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The Beginning of Oil Painting

The history of oil painting is diverse, with influences coming from a variety of sources. The very diversity that makes oil painting so unique also makes it difficult to define the shaping elements in its history.
The history of painting is a never-ending chain that began with the very first pictures ever made. Each style grows out of the styles that came before it. Every great artist adds to the accomplishments of earlier painters and influence later painters.

We can enjoy a painting for its beauty alone. Its lines, forms, colors, and composition (arrangement of parts) may appeal to our senses and linger in our memories. But enjoyment of art increases as we learn when and why and how it was created.

A painting always describes something. It may describe the artist’s impression of a scene or person. It also describes the artist’s feelings about the art of painting itself. Suppose, for example, the artist paints a picture of the birth of Venus, the Roman goddess of love—a subject that has been used many times. The viewer may not learn anything new about the subject from the more recent version that could not have been learned from the older one. Why, then, do painters bother to depict the same scene again? The answer is the way they want to tell us something new about the way the scene can be painted.

In a way, the artist is saying, “I have painted the birth of Venus as no other artist before me has painted it.” The artist not only depicts the birth of Venus but also makes a statement about the art of painting itself.

Many factors have influenced the history of painting. Geography, religion, national characteristics, historic events, the developments of new materials—all help to shape the artist’s vision. Throughout history, painting has mirrored the changing world and our ideas about it. in turn, artists have provided some of the best records of the development of civilization, sometimes revealing more than the written word.

Italian painters at the close of the 13th century were still working in the Byzantine style. Human figures were made to appear flat and decorative. faces rarely had any expression. Bodies were weightless and seemed to float rather than stand firmly on the ground.

In Florence, the painter Cimabue (1240-1302) tried to modernize some of the Byzantine methods. The angels in his Madonna Enthroned are more active than is usual in paintings of that time. Their gestures and faces show a little more human feeling. Cimabue added a new sense of monumentality, or largeness, to his paintings. However, he continued to follow many Byzantine traditions, such as the gold background and patternlike arrangement of objects and figures.

The great Florentine painter Giotto paved the way out of the Byzantine era of art and with the introduction of egg tempera helped dramatically alter the art of the period. His work laid the foundation for the future frescos and beauty of the Renaissance.

It was the great Florentine painter Giotto (1267?-1337) who actually broke with the Byzantine tradition. His fresco series in the Arena Chapel in Padua leaves Byzantine art far behind. In these scenes from the lives of Mary and Christ, there is genuine emotion, tension, and naturalism. All the qualities of human warmth and sympathy are present. The people do not seem at all unreal or heavenly. Giotto shaded the contours of the figures, and he put deep shadows into the folds of their clothing to give a sense of roundness and solidity.

For his smaller panels, Giotto used pure egg tempera, a medium that was perfected by the 14th-century Florentines. The clearness and brightness of his colors must have greatly affected people accustomed to the darker colors of Byzantine panels. Tempera paintings give the impression that soft daylight is falling over the scene. They have an almost flat appearance in contrast to the glossiness of oil paintings. Egg tempera remained the chief painting medium until oil almost completely replaced it in the 16th century.

Giotto’s accomplishments in the early 14th century laid the foundation of the Renaissance. Fifteenth-century Italian artists continued the movement. Masaccio (1401-28) was one of the leaders of the first generation of Renaissance artists. He lived in Florence, the wealthy merchant city where Renaissance art began.

By the time of his death in his late twenties, he had revolutionized painting. In his famous fresco The Tribute Money, he puts solid sculptural figures into a landscape that seems to go far bak into the distance. Masaccio may have learned perspective from the Florentine architect and sculptor Brunelleschi (1377-1446).

The fresco technique was very popular during the Renaissance. It was particularly suitable for large mural paintings because the colors dry perfectly flat. The picture can be viewed from any angle without glare or reflections. Frescoes are also available. Usually the artist had several assistants to help him. Work was completed by sections because it had to be finished while the plaster was still wet.

Masaccio’s full three-dimensional style was typical of the new progressive trend of the 15th century. The style of Fran Angelico (1400?-1455) represents the more traditional approach used by a number of early Renaissance painters. He was lesss concerned with perspective and more interested in decorative pattern. His Coronation of the Virgin is an example of tempera painting at its most beautiful.

The gay, intense colors are set against a gold background and accented with touches of gold. The picture looks like a greatly enlarged miniature painting. The long, narrow figures have little in common with Masaccio’s. The composition is organized in sweeping lines of movement circling about the central figures of Christ and Mary.