The origins of oil painting, as was discovered in 2008, date to at least the 7th century AD, when anonymous artists used oil that may have been extracted from walnuts or poppies to decorate the ancient cave complex in Bamiyan, Afghanistan. But in Europe, oil as a painting medium is recorded only as early as the 11th century. The practice of easel painting with oil colours, however, stems directly from 15th-century tempera-painting techniques. Basic improvements in the refining of linseed oil and the availability of volatile solvents after 1400 coincided with a need for some other medium than pure egg-yolk tempera to meet the changing requirements of the Renaissance (see tempera painting). At first, oil paints and varnishes were used to glaze tempera panels, painted with their traditional linear draftsmanship. The technically brilliant, jewel-like portraits of the 15th-century Flemish painter Jan van Eyck (Eyck, Jan van), for example, were done in this way.

One of the 17th-century masters of the oil technique was Diego Velázquez (Velázquez, Diego), a Spanish painter in the Venetian tradition, whose highly economical but informative brushstrokes have frequently been emulated, especially in portraiture. The Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens (Rubens, Peter Paul) influenced later painters in the manner in which he loaded his light colours, opaquely, in juxtaposition to thin, transparent darks and shadows. A third great 17th-century master of oil painting was the Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn. In his work a single brushstroke can effectively depict form; cumulative strokes give great textural depth, combining the rough and the smooth, the thick and the thin. A system of loaded whites and transparent darks is further enhanced by glazed effects, blendings, and highly controlled impastos.