Azure
- HEX
- #007FFF
- RGB
- 0 127 255
- HSL
- 210° 100% 50%
- CMYK
- 100 50 0 0
Azure or Cornflower?
A bright, clear blue, more vivid than cornflower.
Language
Azure is a word that lost its first letter. Persian lajvard named lapis lazuli and a place where it was mined. Arabic made it lazaward, and in French and Spanish the opening l fell away, apparently taken for the article: l'azur. Lapis lazuli kept its l.
History
Lapis lazuli came from mines in the Badakhshan mountains of Afghanistan. Ground and purified, it made ultramarine, blue from beyond the sea, so costly that painters saved it for the robes of the Virgin.
Symbolism
Heraldry calls blue azure, and it spread fast: about one European coat of arms in twenty used it around 1200, and nearly one in three by 1400. The arms of the French kings were azure with gold lilies, and in 1887 the writer Stéphen Liégeard named the Riviera the Côte d'Azur.
Kin
- Gold: France's royal arms: gold lilies on an azure field
- Turquoise: Persia's other blue stone, named after the Turks who traded it
- Cobalt: Cobalt blue gave painters a cheap stand-in for lapis ultramarine
- Blue: Lapis made Europe's costliest blue
Sources
- OED, 'azure'; Wiktionary, 'lapis lazuli'
- Britannica, 'Lapis lazuli'; 'Ultramarine'
- Wikipedia, 'French Riviera' (Liégeard, La Côte d'Azur, 1887)
- St Clair, The Secret Lives of Colour (2016)
- Pastoureau, Blue: The History of a Color (2001)
Hex values are screen approximations. Every page lists its sources.