FIGURE A Federico Barocci (Italian, 1528-1612). The Entombment, ca. 1579-82. Black chalk and oil paint on oiled paper. Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum, 85.00.26. The History of Oil Sket flies he oil sketch emerged from the Renaissance tradition of preparatory T 1 studies. Painters customarily used drawings to plan a composition, but they also often painted a subsequent sketchy draft on the support, a practice described by such authors as Giorgio Vasari and Ludovico Dolci in their 2 sixteenth-century treatises on painting. The notion of a small, painted pre- paratory work on a separate panel, canvas, or sheet of paper first emerged among the most idiosyncratic sixteenth-century artists of Tuscany and Rome. These artists—such as Polidoro da Caravaggio, Domenico Beccafumi, and Federico Barocci (fig. A)—used these sketches to plot the effects of color and chiaroscuro in their final compositions. A broader change in artistic practice emerged in earnest in the late six- teenth century among Venetian artists, including Veronese, Tintoretto, and Palma il Giovane. In keeping with Venetian tradition, these painters grounded their works in color as much as line, and the oil sketch placed equal empha- sis on color relationships in the early development of a composition. These Venetian artists developed a distinct language of sketchy, assured handling 9