Not sure that there is a single source, but the potted history is like this:
Most paints are pigment (providing the color), extender (bulking it out) and glue. So... to invent oil paint all you had to do was to add oil to your pigment instead of gum Arabic, wax, wet plaster or whatever else you were using. Hardly rocket science. For this reason, oil paint was invented many times in many places.
However, for the most part, it was used in the same way as its antecedents was used. Business as usual.
Several things came together to give us the oil painting tradition we know and love.
Most importantly, the Dutch and Belgians invented the middle-class. These merchants were rich enough to want to buy paintings, but not rich enough to hire a painter for a few years to do a mural. Mural paintings was paint on wet plaster and in effect it was installation art: designed for a particular room.
So... there was a market for small, cheapish, portable paintings. These small paintings were on metal (copper) and wood (usually oak). But canvas eventually won out because the canvas linen, primer and oil paint were all derived from the same plant (flax) which made it super durable.
To cater to this market, the art gallery (basically a shop for paintings). Like this:
An advantage of oil paint was that it dried slowly, which meant that it could be blended easily. It could also be corrected relatively easily (just paint over and start again) unlike paint of plaster (one reason the last supper is such a mess is that Leonardo corrected it too many times).
Blended paint made realism much easier. I would also say that the lighting conditions of Northern Europe also made realism (and illusion) easier. High dynamic range (black to white or chiaroscuro) tends to support realism. And perhaps the protestant faith supported realism. North European paintings had none of the florid excess of their Souther European catholic counterparts, which were more concerned with re-telling classic narratives than in illusion.
At the same time there was an increased interest in perspective and optics and also optical devices, especially in that part of the world. Certainly this impacted on how artists made their paintings, though exactly how is a bit of a smudge.
Though all these ingredients were hanging around for years, it was Jan van Eyck was one of the first to really take advantage of them. Zoom in on his Arnolfini Wedding and weep:
Most paints are pigment (providing the color), extender (bulking it out) and glue. So... to invent oil paint all you had to do was to add oil to your pigment instead of gum Arabic, wax, wet plaster or whatever else you were using. Hardly rocket science. For this reason, oil paint was invented many times in many places.
However, for the most part, it was used in the same way as its antecedents was used. Business as usual.
Several things came together to give us the oil painting tradition we know and love.
Most importantly, the Dutch and Belgians invented the middle-class. These merchants were rich enough to want to buy paintings, but not rich enough to hire a painter for a few years to do a mural. Mural paintings was paint on wet plaster and in effect it was installation art: designed for a particular room.
So... there was a market for small, cheapish, portable paintings. These small paintings were on metal (copper) and wood (usually oak). But canvas eventually won out because the canvas linen, primer and oil paint were all derived from the same plant (flax) which made it super durable.
To cater to this market, the art gallery (basically a shop for paintings). Like this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallery_of_Archduke_Leopold_Wi...
An advantage of oil paint was that it dried slowly, which meant that it could be blended easily. It could also be corrected relatively easily (just paint over and start again) unlike paint of plaster (one reason the last supper is such a mess is that Leonardo corrected it too many times).
Blended paint made realism much easier. I would also say that the lighting conditions of Northern Europe also made realism (and illusion) easier. High dynamic range (black to white or chiaroscuro) tends to support realism. And perhaps the protestant faith supported realism. North European paintings had none of the florid excess of their Souther European catholic counterparts, which were more concerned with re-telling classic narratives than in illusion.
At the same time there was an increased interest in perspective and optics and also optical devices, especially in that part of the world. Certainly this impacted on how artists made their paintings, though exactly how is a bit of a smudge.
Though all these ingredients were hanging around for years, it was Jan van Eyck was one of the first to really take advantage of them. Zoom in on his Arnolfini Wedding and weep:
https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/jan-van-eyck-th...