Somber Set Ultramarine

From the French sombre, dark, gloomy — itself from the Latin sub umbra, under shadow. Used as a color word since the eighteenth century to imply restrained darkness — the deep grays and blue-blacks of mourning dress and Victorian parlor decoration. Sits in the deep-and-quiet end of the grid, closer to brooding than to charred.

Old English settan, to put-down. As a color modifier, set implies a sunset-and-descending quality, the visual register of clear-sky western-horizon sunset-and-moonset descending-celestial-body atmospheric Rayleigh-scattered Belt-of-Venus orange-and-violet surfaces under descending-horizon-and-sunset light. Sits at the modifier-and-time end of the grid, parallel to rise and eve in usage.

The pigment ground from lapis lazuli — the Afghan mineral imported through Venice in the late Middle Ages, more expensive by weight than gold during the Renaissance. The color refers to a freshly mixed ultramarine pigment in linseed oil: a saturated, slightly violet-shifted deep blue with the matte finish of micron-ground rock. Deeper than cobalt, cooler than royal, with the art-historical weight of the blue Vermeer reserved for Mary's robe.