Here’s a little BLUESDAY inspiration from our European art collection, currently on view

 Here’s a little BLUESDAY inspiration from our European art collection, currently on view in Infinite Blue.Unlike red, white, purple, or black, blue appears to have had little symbolic value in Western dress codes until the 12th century, when artists began using it for the Virgin Mary’s robes, to convey her divinity. Blue soon became associated as well with royalty and, by the end of the 14th century it was, so to speak, the new black—considered to be a moral and honest color for clothes, conferring seriousness and dignity to those who wore it. By the eighteenth century, blue had become the most common color worn throughout Europe and was particularly favored among the fashionable classes.The sitter for this portrait, Doña Mariana has been depicted with the conspicuous luxury that befitted her high social status in Spanish colonial Peru. She wears an ankle-length gown called a tobajilla, intricately embroidered in silver and gold over a costly blue and white striped satin or silk fabric.  Doña Mariana was a central figure in one of Lima’s most notorious scandals: she entered a convent to avoid marrying an older man and, when he died, emerged from the cloister to marry the man’s nephew, the wealthy mayor of Lima. The fashionable and brilliant blue of her dress may thus also have been selected to emphasize her chastity.José Joaquín Bermejo (Spanish, born colonial Spanish America, active circa 1760–92) or Pedro José Díaz (Spanish, born colonial Spanish America, 1770–1810) Doña Mariana Belsunse y Salasar, circa 1780. Oil on canvas.  -- source link

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