What Is a Painting?

By JeanArts History Visual Arts

What Is a Painting? episodes

September 09 Episode 30 - A Subject of Controversy, Part 1: The Consecration
What is the story of one painting whose cleaning was objected to?
29 min
June 13 Episode 29 - Unwanted Material
What is meant by "cleaning" a painting? What materials can be removed from a painting and how is that done?
36 min
January 09 Episode 28 - The Tears of Trees
How did painters use natural resins to varnish their paintings?
34 min
October 10, 2025 Episode 27 - Higher Ground
How did 16th century Venetian painters vary their ground layers to create different effects?
28 min
July 25, 2025 Episode 26 - Particular Magic
How did Venetian painters of the 16th century use canvas supports and oil medium to create a new kind of painting?
34 min
June 10, 2025 Episode 25 - A Big Cloth
How have natural aqueous media been used over the centuries, including by one of the most famous artists of the 20th century?
37 min
April 24, 2025 Episode 24 - Reinforcements
What can be done to reinforce a degraded canvas support of a painting, and how can that change that painting's look?
30 min
February 03, 2025 Episode 23 - Glue and Blues
How does paint made from animal glue and different blue pigments work, look, and age?
32 min
November 24, 2024 Episode 22 - A Little Cloth
What is the canvas of a canvas painting, and why and how was it used?
35 min
September 20, 2024 Episode 21 - A Copy of a Copy: The Ghent Altarpiece, Part 4
What's the story of the painting of the Just Judges panel now on display in Ghent?
35 min

About What Is a Painting?

From the publisher's feed

What do you see when you look at a painting? You see the subject and the style of the work but also the materials and technologies used to create it and the traces of everything that has happened to…