Practice question · Estimate
Guimet was awarded his prize for synthetic ultramarine in 1828. How many years earlier had Ghirlandaio's contract priced the natural pigment at four florins the ounce?
Estimate on a scale from 0 years (0) to 500 years (500).
Hints
- The contract is dated 1485.
- Subtract 1485 from 1828.
Show the answer
343 (answers within ±20 count)
Why
343 years. For three and a half centuries the most expensive colour in European painting stayed expensive, and then it stopped in a single decade. That is the fastest change in the material history of the subject, and every claim about what blue means has to be dated either side of it.
Practise The Symbolic, Psychological and Social Life of Colour
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