Fra Angelico Blue is the lightest, purest, and most luminous grade of genuine natural ultramarine, the blue made by grinding lapis lazuli, a semi-precious stone carried for centuries from the mountains of Afghanistan. It takes its name from the Renaissance friar-painter Fra Angelico, who, where other masters reached for the deepest blue, chose the lightest: a soft, celestial blue for the robe of the Virgin Mary and the skies of heaven. It is also the rarest grade to produce, because reaching a blue this pure and this weightless takes more refining than any other shade.
This is the story of where that name comes from, why this blue was once worth more than gold, and how it is still made by hand today.
Who was Fra Angelico and why does a blue carry his name?
In the 1400s, in a quiet Dominican convent in Florence, there lived a friar who painted. His name was Guido di Pietro, but no one remembers him by that. They called him Angelico — "the angelic one" — partly for his gentleness, and partly because the figures he painted seemed to belong less to earth than to heaven.
For Fra Angelico, painting wasn't a job. It was prayer. And the most sacred thing he could place on a wall was a single colour: ultramarine, ground from lapis lazuli carried thousands of miles from the mountains of Afghanistan. It cost more than gold, so it was never wasted. He saved it for what mattered most, the mantle of the Virgin Mary, the blue of heaven itself.
But Fra Angelico did something other painters didn't. Where they reached for the deepest, heaviest blue, he often chose the lightest, a soft, luminous, almost weightless blue that made his Madonnas glow as if lit from within. That delicate, celestial blue became his signature.
Centuries later, when artists wanted to name the purest and most ethereal grade of natural ultramarine, only one name fit. They called it Fra Angelico Blue.
The blue that took the most patience to make
I have spent more than twenty-five years learning to coax that blue out of the stone. No book taught me most of what I know. I learned it the slow way, grinding, extracting, failing, and trying again, until the stone itself began to give up its secrets.
Lapis lazuli is not one thing but three, bound together in a single rock. There is lazurite, which holds the blue. There is pyrite, scattered through it like flecks of gold. And there is calcite, the white that veins the stone like frost. Every colour the stone can give comes down to one decision: how much I extract, and how much I leave behind.
To make Fra Angelico Blue, I grind the lazurite to a fine powder and extract it, patiently, again and again, until almost nothing remains but the blue itself. The pyrite goes. The calcite goes. With every extraction the colour grows lighter, cleaner, and more radiant, until it seems to hold light rather than simply reflect it. It is the most demanding blue I make; it asks for far more time and far more extraction than any other shade, and that patience is exactly why it glows. It is the rarest blue the stone will surrender.
This is what the stone has taught me across twenty-five years: that there is not one blue inside lapis lazuli, but many, and each one waits on the patience of the hand that sets it free.
A colour once worth more than gold
For as long as nine thousand years, almost every great civilization that met lapis lazuli fell under its spell. Long before it was ever ground into paint, it was treasure, and the remarkable thing is how universally it was recognized as such. Cultures that never met, separated by oceans and centuries, all arrived at the same conclusion about a single blue stone.
It came from one place on earth: the Sar-e-Sang mines in the Badakhshan mountains of present-day Afghanistan, worked by hand since at least the seventh millennium BC. From those remote, freezing tunnels, lapis travelled astonishing distances along the oldest trade routes in the world. It reached the Sumerian city of Ur, where it was buried with kings. It reached Egypt, where it ringed the eyes of Tutankhamun's golden funerary mask. Wherever it arrived, it was given to gods, to pharaohs, and to the dead, never to the ordinary.
Part of the reason was the colour, but part was what people saw within it. A deep blue scattered with golden flecks of pyrite looked like nothing else on earth; it looked like the night sky. That is why, when Europe at last learned to grind it into pigment, the colour earned a name meaning "beyond the sea": ultramarine.
Through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, ultramarine was the most expensive colour a painter could buy, costlier, by weight, than gold itself. No one wasted it. It was written into contracts and reserved for the holiest passage on the panel: the mantle of the Virgin Mary. Giotto flooded the vault of the Scrovegni Chapel with it; Fra Angelico and Titian prized it; Michelangelo carried it onto the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel; and Vermeer wrapped it around the head of his Girl with a Pearl Earring, using lapis from these very same Afghan mines.
And that endurance was the deeper reason lapis was so prized. Natural ultramarine is among the most lightfast pigments ever discovered; it does not fade, does not darken, does not surrender to time. In the cave murals of Bamiyan, painted in Afghanistan more than thirteen centuries ago, the lapis blue has outlived the empires that made it. Few materials, made by nature or by hand, can promise a thousand years. This one delivers them.
There is far more to this story, from the illuminators of medieval manuscripts to the lapis-blue pages of Persian and Islamic art. We tell it in full in Why Lapis Lazuli Was Worth More Than Gold, and explain the stone itself in What Is Lapis Lazuli?
One stone, many blues
Fra Angelico is the lightest and purest grade of natural ultramarine, but it is only one of the blues hidden inside lapis lazuli. Leave a little more of the stone behind, and it speaks in a deeper voice.
Keep the lazurite very high and allow only a trace of the other minerals to remain, and the blue turns rich, dark, and regal, the legendary Ultramarine Blue of the old masters. Take the pyrite away but let some white calcite stay, and the blue opens into something airy and fresh: a clean Azure Blue, the colour of a clear morning sky. Leave the pyrite in, and plenty of it, and the blue darkens and clouds into a smoky Charcoal Blue, like the sea after dusk.
One stone, many skies, each decided by how much the hand chooses to extract. See the full range in our genuine lapis lazuli pigment collection.
Why genuine lapis is hard to use and how ours is different
Genuine lapis lazuli has a reputation among painters for being difficult, and most of that difficulty comes down to one thing: grinding. Lapis is not like other pigments. Its blue lives inside crystals of lazurite, and those crystals are fragile in a particular way. Grind them too far, and the colour collapses; the blue turns dull and grey, because the very structure that holds the colour breaks apart. And raw or poorly refined pigment still carries flecks of white calcite and golden pyrite; the moment you grind it into your medium, those colourless minerals churn back through the blue; and mute it. Many artists have watched a beautiful blue turn to grey on their own grinding slab without ever knowing why.
This is the problem I have spent twenty-five years solving. Every De Mairo lapis lazuli pigment is refined to exactly the right fineness, pure lazurite, with the calcite and pyrite already removed, brought to the ideal particle size and not a step beyond. Fine enough to disperse instantly; never so fine that the colour is lost. You don't grind it. You don't fight it. You simply add your binder, linseed or walnut oil, gum arabic, egg yolk for tempera, acrylic medium, whatever you work in, and it disperses smoothly and keeps its true, full-strength blue. No graying, no guesswork, no waste of a precious material.
How artists use Fra Angelico Blue
Because the pigment arrives already refined, Fra Angelico Blue works beautifully across almost every traditional medium. Its soft, luminous tone makes it especially suited to skies, glazes, halos, drapery, and the kind of devotional and historically faithful work it was born from.
It disperses cleanly into oil for radiant, transparent blues, into gum arabic for watercolour, and into egg yolk for tempera and icon painting. You can even stir a little dry pigment straight into a ready-made tube paint to enrich it with the depth of genuine lapis. If you'd like to make your own paint from the loose pigment, our step-by-step guide covers the binder ratios for each medium: How to Make Lapis Lazuli Paint.
And if mixing your own isn't for you, we make it for you. The Fra Angelico shade is available ready-made in watercolour, oil, and gouache, the same genuine lapis, milled by hand and ready to use the moment it arrives.
Bring this blue into your own work
Fra Angelico Blue is more than a colour. It is a thread that runs from the mines of Afghanistan, through the convent walls of Renaissance Florence, to the panel or paper in front of you now, the same blue, prepared the same patient way it has always been.
If you'd like to paint with it, you can shop our genuine Fra Angelico blue pigment here — hand-refined in small batches from authentic Afghan lapis, with nothing added and nothing synthetic.
Frequently asked questions
What is Fra Angelico Blue? The lightest, purest, and most luminous grade of genuine natural ultramarine, made from Afghan lapis lazuli, a soft, glowing sky-blue. It takes the most extraction of any shade to make, which is what gives it its radiance.
Why is it called Fra Angelico? After the Renaissance friar-painter Fra Angelico, who favoured a soft, light, celestial blue for the robe of the Virgin Mary and the skies of heaven. When artists later needed a name for the purest grade of ultramarine, his was the one that fit.
Is Fra Angelico Blue real lapis lazuli or synthetic ultramarine? It is 100% genuine, pure lazurite from authentic Afghan lapis, sourced from the historic Sar-e-Sang mines in Badakhshan. There is no synthetic ultramarine, no dye, and no filler.
Why was lapis lazuli worth more than gold? For centuries it came from a single source in Afghanistan, travelled vast distances, and was painstaking to refine into pigment. Its unmatched, unfading blue made it the most precious colour a painter could own, reserved for the most sacred images.
Is natural ultramarine lightfast? Yes. Natural ultramarine is among the most lightfast pigments known. It doesn't fade or darken, and has survived centuries in frescoes, manuscripts, and the cave murals of Bamiyan.
Which mediums can I use it in? Oil, watercolour, gouache, egg tempera, acrylic medium, murals, and mixed media. It disperses smoothly in all of them, with no grinding needed.
Written by Irfan, Founder of De Mairo, who has spent more than twenty-five years refining genuine lapis lazuli pigment by hand.