Painting on Copper—Origins

The practice of painting in oil on copper had its origins in the sixteenth-century. What is not well understood is where in Europe the practice began. Whether it began in Italy, and especially in Rome, as Vasari reports in the biography of Sebastiano del Piombo, or in the Netherlands as Van Mander mentions was ‘the working-method of the Netherlandish painters’ is not certain. This article reviews the origins of the practice of painting on copper in Europe.