Oil Painting - History

Bamiyan, Afghanistan Cave Oil Painting from  Archaeology Magazine

The origins of oil painting is shrouded in time. Theories on where it began change with archeological finding, but can be contentious. Some sources report the medium dates from ancient antiquity when animal fats and pigment were combined  and applied to cave walls in Southern Europe.

Evidence uncovered in 2008 indicated that oil paint originated in the 7th century C.E. in Bamiyan, Afghanistan where Buddhist monks painted on cave walls. The medium then moved west into Europe.

However, the 16th century artist and art historian, Georgio Vasari credits Jan van Eyck (1395-1441) with the invention of oil paints. Jan van Eyck served the Burgundian Duke Philip the Good at a time when the Italian guilds were still only teaching tempera. We do know that two (2) famous paintings, the Ghent Alterpiece (1432) and the Arnolfini Portrait (1434), were both rendered in oil.

As you can see the use of egg tempera and oil paint overlapped. To further explore this point consider one of a handful of panels surviving by Michelangelo, the Manchester Madonna, currently in the National Gallery, London, which dates from 1497 and while it was not finished is egg tempera, a large portion of which is only underpainting.

Knowledge, like everything else, traveled along the trade routes. If knowledge and use of oil paints traveled from east to west one might assume that such knowledge would have traversed through Italy first. The Italian School and guilds maintained tempera as the principle medium to the end of the 1400s as evidenced by extant panels painted by Michelangelo. How then would Jan van Eyck, serving in Burgundy, produce finished oil paintings during the first half of the 15th century?

What can be assumed is that the scented oils added to disguise the scent of egg slowly replaced the distilled water and egg becoming the sole suspension product for the pigment. Benefits rendered from this exchange is the reduction of cracking in paintings and the dependence upon a rigid ground. As the renaissance flourished the demand for larger and larger paintings in the homes and palazzos of rich merchants, nobles and royalty drove the need for a flexible paint. Egg tempera dries quite quickly, but the drying time of oils gave artists time to consider the work. Finally, oils render with greater intensity and richer luminosity of color than other product.

Yours in Service to the Dream

Addison Carrick