Egg tempera in the context of "Duccio"

Oil painting is a painting method involving the procedure of painting with pigments combined with a drying oil as the binder. It has been the most common technique for artistic painting on canvas, wood panel, or copper for several centuries. The advantages of oil for painting images include "greater flexibility, richer and denser color, the use of layers, and a wider range from light to dark".

The oldest known oil paintings were created by Buddhist artists in Afghanistan, and date back to the 7th century AD. Oil paint was later developed by Europeans for painting statues and woodwork from at least the 12th century, but its common use for painted images began with Early Netherlandish painting in Northern Europe, and by the height of the Renaissance, oil painting techniques had almost completely replaced the use of egg tempera paints for panel paintings in most of Europe, though not for Orthodox icons or wall paintings, where tempera and fresco, respectively, remained the usual choice.

The Baptism of Christ is a painting by the Italian Renaissance master Piero della Francesca. Painted in egg tempera on two panels of poplar wood, the dating is controversial – some give it a very early date, perhaps 1439; others much later, around 1460. It is held by the National Gallery, London.

The panel was commissioned presumably some time about 1440 by the Camaldolese Monastery of Sansepolcro in Tuscany, now Sansepolcro Cathedral. Sansepolcro was the town the birthplace of Piero della Francesca. The town depicted in the middle distance in the painting, to Christ's left, may be Sansepolcro. Its dating to Piero della Francesca's early career is evidenced by the strong relationship with the "light painting" of his master, Domenico Veneziano. It was originally part of a triptych, with side panels of St Peter and St Paul and a predella by Matteo di Giovanni dated to the early 1460s, now in the civic art gallery in Sansepolcro.

The Virgin of Vladimir, also known as Vladimir Mother of God, Our Lady of Vladimir (Russian: Владимирская икона Божией Матери), is a 12th-century Byzantine icon depicting the Virgin and Child and an early example of the Eleusa iconographic type. It is one of the most culturally significant and celebrated pieces of art in Russian history. Many consider it a national palladium with several miracles of historical importance to Russia being attributed to the icon. Following its near destruction in the thirteenth century, the work has been restored at least five times.

The icon was painted by an unknown artist most likely in Constantinople. It was sent to Kiev as a gift before being transferred to the Assumption Cathedral in Vladimir. It is traditionally said that the icon did not leave Vladimir until 1395, when it was brought to Moscow to protect the city from an invasion by Timur, although the historical accuracy of this claim is uncertain. By at least the sixteenth century, it was in the Dormition Cathedral in Moscow where it remained until it was moved to the State Tretyakov Gallery after the Russian Revolution.

Underdrawing is a preparatory drawing done on a painting ground before paint is applied, for example, an imprimatura or an underpainting. Underdrawing was used extensively by 15th century painters like Jan van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden. These artists "underdrew" with a brush, using hatching strokes for shading, using water-based black paint, before underpainting and overpainting with oils. Cennino D'Andrea Cennini (14th century most likely) describes a different type of underdrawing, made with graded tones rather than hatching, for egg tempera.

In some cases, underdrawing can be clearly visualized using infrared reflectography because carbon black pigments absorb infrared light, whereas opaque pigments such as lead white are transparent with infrared light. Underdrawing in many works, for example, the Annunciation (van Eyck, Washington) or the Arnolfini Portrait, reveals that artists made alterations, sometimes radical ones, to their compositions.

The Battle of San Romano is a set of three paintings by the Florentine painter Paolo Uccello depicting events that took place at the Battle of San Romano between Florentine and Sienese forces in 1432. They are significant as revealing the development of linear perspective in early Italian Renaissance painting, and are unusual as a major secular commission. The paintings are in egg tempera on wooden panels, each over 3 metres long. According to the National Gallery, the panels were commissioned by a member of the Bartolini Salimbeni family in Florence sometime between 1435 and 1460. The paintings were much admired in the 15th century; Lorenzo de' Medici so coveted them that he purchased one and had the remaining two forcibly removed to the Palazzo Medici. They are now divided between three collections, the National Gallery, London, the Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, and the Musée du Louvre, Paris.