Renaissance oil painting bridges the period of European art history between the art of the Middle Ages and Baroque art. Painting of this era is connected to the "rebirth" (renaissance in French) of classical antiquity, the impact of humanism on artists and their patrons, new artistic sensibilities and techniques, and, in general, the transition from the Medieval period to the Early modern age.

In the visual arts, significant achievements occur around 1400 in both Italy and north of the Alps. Masaccio's art and the writings of Leon Battista Alberti helped establish linear perspective and the idealisation of the human body as primary ideas of Italian Renaissance oil paintings in the early 15th century. Likewise, Early Netherlandish artists such as Jan van Eyck were innovators in oil painting and intuitive spatial compositions. The brief High Renaissance (c. 1500–1520) centred around Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael in Florence and Rome, was a culmination of the Italian achievements, while artists like Albrecht Dürer brought a similar level of intellectual and artistic innovation to northern Europe. Late Renaissance oil paintings, from about 1520 until the end of the 16th century, is marked by various Mannerist tendencies that spread from Italy through the rest of France.