Hostname: page-component-7dd5485656-7jgsp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-10-31T02:15:06.136Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Maya Blue: An Unsolved Problem in Ancient Pigments

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Rutherford J. Gettens
Rutherford J. Gettens*
Affiliation:
Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The early peoples of Southern Mexico decorated pottery and painted pictures on walls with a stable blue pigment which is not found elsewhere in the world. Investigation of this blue was started over 30 years ago, but still the true nature of the blue color principle is unknown. Since the blue cannot be destroyed by boiling nitric acid, it does not seem to be vegetable or organic in origin. It is quite unlike azurite or natural ultramarine or other blue minerals which were employed as sources of blue pigment by other ancient peoples. The main obstacle in the investigation is the extreme scarcity of research material. The only samples of the blue available for testing are thinly painted films on potsherds and on wall painting fragments where it is mixed with lime plaster and other impurities. Although attempts to procure lump specimens of the blue, even in gram quantitives, have failed, some progress has been made. It is now known that the inorganic base of the blue pigment is a clay mineral called attapulgite. Ordinary attapulgite is nearly colorless. We still do not know what makes the clay blue; whether it is a special kind of attapulgite or if the Maya produced it artifically. In this paper all the evidence accumulated to date is reviewed.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 27 , Issue 4 , April 1962 , pp. 557 - 564
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Archaeology 1962

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Bradley, W. F. 1940 The Structural Scheme of Attapulgite. American Mineralogist, Vol. 25, No. 6, pp. 405–10. Menasha.Google Scholar
Brindley, G. W. and Others (Editors) 1957 Index to the X-ray Powder Data File (Minerals Section). American Society for Testing Materials, Philadelphia.Google Scholar
Gettens, R. J. 1955 Identification of Pigments on Fragments of Mural Paintings from Bonampak, Chiapas, Mexico. In “Bonampak, Chiapas, Mexico,” by Ruppert, Karl, Thompson, J. E. S., and Proskouriakoff, Tatiana, p. 67. Carnegie Institution of Washington, Publication 602. Washington.Google Scholar
Gettens, R. J. and Stout, G. L. 1942 Painting Materials: A Short Encyclopedia. Van Nostrand, New York.Google Scholar
Grim, R. E. 1953 Clay Mineralogy. McGraw-Hill, New York.Google Scholar
Kerr, P. F. and Kulp, J. L. 1951 Reference Clay Localities — United States. American Petroleum Institute Research Project, No. 49, Clay Mineral Standards, Preliminary Report, No. 2. Columbia University, New York.Google Scholar
Merwin, H. E. 1931 Chemical Analysis of Pigments. In “The Temple of the Warriors at Chichen Itza, Yucatan,“ by Morris, E. H., Chariot, Jean, and Morris, A. A., p. 356. Carnegie Institution of Washington, Publication 406. Washington.Google Scholar
Waring, C. L. and Annell, C. S. 1953 Semiquantitative Spectographic Method for Analysis of Minerals and Ores. Analytical Chemistry, Vol. 25, No. 8, pp. 114–9. New York.Google Scholar