Tempera

Technique

Tempera is prepared fresh in small batches, typically mixing egg yolk with water in a ratio around one part yolk to three parts water, then blending it with powdered pigment in roughly equal volumes immediately before use, since the paint cannot be stored once mixed. Painters apply it in thin, controlled layers using fine brushes and a technique of dense cross-hatched or hatched strokes to gradually build tonal depth and modeling, a method that demands patience and precision since the fast-drying paint sets within moments and cannot be blended wet-on-wet the way oil paint can. Because it dries almost instantly to the touch yet takes three to six months to fully cure, artists must work methodically, layer by careful layer, rather than reworking large passages. Tempera's brittleness requires a rigid support such as wood panel or modern rigid boards prepared with true gesso, since any flexing of the surface causes the paint film to crack and flake off. This combination of quick-drying precision, luminous but restrained color, and technical exactitude is what most sharply distinguishes tempera from the slow, blendable, richly saturated character of oil paint.

History

Evidence of egg-based paint appears as early as 3400–2700 BCE in the Domus de Janas rock-cut tombs of prehistoric Sardinia, and tempera-like pigments have also been detected in Mycenaean murals at the Palace of Nestor around 1200 BCE and in ancient Egyptian tomb paintings at Thebes. Tempera became the dominant medium for panel painting and illuminated manuscripts across the Byzantine Empire and medieval Europe, and it remained the standard technique for nearly every European panel painter through the early Renaissance, up to about 1500. Its decline began in the 15th century as Early Netherlandish painters such as Jan van Eyck popularized oil paint in northern Europe, and by around 1500 oil had likewise supplanted tempera as the principal medium in Italy, following masters like Leonardo da Vinci who transitioned between the two techniques. Interest in tempera was rekindled in the 19th and 20th centuries, spurred in part by the 1821 publication of Cennino Cennini's medieval technical treatise 'Il Libro dell'Arte' and the 1901 founding of the Society of Painters in Tempera in Britain, leading to adoption by Pre-Raphaelite and Social Realist painters. Tempera endures today primarily as the traditional medium of Eastern Orthodox icon painting in Greece and Russia, alongside occasional use by contemporary fine artists.