Canvas has become the most used backing for oil paintings, eclipsing the once much more popular wooden panels.

One of the earliest surviving oils on canvas is a French Madonna with angels. It was painted around 1410 in Berlin. This is indeed early for any type of oil painting. Wooden panels as a medium remained much more common through the 16th and 17th centuries. Venetian artists were among those leading the change to canvas, as high quality Venetian sail canvas was readily available.

Canvas is usually stretched across a wooden frame called a stretcher and stapled at the sides.

“Splined” canvases offer advantages that the traditional side-stapled canvas does not. The painter can paint the edges incorporating it into the artwork itself. The painting can also be displayed without a frame.

Stapled canvases stay stretched tighter over a longer period of time, but are more difficult to re-stretch when the need arises.

Canvases are usually coated with “gesso” before use. This is to prevent oil paint from coming into direct contact with the canvas fibres. Otherwise the acid in the paint will eventually attack the canvas causing it to decay. Various alternative and more flexible canvas primers are commercially available, the most popular being synthetic latex paint. Notwithstanding the concern for deterioration of paintings, many popular modern artists sometimes apply paint directly to the “raw” canvas without priming.

One can also buy small, prepared canvases, which are glued to a solid backing in the factory. These canvas "boards" were originally of poor quality being un-primed, backed with cardboard and thus intended for “temporary” or “student” work. This gave them an “amateur” reputation. Modern canvas boards, on the other hand, use synthetic backing, high quality canvas with acid free priming and will last longer than stretched canvas paintings. They also have the advantage of being easier to ship, frame and maintain due to their thinner dimensions and rigidity.

It would indeed be interesting to see what pre-fifteenth century painters could have done with these “canvas boards” and modern oils.

David