mined subsequent aesthetic directions. Two such cases are the refined use
of drying oils for painting in early-fifteenth-century Flanders, exploited by
the predecessors of van der Goes, and the dependence of Impressionism
on the new nineteenth-century pigments.
Perhaps the most famous myth of the whole technical history
of painting involves the first of these two examples and a panel painting.
Vasari wrote in his biography of Antonello da Messina of an occasion on
which Giovanni da Bruggia (now known as Jan van Eyck) devoted the
utmost pains to painting a picture and finished it with great care: “He var-
nished it and put it in the sun to dry, as was then customary. Whether the
heat was excessive or the wood badly joined or ill-seasoned, the picture
unfortunately split at the joints.” Following this experience, van Eyck set
about finding a paint medium that would dry in the shade, without the
need ofthe sun, and that would be lustrous without any varnish. Hence
he invented oil painting. “Enchanted with this discovery, as well he might
be,” Vasari continues, “Giovanni began a large number of works, filling
the whole country with them, to the infinite delight of the people and
immense profit to himself.” The fact that this highly improbable legend is
demonstrably untrue does not make it any less enjoyable, nor does it inval-
idate the premise that the material history of art and the connoisseur’s his-
tory of art are closely intertwined.
The history of painting contains specific examples where the
nature and limitations ofpainting on panel have affected the arrangement
ofa composition or, conversely, where the composition has dictated the
structure ofthe panel. It is well known that painters avoided painting key
components (such as faces) over panel joins, which risked coming apart.
It is surely no coincidence that the faces of Holbein’s two Ambassadors
(National Gallery, London), recently restored, are carefully placed more
or less centrally on two of the ten oak planks that compose the panel.
The artist’s decision to paint on a panel becomes significant when
there is a genuine choice to be made. From the later fifteenth century
onward—and more rapidly in Italy than in northern Europe—convention
increasingly allowed canvas paintings to have equal status with panel paint-
ings. Consequently, convenience and lower cost led to greater use of can-
vas, especially for larger works. Many painters, however, used both canvas
and wood. One of the great questions of the history of painting tech-
niques is this: Why does a painter choose one support over another for a
particular work? Why, for example, did Botticelli paint the Primaveraon
panel and the Birth of Venuson canvas? The works were probably both part
ofthe same decorative scheme. Before the top of the Birth of Venuswas
cut, the works would have been the same size as each other—and also the
same size as another work on canvas, Pallas and the Centaur(Uffizi Gallery,
Florence). Botticelli painted the Primaverajust before he left for Rome in
1481 or 1482, and he painted the two canvases just after he returned to
Florence. Had he somehow been influenced in favor of canvas while he
was away working in the Sistine Chapel? If so, he certainly reverted to
panel after these two pieces, and continued to use panel for the great
majority of his work.
We can ask the same question with regard to many painters over
the next two centuries. While the answers would vary, the majority of
choices would be, undoubtedly, pragmatic. We must never overlook practi-
cal or commonsense explanations for the ways in which painters worked
or for the constraints of tradition within which they learned their craft.
I: K A xvii