Oil Painting Techniques and Imagery

This is an annotated bibliography paper which examines how the development of oil painting technique affected imagery of Renaissance Europe. The paper has annotated one website article and two books. These sources are quite helpful and bring out in full capacity the role of oil painting capacity in the development of imagery of Renaissance Europe.

This article authored by Susan of the Department of Art, Caldwell College gave an excellent start for the topic of the annotation. At the beginning of the article there are 17 oil paintings worked during the renaissance period. All the paintings presented on the article were done on wood. Below these paintings the author starts off by briefly giving the history of oil painting during the twelfth century in Northern Europe. Though oil painting has started as early as the 12^th century it was until the sixteenth century that it picked up well due to the efforts of Jan van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden. The author argues that Jan van Eyck has been wrongly credited as being the inventor of oil painting. In the next chapter the author goes on to show why and how oil painting brings completely new dimensions to painting. She argues that the ability of oil painting to admit applications both in thick impasto and fine details makes it possible to have countless descriptive brushstroke types. It slowness in drying is viewed as a big as it makes it possible for blending to be undertaken to bring about seamless shadows which are significant in the creation of a three dimensional forms. The authors goes ahead to give examples of how this property has been used in paintings to bring about unique imagery. The author also describes how the oil painting spread out to other European regions from its Netherlandish origins. I rate this article as an excellent one as it give basic facts about oil painting  and explains how oil creats uniqueness and as such brings about the change in images. The description and explanation is minute detailed making it possible to have a clear picture of how the oil paining creates the difference. 

Jon suggests that oil painting started in the 15^th century but was fully established in the 16^th century. He does not seem the knowledge that oil painting had started in the 12^th century as Susan had argued in the first article of this paper. Jon however goes ahead to claim that oil painting played a significant role in the changing the way paintings were generally viewed; "what distinguishes oil painting from other forms of is its ability to render the tangibility, the texture, the luster, the solidity of what it depicts" (Jon 73). The author argued that oil painting depicted images in the exactness of the objects. Although the author later claims that photography took over from oil painting it is clear that oil painting was unmatched by its earlier predecessor techniques of displaying images. The author shows through the description that he makes how oil painting developed imagery to a new level. Images were more of the actual objects as it becomes possible for minute details of the objects to be depicted in the images. The author goes to the extent of comparing oil painting to capitalism, "oil painting did to appearance what capitalism did to social relations, and he further went, it reduced everything to the equality of objects" (Jon 73). He uses the terms, "a vision of total exteriority" to describe how oil painting conveyed images of objects.  This article is equally good as the first one. Jon gives full descriptions of what oil painting does to images. Through the description given by this book one gets to understand how oil painting changed and developed.

Woods wrote an excellent book in which he tackled pertinent issues touching on oil painting and its significance effect on images. In his book he particularly discussed how oil painting was of particular significance to the religious setting. In his text are beautiful pictures of the oil painting done on wood. The author describes the Ghent altarpieces which, as he claims, depicted the significance and superiority of using oil paints techniques in the imagery.  The author notes that though oil painting had started early, the artists of the Ghent made notable developments in reference to improving the oil painting techniques. The author reviews a number of painting which were done using the oil painting technique. Various oil paintings are reviewed in this book. The description is followed by the pictures of the oil painting which makes the description quite clear (Woods 192).

I found this source quite helpful especially because of the display of the pictures showing the images done using oil painting techniques. The oil painting pictures done on wood make it possible for one to appreciate the role played by the oil painting technique in developing imagery. I rank this source as the best due to the rich information it has on oil painting technique.

These sources, from the above review, have portrayed oil painting as a technique which brought more reality to images. The images become more tangible with the use of oil painting techniques as it became possible for minute details to be revealed and thus making the images appear real.