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63-626: Exeter Madonna or Virgin and Child with Saint Barbara and Jan Vos are names given to a small oil-on-wood panel painting completed c. 1450 by the Early Netherlandish painter Petrus Christus . It shows Saint Barbara presenting a Carthusian monk identified as Jan Vos, to the Virgin Mary who holds the Christ Child in her arms. Its diminutive size suggests it was meant as a personal devotional piece. The painting

126-659: A donor kneeling before the Virgin is common in Early Netherlandish art, with van Eyck's Madonna of Chancellor Rolin perhaps the most notable example, which Christus would have seen. Christus borrows that painting's line of floor tiles, which are intended to separates the earthly realm from the heavenly. The art historian Maryan Ainsworth writes that Christus pushed the figures into a corner, making it more intimate and utilizing asymmetrical angles characteristic of his work. The art historian Joel Morgan Upton describes

189-513: 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

252-464: A flat surface, of an image as it is seen by the eye . Perspective drawing is useful for representing a three-dimensional scene in a two-dimensional medium, like paper . It is based on the optical fact that for a person an object looks N times (linearly) smaller if it has been moved N times further from the eye than the original distance was. The most characteristic features of linear perspective are that objects appear smaller as their distance from

315-408: A mirror in front of the viewer, it reflected his painting of the buildings which had been seen previously, so that the vanishing point was centered from the perspective of the participant. Brunelleschi applied the new system of perspective to his paintings around 1425. This scenario is indicative, but faces several problems, that are still debated. First of all, nothing can be said for certain about

378-452: 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

441-544: A red robe over a blue dress. The simple dress is only adorned with a single band of ermine fur at the hem. The attire and stance are similar in their simplicity to the Madonna of the Dry Tree by Petrus Christus . The depiction of the child is somewhat reminiscent of van Eyck's Dresden Triptych . The figures are grouped in a high portico or loggia that opens to a city-view and background landscape. The tradition of

504-481: A series of experiments between 1415 and 1420, which included making drawings of various Florentine buildings in correct perspective. According to Vasari and Antonio Manetti , in about 1420, Brunelleschi demonstrated his discovery by having people look through a hole in the back of a painting he had made. Through it, they would see a building such as the Florence Baptistery . When Brunelleschi lifted

567-697: 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. The first century BC to third century AD Fayum mummy portraits , preserved in

630-576: A tiny figure is visible seated a white horse. Through the center window the city's canals and small lake can be seen beneath a towered bridge. Panel painting 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

693-414: 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. Artists would typically use wood native to the region. Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528), for example, painted on poplar when he

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756-471: Is based on qualitative judgments, and would need to be faced against the material evaluations that have been conducted on Renaissance perspective paintings. Apart from the paintings of Piero della Francesca , which are a model of the genre, the majority of 15th century works show serious errors in their geometric construction. This is true of Masaccio's Trinity fresco and of many works, including those by renowned artists like Leonardo da Vinci. As shown by

819-669: Is close to an object under observation and directly facing an observer's eyes (i.e., the observer is on a line normal or perpendicular to the plane). Then draw straight lines from the object to the observer. The area on the plane where the drawn lines pass through the plane is a point-projection prospective image resembling what is seen by the observer. Additionally, a central vanishing point can be used (just as with one-point perspective) to indicate frontal (foreshortened) depth. The earliest art paintings and drawings typically sized many objects and characters hierarchically according to their spiritual or thematic importance, not their distance from

882-738: Is evident in Ancient Greek red-figure pottery . Systematic attempts to evolve a system of perspective are usually considered to have begun around the fifth century BC in the art of ancient Greece , as part of a developing interest in illusionism allied to theatrical scenery. This was detailed within Aristotle 's Poetics as skenographia : using flat panels on a stage to give the illusion of depth. The philosophers Anaxagoras and Democritus worked out geometric theories of perspective for use with skenographia . Alcibiades had paintings in his house designed using skenographia , so this art

945-478: Is explained by the poverty of the country at this time, as well as the lack of Reformation iconoclasm . 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

1008-630: Is not a single occurrence of the word "experiment". Fourth, the conditions listed by Manetti are contradictory with each other. For example, the description of the eyepiece sets a visual field of 15°, much narrower than the visual field resulting from the urban landscape described. Soon after Brunelleschi's demonstrations, nearly every interested artist in Florence and in Italy used geometrical perspective in their paintings and sculpture, notably Donatello , Masaccio , Lorenzo Ghiberti , Masolino da Panicale , Paolo Uccello , and Filippo Lippi . Not only

1071-590: Is not systematically related to the rest of the composition. Medieval artists in Europe, like those in the Islamic world and China, were aware of the general principle of varying the relative size of elements according to distance, but even more than classical art were perfectly ready to override it for other reasons. Buildings were often shown obliquely according to a particular convention. The use and sophistication of attempts to convey distance increased steadily during

1134-442: Is relatively simple, having been long ago formulated by Euclid. Alberti was also trained in the science of optics through the school of Padua and under the influence of Biagio Pelacani da Parma who studied Alhazen 's Book of Optics . This book, translated around 1200 into Latin, had laid the mathematical foundation for perspective in Europe. Piero della Francesca elaborated on De pictura in his De Prospectiva pingendi in

1197-408: Is set in a loggia reminiscent of the interior of Madonna of Chancellor Rolin by Jan van Eyck – complete with a row of floor tiles separating the earthly from the heavenly realms. The panel may have been a companion piece to van Eyck's late work Madonna of Jan Vos (c. 1441). The attribution to Christus is today undisputed, but art historians are unsure regarding the date and circumstances of

1260-620: The Sacra conversazione , which is emphasized by the richness of the world beyond the window. The cityscape in the near background has been identified as Bruges in the 1450s, and is depicted with an unusually high degree of detail. Within the loggia, Saint Barbara's attribute of the tower resembles the Belfry of Bruges . To the exterior's far left in the square called the Huidenvettersplein people can be seen scurrying about, while and

1323-557: The Vistula , across the Baltic to the Netherlands. 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

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1386-618: The east doors of the Florence Baptistery . Masaccio (d. 1428) achieved an illusionistic effect by placing the vanishing point at the viewer's eye level in his Holy Trinity ( c.  1427 ), and in The Tribute Money , it is placed behind the face of Jesus. In the late 15th century, Melozzo da Forlì first applied the technique of foreshortening (in Rome, Loreto , Forlì and others). This overall story

1449-435: The 1470s, making many references to Euclid. Alberti had limited himself to figures on the ground plane and giving an overall basis for perspective. Della Francesca fleshed it out, explicitly covering solids in any area of the picture plane. Della Francesca also started the now common practice of using illustrated figures to explain the mathematical concepts, making his treatise easier to understand than Alberti's. Della Francesca

1512-560: 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

1575-661: 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

1638-506: 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

1701-409: The arrangement as "strictly parallel" with a foreshortened foreground, in a "diagonal, asymmetrical placement...activated by a striking oblique placement of figures." The distinction between the figures and the space around them is characteristic of Christus's work, as is its one-point perspective . The viewer gazes on the Virgin from the same perspective as the kneeling monk, is drawn into the mood of

1764-439: 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

1827-514: 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

1890-956: The commission. In the 17th century it was thought to be by van Eyck and sold as such by the Marquis of Exeter . It was acquired by the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum in 1888 and is now in Berlin's Gemäldegalerie . The Carthusian monk in the painting was identified as Jan Vos in 1938 by the art historian H. J. J. Scholtens. Vos became prior of the Charterhouse of Val-de-Grace in 1441, around when he probably commissioned Jan van Eyck 's Madonna of Jan Vos . Van Eyck died in 1441 and various theories have been put forth in regards to Petrus Christus 's hand in that painting. The art historian Erwin Panofsky speculated that Christus finished

1953-461: The correctness of his perspective construction of the Baptistery of San Giovanni, because Brunelleschi's panel is lost. Second, no other perspective painting or drawing by Brunelleschi is known. (In fact, Brunelleschi was not known to have painted at all.) Third, in the account written by Antonio Manetti in his Vita di Ser Brunellesco at the end of the 15th century on Brunelleschi's panel, there

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2016-507: 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

2079-566: 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

2142-584: 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

2205-429: The exact vantage point used in the calculations relative to the image. When viewed from a different point, this cancels out what would appear to be distortions in the image. For example, a sphere drawn in perspective will be stretched into an ellipse. These apparent distortions are more pronounced away from the center of the image as the angle between a projected ray (from the scene to the eye) becomes more acute relative to

2268-526: 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,

2331-542: 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

2394-595: The first or second century until the 18th century. It is not certain how they came to use the technique; Dubery and Willats (1983) speculate that the Chinese acquired the technique from India, which acquired it from Ancient Rome, while others credit it as an indigenous invention of Ancient China . Oblique projection is also seen in Japanese art, such as in the Ukiyo-e paintings of Torii Kiyonaga (1752–1815). By

2457-618: The frame was also painted, including an inscription done illusionistically to resemble carving. 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

2520-443: 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

2583-529: The later periods of antiquity, artists, especially those in less popular traditions, were well aware that distant objects could be shown smaller than those close at hand for increased realism, but whether this convention was actually used in a work depended on many factors. Some of the paintings found in the ruins of Pompeii show a remarkable realism and perspective for their time. It has been claimed that comprehensive systems of perspective were evolved in antiquity, but most scholars do not accept this. Hardly any of

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2646-540: The many works where such a system would have been used have survived. A passage in Philostratus suggests that classical artists and theorists thought in terms of "circles" at equal distance from the viewer, like a classical semi-circular theatre seen from the stage. The roof beams in rooms in the Vatican Virgil , from about 400 AD, are shown converging, more or less, on a common vanishing point, but this

2709-404: The now lost Madonna of Nicolas van Maelbeke as a source. Christus's rendition is a reinterpretion, rather than a direct copy of van Eyck's painting. Although Saint Barbara and Vos are in the same position in both paintings, the most obvious difference is the exclusion of Saint Elizabeth . Saint Barbara presents Jan Vos to the Virgin Mary , who holds the Christ Child in her arms. She wears

2772-724: The observer increases, and that they are subject to foreshortening , meaning that an object's dimensions parallel to the line of sight appear shorter than its dimensions perpendicular to the line of sight. All objects will recede to points in the distance, usually along the horizon line, but also above and below the horizon line depending on the view used. Italian Renaissance painters and architects including Filippo Brunelleschi , Leon Battista Alberti , Masaccio , Paolo Uccello , Piero della Francesca and Luca Pacioli studied linear perspective, wrote treatises on it, and incorporated it into their artworks. linear or point-projection perspective works by putting an imagery flat plane that

2835-444: The overall piece apart at the seams. 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

2898-583: 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

2961-481: The period, but without a basis in a systematic theory. Byzantine art was also aware of these principles, but also used the reverse perspective convention for the setting of principal figures. Ambrogio Lorenzetti painted a floor with convergent lines in his Presentation at the Temple (1342), though the rest of the painting lacks perspective elements. It is generally accepted that Filippo Brunelleschi conducted

3024-406: The quick proliferation of accurate perspective paintings in Florence, Brunelleschi likely understood (with help from his friend the mathematician Toscanelli ), but did not publish, the mathematics behind perspective. Decades later, his friend Leon Battista Alberti wrote De pictura ( c.  1435 ), a treatise on proper methods of showing distance in painting. Alberti's primary breakthrough

3087-494: 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. The earliest forms of panel painting were dossals (altar backs), altar fronts and crucifixes . All were painted with religious images, commonly

3150-426: 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 ,

3213-494: 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

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3276-641: The van Eyck. Given Christus's purchase of citizenship on July 6 1444, his ostensible arrival in Bruges at that time, and Vos's movements (he was absent from Bruges for a number of years), a more probable scenario is that the Exeter Madonna was commissioned as a portable devotional piece for Vos during his travels, or on his return to Bruges in the 1450s. It is possible that Vos gave the Madonna of Jan Vos to Christus work from. Christus seems also to have used

3339-455: The viewer, and did not use foreshortening. The most important figures are often shown as the highest in a composition , also from hieratic motives, leading to the so-called "vertical perspective", common in the art of Ancient Egypt , where a group of "nearer" figures are shown below the larger figure or figures; simple overlapping was also employed to relate distance. Additionally, oblique foreshortening of round elements like shields and wheels

3402-548: 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

3465-462: Was also the first to accurately draw the Platonic solids as they would appear in perspective. Luca Pacioli 's 1509 Divina proportione ( Divine Proportion ), illustrated by Leonardo da Vinci , summarizes the use of perspective in painting, including much of Della Francesca's treatise. Leonardo applied one-point perspective as well as shallow focus to some of his works. Two-point perspective

3528-461: Was demonstrated as early as 1525 by Albrecht Dürer , who studied perspective by reading Piero and Pacioli's works, in his Unterweisung der Messung ("Instruction of the Measurement"). Perspective images are created with reference to a particular center of vision for the picture plane. In order for the resulting image to appear identical to the original scene, a viewer must view the image from

3591-745: 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)

3654-527: 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

3717-482: Was not confined merely to the stage. Euclid in his Optics ( c.  300 BC ) argues correctly that the perceived size of an object is not related to its distance from the eye by a simple proportion. In the first-century BC frescoes of the Villa of P. Fannius Synistor , multiple vanishing points are used in a systematic but not fully consistent manner. Chinese artists made use of oblique projection from

3780-423: Was not to show the mathematics in terms of conical projections, as it actually appears to the eye. Instead, he formulated the theory based on planar projections, or how the rays of light, passing from the viewer's eye to the landscape, would strike the picture plane (the painting). He was then able to calculate the apparent height of a distant object using two similar triangles. The mathematics behind similar triangles

3843-431: Was not used, the main oeuvre of the northern school was painted on oak panels. Perspective (graphical)#One-point perspective Linear or point-projection perspective (from Latin perspicere  'to see through') is one of two types of graphical projection perspective in the graphic arts ; the other is parallel projection . Linear perspective is an approximate representation, generally on

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3906-468: Was perspective a way of showing depth, it was also a new method of creating a composition. Visual art could now depict a single, unified scene, rather than a combination of several. Early examples include Masolino's St. Peter Healing a Cripple and the Raising of Tabitha ( c.  1423 ), Donatello's The Feast of Herod ( c.  1427 ), as well as Ghiberti's Jacob and Esau and other panels from

3969-684: 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

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