Giovanni Bellini, the major artist in Venice at the time of Antonello's arrival, was hugely impressed by the fluency of Flemish oil painting and adapted the technique for his own work. This portrait is considered by many sources to be a self portrait of the artist. His stunning detail, lifelike textures, subtle blends and dramatic contrasts of tone gained him an unrivalled reputation throughout Europe.
Van Eyck developed an exceptional technique with oil paints to create superbly naturalistic images with brilliant glowing colors. They were also waterproof when dry, with a smooth consistency that blended infinitely better than tempera or fresco. Furthermore, when he tried mixing them with his pigments, he saw that his colors were so vibrant that they no longer needed a final varnish. In an attempt to develop a varnish that dried indoors, Van Eyck discovered that linseed and walnut oils dried faster than any others he tested. Paintings that were finished with these slow drying varnishes had to be left out the sun to dry, often cracking or blistering in the heat. Some artists had experimented with oil based varnishes to lift the vitality of their colors but with no great success.
The solution to these problems came from the art of Northern Europe and, in particular, the great Flemish master, Jan van Eyck. The two main issues were that these media were quick drying making it difficult to blend tones and the vibrant pigments used to mix the medium lost their intensity of color in the process of applying the paint. Early Renaissance artists were aware of the limitations of fresco and tempera painting techniques.
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