The Eyckian painting medium has provided an irresistible subject for study by artists, scientists, art conservators, and art historians during the past two centuries and has resulted in richly diverse and often opposing views of its ingredients. Giorgio Vasari attributed the invention of oil painting to Jan van Eyck in 1550. After this mythe was refuted in the late eighteenth century, interest in the components of the Netherlandish artist's medium grew due to the superb quality of his paintings as well as their fine state of preservation. An examination of the presumptions and assumptions made during the past two centuries about the nature of van Eyck's medium, by authors such as Eastlake, Laurie, Doerner, and Coremans, charts shifts in the artistic climate as well as in in the technical study of paintings.