Afghanistan has world's oldest oil paintings, an art research says

[Contemporary]

Afghanistan Has World's Oldest Oil Paintings

Buddhist images on the walls of central Afghanistan's Bamiyan caves
are the world's first oil paintings, Japanese researcher Yoko
Taniguchi says. Taniguchi, an expert at Japan's National Research
Institute for Cultural Properties, and a group of Japanese, European,
and American scientists are collaborating to restore the damaged
murals, the Daily Star reports. The Los Angeles-based Getty
Conservation Institute analyzed 53 samples from the murals that date
back to about 650 A.D., concluding that they had oil in the paint. "My
European colleagues were shocked because they always believed oil
paintings were invented in Europe," Taniguchi said. "They couldn't
believe such techniques could exist in some Buddhist cave deep in the
countryside." The Bamiyan Valley is known for two huge 1,500-year-old
statues of the Buddha that were destroyed by the Taliban in 2001. The
researchers are restoring the murals, which depict thousands of
Buddhas in red robes, as part of international efforts to salvage what
is left of the region's cultural relics.
http://ashokartgallery.blogspot.com