painting - Tempera
Photograph by tracie7779on Flickr.
When dry, it produces a smooth matte finish. Even so, many (if not most) modern pigments are still dangerous unless certain precautions are taken; these include keeping pigments wet in painting Panoramic painting storage to avoid breathing their dust. Tempera paint dries rapidly.
The art technique was known from the classical world, where it appears to have taken over from encaustic painting and was the main medium used for panel painting and illuminated manuscripts in the Byzantine world and Medieval and Early renaissance Europe. The twentieth century saw a significant revival of tempera.
Tempera paintings are very long lasting, and examples from the first centuries AD still exist. As tempera dries, the artist will add more water to preserve the consistency and to balance the thickening of the yolk on contact with air. Different preparations use the egg white or the whole egg for different effect.
Heavy paper is also used. Although tempera has been out of favor since the Late Renaissance and Baroque eras, it has been periodically rediscovered by such later artists such as William Blake, the Nazarenes, the Pre-Raphaelites, and Joseph Southall. Tempera, also known as egg tempera, is a permanent fast drying painting medium consisting of colored pigment mixed with a water-soluble binder medium (usually a glutinous material such as egg yolk or some other size).
Studio 1986). Guido da Siena, Church of San Regolo, Siena, Tempera and gold on panel, 1285-1295 Madonna and Child with saints polyptych, Duccio, Tempera and gold on wood, 1311-1318 Madonna by Sassetta, Cortona, Tempera on wood, 1435 Sandro Botticelli, Tempera on panel, 1490-1500 Crivelli, Tempera on wood, transferred to canvas, 1470 Raphael, Tempera and gold on wood, 1503-1505 Marianne Stokes, Melisande (Stokes), Tempera on canvas, 1895-1898 . In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries there were intermittent revivals of tempera technique in Western art, among the Pre-Raphaelites, Social Realists, and others.
Because it cannot be applied in thick layers as oil paints can, tempera paintings rarely have the deep color saturation that oil paintings can achieve. Tempera painting was the primary panel painting medium for nearly every painter in the European Medieval and Early renaissance period up to 1500.
European painters who worked with tempera include Giorgio de Chirico, Otto Dix, and Pyke Koch; and the medium was popular with American artists such as the Regionalist Thomas Hart Benton and his student Roger Medearis; Social Realists Isabel Bishop, Reginald Marsh, and Ben Shahn; Jacob Lawrence, Paul Cadmus, Jared French, Rudolph F. The white of the egg and even the membrane of the yolk are discarded (the membrane of the yolk is dangled over a receptacle and punctured to drain off the liquid inside). The paint mixture has to be constantly adjusted to maintain a balance between a greasy and watery consistency by adjusting the amount of water and yolk.
Other additives such as oil and wax emulsions can modify the medium. Many of the Fayum mummy portraits use tempera, sometimes in combination with encaustic.
Tempera also refers to the paintings done in this medium. In this respect the colors of an unvarnished tempera painting resemble a pastel, although the color deepens if a varnish is applied.
Oil replaced tempera as the principal medium used for creating artworks during the 15th century in Early Netherlandish painting in northern Europe. Tempera painting continues to be used in Greece and Russia where it is the required medium for Orthodox icons. Tempera is traditionally created by hand-grinding dry powdered pigments into a binding agent or medium, such as egg, glue, honey, water, milk (in the form of casein) and a variety of plant gums. Tempera painting starts with placing a small amount of the pigment paste onto a palette, dish or bowl and adding about an equal volume of the binder and mixing.
Egg tempera was a primary method of painting until after 1500 when it was superseded by the invention of oil painting. Most artists today use modern synthetic pigments, which are less toxic but have similar color properties to the older pigments.
Around the year 1500, oil paint replaced tempera in Italy. Tempera painting allows for great precision when used with traditional techniques that require the application of numerous small brush strokes applied in a cross-hatching technique.
For example, every surviving panel painting by Michelangelo is egg tempera. Oil paint, which may have originated in Afghanistan between the 5th and 9th Centuries eventually superseded tempera. It is normally applied in thin, semi-opaque or transparent layers.
On the other hand, tempera colors do not change over time Tempera adheres best to an absorbent ground that has a lower “oil” content than the tempera binder used Historically wood panels were used as the substrate, and more recently un-tempered masonite and modern composite boards have been employed. For this form most often only the contents of the egg yolk is used.
Some pigments require slightly more binder, some require less. A version of tempera consisting of pigment and glue size is commonly used and referred to by some manufacturers in America as poster paint. Tempera painting has been found on early Egyptians sarcophagi decorations.
Adding oil for instance in no more than a 1:1 ratio with the egg yolk by volume will produce a water soluble medium with many of the color effects of oil paint, although it cannot be painted thickly. Some of the pigments used by medieval painters, such as Vermilion (made from cinnabar, a mercury ore), are highly toxic.
