115 - Ultramarine Blue
Take fragments of lapis lazuli, which you can find plentifully in Venice, and at low prices. Get fragments that are nicely tinted a pretty celestial colour and remove any poorly tinted fragments. Cull the nicely coloured fragments into a pot, and put it amongst hot coals to calcine. When they are inflamed throw them in fresh water, and repeat this two times.
Then take equal amounts, 3 oz each, of pine pitch, black tar, mastic, new wax, and turpentine, add 1 oz each, of linseed oil, and frankincense. I put these things in a clay bowl to warm on the fire until I see them dissolve, and with a stirring rod, I mix and incorporate them thoroughly. This done, I throw them into fresh water, so they will combine into one mass for my needs.
For every pound of finely powdered lapis lazuli, ground as described above, take 10 oz of the above gum cake. In a bowl over a slow fire, melt the gum, and when it is well liquified throw into it, little by little, the finely powdered lapis lazuli. lncorporate it thoroughly into the paste with a stirring rod.
Cast the hot incorporated material into a vessel of fresh water, and with hands bathed in linseed oil, form a round cake,
proportionately round and tall. You should make one or more other of these cakes from the quantity of the material. Then soak these cakes for 15 days in a large vessel full of fresh water, changing the water every 2 days. In a kettle, you should boil clear common water, and put the cakes in a well cleaned glazed earthen basin. Pour warm water over them, and then leave them until the water has cooled.
Empty out the water, and pour new warm water over them. When it has cooled ,pour again, replenishing the warmth.
Repeat this many times over, so that the cakes unbind from the heat of water. Now add new warm water, and you will see that the water will take in a celestial color. Decant the water into a clean glazed pan, pour new [warm] water over the cake, and let it color [the water].
When it is colored, decant it and pass it through a sieve into a glazed basin. Pour warm water over the cake, repeatedly until it is no longer colored. Make sure that the water is not too hot, but only lukewarm because too much heat will cause the blue to darken, hence this warning, which is very important.
Pass all this colored water through a sieve into the basin. lt still has the unctuosity of the gum, so leave it to stand and rest for 24 hours; all the color will go to the bottom. Then gently decant off the water with its unctuosity, pour clear water over it, and pass it through a fine sieve into a clean basin.
Pass the fresh water through the sieve with the color stirred up so that this color still passes through, and therefore a great
part of the filth and unctuosity will remain in the sieve. Wash the sieve well, and with new water again pass the color through. Repeat these steps three times, which ordinarily
leaves all the filth on the blue resting in the sieve. Always wash the sieve each time, cleaning it of all contamination. Put the blue
in a clean pan. Gently decant off the water, and then leave it to dry. You will have a most beautiful ultramarine, as I have made many times in Antwerp.
The amount per pound of lapis lazuli will vary. lt depends on whether the Iapis has more or less charge of color, and on the
beauty of its color. Grind it exceedingly fine on the porphyry stone, as described above, and you will succeed beautifully.
For a quite beautiful and sightly biadetto blue that mimics ultramarine blue, take ordinary blue enamel. Grind it exceedingly fine over the porphyry stone, as above. lncorporate it into the gum cake with the dose described above, and hold it in digestion in fresh water for 15 days as with the Iapis lazuli. Follow the directions for the Iapis lazuli, in all and for all, until the end. These blues are not only useful to painters, but they also serve in order to tint glasses par excellence.