Painted works executed on stretched canvas cloth appeared at the end of the 14th century, almost simultaneously with the widespread use of drying oils as binding agents for color pigments. That is why the name "oil painting" has prevailed and can be used for other types of binders (tempera, acrylic, etc).  The discovery and wide dissemination of the technique is attributed to Flemish painters Hubert and Jan van Eyck.

Cloth, as an independent material, began to be used as a surface support framed by wood during the Renaissance, mostly by artists who used the technique of oil painting and considered cloth to be better suited for it than wood. An important role in this transition was played by  the high construction cost of wooden supports and paneling, along with the specialized techniques required for their construction and preparation, their cumbersome weight and difficulty in transport, and their constraints on project size.

A painting work with a cloth support is composed of the following:

1) The frame, a wooden framework that framed the artwork

2) The cloth support

3) The priming, or substrate layer on which the painting is done

4) The oil painted layer

5) The varnish.

Wood is one of the oldest supports for portable paintings, and was already in use by ancient Greece. Due to its perishable quality, very few original works in wood have survived. The oldest surviving examples are the painted wooden tablets found in the cave of Pitsa, in Corinth.

Typical examples of wood panel paintings are the funerary portraits of Fayum, Egypt (1st BC to 3rd century AD approx). Due to the region's climate, a large number of wooden specimens were preserved in good condition.

Although its use has never truly been eliminated, wood was most widely used as a support from the Byzantine to post Byzantine years in Eastern Europe, and until the 14th century & nbsp; in Western Europe, when it was gradually replaced by cloth.

A work of painted wood consists of the following:

1) Wood, which determines the size and shape of the work

2) The priming, or substrate layer on which the painting is done

3) The painted layer

4) The varnish

In many cases, between the wood and the substrate layer fabric is inserted.