In post-classical European art the great majority of paintings are close to being square, with an aspect ratio (given as width to height) of between 0.75:1 and 1.5:1. Although there’s no generally agreed cut-off for what constitutes a panorama, those with an aspect ratio of 2:1 or greater should qualify.

Ancient and classical paintings are different, though, and what’s probably the oldest landscape painting (excluding those in caves) is far broader than it is high. This Flotilla Fresco painted at Thera on the island of Santorini in Greece must have been completed before a catastrophic volcanic explosion in about 1627 BCE destroyed the local civilisation.

Paul Bril was exceptional in this panoramic View of Bracciano painted in about 1622 with an aspect ratio of 2.2:1. Although strongly Italianate, it’s a painting ahead of its time in other respects, as a fairly accurate depiction of a real place, with all sorts of fascinating little scenes within it, like the young boy doffing his hat to the passing dignitary in his coach with armed guard.

Just over twenty-five years later, the Dutch painters Bartholomeus van der Helst and Jan Vos used a panoramic canvas to accommodate all those in The Celebration of the Peace of Münster, 18 June 1648, in the Headquarters of the Crossbowmen’s Civic Guard (St George Guard), Amsterdam. This has an aspect ratio of 2.4:1, even greater than Bril’s.

The Swiss painter Caspar Wolf was another early exponent in his Panorama of Grindelwald with the Wetterhorn, Mettenberg and Eiger painted in 1774, although this couldn’t have been called a panorama at the time. This shows the distortion needed to include the whole of this view on a single canvas, with its remarkably high aspect ratio of 2.75:1. Today we’d envisage this as being painted through a wide-angle lens, although it was a century before such camera lenses came into use.

It’s generally accepted that the idea of a panorama was first formalised in British patent number 1612 of 1787 awarded to Robert Barker, where he coined the word, and the word’s first appearance in print occurred four years later.

A little later, Giovanni Battista Lusieri attained high aspect ratios of around 2.7:1 by assembling multiple supports, in his case sheets of paper, as he worked in watercolour on this View of the Bay of Naples, Looking Southwest from the Pizzofalcone Toward Capo di Posilippo in 1791.

Robert Barker’s panorama wasn’t artistic in the slightest, but pure spectacle and entertainment. His original painting of Edinburgh was on a large roll of paper, and first exhibited in Leicester Square, London, an area now known for its leading movie theatres. Baker either stuck the painted roll on the inside of a large cylinder for rotation about the viewer (also known as a cyclorama), or later he scrolled the roll past the viewers’ eyes.

Many paintings in JMW Turner’s huge output are panoramic in nature if not in form. This example, Petworth Park: Tillington Church in the Distance (c 1828), is viewed from a higher level even though its content has little vertical extent, to emphasise its long cast shadows. It has a high aspect ratio of 2.4:1, and the odd arc of the path in the foreground enhances its wide-angle effect.

In about 1830, Théodore Rousseau’s Panoramic View of the Ile-de-France attained the highest aspect ratio yet, of just over 3.7:1, which may have been driven by the growing popularity of panoramas as entertainment. He’s also more conventional in placing the viewer at the level of the rooftops, looking over foreground buildings. The angles of lines of trees and other objects in the foreground appear to show wide-angle lens distortion, although the earliest known photograph wasn’t made until 1838. One possible explanation is that Rousseau used a camera obscura to draw in the view, although I’m not aware of any evidence of that.

Just a few years later, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot painted panoramic views en plein air and in his studio. This example of Avignon from the West (1836) shows how well he transferred the skills that he had learned when in the Roman Campagna to the French countryside. Its aspect ratio is more modest at 2.2:1, similar to that of Paul Bril two centuries earlier.

Many of Frederic Edwin Church’s epic landscapes were painted far south beyond the US border, but this early panoramic view of Niagara made in 1857 remains one of his most important works, with its aspect ratio of 2.3:1.

I don’t have a date for Henri Harpignies’ magnificent watercolour panorama of View of the Seine at Rouen, which I believe shows the view from Bonsecours, to the south-east of the city, looking north-west into the summer sunset, with an aspect ratio of 2.2:1.

By the end of the nineteenth century panoramas were attaining aspect ratios over 4:1, requiring custom supports, either being painted on the interior walls of a cylindrical building or rotunda, or on rolls like Robert Barker’s.

Hendrik Willem Mesdag’s staggering Panorama Mesdag from 1880-81 was commissioned as a view of the village of Scheveningen, the Netherlands, from its coastal dunes. It’s 14 metres high and 120 metres long, giving it an aspect ratio of 6.8:1. When tastes changed towards the end of the nineteenth century, the company exhibiting the panorama as an entertainment went bankrupt; Mesdag bought it back, and it remains housed in its dedicated building, an appropriately extreme memorial to this long-lasting fascination.

Over the following decades other huge panoramas were painted to commemorate wars and national history. I show here just two examples.

Paul Dominique Philippoteaux’s vast Gettysburg Cyclorama opened to public acclaim just twenty years after the battle, in 1883, and continues to draw attention at the battlefield’s visitor centre. It was commissioned by a group of Chicago investors, rather than anyone interested in its art, and has the highest aspect ratio of 13.3:1.

As their popularity was waning at the end of the century, Árpád Feszty and a hoard of assistants depicted the narrative scenes they imagined of a millennium earlier, as the first Hungarians arrived to settle their country. Their whole panorama has an aspect ratio of 8:1.

The vast majority of oil paintings have been made on supports of wood or stretched fabric. But over the centuries a wider variety of materials have been used, including sheets of metal, slate and other stone, glass, and most recently elaborately-structured composite materials. They all meet the primary requirement, that of rigidity, but vary in their dimensional stability, weight, and suitability to retain paint or an appropriate ground.

The most commonly-used of these alternative supports has been copper sheet, which has long been used as the support and ground for enamelling, and forms plates for various methods of making prints. Although a relatively expensive metal, it’s highly malleable and was worked into uniformly thin sheets even in ancient times. This and tomorrow’s articles show some examples of oil on copper.

The challenge to painters who chose to paint on copper was ensuring good adhesion to the metal surface. Traditional recipes stress the importance of thorough cleaning and de-greasing, and some recommend treatment of the copper using cloves of garlic or their juice. Like many metals, copper does slowly corrode when exposed to the atmosphere, and ensuring complete coverage of bare metal by ground or paint was important to prevent that. In practice, surviving oil on copper paintings have generally remained in fine condition, lack visible cracking, and don’t appear to suffer delamination.

In return, the painter gets a very smooth surface on which they can develop fine detail. The dark natural colour of the metal was widely used for chiaroscuro effects, and the surface of the paint layer is usually so smooth that varnishing was unnecessary.

Most of the earliest surviving paintings on copper date from the first half of the sixteenth century. Lavinia Fontana’s striking painting of The Annunciation from about 1575 is a good example from the time that copper came into vogue in both the north and south of Europe.

Bartholomeus Spranger was another early adopter, as shown in his Hercules and Omphale from about 1585. At 24 by 19 cm (9.5 by 7.5 inches), this is even smaller than Fontana’s painting above.

Although Paul Bril seems to have adopted more conventional supports, his Mountainous Landscape with Saint Jerome from 1592 was painted on copper. This demonstrates how fine details can become, in the foliage and far distance.

Jan Brueghel the Elder was among many others who painted on copper at this time. By the early seventeenth century, there were twenty-five master coppersmiths in Antwerp alone who provided plates for painting. His Juno in the Underworld from 1596-98 is another fine example of the detail that could be achieved on copper’s smooth surface.

Adam Elsheimer was probably the greatest exponent of painting on copper, a skill he may have learned when he worked in Venice as an assistant to Hans Rottenhammer, another enthusiast for copper supports.

Adam Elsheimer’s small The Conversion of Saint Paul (c 1598) is an original composition showing the outcome of a mediaeval skirmish, with all the horses in trouble, and Paul’s mount stretched out on its back in severe distress.

His Saint Elizabeth of Hungary Bringing Food for the Inmates of a Hospital from about 1598 looks larger than its 27.8 by 20 centimetres (11 by 8 inches) plate, as it develops fine details.

Adam Elsheimer’s The Great Flood (c 1600) is an example of how effective copper can be for nocturnes. It’s nighttime, and the dense clouds are lit only by flashes of lightning. The population of a village is processing up to higher ground to escape the rising floodwaters.

He developed this further in his chiaroscuro Ceres at Hecuba’s Home in about 1605.

Perhaps his greatest achievement was in one of his last paintings on copper, Jupiter and Mercury with Philemon and Baucis (1609-10). This shows Philemon (right) and Baucis (centre right) giving their hospitality generously to Jupiter (left) and Mercury (centre left), in their tiny, dark cottage. This is a mere 16.5 by 22.5 cm (6.5 by 9 inches).