Painting

Fresco

Because the plaster stays wet only a few hours, a fresco must be painted quickly, in daily sections ('giornate'): corrections are barely possible. Famous examples are Michelangelo's Sistine ceiling and Raphael's Vatican rooms.

💡 Did you know? 'Fresco' comes from the Italian for 'fresh': meaning the fresh, wet plaster.

Tempera

Because tempera dries almost instantly, areas are built up from fine strokes and hatching rather than soft blends. In the early Italian Renaissance e.g. Botticelli: it was standard, until oil painting displaced it from the 15th century.

💡 Did you know? Many medieval altarpieces still glow after centuries because tempera is so lightfast.

Oil

Applied in thin, translucent layers (glazes), oil paint produces deep, glowing colours and the finest detail. From the 16th century it became the main technique across Europe: from Rembrandt into the modern age.

💡 Did you know? Oil painting was perfected in 15th-century Flanders: Jan van Eyck is seen as one of its pioneers.

Chiaroscuro

Leonardo da Vinci already used soft light-dark transitions to make figures look three-dimensional. In the Baroque, Caravaggio and Rembrandt heightened the effect into theatrical drama with deep shadows and targeted light.

💡 Did you know? Caravaggio's extreme, hard-spotlight version is called 'tenebrism'.

Impasto

The thick layer of paint catches real light and casts tiny shadows, giving the picture an almost tangible, relief-like surface. Rembrandt already used it, and later especially modern painters.

💡 Did you know? In van Gogh's paintings the paint sometimes stands millimetres thick on the canvas.

Cubism

Cubism moved from the 'analytic' breaking-up of form to a 'synthetic' phase, in which real materials such as newspaper were first glued into the picture: the birth of collage. It is seen as a forerunner of abstract art.

💡 Did you know? The name came from a critic who mockingly spoke of 'cubes'.

Impressionism

Instead of the studio, the Impressionists often painted outdoors, with visible, rapid brushstrokes, to capture the light and mood of a moment. Leading figures include Monet, Renoir and Degas: made easier by the newly invented paint in tubes.

💡 Did you know? The name was at first a critic's mockery of the supposedly 'unfinished' pictures: the painters then wore it with pride.

Surrealism

Surrealism emerged around 1924 out of the Dada movement and was strongly shaped by Sigmund Freud's ideas about the unconscious. Among its most famous works are Dalí's melting clocks and Magritte's pipe titled 'This is not a pipe'.

💡 Did you know? The Surrealists used chance techniques to switch off the controlling mind.

Pointillism

Georges Seurat and Paul Signac placed the dots according to scientific colour rules; the method is also called 'Divisionism'. A single large work could take years.

💡 Did you know? The technique was based on then-new findings about colour perception.

Perspective

Before the Renaissance, painted spaces often looked flat; with perspective the viewer seemed to look into the pictorial space. The simplest form has a single vanishing point on the horizon, to which all depth lines converge.

💡 Did you know? The architect Filippo Brunelleschi first demonstrated the construction systematically around 1420.

Still life

In the 17th century the still life had its heyday in the Netherlands. Lavish bouquets and exotic fruit were often painted more expensively than the real objects would ever have cost.

💡 Did you know? A 'vanitas' still life with a skull is a reminder of the transience of life.

Green

Arrange the colours in a wheel and 'complementary colours' sit opposite each other, such as red and green. Side by side they intensify into a vivid contrast; mixed together they make a dull grey.

💡 Did you know? Mixing paint (subtractive) makes things darker, while mixing light (additive) makes them brighter.

Vincent van Gogh

Vincent van Gogh (1853 to 1890) created over 2000 works in only about ten years, yet sold almost none in his lifetime. Only after his death did he become world-famous; today his paintings are among the most expensive ever.

💡 Did you know? After a quarrel with Paul Gauguin he cut off part of his left ear in 1888; the exact circumstances are still debated.