due to expense. Fra Angelico blue is still expensive. 23,000 Euros a kilo from Kremer. Even new synthetic blues are expensive. YInMn blue is 208 Euro for 50g.

The real revolution in color was the invention of cheap synthetic blues starting with Prussian blue in the 19th century and led today by the ultramarines and phthalocyanine blues, which include our standard cyan used in every inkjet. When Prussian blue came out there were a few decades of artistic celebration at the dawn of a cheap, intense, and gorgeous blue. Hokusai's 36 Views of Mount Fuji is a particularly exuberant example of this new blue's early use.