2024-04-25
Oil painting is a painting technique using oil paints with linseed oil (sometimes poppy oil or other oil) as the main binder. The artist can use various painting bases for his work: wood, canvas, sheet metal, or even paper or parchment.
The first references to the use of oil painting date back to antiquity. The earliest known examples of the use of this technique are Buddhist wall paintings created around 650 AD in Bamiyan, Afghanistan. It is known that Theophilus the Presbyterus in his work "On the various arts" from around 1125 gives instructions on how to paint an oil painting.
However, it was not until the 15th century that the technique really took off. Dutch artists such as Van Eyck and Robert Campin began to experiment with multi-layered painting. The fashion quickly spread to Northern Europe and Italy. Over time, oil paints replaced tempera, and the wooden canvas was replaced by a canvas. Venetian artists were at the forefront of this revolution. Thanks to the use of stretched canvas they could create large altar paintings. For example, Giovanni Bellini's Madonna with Child and Saints (1505) is 5 metres high and 2.3 metres wide.
In 1841 another breakthrough took place: the American painter John Goffe invented the metal tube for paints. Thanks to this invention artists began to go outdoors and landscape painting developed rapidly. At the end of the 20th century, another technological breakthrough was made with the invention of water-based oil paints. Artists still use oil painting today.
The two basic techniques of oil painting are laser technique and alla prima. In the former, many layers of semi-opaque paint are applied to achieve a refined colour scheme and depth of colour. In the latter, a single, sometimes very thick layer of paint is applied. Painting alla prima is much faster and allows to quickly obtain the impasto effect (thick, raised layer of paint).