Churches in Venice

True confession time here….I’m a bit addicted to Google. I think of something I want to know and start looking and next thing I know, hours of my life have passed by and I’ve got all kinds of new and interesting trivia in my head. I haven’t decided if I should be worried about this or not.

Here’s an example. I was looking through my shrine photos and noticed how many of the Madonna shrines are light blue/sky blue/baby blue (we call it Carolina blue here in NC but that’s another story). Either her clothes are that shade of blue or the shrine itself or both. So I went to Google to try to find out why, and here are a few interesting things I found along the way.

Bathtub Madonna shrines

Who knew? Evidently these are very popular in the Midwest. Paint the inside of an old bathtub sky blue, bury it halfway, put a Madonna inside, and voila, a shrine for your yard.

Pink and Blue

This NY Times article about the Princess Craze says that in the early 20th century, pink was considered to be a masculine color (because it was close to red) and baby blue was a feminine color (because of its association with the Virgin). But by the 1930’s, the gender associations had switched, and pink became feminine and blue masculine. How weird is that? How and why does a change like that happen?

Why does Mary always wear light blue?

This article says that she doesn’t.

I finally found an explanation that makes sense – centuries ago, blue pigment (made from lapis lazuli) was the most precious and costly pigment in painting, and using that color was a way to honor and show devotion to her. That gave me the "a-ha" moment I was looking for so I could stop googling this topic and move into the next one.