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In the fast-changing landscape of digital tools for creatives, Glaze app (Glaze.art), developed by the Polish tech-art company Well of Art, redefines how we learn, teach, and experience classical painting in the 21st century. With the recent launch of The Return of Raphael, a digital painting competition inspired by one of the most haunting art mysteries of the 20th century, Glaze is demonstrating that new technology can, paradoxically, bring us closer to the past.

Designed as a comprehensive educational platform, Glaze simulates the slow, layered process of oil glazing—a painting technique perfected by Renaissance masters like Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael. 

Glazing involves applying multiple thin, transparent layers of oil paint over a dry opaque underpainting, allowing light to pass through and reflect off the lower layers, creating depth, luminosity, and rich color complexity unattainable with direct painting alone. This method requires patience, precision, and an understanding of how pigments interact optically. Traditional oil glazing can take weeks or even months to complete a single work due to drying times between layers. Glaze app captures this meditative rhythm in a digital environment, making it accessible for artists and students alike.

The application is the result of years of in-depth research and collaboration between artists, mathematicians, physicists, and software developers. It was founded by artist Robert Latoś, CEO and founder at Well of Art, and new technologies entrepreneur Marcin Molski.

Latoś, who after studying at the Academy of Fine Arts went to pursue hands-on mastery of glazing in Venice, says the app was born from a personal and professional desire to make the technique once again accessible. “It’s very unique in the way the artist really works,” he explains. “But in an old-school way, it’s simply too time-consuming, and also too expensive. The only way to make this technique usable and understandable again was through technology.”

Replicating the analog complexity of glazing in digital form was no easy feat. Latoś describes the multi-year journey as one that began with him carrying actual oil paintings into the labs of physicists and mathematicians. Together, they studied how light interacts with translucent layers of pigment, building custom machines to apply glazes and measure their properties. “We didn’t want to create another painting software,” he emphasizes. “We wanted a digital twin of the oil glazing technique—with the same pigments, brushes, and canvas behavior, governed by the physics of material and light.”

The final result is a stylus-based app for tablets that allows users to interact with paint in a way that mirrors the tactile, physical experience of traditional oil painting. Glaze is already being used in museums and schools, with lesson plans tailored for K-12 students, but it is also attracting attention from professional artists, many of whom see it as a tool for refining their process or expanding into digital media.

“Today, kids learn how to make something look impressive with a few clicks,” says Zofia Czartoryska, curator and art historian, advisor on cultural partnerships at Well of Art. “But Glaze brings the focus back to the artistic process—it’s a tool that demands your time, your intellect, your manual skill. It’s not just image-making—it’s art-making.”

In this spirit, Glaze has launched its first international competition, The Return of Raphael, inviting participants of all ages to reimagine Raphael’s Portrait of a Young Man, a painting stolen by the Nazis from the Princes Czartoryski Museum in Kraków during World War II and missing ever since. Widely considered the most important artwork still lost from the war, the painting’s fate remains a mystery. Was it taken by Governor Hans Frank as he fled? Or hidden elsewhere and forgotten? All that remains is a black-and-white photograph—and an empty frame in the museum where it once hung.

For Latoś and Czartoryska, the painting’s absence is precisely what makes it the perfect prompt. “We didn’t want to copy something that already exists,” Czartoryska says. “We wanted to bring back a spirit—through the technique, through the intellectual process behind Raphael’s work. What happens when a young artist today paints a young person, using the method of the Renaissance? It becomes something entirely new.”

Rather than a traditional copy, the competition encourages interpretation. Artists begin with a simple sketch inspired by the composition of the original portrait—essentially a loose framework—and then develop a finished painting using the glazing technique. “It should be a story about yourself,” says Latoś. “You don’t just look in the mirror for ten minutes. Painting a self-portrait is a deep, time-consuming study. You fail, try again, and through this, you learn something not only about painting, but about who you are.”

The competition is open to all ages, structured into four categories. Originally intended for school students, the project quickly grew in ambition after seeing enthusiastic engagement from older users. “Creativity can bloom at any age,” says Czartoryska. “It would be discriminatory to stop at 18. The app is a workshop for everyone”.

Winners will be selected not only for their creativity and conceptual depth, but also for how well they use the glazing technique. Entries must adhere to the basic sketch, but there are no stylistic limitations. “It can be abstract, contemporary, symbolic—it’s about interpretation and technical expression,” she explains.

Prizes include tablets, a feature in Apollo magazine, the world’s oldest art magazine. Another major reward is a public exhibition at the Czartoryski Museum in Kraków this December, showcasing around 100 selected works. “To see your digital painting next to one of the world’s most prestigious art collections—it’s something very special,” says Latoś.

As David Hockney once said, “Painting can’t die, because photography is not good enough…Why not look longer at something? Look longer, and you may see more.” For the creators of Glaze, it’s this longer look, this deeper engagement, that marks the difference between creating an image and making art. And that difference, they believe, will shape the artists of tomorrow.