Tempera Painting

Tempera painting, also known as gouache, is one of the oldest painting techniques, probably first practiced in the ancient civilizations of Egypt, Babylonia, and India. Tempera was also used in the art of the Byzantine empire and medieval era, as well as the early Renaissance in Europe. After the appearance of oil paints during the Renaissance, tempera fell in popularity, although it enjoyed short revivals during the nineteenth and early twentieth century. In ancient times, the medium involved dissolving powdered pigments in water and adding egg yolk as a binder. Gum Arabic is used as a binder in modern paint. Tempera, a water-based technique, is characterized by the thickness of its colors, which allows for a homogenous coloring of large surfaces. It dries quickly and allows for chromatic corrections. Tempera may be applied with a brush, sponge, or fingers, over wood, paper, or cardboard. Tempera is a popular medium to introduce young children to painting.

Brief History

Initially, tempera was an emulsion, that is, it was created through the process of mixing and thinning oil—or a blend of oil and water—with pigment until it reached a paste-like texture. In time, artists began to add egg yolk to the mixture as a binder. Later on, tempera was made by mixing pigments with gum Arabic—a plant based glue—and it often included other elements too. Like watercolors, tempera is water-based and uses gum Arabic, but differences exist between the media. For example, tempera is opaque whereas watercolor is transparent. This is because tempera pigments have white added to them, which makes them denser or opaque, while watercolors tend to be made from purer pigments, with no white added. Tempera dries quickly and may be used in different consistencies from watery to dense, also referred to as "dry." The latter is used in a method known as dry brush painting.

During the Middle Ages, tempera became common all over Europe. In Eastern Europe, tempera was used to paint Orthodox icons in the Byzantine style. By the twelfth century, most panels—that is, paintings made on wood—and manuscript illumination was done in tempera. Tempera ruled as the principal paint medium until the emergence of oil painting in the late 1500s.

Artists found that tempera had some limitations. It could be difficult creating the desired consistency, it tended to change in hue as it dried, and the limited palette, or array of colors, did not lend themselves to subtle nuances. Artists, then, were forced to engage in complex techniques in order to produce the results they wanted, which included coating or priming the surface with a material such as chalk gesso, taking care not to produce any bubbles, sanding the dry gessoed surface, sketching the composition, adding an underpaint followed by careful layers of tempera until the desired color was achieved. It was a slow process that required much training and skill. Not surprisingly, it inspired artists to experiment with different techniques to facilitate the process and to improve the chromatic depth and quality of tempera.

Overview

It is known that water-based paints, such as tempera and watercolor, originated in the ancient world. Because tempera tends to be very durable, many works in tempera painting have survived from the Egyptian, Indian, and Roman civilizations. According to ancient scholars such as Pliny the Elder (23–70 CE) and Pausanias (110–180 CE) in his description of Greece, Greeks were skilled in panel painting in encaustic, a wax-based medium, and tempera.

Tempera became the common medium for icon painting in the Byzantine Eempire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, which lasted from the fifth century to the fall of Constantinople in 1453. From there, it spread through Eastern Europe, where it became the principal medium for religious paintings, particularly panels and icons. In fact, it became the official medium for icon paintings in the Orthodox churches of Eastern Europe and Greece.

The popularity of tempera also spread through Western Europe, where it became very important in the production of illuminated manuscripts and panel painting. Tempera use peaked approximately from the thirteenth century to the mid-1500s, although it began to decline gradually with the invention of oil paint in the fifteenth century. Despite its diminished popularity, it continued to be used by some schools of painting until the first half of the sixteenth century. For instance, some Renaissance artists, such as Leonardo Da Vinci, used both tempera and oils in their work. In fact, sometimes both methods were combined in a single canvas or panel, by layering oil paints over tempera. An example of Renaissance era egg tempera application is Raphael’s The Crowning of the Virgin (c. 1502), which is part of the Oddi Altarpiece. Sandro Boticcelli’s Madonna and the Infant St. John the Baptist (c. 1490) is an excellent example of Renaissance Era technique of tempera on wood panel.

Two main types of tempera existed: egg-based tempera and tempera grassa. Egg-based tempera is the oldest technique, in which egg yolk is used to agglutinate or bind the pigment. Tempera Grassa, on the other hand, combined egg yolk and oil as a way to make the paint more translucent.

By the late sixteenth century, tempera use had declined significantly. Tempera painting enjoyed a revival during the romantic period, when it became a preferred medium by artists such as William Blake (1757–1827) and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in the mid-nineteenth century. However, while Blake aimed to follow in the steps of Raphael and Michelangelo, the Pre-Raphaelites rejected the work of Raphael and Michelangelo in favor of some of their artistic predecessors, seeking to revive the style and approach of early Quattrocento art.

Tempera enjoyed another revival in the twentieth century, when painters from diverse modern and avant-garde schools began to use it again. Artists such as the Norwegian Edvard Munch (1863–1944), Giorgio de Chirico (1888–1978) from Italy, Otto Dix (1891–1969) from Germany, Mexican artist Frida Kahlo (1907–1954), and the American Andrew Wyeth (1917–2009), turned to tempera. One of the most iconic paintings in modern American art is Wyeth’s Christina’s World (1948), rendered in tempera.

In the twentieth century, tempera also became very popular in the fields of comics, illustration, and graphic design. Tempera is a widely available commercial paint, often used with young children in order to introduce them to the art of painting.

Bibliography

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