The word Azure is a near synonym for the color blue. Commonly it refers to a bright blue, resembling the sky on a bright, clear day.
The etymology of the word azure has been traced back to the Persian word لاژورد "Lazheward"4 , which is the name of a place in northeastern Afghanistan that in ancient times was the main source for lapis lazuli, a semi-precious rock with a vivid blue color. The word was adopted into French (as l'azur, the initial /l/ being understood as 'the') by the twelfth century. Today it is found in all Western European languages. It was adopted into English from the French, and the first recorded use of it as a color name in English was in 1374 in Geoffrey Chaucer's work Troilus and Criseyde, where he refers to "a broche, gold and asure" (a broach, gold and azure)567
The use of the term spread through the practice of heraldry, where “azure” represents a blue color in the system of tinctures. In engravings, it is represented as a region of parallel horizontal lines, or by the abbreviation az. or b. In practice, azure has been represented by any number of shades of blue. In later heraldic practice a lighter blue, called bleu celeste (“sky blue”), is sometimes specified.
Azure also describes the color of the mineral azurite, both in its natural form and as a pigment in various paint formulations. In order to preserve its deep color, azurite was ground coarsely. Fine-ground azurite produces a lighter, washed-out color. Traditionally, the pigment was considered unstable in oil paints, and was sometimes isolated from other colors and not mixed. Modern investigation of old paintings, however, shows that the pigment is very stable unless exposed to sulfur fumes.8
In some color systems, azure is defined more specifically. In the X11 color system which became a standard for early web colors, azure is a pale cyan color.
In Russian, "голубой" (goluboj, azure or cyan) and "синий" (sinij, blue or navy blue) are not two shades of the same color, but distinguished in the way red and pink are distinct colors in English. A similar distinction exists between "azzurro" (azure, but used to indicate various shades of light blue) and "blu" (blue) in Italian and "ฟ้า (fah, sky blue) and น้ำเงิน (nam ngoen, blue) in Thai.citation needed
Displayed at right is the web color called azure; in actuality it is a pale pastel tint of cyan, as can be ascertained by noting its hue angle of 180 degrees (cyan).
In an artistic context, this color would be called azure mist.
S.Fantetti e C.Petracchi
(2001).
Il dizionario dei colori:
nomi e valori in quadricromia.
Zanichelli
. ISBN 8808079953.
B: Normalized to [0–255] (byte)
Celeste (pronounced che-les-te in Italian, Se-lest in English) is the colloquial name for the turquoiseblue colour associated with the Italian Bianchi Bicycle Company. In Italian, as the name Celestial indicates, it is an attempt to reproduce the colour of clear skies.
The first recorded use of sky blue as a color name in English was in 1728 in the Cyclopædia of Ephraim Chambers.20 Prior to the Chambers reference, the color had first been used in 1585 in a book by Nicolas De Nicolay where he stated "the tulbant of the merchant must be skie coloured".2122
Azure Agony is the name of a Progressive Metal band hailing from Italy.
"Azure Blue" is a jazz/blues fusion composition written by Edward Bland. Trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie first recorded the tune on his 1969 live LP "Sweet Soul," which consisted entirely of Bland's compositions, and has since been reissued on several compilation packages.
