A History of Art in Three Colours: Blue

Art historian James Fox turns his attention to blue, examining how the colour was originally created from lapis lazuli, an imported precious stone found in the East, and that the bright paint it produced captivated artists in the Middle Ages. He explores the renowned Florentine painter Giotto's ground-breaking religious frescoes in the Arena Chapel in Padua, and charts how the colour has also helped painters from more recent times, including Gaugin, Van Gogh and Picasso, to depict emotional depth