A panel painting is a painting made on a flat panel of wood, either a single piece or a number of pieces joined together. Until canvas became the more popular support medium in the 16th century, panel painting was the normal method, when not painting directly onto a wall (fresco) or on vellum (used for miniatures in illuminated manuscripts). Wood panels were also used for mounting vellum paintings.
Panel painting is very old; it was a very prestigious medium in Greece and Rome, but only very few examples of ancient panel paintings have survived. A series of 6th century BC painted tablets from Pitsa (Greece) represent the oldest surviving Greek panel paintings. Most classical Greek paintings that were famous in their day seem to have been of a size comparable to smaller modern works – perhaps up to a half-length portrait size. However, for a generation in the second quarter of the fifth-century BC there was a movement, called the "new painting" and led by Polygnotus, for very large painted friezes, apparently painted on wood, decorating the interiors of public buildings with very large and complicated subjects containing numerous figures at least half life-size, and including battle scenes. We can only attempt to imagine what these looked like from some detailed literary descriptions and vase-paintings that appear to echo their compositions. [1]
The first century BC to third century AD Fayum mummy portraits, preserved in the exceptionally dry conditions of Egypt, provide the bulk of surviving panel painting from the Imperial Roman period – about 900 face or bust portraits survive. The Severan Tondo, also from Roman Egypt (about 200 AD), is one of the handful of non-funerary Graeco-Roman specimens to survive. Wood has always been the normal support for the Icons of Byzantine art and the later Orthodox traditions, the earliest of which (all in Saint Catherine's Monastery) date from the 5th or 6th centuries, and are the oldest panel paintings which seem to be of the highest contemporary quality. Encaustic and tempera are the two techniques used in antiquity. Encaustic largely ceased to be used after the early Byzantine icons.
Although there seem from literary references to have been some panel paintings produced in Western Europe through the centuries between Late Antiquity and the Romanesque period, and Byzantine icons were imported, there are next to no survivals in an unaltered state. In the 12th century panel painting experienced a revival. Altarpieces seem to have begun to be used during the 11th century, with the possible exception of a few earlier examples. They became more common in the 13th century because of new liturgical practices—the priest and congregation were now on the same side of the altar, leaving the space behind the altar free for the display of a holy image—and thus altar decorations were in demand. The habit of placing decorated reliquaries of saints on or behind the altar, as well as the tradition of decorating the front of the altar with sculptures or textiles, preceded the first altarpieces. [2]
The earliest forms of panel painting were dossals (altar backs), altar fronts and crucifixes. All were painted with religious images, commonly the Christ or the Virgin, with the saints appropriate to the dedication of the church, and the local town or diocese, or to the donor. Donor portraits including members of the donor's family are also often shown, usually kneeling to the side. They were for some time a cheaper alternative to the far more prestigious equivalents in metalwork, decorated with gems, enamels, and perhaps ivory figures, most of which have long been broken up for their valuable materials. Painted panels for altars are most numerous in Spain, especially Catalonia, which is explained by the poverty of the country at this time, as well as the lack of Reformation iconoclasm. [3]
The 13th and 14th centuries in Italy were a great period of panel painting, mostly altarpieces or other religious works. However, it is estimated that of all the panel paintings produced there, 99.9 percent have been lost. The vast majority of Early Netherlandish paintings are on panel, and these include most of the earliest portraits, such as those by Jan van Eyck, and some other secular scenes. However, one of the earliest surviving oils on canvas is a French Madonna with angels of about 1410 in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, which is very early indeed for oil painting also. In these works the frame and panel are sometimes a single piece of wood, as with Portrait of a Man (Self Portrait?) by van Eyck (National Gallery, London), where the frame was also painted, including an inscription done illusionistically to resemble carving. [4]
By the 15th century with the increased wealth of Europe, and later the appearance of humanism, and a changing attitude about the function of art and patronage, panel painting went in new directions. Secular art opened the way to the creation of chests, painted beds, birth trays and other furniture. Many such works are now detached and hung framed on walls in museums. Many double-sided wings of altarpieces (see picture at top) have also been sawn into two one-sided panels.
Canvas took over from panel in Italy by the first half of the 16th century, a change led by Mantegna and the artists of Venice (which made the finest canvas at this point, for sails). In the Netherlands the change took about a century longer, and panel paintings remained common, especially in Northern Europe, even after the cheaper and more portable canvas had become the main support medium. The young Rubens and many other painters preferred it for the greater precision that could be achieved with a totally solid support, and many of his most important works also used it, even for paintings over four metres long in one dimension. His panels are of notoriously complicated construction, containing as many as seventeen pieces of wood (Het Steen, National Gallery, London). For smaller cabinet paintings, copper sheets (often old printmaking plates) were another rival support, from the end of the 16th century, used by many artists including Adam Elsheimer. Many Dutch painters of the Golden Age used panel for their small works, including Rembrandt on occasion. By the 18th century it had become unusual to paint on panel, except for small works to be inset into furniture, and the like. But, for example, The National Gallery in London has two Goya portraits on panel.
Many other painting traditions also painted, and still paint, on wood, but the term is usually only used to refer to the Western tradition described above.
The technique is known to us through Cennino Cennini's "The Craftsman's Handbook" (Il libro dell' arte) published in 1390, and other sources. It changed little over the centuries. It was a laborious and painstaking process:
Once the panel construction was complete, the design was laid out, usually in charcoal.
The usual ancient painting technique was encaustic, used at Al-Fayum and in the earliest surviving Byzantine icons, which are at the Saint Catherine's Monastery. This uses heated wax as the medium for the pigments.
This was replaced before the end of first millennium by tempera, which uses an egg-yolk medium. Using small brushes dipped in a mixture of pigment and egg-yolk, the paint was applied in very small, almost transparent, brushstrokes. Thin layers of paint would be used to create volumetric forms.
By the beginning of the 15th century, oil painting was developed. This was more tolerant, and allowed the exceptional detail of Early Netherlandish art. This used a very painstaking multi-layered technique, where the painting, or a particular part of it, had to be left for a couple of days for one layer to dry before the next was applied.
Wood panels, especially if kept with too little humidity, often warp and crack with age, and from the 19th century, when reliable techniques were developed, many have been transferred to canvas or modern board supports. This can result in damage to the paint layer, as historical transfer techniques were rather brutal.
Paintings on wood panel that were expanded, such as Rubens' A View of Het Steen in the Early Morning (which consists of eighteen separate panels, seventeen added as the artist enlarged his composition), often suffer greatly over time. Each warps in its own way, tearing the overall piece apart at the seams. [5]
Wood panel is now rather more useful to art historians than canvas, and in recent decades there has been great progress in extracting this information. Many fakes have been discovered and mistaken datings corrected. Specialists can identify the tree species used, which varied according to the area where the painting was made. Carbon-dating techniques can give an approximate date-range (typically to a range of about 20 years), and dendrochronology sequences have been developed for the main source areas of timber for panels. Italian paintings used local or sometimes Dalmatian wood, most often poplar, but including chestnut, walnut, oak and other woods. The Netherlands ran short of local timber early in the 15th century, and most Early Netherlandish masterpieces are Baltic oak, often Polish, cut north of Warsaw and shipped down the Vistula, across the Baltic to the Netherlands. [6] Southern German painters often used pine, and mahogany imported into Europe was used by later painters, including examples by Rembrandt and Goya.
In theory, dendro-chronology gives an exact felling date, but in practice allowances have to be made for a seasoning period of several years, and a small panel may be from the centre of the tree, with no way of knowing how many rings outside the panel there were. So dendro-chronological conclusions tend to be expressed as a "terminus post quem" or an earliest possible date, with a tentative estimate of an actual date, that may be twenty or more years later.
The so-called Panel Paintings Initiative is a multi-year project in collaboration between the Getty Conservation Institute, the Getty Foundation, and the J. Paul Getty Museum. The Panel Paintings Initiative is a response to the growing recognition that significant collections of paintings on wood panels may be at risk in coming decades due to the waning numbers of conservators and craftspeople with the highly specialized skills required for the conservation of these complex works of art. [7]
Artists would typically use wood native to the region. Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528), for example, painted on poplar when he was in Venice and on oak when in the Netherlands and southern Germany. Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) used oak for his paintings in France; Hans Baldung Grien (1484/85–1545) and Hans Holbein (1497/98–1543) used oak while working in southern Germany and England. In the Middle Ages, spruce and lime were used in the Upper Rhine and often in Bavaria. Outside of the Rhineland, softwood (such as pinewood) was mainly used. Of a group of twenty Norwegian altar frontals from the Gothic period (1250–1350) fourteen were made of fir, two of oak, and four of pine (Kaland 1982). Large altars made in Denmark during the fifteenth century used oak for the figures as well as for the painted wings. Lime was popular with Albrecht Altdorfer (c. 1480–1538), Baldung Grien, Christoph Amberger (d. 1562), Dürer, and Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472–1553). Cranach often used beech wood—an unusual choice. In Northern Europe, poplar is very rarely found, but walnut and chestnut are not uncommon. In the northeast and south, coniferous trees such as spruce, and various types of fir, and pine have been used. Fir wood is shown to have been used in the Upper and Middle Rhine, Augsburg, Nuremberg, and Saxony. Pinewood was used mainly in Tirol and beech wood only in Saxony. However, in general, oak was the most common substrate used for panel making in the Low Countries, northern Germany, and the Rhineland around Cologne. In France, until the seventeenth century, most panels were made from oak, although a few made of walnut and poplar have been found.
The oak favored as a support by the painters of the northern school was, however, not always of local origin. In the seventeenth century about four thousand full-grown oak trees were needed to build a medium-sized merchant ship; thus, imported wood was necessary. Oak coming from Königsberg as well as Gdańsk is often found among works by Flemish and Dutch artists from the 15th through the 17th centuries; the origin can be established by the patterns of growth rings. In the last decade of the seventeenth century, Wilhelmus Beurs, a Dutch writer on painting techniques, considered oak to be the most useful wooden substrate on which to paint. However, exceptions are seen rather early in the seventeenth century: sometimes walnut, pearwood, cedarwood, or Indian woods were used. Mahogany was already in use by a number of painters during the first decades of the seventeenth century and was used often in the Netherlands in the nineteenth century. Even so, when canvas or copper was not used, the main oeuvre of the northern school was painted on oak panels. [8]
Oil painting is the process of painting with pigments with a medium of drying oil as the binder. It has been the most common technique for artistic painting on canvas, wood panel or copper for several centuries, spreading from Europe to the rest of the world. The advantages of oil for painting images include "greater flexibility, richer and denser colour, the use of layers, and a wider range from light to dark". But the process is slower, especially when one layer of paint needs to be allowed to dry before another is applied.
Tempera, also known as egg tempera, is a permanent, fast-drying painting medium consisting of pigments mixed with a water-soluble binder medium, usually glutinous material such as egg yolk. Tempera also refers to the paintings done in this medium. Tempera paintings are very long-lasting, and examples from the first century AD still exist. Egg tempera was a primary method of painting until after 1500 when it was superseded by oil painting. A paint consisting of pigment and binder commonly used in the United States as poster paint is also often referred to as "tempera paint", although the binders in this paint are different from traditional tempera paint.
Jan van Eyck was a Flemish painter active in Bruges who was one of the early innovators of what became known as Early Netherlandish painting, and one of the most significant representatives of Early Northern Renaissance art. According to Vasari and other art historians including Ernst Gombrich, he invented oil painting, though most now regard that claim as an oversimplification.
An altarpiece is an artwork such as a painting, sculpture or relief representing a religious subject made for placing at the back of or behind the altar of a Christian church. Though most commonly used for a single work of art such as a painting or sculpture, or a set of them, the word can also be used of the whole ensemble behind an altar, otherwise known as a reredos, including what is often an elaborate frame for the central image or images. Altarpieces were one of the most important products of Christian art especially from the late Middle Ages to the era of the Counter-Reformation.
Antonello da Messina, properly Antonello di Giovanni di Antonio, but also called Antonello degli Antoni and Anglicized as Anthony of Messina, was an Italian painter from Messina, active during the Italian Early Renaissance.
Early Netherlandish painting is the body of work by artists active in the Burgundian and Habsburg Netherlands during the 15th- and 16th-century Northern Renaissance period, once known as the Flemish Primitives. It flourished especially in the cities of Bruges, Ghent, Mechelen, Leuven, Tournai and Brussels, all in present-day Belgium. The period begins approximately with Robert Campin and Jan van Eyck in the 1420s and lasts at least until the death of Gerard David in 1523, although many scholars extend it to the start of the Dutch Revolt in 1566 or 1568–Max J. Friedländer's acclaimed surveys run through Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Early Netherlandish painting coincides with the Early and High Italian Renaissance, but the early period is seen as an independent artistic evolution, separate from the Renaissance humanism that characterised developments in Italy. Beginning in the 1490s, as increasing numbers of Netherlandish and other Northern painters traveled to Italy, Renaissance ideals and painting styles were incorporated into northern painting. As a result, Early Netherlandish painters are often categorised as belonging to both the Northern Renaissance and the Late or International Gothic.
Gothic art was a style of medieval art that developed in Northern France out of Romanesque art in the 12th century AD, led by the concurrent development of Gothic architecture. It spread to all of Western Europe, and much of Northern, Southern and Central Europe, never quite effacing more classical styles in Italy. In the late 14th century, the sophisticated court style of International Gothic developed, which continued to evolve until the late 15th century. In many areas, especially Germany, Late Gothic art continued well into the 16th century, before being subsumed into Renaissance art. Primary media in the Gothic period included sculpture, panel painting, stained glass, fresco and illuminated manuscripts. The easily recognizable shifts in architecture from Romanesque to Gothic, and Gothic to Renaissance styles, are typically used to define the periods in art in all media, although in many ways figurative art developed at a different pace.
Geertgen tot Sint Jans, also known as Geertgen van Haarlem, Gerrit van Haarlem, Gerrit Gerritsz, Gheertgen, Geerrit, Gheerrit, or any other diminutive form of Gerald, was an Early Netherlandish painter from the northern Low Countries in the Holy Roman Empire. No contemporary documentation of his life has been traced, and the earliest published account of his life and work is from 1604, in Karel van Mander's Schilder-boeck.
The Mérode Altarpiece is an oil on oak panel triptych, now in The Cloisters, in New York City. It is unsigned and undated, but attributed to Early Netherlandish painter Robert Campin and an assistant. The three panels represent, from left to right, the donors kneeling in prayer in a garden, the moment of the Annunciation to Mary, which is set in a contemporary, domestic setting, and Saint Joseph, a carpenter with the tools of his trade. The many elements of religious symbolism include the lily and fountain, and the Holy Spirit represented by the rays of light coming through from the central panel's left hand window.
Joos van Cleve was a leading painter active in Antwerp from his arrival there around 1511 until his death in 1540 or 1541. Within Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting, he combines the traditional techniques of Early Netherlandish painting with influences of more contemporary Renaissance painting styles.
An oil sketch or oil study is an artwork made primarily in oil paint in preparation for a larger, finished work. Originally these were created as preparatory studies or modelli, especially so as to gain approval for the design of a larger commissioned painting. They were also used as designs for specialists in other media, such as printmaking or tapestry, to follow. Later they were produced as independent works, often with no thought of being expanded into a full-size painting.
The Annunciation is an oil painting by the Early Netherlandish master Jan van Eyck, from around 1434–1436. The panel is housed in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. It was originally on panel but has been transferred to canvas. It is thought that it was the left (inner) wing of a triptych; there has been no sighting of the other wings since before 1817. The Annunciation is a highly complex work whose iconography is still debated by art historians. It was bought by the Tsar of Russia for the Hermitage Museum, but was sold by Stalin's government in 1930.
The Magdalen Reading is one of three surviving fragments of a large mid-15th-century oil-on-panel altarpiece by the Early Netherlandish painter Rogier van der Weyden. The panel, originally oak, was completed some time between 1435 and 1438 and has been in the National Gallery, London since 1860. It shows a woman with the pale skin, high cheek bones and oval eyelids typical of the idealised portraits of noble women of the period. She is identifiable as the Magdalen from the jar of ointment placed in the foreground, which is her traditional attribute in Christian art. She is presented as completely absorbed in her reading, a model of the contemplative life, repentant and absolved of past sins. In Catholic tradition the Magdalen was conflated with both Mary of Bethany who anointed the feet of Jesus with oil and the unnamed "sinner" of Luke 7:36–50. Iconography of the Magdalen commonly shows her with a book, in a moment of reflection, in tears, or with eyes averted.
The Entombment is a glue-size painting on linen attributed to the Early Netherlandish painter Dieric Bouts. It shows a scene from the biblical entombment of Christ, and was probably completed between 1440 and 1455 as a wing panel for a large hinged polyptych. While the altarpiece remains lost as a complete set, it is thought to have contained a central crucifixion scene flanked by four wing panel works half its height – two on either side – depicting scenes from the life of Christ. The smaller flanking panels would have been paired in a format similar to Bouts's 1464–1468 Altarpiece of the Holy Sacrament. The larger work was probably commissioned for export to Italy, possibly to a Venetian patron whose identity is lost. The Entombment was first recorded in a mid-19th-century inventory in Milan, and has been in the National Gallery, London, since its purchase on the Gallery's behalf by Charles Lock Eastlake in 1861.
The Miraflores Altarpiece is a c. 1442-5 oil-on-oak wood panel altarpiece by the Early Netherlandish painter Rogier van der Weyden, in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin since 1850. The three panels are each 71 x 43 cm and show, from left to right, a portrait of the Holy Family, a Pietà and Christ's appearance to Mary—a chronological reading of the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus, with Mary the focus of both wings. The altarpiece examines Mary's relationship with Christ at different stages of his life. It is notable for its use of colour, distinguished by its use of whites, reds and blues, and use of line—notably the line of Christ's body in the central panel—and, typically of van der Weyden, its emotional impact.
Glue-size is a painting technique in which pigment is bound (sized) to cloth with hide glue, and typically the unvarnished cloth was then fixed to the frame using the same glue. Glue-size is also known as distemper, though the term "distemper" is applied variously to different techniques. Glue-size was used because hide glue was a popular binding medium in the 15th century, particularly among artists of the Early Netherlandish period, who used it as an inexpensive alternative to oil. Although a large number of works using this medium were produced, few survive today, mainly because of the high perishability of linen cloth and the solubility of hide glue. Well-known and relatively well-preserved – though substantially damaged – the most notable examples include Quentin Matsys' Virgin and Child with Saints Barbara and Catherine and Dirk Bouts' Entombment. In German the technique is known as Tüchleinfarben, meaning "small cloth colours", or Tüchlein, derived from the German word for “handkerchief”.
Virgin and Child with Saints, is a large mid-15th century oil-on-oak altarpiece by the early Netherlandish painter Rogier van der Weyden. The work is lost since at least the 17th century, known only through three surviving fragments and drawing of the full work in Stockholm's Nationalmuseum by a follower of van der Weyden. The drawing is sometimes attributed to the Master of the Drapery Studies.
The practice of conserving an unstable painting on panel by transferring it from its original decayed, worm-eaten, cracked, or distorted wood support to canvas or a new panel has been practised since the 18th century. It has now been largely superseded by improved methods of wood conservation.
Gold ground or gold-ground (adjective) is a term in art history for a style of images with all or most of the background in a solid gold colour. Historically, real gold leaf has normally been used, giving a luxurious appearance. The style has been used in several periods and places, but is especially associated with Byzantine and medieval art in mosaic, illuminated manuscripts and panel paintings, where it was for many centuries the dominant style for some types of images, such as icons. For three-dimensional objects, the term is gilded or gold-plated.
In visual arts, the support is a solid surface onto which the painting is placed, typically a canvas or a panel. Support is technically distinct from the overlaying ground, but sometimes the latter term is used in a broad sense of "support" to designate any surface used for painting, for example, paper for watercolor or plaster for fresco.
