I did this a couple of years ago. It’s a copy of a small panel painting by Raphael (6.7 × 6.7 inches) at the original size. Wikipedia says this about it (the original, of course):

The Vision of a Knight or The Dream of Scipio or Allegory is a small egg tempera painting on poplar by the Italian Renaissance artist Raphael, finished in 1504. It is in the National Gallery in London. It probably formed a pair with the Three Graces panel, also 17 cm square, now in the Chateau de Chantilly museum.

The theme is controversial. Some authorities intend the sleeping knight to represent the Roman general Scipio Africanus (236–184 BC) who was dreaming to choose between Virtue (behind whom is a steep and rocky path) and Pleasure (in looser robes). However, the two feminine figures are not presented as contestants. They may represent the ideal attributes of the knight: the book, sword and flower which they hold suggest the ideals of scholar, soldier and lover which a knight should combine.

I did it in egg tempera with oil glazes. More recent analysis by the National Gallery indicates that the original was actually an oil painting. Although it is by no means a perfect copy, I am mostly satisfied, as I think I managed to capture some portion of the sweetness of Raphael’s early work.

First I made titanium white egg tempera by grinding egg yolk (with a little water added) to titanium white pigment. I used a frosted glass muller, grinding on a marble slab. Following the recipe, I made it stiffer than I would if I were going to paint with it in egg tempera. Then I used a palette knife to mix it in approximately equal parts with some tube flake white (Doak’s flake 1c). (I don’t work with lead white in powder form.) I mulled the mixture on the slab. As the recipe predicted, the paint instantly became very stiff—much stiffer than either of the two ingredients before mulling. The recipe suggests adding oil, emulsion, or water. I added more egg yolk (emulsion) until the paint became workable. I mulled for several minutes and transferred it to my palette. It was quite thick.

Then I made some burnt sienna oil paint by mulling in linseed oil. I tried making egg tempera by mixing egg yolk with pigment/water paste, but it was very thin. I added a bit of dry pigment. Then I followed the same procedure, mixing the oil paint with the egg tempera in equal proportions. Again, it stiffened instantly. This time I added a bit of oil and, when that didn’t do the trick, a little water. After mulling this mixture for a few minutes, I transferred it to my palette. Again, it was very thick.

Then I tried painting with it. The paint alone was unworkably thick and pasty. It mixed easily with water, however. I was able to paint loosely. It handled similarly to other tempera grassa recipes I’ve worked with when thinned with water. Easier to blend than egg tempera, but not so smooth as oil paint. I could imagine using this for a lean underpainting.

Conclusions:

• Overall, this was not a success. The paint is not manageable without a lot of thinning down. It is not superior to other recipes that are easier to make. On the other hand, this was my first time. Next time, I will experiment by adding more oil to the mixture. It should still be water-mixable even with considerably more oil than I used.
• This is time-consuming. It would only be worth doing if I could make up a palette of colors and get them to last for at least a week or two before becoming bad or, well, putrid. The recipe suggests a few drops of clove oil. That would preserve the egg yolk and act as a retarder for the oil. The problem, potentially, is that the clove oil would retard the drying of the oil component of the paint after it’s been applied to the painting. That might slow the process of applying multiple layers. Another possibility would be to add a few drops of white wine vinegar.
• In terms of time, this will really only work for me with tempera mixed with tube paint. I don’t have time to grind my own fresh oil paint routinely, although that would probably produce superior results.
• Thus, I need to learn how to make more workable paint, and learn to make it last.

Update

24 June 2008: Applied thinly, the paint was completely dry the next day. It definitely has potential, at least for underpainting.

In the 19th century (especially in Germany), painting recipes were developed that involved various combinations of tempera ingredients, often including some combination of egg white, whole egg, linseed oil, stand oil, dammar varnish, stand oil, and turpentine. You can find many such recipes on the internet with a few simple Google searches. I’ve usually avoided these relatively complex recipes in favor of simple emulsions of egg yolk (the traditional binder for egg tempera) and linseed or walnut oil, mixed with pigment/water paste.

Recently, I ran across a web reprint of Egg Tempera Painting, Tempera Underpainting, Oil Emulsion Painting: A Manual of Technique, by Vaclav Vitlacyl and Rupert Davidson Turnbull. Published in 1935, it is a compendium of various tempera techniques. One that caught my eye is a recipe they call “putrido.” Putrido is one name for tempera grassa (because it starts to smell bad after a few days). They say that this is based on a recipe from an old manuscript found in Venice. For all I know it’s what was used in the Renaissance.

Take whatever quantity of dry color you wish to prepare. Divide it into two equal parts. Rub up one part with yolk of egg only into a fairly stiff paste. Rub up the other part with sun-bleached linseed oil, to about the consistency of ordinary tube colours. (To save time or trouble, it is possible to use ordinary tube oil colours, but to be sure of your ingredients, it is always advisable to grind your own colour in oil.) The part that is rubbed up with oil may be slightly larger in quantity than the part rubbed with yolk of egg. Then take the two parts so prepared and grind them together, preferably on the marble slab. It will be found that when these two parts are put together, the resultant mixture will stiffen at once into a very stiff paste, too stiff to be easily rubbed. This may be softened down by the addition of either water, emulsion, or linseed oil. If you wish to use the Putrido in its leaner form, add either water or the emulsion (Medium Fat Emulsion), but if you wish to paint with it as an oil paint using oil as the medium, then thin it down with oil. In either case, add the water, the emulsion, or the oil very slowly, only a few drops at a time, until the paste becomes a smooth cream easily handled on the marble slab.

I find this to be pretty interesting. It is a recipe that is similar to what I’ve done before, is simple to make, doesn’t involve solvents, and uses egg yolk (rather than the white or the whole egg), with which I am more familiar. They suggest that adding a small amount of oil of clove will preserve the paint mixture and allow it to be kept for some time (although not indefinitely). I expect that storing them in a refrigerator, especially in warm weather, would be a good idea. The oil of clove would also act as a retarder for the oil component of the paint, causing to dry more slowly. That could be a good or a bad thing, but I expect one would have to wait between layers for the paint to dry. You could try to balance the retarding effect of the clove oil by adding a small amount of lead napthenate, but that makes for a more complex reaction than I am really comfortable with.

I’ll have to try this recipe soon. I have a large painting that I started in tempera and then stopped work on. It might make an excellent underpainting for this TG recipe.

I am new to egg tempera and here is my question. To mix the pigment with the egg yolk do you have to use one of those glass grinders and heavy glass surface? In my effort to work without the grinder I bought some liquid pure pigment made by createx. It is a concentrated pigment dispersed in water. It handles well and the colors are great. I’m just wondering if I’m missing something. Is there any premixed pigment paste one could use? The only negative side in handling the pigments I have is that they are liquid and I can’t make them any thicker.

Egg tempera is very easy to work with. For most purposes, you don’t need one of those glass grinders, which are called mullers. I use my muller much more for making and mixing oil paint than tempera. In the old days, when pigments mostly came in the form of rocks, it took a lot of work to grind them down to a reasonably even particle size, and mulling was the last step in that grinding process. Nowadays, the pigment powders you can buy are almost always ground evenly and to the right size for making into paint. There is a school of thought that says that pigments need to be mulled in water in order to make sure that every particle is surrounded by water, without any microscopic clumps of particles stuck together. In theory, that makes sense. In practice, you just can’t tell the difference between tempera made using mulled commercial pigment and tempera made using the same pigment, but without all that work. Mulling pigment is kind of a pain.

Here’s what I do: wearing a dust mask, I transfer powdered pigment into a small glass jar (baby food jars work great if you first boil them to kill any residual bacteria). I then add some distilled water (which you can get cheaply from your local pharmacy). I take off the dust mask, put the cap on the jar, and shake hard for 30 seconds or so. The pigment and water are now mixed thoroughly. How much pigment and water to use? It’s not that important. Most pigments will eventually settle in the water to the bottom of the jar anyway, leaving clear water at the top, so they create their own pigment to water ratio. For those that stay in solution with water, any reasonable mixture will do. I shoot for a consistency between cream and ketchup. Every couple of weeks I need to check my jars and add water to those that are starting to dry out.

The pigment dispersions sold by some companies work just fine also. For some pigments they make particular sense. Ultramarine, for example, settles to the bottom of a jar of water and forms a hard mass that you have to dig out with a palette knife. An ultramarine dispersion is easier to work with. Titanium white gets kind of chunky in water and requires a lot of mixing. But most pigments work just fine as pigment pastes.

To make tempera, separate an egg yolk. I like to mix in a very small amount of distilled water to thin it down and then shake it hard in a small jar. I mix the yolk and the pigment paste in a ratio of about 50/50 (some pigments like a little more yolk, some a little less). That’s it; you have paint. You can test it by painting it thinly onto a sheet of glass. Let it dry and then scrape it off with a razor blade. Does it peel off cleanly? You have good paint. Does it flake off or break apart? You have too much pigment or too much yolk. With just a little practice, it’s pretty easy to make it right every time.

i have just bought pigment powder and am preparing wood (with gesso) to make an icon type painting…can you give me any tips on mixing egg tempera…the type of oil etc.

Prepare pigments as follows: while wearing a dust mask, use a palette knife or spoon to transfer each pigment to a small glass jar (baby food jars work great if you first boil them for 20 minutes to remove bacteria). Add distilled water. Put the cap on the jar and shake. You now have a pigment paste. Take the mask off, since there isn’t any more pigment dust to worry about.

Separate an egg yolk into another jar. Add about a teaspoon of distilled water and mix. To make egg tempera paint, mix about equal amounts of the egg mixture with pigment paste.

This is classic egg tempera of the sort that is used to make ikons (I’m pretty sure about that, but I am no expert on ikon painting). You can add other substances to it (oils, resins, etc.), but I suggest you learn to paint with just yolk, water, and pigment before you try to experiment with more complex mixtures.

Have fun.

That’s one way to paint in tempera, and one that every tempera painter should probably familiarize themselves with.

But there are really only three constraints on tempera painting:

• You need to paint on a rigid support, preferrably on traditional gesso.
• You need to get the right ratio of pigment to egg yolk binder when painting (you can then thin it as much as you want with water).
• You can’t paint with thick blobs of impasto.

That’s it. You can use thick bristle brushes if you want. You can use a well-loaded brush, drybrush, or even tilt the panel horizontal and paint with loose washes. Wet paint can be blended. You can apply layer after layer of glazing. You can scrape the paint back, apply it with sponges, paint with your fingers, or rub partially dry paint to create textural effects.

Tempera is not fussy.

For the larger passages, however, I have found myself working with a pretty wet brush. After a few layers, the paint feels moist. I sometimes use a hair dryer (held at a considerable distance to avoid cooking the yolk binder) to dry the surface and allow my to apply another layer more quickly. I’m finding that insufficient. The surface of the paint stays moist and the dryer doesn’t affect it, as if the multiple layers of paint are keeping a certain amount of water locked in lower layers that won’t be affected by just blowing air on the surface. I need to stop painting now so that I don’t start digging up previous layers as I add more paint. It should be OK to paint on again in a day or two.

Huh. Never had that happen before. I’ve encountered this when applying multiple layers of tempera grassa (egg-oil emulsion) but never before with pure egg tempera.

You can strengthen a tempera painting, by the way, by sitting it in a sunny window for a few hours. The actinic light helps to cure the paint. You can also gently polish the hardened yolk surface with a piece of soft cotton, silk, or cheesecloth. This makes the dried layer smoother and more accepting of paint; it also helps even out any differences in sheen caused by varying yolk to pigment ratios.

Update

6 February 2007 (the following day): the paint has fully hardened and is ready to paint on again.

Here are two swatches of ultramarine blue. The one on the left is in egg tempera. The one on the right is Doak’s ultramarine blue medium oil paint. Both are mixed with titanium white at the bottom. It’s not as obvious in this photo as it is in real life that the tempera is lighter and higher in chroma. A number of pigments, especially earths, are brighter in tempera.

Go to a museum some time and look at some paintings from the Renaissance. Notice any absence of color? Dullness? Inability to obtain mixtures that convey a sense of reality? Muddiness? Poor color harmony? Unrealistic flesh tones? No? Many of those paintings were done with six or seven total pigments. Not pigments carefully selected to create an optimal palette from among hundreds of colors available in in an art store, but six or seven pigments selected from maybe ten or twelve that the artist could get. And yet they made some of the most gorgeous paintings ever created.

If you like the way paintings from before 1800 look, one option is to select a palette of colors that replicates those available then. So here is a simple palette that is similar to what was available in Western Europe before the new synthetic pigments began to be discovered in the late 1700’s.

White: lead white was about it. If you want to simulate the color and opacity (not the handling properties) of lead white, mix titanium white and zinc white at about 50/50, then add a tiny touch of yellow ochre.

Black: usually bone black (now called “ivory” black), lamp black, or vine black.

Red: genuine vermilion, which you can simulate with cadmium red light. Red lake, which you can simulate with rose madder or alizarin crimson. Minium (red lead) which you can simulate with cadmium orange mixed with cadmium red light.

Blue: mineral ultramarine, which you can simulate with modern synthetic ultramarine (if you want to simulate cheaper grades of this incredibly expensive pigment, add some white and black). Azurite, which you can simulate with cobalt blue. Indigo, which you can simulate with Prussian blue mixed 50/50 with black.

Yellow: lead tin yellow, which you can simulate with a 50/50 mix of cadmium yellow light and yellow ochre. Later on, Naples yellow gradually replaced lead tin yellow. It is similar, but more like 2 parts cadmium yellow light to 3 parts yellow ochre.

Green: greens were usually mixed from ultramarine or azurite and lead tin yellow or Naples yellow. They also had copper green (used only sometimes, since it was known to turn brown unless isolated between layers of varnish), which can be simulated with viridian.

Violet: was usually mixed with red lake and a blue.

Orange: was usually mixed with vermilion and lead tin yellow or Naples yellow.

Earths: a wide range of earths were available, depending on where the artist lived. These included equivalents to modern raw sienna, burnt sienna, raw umber, burnt umber, yellow ochre, red ochre, green earth, black earth, brown earth. They also sometimes used malachite, which you can simulate with 1 part viridian to 5 parts white.

There were a few others used from time to time, but these were the common ones. Most artists didn’t use all of these.

Try using this palette for a few paintings. You’ll get a much better sense of how “Old Masters” did their color mixing.