Tempera, in its most essential form, is a pact between the earth and life itself. It is a painting medium born from the simple, yet revolutionary, act of mixing finely ground Pigment—the colored dust of minerals, plants, and earth—with a water-soluble binder. While various binders like animal glue or milk casein have been used, the medium’s soul is eternally bound to its most famous and resilient emulsifier: the yolk of an Egg. This humble, golden orb, a universal symbol of creation, possesses the unique chemical magic to hold the particles of color in a stable suspension of water, oil, and protein. When applied, typically in thin, meticulous layers, the water evaporates, and the egg yolk’s proteins and lipids cross-link, locking the pigment into a permanent, insoluble film of breathtaking luminosity. Unlike its later rival, Oil Paint, tempera dries rapidly to a matte or soft satin finish. It does not yellow with age, preserving its colors with a crisp, crystalline clarity that can endure for millennia. Its story is not merely one of chemistry, but of humanity’s quest to capture light, to give form to the divine, and to render the world with a precision that borders on the sacred.
Long before the galleries and museums of the modern world, the impulse to create images was a fundamental human instinct. In the sprawling, multicultural crucible of the ancient world, artists and artisans were perpetual chemists, experimenting with whatever nature offered to make their marks permanent. The earliest ancestors of tempera were simple mixtures of colored earth with binders like animal saliva or plant sap. But it was in the sun-drenched lands of the Mediterranean that the technique began its slow, deliberate journey toward refinement.
Our most spectacular window into the early life of tempera comes from the arid sands of Egypt during the Roman occupation (c. 1st-3rd centuries CE). Here, a hauntingly beautiful and sociologically fascinating art form emerged: the Fayum mummy portraits. These were not idealized images of pharaohs, but startlingly realistic portraits of everyday citizens—merchants, soldiers, and matrons—painted on thin wooden boards and bound into the wrappings of their mummies, placed directly over the face of the deceased. They were a final, lifelike gaze meant to bridge the worlds of the living and the dead, a fusion of Roman verism with ancient Egyptian funerary beliefs. Many of these portraits were created using the encaustic method, where pigment is mixed with hot beeswax. But a significant number were painted, either wholly or in part, with tempera. The artists of Fayum had mastered the alchemical potential of the egg. Using a palette of earth tones, carbon black, and Egyptian blue, they would apply the fast-drying paint with quick, confident brushstrokes. Tempera was ideal for rendering the fine, individual strands of a curled hairstyle, the delicate folds of a linen tunic, or the glint of light in a subject’s dark, liquid eyes. These faces, preserved by the dry climate, speak to us across two millennia. They reveal not just the skill of the artists but the very character of their subjects—the weary soldier, the graceful woman adorned in pearls, the thoughtful scholar. In these portraits, tempera was a medium of startling immediacy, capturing a fleeting human presence and making it eternal.
The success of these early works relied on a deep, intuitive understanding of materials, a knowledge passed down through workshops and generations. The two core components, the binder and the pigment, each had their own rich history.
The choice of the egg was a stroke of genius, both practical and symbolic. The yolk is a natural emulsion, containing lecithin, a powerful emulsifying agent that allows the fatty oils and the water-based components to mix harmoniously. This gave the paint a smooth, fluid consistency. When applied, the water would evaporate quickly, making it possible to apply subsequent layers without disturbing the one beneath. This rapid drying time was both a challenge and an advantage, demanding a swift, decisive hand but allowing for the creation of crisp, clean lines and intricate detail. The protein in the yolk, upon drying, formed a tough, water-resistant film that was remarkably durable. Sociologically, the egg was a ubiquitous and inexpensive resource, making the medium accessible. It was a piece of everyday life elevated into a component of high art, a symbol of birth and sustenance used to create images that defied death.
The other half of the tempera equation was the Pigment, the very substance of color. The ancient world was connected by a vast and complex network of trade, and the contents of a painter's workshop were a testament to this global reach.
This marriage of the local, humble egg with globally sourced, precious pigments gave tempera its voice—a voice capable of capturing both the earthy reality of a human face and the otherworldly hue of the heavens.
As the Roman Empire fractured and Christianity rose to become the dominant spiritual and political force in its eastern half, the purpose of art underwent a profound transformation. The goal was no longer the realistic depiction of the mortal world, but the manifestation of the divine. In the Byzantine Empire, with its capital in Constantinople, a new artistic form came to dominate religious life: the Icon. And for the creation of these holy images, egg tempera was not merely a choice of medium; it was a theological necessity.
An Icon, from the Greek word eikōn meaning “image,” was not considered a simple illustration or a work of art in the modern sense. It was a sacred object, a “window into heaven” through which the faithful could commune with God, Christ, the Virgin Mary, or the saints. The artistic style that developed was intentionally non-naturalistic. It employed reverse perspective (where lines diverge rather than converge), flattened figures, and serene, emotionless faces to convey that the reality being depicted was not of this world, but of a timeless, spiritual realm. Egg tempera was the perfect vehicle for this spiritual aesthetic. Its inherent properties aligned perfectly with the theological goals of the icon painter.
The making of an icon was a deeply spiritual and ritualistic process, a form of prayer in itself. The artist, often a monk, would prepare for the work through fasting and prayer. Every step was imbued with tradition and meaning, a technological process elevated to a sacred rite.
The journey began with the selection of a wooden Panel Painting, typically a well-seasoned, non-resinous wood like linden or poplar. This physical foundation was then prepared to receive the divine image. A piece of linen cloth was often glued to the surface to prevent the wood from cracking. Then, multiple layers of Gesso were applied. Gesso, a brilliant white ground made from a mixture of animal glue (usually rabbit-skin glue) and a white pigment like chalk or gypsum, was the crucial intermediary between the wood and the paint. It was sanded to a smooth, ivory-like finish, creating a pristine, luminous surface that would amplify the brilliance of the pigments applied on top of it. This white ground was symbolic of the purity and divine light upon which the sacred story would be written in color.
The image would be transferred or drawn onto the gesso surface. The painting process itself was a methodical layering, moving from dark to light, a practice known as proplasmos. The artist would lay down a flat, dark base color for an area like a face or robe. Then, successive, lighter layers of semi-transparent paint were delicately hatched on top to build up the forms, culminating in the brightest highlights. This technique physically mirrored the theological concept of divine light dispelling darkness. The final, and most glorious, step was often Gilding. Thin sheets of gold leaf were applied to the halos and the background of the icon. The gold was not meant to represent real, physical gold in a scene; it symbolized the uncreated light of God, the timeless and spaceless realm of heaven. When viewed in the flickering candlelight of a Byzantine church, the gilded surface would shimmer and reflect, making the figures appear to float in a field of divine radiance. The combination of brilliant tempera colors and shimmering gold created an object of immense spiritual power, a conduit between the worshipper and the divine, all made possible by the humble egg and the earth's colored dust.
As the cultural center of gravity shifted from Byzantium to the burgeoning city-states of Italy in the 13th and 14th centuries, the artistic ambitions of humanity shifted as well. While religion remained the dominant subject matter, a new spirit of humanism, championed by thinkers like Petrarch and Boccaccio, began to take hold. Artists of the early Renaissance were no longer content to simply represent a remote, divine reality. They sought to bridge the gap between heaven and earth, to depict saints with human weight and emotion, and to place sacred stories in naturalistic, believable spaces. For this monumental task, the artists of the Trecento and Quattrocento inherited the Byzantine tradition of egg tempera and, with breathtaking ingenuity, pushed it to its technical and expressive limits.
The great Florentine master Giotto di Bondone is often hailed as the father of Western painting. Working in both Fresco and tempera on panel, Giotto broke decisively with the flat, ethereal style of Byzantine art. His figures possessed a revolutionary sense of volume and physical presence. Their faces registered profound human emotions—grief, awe, tenderness. In his Ognissanti Madonna (c. 1310), the Virgin Mary is not a stylized, remote queen of heaven, but a substantial, maternal figure whose knees and body create a convincing sense of space for the Christ child on her lap. Giotto achieved this new naturalism by mastering tempera's linear qualities. He couldn't blend colors smoothly as one could with oil. Instead, he modeled his forms with meticulous systems of cross-hatching, known as tratteggio. By layering thousands of tiny, thread-like brushstrokes of lighter and darker tones, he created the illusion of rounded forms and the play of light on drapery. It was a painstaking, disciplined technique that transformed tempera from a medium of flat, symbolic color into one capable of describing three-dimensional reality.
The technical knowledge of the Renaissance workshop, or bottega, was codified in the late 14th century by the painter Cennino Cennini in his famous treatise, Il Libro dell'Arte (The Craftsman's Handbook). This book provides an invaluable, step-by-step guide to the art of tempera painting, offering a window into the daily life, materials, and sociology of the Renaissance artist. Cennini describes everything from how to make your own brushes from squirrel tails to the proper way to grind pigments, prepare panels with Gesso, and, most importantly, how to paint flesh tones. His method involved laying down a greenish underlayer of terra verde (green earth). Over this cool, verdant base, the warmer, pinkish flesh tones were delicately hatched, allowing the green to show through subtly in the shadows. This technique produced the luminous, slightly cool, and incredibly lifelike skin tones characteristic of so much early Renaissance portraiture. Cennini’s book reveals an artist who was not a temperamental genius, but a master craftsman, a chemist, a businessman, and a guardian of tradition, whose workshop was a laboratory of artistic technology.
Perhaps no artist represents the ultimate refinement of egg tempera more than Sandro Botticelli. His masterpieces, The Birth of Venus and Primavera, are hymns to the unique qualities of the medium. Look closely at the hair of Venus: each golden strand is individually and exquisitely rendered with a fine brush, a feat made possible by tempera's rapid drying time and linear precision. The transparent fabric of the Graces' gowns in Primavera and the delicate rendering of countless flowers and plants showcase the medium's capacity for sharp detail and brilliant, unadulterated color. Botticelli’s work is characterized by a strong emphasis on line, or disegno, a central value in Florentine art. Tempera was the perfect medium for this linear aesthetic. The paintings possess an ethereal, otherworldly grace, a cool light, and a crispness that feels almost like a drawing executed in color. Yet, these works also stand at a precipice. They represent the zenith of the tempera tradition, the most sublime expression of its possibilities. But even as Botticelli was painting them, a new technology, a new way of seeing, was arriving from the North—one that would soon challenge and ultimately overthrow tempera’s long reign.
For nearly a thousand years, egg tempera had been the undisputed king of Panel Painting in Europe. It had given form to the divine and captured the burgeoning humanism of the Renaissance. Its luminous clarity and disciplined line were the very language of painting. But in the 15th century, a rival emerged from the workshops of Northern Europe, particularly Flanders. This new medium, Oil Paint, was not a sudden invention but a slow refinement of ancient techniques. Yet, its perfection by artists like Jan van Eyck marked a technological disruption so profound that it would permanently alter the course of Western art.
The fundamental difference between the two media lay in the binder. While tempera used egg yolk, oil paint used a drying oil, most commonly linseed oil, but also walnut or poppy oil. This seemingly simple substitution had revolutionary consequences for the artist.
Jan van Eyck’s Ghent Altarpiece or The Arnolfini Portrait astonished his contemporaries. The incredible realism, the depiction of light reflecting off metal, the soft texture of fur, the deep, atmospheric interiors—these were effects that were simply impossible to achieve with the linear, hatched technique of tempera.
News of this remarkable northern innovation traveled south along the trade routes, and Italian artists were quick to see its potential. Antonello da Messina, who may have learned the technique directly from Flemish painters, is credited with introducing a refined oil technique to Venice in the 1470s. The Venetians, with their emphasis on color, light, and atmosphere (colorito), embraced it enthusiastically. Masters like Giovanni Bellini and later Titian abandoned tempera for the sensuous possibilities of oil, using it to create works of unprecedented emotional depth and visual splendor. In Florence, where the tradition of disegno (drawing and line) was paramount, the transition was slower. Many artists experimented with hybrid techniques. Some would begin a painting with a tempera underpainting, valuing its quick-drying stability and brightness, and then apply oil glazes on top to achieve depth and richer color. Another variation was tempera grassa, or “fat tempera,” where a small amount of oil was mixed into the egg yolk binder. This made the paint slightly more flexible and slower-drying, a compromise between the two worlds. The most famous—and tragic—of these experiments was Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper. Painted on a dry wall in Milan, Leonardo rejected the true Fresco technique, which required painting on wet plaster. Instead, he tried to invent his own method, using something akin to tempera on a gesso-and-pitch ground. He wanted the slow working time of oil on a grand mural scale. The result was a technical catastrophe. The paint did not adhere properly to the wall and began to flake away within his own lifetime, a heartbreaking testament to the perils of technological transition. By the early 16th century, the sunset of tempera was complete. The great masters of the High Renaissance—Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael—had all embraced oil as their primary medium. Tempera, once the voice of God and the tool of humanism, was now seen as archaic, difficult, and limited. It was a “primitive” medium, relegated to the past as art moved forward into a new world of shadow, atmosphere, and dramatic realism.
After its dramatic fall from grace during the High Renaissance, egg tempera did not disappear entirely. It entered a long period of quiet hibernation, its grand legacy preserved in the gilded icons and pristine altarpieces of a bygone era. For nearly three centuries, it was largely ignored by the mainstream of Western art, which was captivated by the ever-expanding expressive potential of Oil Paint. Tempera's survival was ensured in two distinct realms: in the conservative, tradition-bound workshops of Eastern Orthodox icon painters, who never abandoned the ancient techniques, and in the notebooks of art historians, where it became an object of academic curiosity. It was not until the 19th century, in a climate of romantic nostalgia and artistic rebellion, that tempera began its slow, remarkable resurrection.
In mid-19th century England, a group of young, rebellious artists formed the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Artists like Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais, and William Holman Hunt were reacting against what they saw as the triviality and academic sludge of the art of their day, epitomized by the Royal Academy and its slavish devotion to Raphael. They yearned for the “purity,” spiritual intensity, and brilliant color of Italian art before Raphael—the art of the Quattrocento. In their quest for this lost authenticity, they rediscovered the writings of Cennino Cennini and began to experiment with the tempera medium. They were drawn to its jewel-like colors, its sharp focus, and its rejection of the dramatic, often murky, shadows (chiaroscuro) that had dominated painting since the Baroque period. While they often worked in oil, they sought to emulate tempera’s clarity by painting on bright white grounds and using brilliant, unmixed colors. This revival was driven by a cultural and spiritual impulse—a romantic rejection of the industrial age and a desire to return to an idealized past of piety and craftsmanship.
Tempera's second, and perhaps more significant, revival came in the 20th century. This time, artists were not drawn to it for reasons of nostalgia, but for its unique aesthetic properties, which they found surprisingly well-suited to modern sensibilities. The medium’s matte surface, its precise linearity, and its slightly detached, cool emotional tone offered a powerful alternative to the thick, expressive brushwork of Impressionism and Expressionism.
Today, egg tempera holds a respected, if niche, position in the world of art. It is no longer a dominant technology, but it is cherished by contemporary artists who value its unique luminous qualities, its demand for discipline, and its direct connection to a thousand years of art history. Art schools continue to teach its methods, ensuring that the knowledge codified by Cennini is not lost. The story of tempera is a powerful lesson in the life cycle of a technology. It was born from a simple, natural solution, rose to become a vehicle for humanity’s highest spiritual aspirations, was perfected into a tool of revolutionary naturalism, and was eventually supplanted by a more versatile and adaptable innovation. Yet, it never truly died. Its luminous bond—the pact between the humble egg and the pigments of the earth—endured. It waited patiently in the quiet of history until new generations, with new eyes and new questions, rediscovered its singular and timeless voice.