Egg Tempera Painting

Egg Tempera is an old painting method. It was used by the ancient Egyptians and Greeks, and also in the Byzantine Empire. During the Italian Renaissance before 1500 AD almost every painter used egg tempera, including Michelangelo.


The egg tempera technique uses egg yolk to bind the pigments for painting. As can be all too clear when it comes time to do the dishes, egg yolk dries quickly and if left for some time, is very hard to remove. This property is used to the painter's advantage by mixing colors with it to make paint.



Egg yolk cracks when left to dry in a thick droplet. To avoid cracks in a painting it's necessary to apply it in thin layers. In order to achieve this, only a small amount of egg tempera paint can be applied to the paintbrush. As the egg yolk dries very quickly in these quantities it is therefore essential to this technique that small amounts of paint are applied in short brush strokes. Almost immediately after applying the paint it's dry enough to apply more straight on top of it without lifting what's already there.


It's clear that the characteristic features of egg yolk, and how it dries, largely define the egg tempera technique. The paint is applied in short brush strokes, one thin layer over another until there are many layers. Different colors with varying levels of opacity can be applied in the different layers. To achieve a smooth appearance the brush strokes can be applied in all different directions so that no one direction is given preference. And any number of textures can be created, for example by making the strokes cross-hatched, or by having them all flow in the same direction.

Egg yolk dries as a crystalline substance, and on its own, allows light to pass through it and also to be reflected back up through it. It acts almost as a jewel, bouncing, diffusing and reflecting the light that enters it. With pigments present in the egg yolk, the light will act differently according to the absorbing properties of the pigments and their opacity.

Light entering the painting is scattered from each layer, and brush stroke, in an infinite variety of ways. Some of the light is scattered and reflected back before it reaches the bottom surface of the painting, some is bounced back from the base of the painting. If a bright white surface is used as the base of the painting this can reflect up into the painting, giving it an almost back-lit feeling. The result is a light-filled, almost luminescent, bright work of art.

As you might gather from this description, painting with egg tempera is a slow and very painstaking process. It requires meticulous attention not only to the detail of the subject matter but also to how the medium should be applied. An advantage of this technique is that it allows the artist to create paintings of incredible detail and accuracy.

There are many other binding agents used to make paints, including gum arabic (used in watercolor paints because it dissolves easily in water), oil, egg white, and casein (a milk protein). Around 1500, the use of oil paints largely replaced egg tempera. Oil paint can be applied in thicker and larger amounts allowing for much faster application, and therefore oil paintings often have a much deeper color saturation.

One great advantage egg tempera paintings have is that once they're set, egg tempera paintings don't change. Oil paints darken, yellow and become transparent with age. Egg tempera paintings don't fade or change color; they're permanent. Examples from the first few centuries AD still exist. Here's one of my (yes certainly more recent than centuries ago!) paintings. If you'd like to see more you can go to DweezelJazz Art.com.