Forget Renaissance Europe. The world’s first oil paintings go back nearly 14 centuries to murals in Afghanistan’s Bamiyan caves, a Japanese researcher says.

Buddhist images painted in the central Afghan region, dated to around 650 AD, are the earliest examples of oil used in art history, says Yoko Taniguchi, an expert at Japan’s National Research Institute for Cultural Properties.

A group of Japanese, European and US scientists are collaborating to restore damaged murals in caves in the Bamiyan Valley, famous for its two gigantic statues of the Buddha which were destroyed by the Taliban in 2001.

In the murals, thousands of Buddhas in vermilion robes sit cross-legged, sporting exquisitely knotted hair.

A recent handout picture, released from the Japanese National Research Institute for Cultural Properties, shows an oil painting of a Buddhist image, discovered in a cave in Afghanistan’s Bamiyan. (AFP: Japanese National Research Institute for Cultural Properties

Other motifs show crouching monkeys, men facing one another or palm leaves delicately intertwined with mythical creatures.

The paintings incorporate a mix of Indian and Chinese influences, and are most likely to be the works of artists travelling on the Silk Road, which was the largest trade and cultural route connecting the East and the West.

The Los Angeles-based Getty Conservation Institute analysed 53 samples extracted from the murals. Using gas chromatography methods, the researchers found that 19 had oil in the paint.

“Different types of oil were used on the dirt walls with such a sophisticated technique that I felt I was looking right at a medieval board painting dating from 14th or 15th century Italy,” Ms Taniguchi said.

The discovery would reverse common perceptions about the origins of oil paintings.

The technique is widely believed to have emerged in Europe leading into the Renaissance, which flowered from 1400 to 1600.

Italian artist and architect Giorgio Vasari first wrote of oil painting in his book, The Lives of the Artists, in the mid-16th century.

Art historians, however, argue that 15th-century Flemish painter Jan van Eyck may have known of the technique because he had developed a stable varnish, although he kept it secret until his death.

“It was very impressive to discover that such advanced methods were used in murals in central Asia,” Ms Taniguchi said.

“My European colleagues were shocked because they always believed oil paintings were invented in Europe.

“They couldn’t believe such techniques could exist in some Buddhist cave deep in the countryside.”

Painters of the Buddhist murals used organic substances - including natural resin, plant gum, dry oil and animal protein - as a binder, which even today is an important element in paint.

A binder keeps pigment particles together in a cohesive film and allows the paint to resist decay.

The researchers are trying to restore the murals amid international efforts to salvage what is left of Bamiyan.

The Taliban, ignoring global protests, dynamited the two 1,500-year-old statues, the world’s biggest representations of the Buddha, in March 2001, branding them un-Islamic idolatry.

The regime was ousted later that year in a US-led military campaign after the September 11 attacks on the United States.

Although oil was used in ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, there currently exist no examples of their use in painting. The oil was used for medicine, cosmetics or to coat boats, Ms Taniguchi said.

Ms Taniguchi hopes the advanced techniques used to analyse the murals would be put to use in ruins of other ancient civilisations.

Other early civilisations including those in current-day Iran, China, Turkey, Pakistan and India may have used similar techniques as well but their ruins have not been subject to advanced, extensive research, she said.

“In analysing old murals throughout Europe and Central Asia, I look forward to throwing light on the roots of oil paintings,” she said.

Damien Hirst, whose London show closed this month without a sale of his diamond skull, has found buyers for £130 million ($265 million) of art at the White Cube galleries, said exhibitions director Tim Marlow. A split shark fetched £10 million, “three crucified sheep sold for 6 million pounds, and talks to sell the skull were ongoing,” Marlow said in a telephone interview yesterday. Frank Dunphy, the artist’s business manager, has valued Hirst’s art in the White Cube shows at £200 million ($410 million) or more.

Damien Hirst : For the Love of God - 2007

The platinum skull, originally belonging to a 18th c. man aged 35, studded with 8,601 diamonds weighing a total of 1,106.18 carats, and priced at £50 million ($103 million), costs about 12 times as much as hedge-fund manager Steven Cohen paid to buy Hirst’s shark from collector Charles Saatchi. The discrepancy in price, and the skull’s status as a bejeweled object, may explain why contemporary collectors didn’t rush to buy it, art experts said. The central diamond on the forehead of the skull cost£4.2 million ($9 million) alone.

“A work of art does not owe its importance to the fact that it is made of precious materials,” said Jean-Jacques Aillagon, president of the Chateau de Versailles, and through June 2007, director of Francois Pinault’s Palazzo Grassi in Venice. “In the price, how much corresponds to the work of Damien Hirst, and how much to the materials he used for the work?”

George Michael

The White Cube shows drew collectors from Eli Broad to five museums who purchased Hirst’s works, including at least two from the U.S., according to the gallery.

The singer George Michael paid £3.5 million ($7 million) for “Saint Sebastian, Exquisite Pain” - a glass tank containing a black calf, its suspended body tied to a post and pierced by dozens of arrows.

The skull represents a price increase for Hirst that exceeds even those of Mark Rothko and Andy Warhol, which trebled or quadrupled their auction records in May. Hirst’s record of £9.7 million pounds ($20 million) - the highest for a living artist - was set in June at Sotheby’s, when a telephone bidder bought a pill cabinet, “Lullaby Spring,” that cost the New York seller about £730,000 ($1.5 million) in 2002, auctioneers said.

Joel Mallin, a sculpture collector who sold the pill cabinet in London, said the appreciation was beyond his expectations.

“I only sold this piece because the art market has gotten so outrageous,” Mallin said in a telephone interview. Still, “the price was a surprise.”

The take from the White Cube shows, including bisected animals and paintings of operations, will probably break the record for a dealer sale of an artist’s works, said Marlow. It would also enrich Hirst, 42, whose fortune has been valued at £130 million ($265 million) by the Sunday Times and who may get 75 percent or more of the proceeds of a sale, according to art professionals.

The amount of art sold to date by White Cube was reported earlier by the Sunday Times.

Schwarzenegger

The U.K. artist’s previous show at Gagosian in Beverly Hills, which drew California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to the February opening, sold about 30 butterfly pictures at $1 million to $2.5 million, Gagosian said.

“We’re very confident that the skull will sell, but it’s difficult to say exactly when,” said Marlow. He wouldn’t say if the artwork would be discounted, or if potential buyers were well-known contemporary collectors or new buyers, such as the Russians and East Europeans who patronize the auction rooms. Hirst would prefer a buyer who would show the work publicly, he indicated.

“The skull was shown five weeks in London,” Marlow said. “One issue to consider is whether it can have public access.”

Price

Museum buyers of Hirst’s works would issue releases once they agreed with their trustees about the purchases, or had paid the gallery, he said.

Hirst’s skull, titled “For the Love of God,” cost £10 million to make, according to Dunphy. It is known as the 50 million-pound skull.

“You have to get the price right, or it will come back into the market,” said Hirst, wearing jeans and a blue shirt imprinted with a black bat-winged skull, in an interview at London’s White Cube gallery in June. “A lot of people buy things and flip them,” making a quick profit if the work has been underpriced, he said.

A sale of the skull for £50 million would put Hirst on a price level with Pablo Picasso and Gustav Klimt, dead artists who produced some of the 20th century’s most famous works.

Hirst is a boon for dealers and auction houses. About 80 artists and support staff at his studios help turn out new works, often on the themes of death and disease. His art factory system resembles that of Warhol, who died in 1987.

A series of London auctions featuring paintings by Lucian Freud, Claude Monet and Joan Miro netted the biggest-ever sum for a week of art sales in Europe, auctioneers Christie’s said today.

The sales earned a total of £237 million ($561.41 million) and featured 23 new artist records.

Highlights included French Impressionist Monet’s Waterloo Bridge, which sold for £17.9 million ($42.4 million), the third-highest price for the artist at auction and the week’s most expensive painting at Christie’s.

Bruce Bernard by Briton Freud sold for nearly £7.9 million ($18.71 million) - a world record for any work by a living European artist - and Spaniard Miro’s Le Coq (The Cock) fetched £6.6 million ($15.63 million).

Tuesday’s Impressionist and modern art sale was the most lucrative of the week, with sales totalling over £121 million.

Christie’s European president, Jussi Pylkkanen, said the results highlighted “the ever-increasing number of new buyers entering the market”.

“There is great strength and depth in this marketplace and it promises to be another record year for the London art market,” he said.

Christie’s rivals Sotheby’s are also conducting high-budget art sales in London this week.

The auction house sold Monet’s Nympheas, part of his water lilies series, on Wednesday for £18.5 million ($43.82 million), the second-largest price tag ever for the sought-after artist.