 In the first part of this module, we learned about the chemical and physical properties of the minerals, the blue minerals in lapis lazuli, both the Lazarite and the Helena, and the conditions under which these minerals form and are found in nature. What you should have learned is that unlike the ochres, which are very commonly formed at surface conditions on the earth and thus abundant and easily accessible, the metamorphic rock lapis lazuli is very rare, very uncommon, formed at high pressure and temperature conditions in the interior of the earth and then needs to be exposed by erosion back at the earth's surface. So this is the primary reason or one of the primary reasons why, in comparison to the relatively inexpensive and abundant ochres we learned about in module one, the ultramarine pigments we're going to be looking at in module two are much more rare and expensive. Maureen was mentioning that lapis tends to be quite rare and this wonderful blue color that you see here, which can be much more intense in some of the stones. I don't happen to own ones that are super impressive, but we can bring you the picture of one. This beautiful blue color, as you might imagine, had some symbolic associations with it. So blue is often times related to the heavens, to the sea, to other realms. In the ancient Near East it was associated with protection. It appears to have also been associated sometimes with eroticism and with love. And in painting, starting in the Middle Ages, possibly because there was a legend about a mantle belonging to the Virgin Mary that was blue, it was associated with the Virgin Mary and used to portray her clothing in particular paintings. Since it was such an expensive pigment, it was highly regulated and we have many painting contracts that stipulate by weight and also by grade exactly what type of ultramarine, which is this lapis lazuli-based pigment, could be used by weight and also by its quality. And to give you an idea of two different types of quality here, I have very pure lapis in this smaller vial. It's quite expensive. And then what I have in this much larger vial is what is considered to be ultramarine ash. This is sort of what's left over once you've purified most of your lapis into ultramarine pigment. So we'll be discussing techniques. You'll be watching a video that shows all of the steps for processing the stone into pigment. And we'll look at a selection of works, both three-dimensional and also two-dimensional works with painting them. The last thing I want to show you before we go on is this is some encaustic paint using lapis. And you might be able to see in my glass container here that it is somewhat translucent. And that's one of the qualities of this ultramarine pigment that makes it very desirable. You can put it in a thin coat on top of something else, for example, gold leaf, and see the sparkle of that gold leaf through the layer of paint.