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A panel painting is a painting made on a flat panel of wood, either a single piece or a number of pieces joined together. Until canvas became the more popular support medium in the 16th century, panel painting was the normal method, when not painting directly onto a wall (fresco) or on vellum (used for miniatures in illuminated manuscripts). Wood panels were also used for mounting vellum paintings.
The first century BC to third century AD Fayum mummy portraits, preserved in the exceptionally dry conditions of Egypt, provide the bulk of surviving panel painting from the Roman Empire – 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 of Byzantine art and the later Orthodox traditions, 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 the centuries between Late Antiquity and the Romanesque art 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 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 (altar backs), altar fronts and crucifixes. All were painted with religious images, commonly 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. 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, vitreous enamel, 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 is explained by the poverty of the country at this time, as well as the absence of Reformation-era iconoclasm.Dodwell, 263
The 13th and 14th centuries in Italy were a great period of panel painting, mostly 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 the earliest , 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 the frame was also painted, including an inscription done illusionistically to resemble carving.Campbell, 216
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 the first half of the 16th century, a change led by Andrea 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 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 , copper sheets (often old printmaking plates) were another rival support, from 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 Francisco Goya portraits on panel.
Many other painting traditions also painted, and still paint, on wood, but the term is usually only used to refer to the Western tradition described above.
The usual ancient painting technique 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 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.
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 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 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 wood, most often Populus, 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 Poland, cut north of Warsaw and shipped down the Vistula, across the Baltic Sea to the Netherlands.Campbell, 29 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 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 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.More information on the objectives of the project can be found on The Getty website
The oak favored as a support by the painters of the northern school was, however, not always of local origin. In 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 . In the last decade of the seventeenth century, Wilhelmus Beurs, 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, , cedar wood, 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 was not used, the main oeuvre of the northern school was painted on oak panels.Wadum pp. 149–177
Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud, Cologne
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