Long before acrylics, the most famous artists of the Renaissance only had a handful of mediums to play with, yet a lot of their work has survived for more than 500 years. This is partly down to the medium itself - the material that binds the pigment to a surface. Here’s how each one works.
Fresco, painting on wet plaster
Fresco is a mural technique where you apply water-based paint onto wet plaster. The plaster dries, so the colour becomes part of the wall itself, which is what makes it so durable.
But this ends up becoming a race against the clock, so artists would only lay one day’s worth of plaster at a time. This was known as a giornata, or “a day’s work”, in Italian.
Michelangelo used fresco for the Sistine Chapel ceiling, and its best-known scene, The Creation of Adam, is one of the most recognisable images in art. You still see fresco artists following in his footsteps nowadays.
Egg tempera, before oil took over
Egg tempera was your go-to medium for panel paintings if you were a European artist in the 1400’s. The pigment was mixed with egg yolk and water, which dried quickly into this hard, durable finish. This would make colours trickier to blend. So instead, artists would build up images in thin layers with fine brush strokes.
Sandro Botticelli painted The Birth of Venus in a thin diluted tempera, which still attracts huge crowds at the Uffizi in Florence.
Oil paint, tempera’s replacement
Oil paint is pigment that has been mixed with a drying oil (which is usually linseed) that hardens into a tough film. There’s this common notion that Jan van Eyck invented this method. He didn’t, but few artists out there did more to show what it could do.
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Oil paint in Newcastle today
Painter Sam Wood also works in oil, but you’ll see his approach is a world away from van Eyck’s. He uses a mix of squeegees, rollers, sponges and rags - what we’re left with are more spontaneous paintings with an almost abstract energy, while still keeping their mood.
And like van Eyck, Wood tends to paint on board, with his recent work taking inspiration from traditional Northern imagery of pit and shipyard workers. Pieces like The Straightener, for instance show a fight scene with a crowd of observers. Or take Crossing The River, showing the Tyne Bridge under construction.
600 years later, and the Old Masters’ medium is still telling new stories.
What this means when you’re buying
You start to see the value in owning an original once you’ve seen how an oil painting comes together - hours of hands-on work.
As a Newcastle contemporary art gallery, Hancock Gallery is delighted to represent local artists.
If you’re keen to see a centuries-old medium in contemporary hands, explore the new collection of original oil paintings by Newcastle-based artist, Sam Wood.
