The oil painting has experienced several different developing period: the ancient, the medieval, the renaissance, the mannerism, the baroque, the neoclassicism, the romanticism, the academism, the realism and the modern time. The paintings of different times, as are dominated by art idea and limited by techniques of different age, appear style.

      The historical background decided the realism of oil painting in its initial developing stage. In the European Renaissance Movement of 15th century, the Humanism which was against the religion, actively pay more attention to the social reality. Many artists in order to break away from the single Classical Christian theme, they began to observe and describe the people, landscape and objects in daily life, and added the secular factor into the religion painting. Some artists` paintings are completely the reflection of the real life. The artists of Renaissance inherited the art idea of Roman and Greece which emphasized not only in depicting an event in the works but also disclosed cause end effect of the event. Thus the art technique of conceiving typical plot and building obvious image were formed. At the same time, the artist also had an exploration in application the knowledge of the anatomy and perspective for oil painting as well as the effect of the light and shade to oil painting thus creates the scientific sculpting theory. The anatomy made the character of the oil painting be exact and real in proportion, form and structure. The foreshortened figure helps the composition of the picture a sense of depth space. The objects in painting can be the same as the true object in the vision. The shading unified all the objects under a main lamp-house and forms the clear layers from near to far on the painting. The humanistic art theme and its pursue for the reality in the image-building can` t be expressed completely in other kind of painting for the limitation of the tools, while oil painting tools can be fully competent for that. Thus the oil painting was the highly true-life products took by long time to make.