Tempera is a paint made from colored pigment ground to a powder and mixed with egg yolk, thinned with a little water. Painters lay it on in thin coats, usually on a wooden panel covered with a smooth white ground, and it dries to a hard, slightly matte film.
Until oil gradually took its place, this was the paint of most early Italian pictures on wood. In the Tuscan city of Siena, it covered the altarpieces, the large painted panels set above church altars, often against a background of gold. When people say tempera without another word, they mean this egg tempera.
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The best guide to how it was handled is a handbook written probably around 1400 by Cennino Cennini, a painter trained in Florence, for apprentices learning the trade. His instructions go further than most readers would expect. He says which eggs to choose depending on the age of the sitter, and he asks for two coats of green under every face.
On some of the oldest panels to survive, the flesh painted over that green has worn thin, and the faces now look faintly green.
A word for mixing
Tempera takes its name from the verb Cennini uses for preparing colors…
What You'll Discover
Which eggs Cennini told painters to use.
Why some old painted faces now look green.
How gold went on a panel before the paint.
Why tempera pictures are built from tiny strokes.
What school tempera has to do with eggs.
How one painter matched sixty panels.