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| Rogier van der Weyden The Descent from the Cross ca. 1435 oil on panel Museo del Prado, Madrid |
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| Petrus Christus The Lamentation ca. 1455-60 oil on panel Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels |
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| Hugo van der Goes Adoration of the Magi ca. 1470 oil on panel Gemäldegalerie, Berlin |
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| attributed to Giovanni di Pietro (Lo Spagna) Agony in the Garden ca. 1500-1505 oil on panel National Gallery, London |
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| Jan Gossaert Adoration of the Magi ca. 1510-15 oil on panel National Gallery, London |
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| Albrecht Dürer Adoration of the Trinity (Landauer Altarpiece) 1511 oil on panel Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna |
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| Paolo Morando (il Cavazzola) The Deposition and Lamentation 1517 oil on panel Museo di Castelvecchio, Verona |
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| Pontormo (Jacopo Carrucci) The Visitation 1528-29 oil on panel Pieve di San Michele Arcangelo, Carmignano |
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| Andrea del Sarto Pietà with Saints ca. 1523-24 oil on panel Palazzo Pitti, Florence |
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| Michele Parrasio Allegory of the Infante's Birth ca. 1575 oil on canvas Museo del Prado, Madrid |
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| Giovanni Lanfranco Salvator Mundi ca. 1610-20 oil on canvas Galleria Nazionale di Parma |
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| Jacob Jordaens after Peter Paul Rubens Flight of Lot and His Family from Sodom ca. 1618-20 oil on canvas National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo |
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| workshop of Simon Vouet The Entombment ca. 1635-38 oil on panel Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels |
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| Giovanni Francesco Romanelli Venus Pouring Balm on the Wound of Aeneas before 1650 oil on canvas Musée du Louvre |
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| Giovanni Battista Gaulli (il Baciccio) Portrait of Cardinal Giovan Francesco Ginetti ca. 1685 oil on canvas Fondazione Cavallini Sgarbi, Ferrara |
"Time and the cost of materials played an important role in the production of paintings. In many cases the making of durable paints was a time-consuming process and the use of expensive and colorfast pigments could raise the price of a painting above the acceptable."
"There would have been extremely expensive paintings that had been worked on for a very long time and involved the honor of both the painter and the patron."
"Paintings that had not (markedly) discolored within a few decades were apparently considered to be especially durable. So when authors state that a particular color would last an extremely long time, or eternally or forever, they are in fact referring to a period of just several decades."
"One of the few remarks where a painter referred to preservation over centuries is found in the correspondence between Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) and Jacob Heller. Heller, a rich textile merchant, had asked Dürer to make an expensive altarpiece depicting The Ascension and Coronation of the Blessed Virgin (1507-09). While he was working on the altarpiece, Dürer informed Heller that he was only using the best pigments for the altarpiece and was taking the greatest possible care with the painting. Dürer guaranteed that these methods would ensure that the altarpiece's middle panel would still be pure and fresh of color in five hundred years' time."
– Margriet van Eikema Hommes, from Changing Pictures: Discolouration in 15th to 17th Century Oil Painting (London: Archetype Books, 2004)
"When I buy colors, it is by the mere sight of their names. The name of the color (Indian yellow, Persian red, celadon green) outlines a kind of generic region within which the exact, special effect of the color is unforeseeable; the name is then the promise of a pleasure, the program of an operation; there is always a certain future in the complete names. Similarly, when I say that a word is beautiful, when I use it because I like it, it is never by virtue of its sonorous charm or of the originality of its meaning, or of a "poetic" combination of the two. The word transports me because of the notion that I am going to do something with it: it is the thrill of a future praxis, something like an appetite. This desire makes the entire motionless chart of language vibrate."
– from Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes, translated by Richard Howard (Hill & Wang, 1977)