What is the oldest existing painting in canvas?

Question

Is there any painting in canvas or paper older than the Mona Lisa?

Answer 1

Interesting question, although by asking about paper you've opened it up rather.

Lets deal with paper first. It is widely accepted that paper was first made by the Chinese in the early first century (scholars variously put it somewhere between 200BC to 150AD). The paper was used for ideograms and map drawings, so you could argue that a paper painting would be far older than the Mona Lisa. There are certainly Chinese paintings on paper that are at least two centuries earlier than the Mona Lisa and may be even older.

Your question about canvas paintings is far more interesting.

Firstly, I should point out that the Mona Lisa was actually painted on wood between 1503-1506.

Artists began to use canvas around about 1500 and the earliest reasonably well-known artist I can find who used it was Giovanni Bellini. Around 5% of his works are on canvas, whereas Titian (his pupil) used canvas for around 95% of his work.

The earliest I can find is his "Resurrection" dating from between 1475-1479, around 30 years earlier than the Mona Lisa


******SAMANTHA J**********

I am absolutely intrigued about the 13th century Madonna on canvas in the Santa Francesca Romana church in Rome. PLEASE CAN YOU PROVIDE MORE INFORMATION.

The only Madonnas I know of in this church are by da Cremona (working late 15th century) and Sinibaldo Ibi (working mid 16th century) and I thought both of these were on wood.

I'm not trying to catch you out........I really want to know, as I am studying art history.

Answer 2

You've already had some interesting answers and part of what's been written is correct to a point.

The Mona Lisa is not painted on canvas but on poplar wood, although canvas was widely used during the Renaissance.


There is also much evidence that canvas was used during the 1200s. I know of a 13th century medieval depiction of the Madonna in Rome's Church of Santa Francesca Romana.

There's some debate with regard to paper. Some say that it was invented in 105 A.D. by Ts'ai Lun, a Chinese court official. Others say that papyrus was the first paper type. The earliest form of papyrus has been dated to around 4000BC and paintings of dieties and everyday life are common.

******* The Lipsi********

No problem here's the article and website

From the Magazine | Art
The Oldest Madonna
SUBSCRIBE TO TIMEPRINTE-MAILMORE BY AUTHOR
Posted Monday, May 16, 1955
WHAT may be the West's oldest painting of the Madonna has been rediscovered in Rome's Church of Santa Francesca Romana. An expert restorer named Pico Cellini found the panel (right) under a 13th century Tuscan canvas of the same subject, which he had been commissioned to clean.

Until the last few decades, "restorers" hid more pictures, under new and falsely prettifying layers of paint and varnish, than they cleaned. Modern practitioners take the bolder course of removing past additions in order to restore pictures to something approximating their original state. Sometimes they scrub with too much enthusiasm, destroying the translucent glazes of a picture surface and reducing it to the artist's bare beginnings. More often, as in the case of Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper (TIME, Oct. 4), they succeed in bringing back much of the painting's original bloom and freshness. Their greatest, and rarest, delight lies in discovering new and better pictures beneath the old, as Cellini did in Rome.

Cellini's first hint that he had found something important was the presence of a few spots of wax where the 13th century canvas had deteriorated. To him the spots spelled encaustic, a method of painting with pigments mixed in hot wax, which was common among the ancients. Cellini dissolved the glue between the canvas and the panel on which it was mounted. Slowly, with utmost caution, he peeled back the canvas, preserving it in the process. On the panel underneath was an encaustic painting which churchmen of the Middle Ages had apparently thought too old-fashioned to keep. The ancient Madonna gazes with Byzantine intensity from eyes wide and dark as night. She has the classic profile and small, thoughtful mouth of late Roman art. Experts agree that the picture must have been painted only four or five centuries after Christ's birth.

From the May 16, 1955 issue of TIME magazine

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,866375,00.html

Answer 3

The oldest known paintings are at the Grotte Chauvet in France, dated at about 32,000 years old. They are engraved and painted using red ochre and black pigment and show horses, rhinoceros, lions, buffalo, and mammoth. There are examples of cave painting all over the world......
its not actually painted in canvas but it is the oldest paintings in history...................................

Answer 4

I'm not sure, maybe not