Oil paintings are heavily associated with art and culture, bringing up thoughts of museums and famous galleries. Anyone touring Europe will likely have several of these types of stops on their agenda. Most people don't consider the historic quality of what they will be viewing with such awe and wonder.

The art form of using a medium such as oil to make art is based on how the paints are made. A natural resin would be mixed with oil, and pigment would then be added. The oil was chosen from walnuts, safflower or even poppy seeds. If a resin like frankincense was chosen for the oils, they would come out as a varnish, having high and valuable gloss and body.

When people look back through the history of oil painting, they usually settle on the 15th century as where it originated. In truth, Indian and Chinese painters were using this type of paint as far back as the fifth through ninth centuries. There is also an important treatise written by Theophilus Presbyter dated in 1125 all about how to use oil based paints.

When oil painting became a popular art form in Europe, most pictures were of three kinds. Painters would paint portraits for money and many famous courts kept an artist in residence for such uses. Pictures were also composed of famous biblical or mythological scenes, such as the Raising of the Cross or the Rape of Europa. Another popular subject was that of typical people. Paintings like Bust of an Old Man With Helmet and The Blue Boy were very common.

One of the most famous oil paintings in existence is that of the Mona Lisa. Surrounded by mystery for hundreds of years, the painting was finally considered finished by Leonardo da Vinci just before his death in 1525. A margin note found in 2005 correctly identifies the sitter as Lisa del Giocondo, for whom the picture was painted in celebration of the birth of her second son and her family's acquisition of a new home.

Looking on the Mona Lisa, people always call her beautiful. However it's also true that she is not an orthodox type of beauty, not even in comparison to women of the era of the painting. The reality is that da Vinci was an honest painter who was true to his subject matter. People thought that the sitter had plucked out her eyelashes and eyebrows as many women of the time did, but in truth a closer look has revealed that these were once evident on the painting. It's likely that over cleaning has since wiped them off.

The Mona Lisa was stolen in 1911 by a Louvre employee and held captive for almost two years before its return. The man who stole it was an Italian patriot who walked out of the museum during working hours with the painting under his jacket. The painting toured Italy and was returned, and he served six months while being heralded as a hero by his countrymen.

The art of oil painting harkens back to a more difficult time for painters, when they had to acquire and make their own pigments and couldn't typically travel to the sources of their inspiration. Paints weren't water soluble in those days and the art form took great patience and care. Oil paintings offer those who most appreciate them a chance to glimpse a historic capturing of the past, for which they are so grateful.