Slide 1
Egg yolk helps bind pigment to a prepared surface
Egg tempera combines coloured pigment with an egg-based binder. The yolk helps hold the colour together on the prepared surface.
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Water adjusts the mixture for painting. The pigment supplies colour, while the binder makes the particles adhere; these are separate roles within the same brushful.
Slide 2
Quick drying encourages small strokes rather than broad wet blending
Egg tempera dries quickly. Painters can build modelling with small strokes instead of blending wet paint across a large area.
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In Michelangelo's unfinished Manchester Madonna, hatching and cross-hatching remain visible. An incomplete work can reveal intermediate stages that a finished surface would cover.
Slide 3
Prepared tones can build smoother-looking transitions
A painter can prepare several tones before applying them. Closely spaced strokes make transitions appear smoother when seen together.
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The National Gallery describes darker modelling followed by lighter passages in the Manchester Madonna. This makes the sequence of construction different from simply filling in an outline.
Slide 4
An unfinished panel reveals planning beneath the paint
The colour sits on a prepared panel. Transferred drawing in Michelangelo’s unfinished Manchester Madonna shows that planning came before the paint.
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Transferred preparatory drawing is visible in the Manchester Madonna. It connects the painted panel to planning on another surface, showing that the design did not begin with colour.
Slide 5
Tempera does not identify every work from a period
Tempera was important in early Italian painting, but a medium does not define every painting made in the same place or century.
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Artists also combined tempera with oil techniques. A material label can therefore describe a mixture or particular passages, rather than a uniform recipe across the whole object.
Sources
- How is egg tempera paint made?
National Gallery
- The Manchester Madonna
National Gallery
- Tempera glossary
National Gallery