The Ghent Altarpiece Panel Paintings
(c.1432) by Northern Renaissance
artist Jan Van Eyck. (Detail)

Panel Painting

The term 'panel painting' denotes a picture painted on a panel (either a one-piece or multi-piece panel), usually made of wood, although metal and other rigid materials are used. Until canvas began to be adopted by artists in the fifteenth century, virtually all European movable paintings (viz, excluding murals or artworks on vellum) were created on panels. Indeed, right up until 1600, panels were as common as canvases.

They were especially popular with painters producing miniatures, who might use wood or copper (even slate) panels.

Detail from The Ghent Altarpiece

Wooden Panels

The preference of most Italian Old Masters was white poplar, while Dutch, Flemish and other northern European painters tended to use oak. Other types of panel wood included: beech, cedar, chestnut, fir, larch, mahogany, spruce, teak and walnut. Among modern artists, synthetic materials like fibre-board and plywood, are popular.

Panel Preparation and Painting

The basic Renaissance technique involved seasoned wood, planed and sanded, then coated with 'size' (an admixture of gelatin or glue made from animal skins) after which up to 15 layers of gesso (a white absorbent ground for painting in tempera or oil, made from chalk mixed with glue) would be applied to produce a hard smooth surface. After this, the artist drew a freehand design or drawing, typically in charcoal, before applying paint. The actual painting might be done using the encaustic (Byzantine panels), tempera (Italian Renaissance panels) or oil (Dutch/Flemish panels) method.

Encaustic Panel Painting
from St Catherine's Monastery
Mount Sinai (6th Century).

History

Although panel painting in Greek art was quite commonplace, most Greco-Roman panel art has been destroyed. The largest surviving group of panel paintings from Antiquity are the Egyptian mummy portraits, dating from about 100 BCE to 250 CE. However, the finest ancient examples are the Byzantine panel pictures in Saint Catherine's Monastery, Mount Sinai, completed about 400-600. Later, towards 1200, changes in church practices (aligning both priest and congregation on the same side of the altar) provided space behind the altar for an icon or religious image and thus caused a revival in panel painting. Typical icongraphy included Jesus Christ or the Virgin, alone or accompanied by saints.

Italian and Northern Renaissance

Italy in the pre-Renaissance, Early Renaissance and High Renaissance eras was a high point of panel painting, typically altarpieces or other religious icons. Sadly most have been destroyed. Many Northern Renaissance Dutch/Flemish paintings from this period, especially portraits, were also executed on panel.

Advent of Canvas

New attitudes, greater prosperity, and changes in art practices, led to canvas displacing panels as a more popular and convenient medium - a process beginning about 1500 and championed by Venetian artists like Andrea Mantegna: not least because Venice was the foremost source of quality canvases. This process of change occured almost 100 years later in Northern Europe, where panel painting remained more popular among Old Masters like Rubens due to the greater precision it provided. Also many Dutch and other European artists (eg. Rembrandt, Goya and Elsheimer) used panels for their smaller works and miniatures.

• For facts about painting types, styles and history, see: Fine Art Painting.
• For details of oil, watercolour and acrylic artists in Ireland, see: Guide to Irish Art

• How to Update This Mini Review of Panel Paintings