 |
| Anonymous Florentine Artist Scholar with Book (initial R in manuscript of the Epistole of Leonardo Bruni) 15th century tempera on vellum Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence |
 |
| Antonio di Nicolò di Lorenzo Initial N applied to printed Commentary on Dante 1481 tempera on vellum Accademia della Crusca, Florence |
 |
| Antonio di Nicolò di Lorenzo Initial P applied to printed Commentary on Dante 1481 tempera on vellum Accademia della Crusca, Florence |
 |
| Anonymous Italian Artist Ideal City ca. 1480 tempera on panel Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino |
 |
| Anonymous Italian Artist Ideal City (detail) ca. 1480 tempera on panel Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino |
 |
| Anonymous Italian Artist Ideal City (detail) ca. 1480 tempera on panel Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino |
 |
| Andrea da Murano St John the Evangelist mourning the Dead Christ ca. 1490 tempera on panel Detroit Institute of Arts |
 |
| Filippo Lippi St Damian (detail of Virgin and Child enthroned with Saints) ca. 1445 tempera on panel Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence |
Tempera – In the history of art, the word is normally used to denote egg tempera, the type of paint favoured for Italian panel painting until the early 16th century; it consists of pigments ground in water mixed with egg yolk or whole egg. The resulting paint is opaque and eventually dries to a waterproof film with a velvety sheen, the first stage in its drying being the rapid evaporation of the water, followed by the slow and gradual hardening of the egg proteins. These properties mean that, unlike oil paint, tempera can neither be applied in translucent glazes, nor thickly applied with textured impasto, nor blended and worked when wet, because the partially set paint will redissolve and peel away from the surface. The necessary convention of tempera painting is thus to build up the paint film gradually with repeated lightly-touched hatchings or stipplings, not unlike those of drawing. Once mixed with the egg the paint will begin to dry in its dish or pot; in order to avoid wastage of sometimes expensive materials, the amount of pigment needed had to be assessed accurately before the paint was made. It seems likely therefore that in painting a panel the artist may have moved from colour to colour rather than concentrating on a single figure or scene – that is, painted all the blues, say, at one time across the whole panel. (In workshop practice someone else, with a paint pot of a different colour, could then move in to paint, say, all the vermilion reds.) Tonal modelling of drapery also required the most meticulous planning. Since colours could not be blended and modelled on the surface of the painting, each tone from shadow to highlight had to be mixed and prepared in advance. In practice this meant that the pigment was at its purest and most saturated in the shadows; for the highlights it was mixed with a high proportion of white. A mid-tone was made by mixing equal amounts of the colour prepared for the shadows with that for the highlights; further intermediary tones could then be mixed from these three, and the pre-mixed shades would be systematically applied, beginning with the shadows and working through to the highlights, the initially sharp transitions softened by the intermeshing of the hatched brushstrokes. An alternative method, called cangiante (changeant in French), used different hues, such as, say, a dark red and a light yellow, for shadows and highlights, imitating the appearance of shot silk woven with yarns of different colours in the warp and weft. It is easy to see why the laborious methods of tempera panel painting and fresco, both requiring elaborate planning at an early stage and militating against spontaneous revisions on the surface of the paint, fostered the rise of disegno in its practical sense of 'drawing' and its philosophical extensions, so crucial in the evolution of Italian art.
– The Yale Dictionary of Art & Artists by Erika Langmuir and Norbert Lynton (2000)
 |
| Girolamo Mocetto Portrait of a Boy ca. 1490 tempera on panel Palazzo dei Musei, Modena |
 |
| Pisanello Madonna of the Quail ca. 1420 tempera on panel Museo di Castelvecchio, Verona |
 |
| Carlo Crivelli Madonna della Passione ca. 1460 tempera on panel Museo di Castelvecchio, Verona |
 |
| Carlo Crivelli Madonna della Passione (detail) (Cherubs making Music) ca. 1460 tempera on panel Museo di Castelvecchio, Verona |
 |
| Carlo Crivelli Madonna della Passione (detail) (Cherubs with Instruments of the Passion) ca. 1460 tempera on panel Museo di Castelvecchio, Verona |
 |
| Carlo Crivelli Madonna della Passione (detail) (Cherubs with Instruments of the Passion) ca. 1460 tempera on panel Museo di Castelvecchio, Verona |
 |
| Carlo Crivelli The Crucifixion ca. 1487 tempera on panel Art Institute of Chicago |