Telegraph.co.uk: Oil painting 'invented in Asia, not Europe' - by Roger Highfield

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Oil painting 'invented in Asia, not Europe' - by Roger Highfield

The idea that oil painting was invented in Europe is overturned today by a remarkable discovery made as a result of one of the worst examples of cultural vandalism in recent years.Scientists have proved, thanks to experiments performed at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble, that the paints used were based of oil, hundreds of years before the technique was "invented" in Europe, when artists found they could use pigments bound with a medium of drying oil, such as linseed oil.

In many European history and art books, oil painting is said to have started in the 15th century in Europe. But the team that used the ESRF, an intense source of X rays, found the Bamiyan paintings date back to the mid-7th century AD