Oil paintings have been found in caves behind the two ancient colossal Buddha statues destroyed in 2001 by the Taliban, suggesting that Asians — not Europeans — were the first to invent oil painting.

In his 1550 volume Lives of the Artists, painter and architect Giorgio Vasari snuck in praise for the Flemish artist Jan van Eyck in his chapter on the Italian painter Antonello da Messina. Vasari ...