1. Flemish Primitives Influence:
- Robert Campin, a prominent Early Netherlandish painter active from 1406 to 1444, created the Merode Altarpiece.
- This artwork played a fundamental role in fostering the widespread development of the oil painting technique, paving the way for the advancements brought by Jan van Eyck.
2. Innovative Technique:
- Before its inception, artists commonly executed artworks with egg tempera. Tempered paint contains natural resins, egg yolk, and water.
- The Merode Altarpiece stands out from earlier paintings due to its skillful employment of newly adopted oil-based techniques.
3. Oil's Superior Properties:
- Oils allowed artists greater dexterity in modeling realistic faces and depicting fabric textures through transparent glazes.
- It afforded an extended drying time, giving painters extra flexibility as they blended or refined the colors within a composition.
4. Unraveling Oil's Potential:
- Artists experimenting with oil paints, inspired by Campin's work, unlocked the medium's full capacity to achieve lifelike textures and profound depth.
- Jan van Eyck, whose groundbreaking Ghent Altarpiece solidified oil as the foremost technique of the Renaissance and afterward, was an ardent proponent of these artistic pursuits.
The Merode Altarpiece serves as a crucial reference, signaling the arrival of a novel painting methodology that facilitated extraordinary technical developments throughout European art history from that point onwards.