Egg Tempera Painting Technique: A Beginner’s Guide

A note before you start: this guide draws on the standard, widely cited references in the field (Cennini, Thompson, Doerner, Mayer, the Mayerne manuscript) as well as current information on materials. I can't read entire books cover-to-cover in a library - I work from my training knowledge of these texts and from web sources I can search and retrieve. Where a claim comes from something I searched just now, I've noted it. For anything you want word-for word, the bibliography at the end tells you exactly where to find it.

Egg Tempera Painting Technique: A Beginner’s Guide

Egg tempera is one of the oldest and most enduring painting techniques, valued for its luminosity, precision, and permanence. Traditionally applied on prepared wood panels, egg tempera requires careful surface preparation, finely ground pigments, and a disciplined, layered approach to painting.

This guide introduces the fundamentals of egg tempera painting technique and explains the best practices for working with egg tempera on wood panels, from preparation to finished surface.

What is Egg Tempera?

Egg tempera is paint made by grinding dry pigment into an emulsion of egg yolk (sometimes whole egg) and water. The egg acts as the binder - it dries by evaporation and by the slow oxidation/polymerization of the lipids and proteins in the yolk, forming a tough, insoluble film almost immediately. This is fundamentally different from oil paint, which dries slowly through oxidation of the oil alone, or watercolor, which uses gum arabic and stays re-wettable.

Because the paint dries the instant it hits the surface, tempera cannot be blended wet-into-wet the way oil can. It builds up instead through many thin, semi-transparent layers and fine hatched or cross-hatched strokes - a linear, patient, drawing-like way of painting.

History of Egg Tempera Painting

Ancient roots. Egg-based and other proteinaceous binders were used in the ancient Mediterranean world; some Fayum funerary portraits from Roman Egypt combine tempera with encaustic (wax) technique. Egg as a binder for panel and manuscript painting is documented from late antiquity onward.

Byzantine and medieval painting (5th–14th c.). Egg tempera became the standard medium for panel icons, illuminated manuscripts, and church decoration across the Byzantine world and medieval Europe. Its quick-drying, durable film suited devotional images meant to last.

The Italian golden age (12th–15th c.). Tempera reached its technical peak in Trecento and early Quattrocento Italy - Duccio, Giotto, Fra Angelico, Botticelli - painted on gessoed wood panels, often over gold leaf. This is the period documented in the era's own technical manual, Cennino Cennini's Il Libro dell'Arte (c. 1400), which describes gesso preparation, pigment grinding, verdaccio underpainting, and egg tempera application step by step.

Displacement by oil (late 15th–16th c.). As oil painting spread from the Netherlands into Italy, its ability to blend tones smoothly and glaze deeply made it the dominant medium for large-scale panel and canvas work. Tempera didn't disappear - it persisted for icons, small devotional panels, and manuscript work - but it stopped being the mainstream choice for ambitious painting.

The Mayerne manuscript (compiled 1620–1646 by Sir Théodore Turquet de Mayerne, a physician who interviewed painters including Rubens and van Dyck) documents this later period, when <cite index=16-1>de Mayerne became interested in how pigments were created and expanded his knowledge by interviewing over 50 artists regarding their techniques</cite> - mostly oil practice by then, but with pigment-preparation notes relevant to any medium.

19th–20th century revival. Tempera saw sporadic revivals: the Pre-Raphaelites experimented with it in England; in early-20th-century America, figures like Daniel V. Thompson (art historian and translator of Cennini) helped re-establish tempera as a serious studio medium; painters such as Andrew Wyeth, Robert Vickrey, and Paul Cadmus made it a vehicle for a precise, luminous realism that's still associated with American tempera painting today. It remains the standard medium for Eastern Orthodox icon painting to this day.

What Are the Best Techniques for Working With Egg Tempera on Wood Panels?

• Panel painting - the historical default: wood panel, sized, built up with many thin coats of gesso (glue + chalk/gypsum), sanded to an ivory-smooth surface, then painted.
• Icon painting - the living, continuous tradition in Orthodox Christianity, still using egg tempera on gessoed wood essentially unchanged in method.
• Manuscript illumination - egg or glair (egg white) binder for miniatures and decorated initials.
• Fine art painting - 20th/21st-century easel painting where artists want tempera's precision, matte luminosity, and permanence rather than oil's blending.
• Murals and decorative work - historically on dry plaster (a secco), as opposed to true fresco (buon fresco), which uses no binder at all.

Egg tempera is not well suited to thick impasto, broad atmospheric blending, or very large fast-turnaround canvases - its strengths are precision, detail, luminosity, and longevity (properly made tempera paintings from the 1300s survive in excellent condition).

Why Choose Egg Tempera - Characteristics and Advantages

• It is one of the most versatile and most durable methods of painting.
• Tempera is applied in thin layers; each layer dries rapidly and becomes water resistant, so it does not mix with the underlying layer. This creates an optical blending of colors that accounts for the glowing effect a tempera painting achieves.
• Very delicate and complex work can be achieved with egg tempera, since layers of paint are overlaid in hatching and cross-hatching.
• It takes its edge over watercolor because it can be applied in distinct layers and glazes with no mixing of adjoining layers, giving an effect that is more transparent than watercolor. Egg tempera also allows almost immediate overpainting, since the layer dries quickly.
• Unlike watercolor, mistakes can be corrected by gently wiping the area with a damp cloth and repainting it.
• Its quick drying time and translucent quality give it an edge over oil painting.
• Colors become richer and deeper as the painting cures with time.
• It is almost unaffected by humidity and temperature changes.
  

Traditional vs. Commercial Tempera Paints

Many painters prefer to make their own tempera, preparing it as required immediately before use. This removes the problem of storage and makes the artist familiar with the material, which is an important element of artistic progress.

Commercially produced temperas, sold in tubes etc., are mostly egg-oil emulsions based on 19th-century recipes. They tend to dry poorly compared to freshly made paint, and the range is limited and lacks glow; they can also be greasy and may darken with age because of their oil content.

Step-by-Step Egg Tempera Painting Technique

There isn't one single "recipe" - there are several traditional formulas, and different authors favor slightly different ratios. Below are the main approaches you'll find across the literature, along with the concrete hands-on process for the classic method.

Plain Egg-Yolk Tempera (the classic, "lean" tempera)

• Crack the egg and separate the yolk by passing it from hand to hand while letting the white fall away.
• Dry the yolk by rolling it gently on a piece of cloth, or passing it gently from hand to hand while drying each other.
• As the yolk dries, grasp it by the yolk sac, pierce the sac with a pin, and let the yolk flow down into a small glass jar; discard the jar.
• Traditionally, this pure yolk binder is diluted roughly 1:1 with distilled water (some painters use a bit less water, some a bit more, depending on how fluid they want the paint). Close the lid of the jar tightly.
• Mix a pigment paste - grind a small amount of pigment with distilled water into a smooth paste with a muller or palette knife. You can add one or two drops of oxgall to tame unruly pigments.
  
• Mix the pigment paste with diluted egg yolk in roughly equal parts, grinding well, adjusting until you get a workable, milk-to-cream consistency. Add one or two drops of water if needed to keep the pigment fluid.
  
• Make fresh paint in small batches each day - egg yolk emulsion doesn't keep for more than a day or two, even refrigerated, and traditional practice is to mix fresh paint daily.

This is the method described by Cennini, and it's the one most closely associated with the Italian panel tradition and modern American tempera painters like Thompson and Wyeth.

Whole-Egg Tempera

Uses the entire egg (yolk and white) beaten together with water. Slightly more brittle and faster-drying than yolk-only; historically more common for manuscript and secco wall work.

Tempera Grassa ("fat" or emulsified tempera)

A small amount of drying oil (linseed or walnut) and sometimes a little varnish is emulsified into the yolk-and-water mixture. This gives a paint that behaves a bit more like oil - slightly more blendable, glossier, more flexible - while still drying fast enough to work in layers.

This hybrid approach is documented in later historical sources (including material close to the period covered by the Mayerne manuscript) and was revived by 20th-century writers such as Jacques Maroger, who researched historical oil-tempera secret mediums.

Step-by-Step: From Panel to Finished Painting

• Preparing the surface - The traditional surface for egg tempera is gesso - animal glue mixed with chalk - applied on a wood panel. Cover a plywood panel with this mixture thickly, and smooth it with sandpaper once dried. The surface should be rigid, not flexible.
• Preparing the egg binder - Separate the yolk, dry it, pierce the sac, and dilute it roughly 1:1 with distilled water.
  
• Preparing the paint - Grind pigment into a paste with distilled water, then mix it with the egg binder in roughly equal parts.
• Drawing the sketch - Transfer or draw your design onto the prepared panel before any paint is applied.
• Start painting with verdaccio - Using the verdaccio technique, lay in a monochrome green-gray or brown-gray underlayer to establish the full value structure - lights, mid-tones, and shadows - before any color goes down.
• Underpainting with De Mairo Natural Ultramarine - It is extremely easy to make egg tempera with De Mairo Lapis Lazuli pigment; it is finely ground without any grit, and unlike other pigments, extra grinding is not needed - only thorough mixing for a few minutes. You can mix this pigment directly with egg yolk, or, if required, add a few drops of distilled water to the yolk while working it into a paint. Roughly 1 part pigment to 1 part binder is mixed thoroughly to make a soft, semi-fluid paste. Add a little more pigment if the paint is too runny, or more yolk if the paint seems dry.
  
• Main painting, first and second stage - Build color over the verdaccio and underpainting using cross-hatching and fine hatched strokes, layering
  thin, semi-transparent glazes so each layer dries before the next goes on. Because tempera can't be blended wet-into-wet, form is modeled entirely through these layered strokes rather than by blending - work light to dark or dark to light, always in thin layers.
  
• Finishing - Use scumbling to cool, warm, or soften passages without fully
  obscuring what's beneath, and, if desired, work in a little egg-oil emulsion (tempera grassa) for final glazes or richer darks. If a color seems dull or "sinks in" as it dries, that's normal for tempera's matte finish - traditional panels were sometimes given a final varnish once fully cured (weeks to months later) to unify gloss and saturate the darks.

Of course, you can apply and vary the tempera painting method according to your own desire and artistic aims, but you should try one painting in the unsurpassed classical method to appreciate its subtle beauty.

General Working Notes

• Grind pigments individually with distilled water first; add the egg medium only when you're ready to paint, since the emulsion doesn't store.
• A drop of vinegar or a clove is sometimes added to the yolk as an old-fashioned preservative for the day's working batch.
• Work on an absorbent, rigid ground (traditional chalk-glue gesso on wood, or a modern acrylic-gesso-on-panel substitute) - tempera on flexible canvas or non-absorbent grounds is prone to cracking.
• Apply in thin, semi-transparent layers with a fine, soft brush; let each layer dry (minutes, not hours) before the next.
• Make paint fresh, in small amounts, each session - pre-mixed tempera doesn't keep.
• Keep pigment-to-binder ratios roughly equal by volume as a starting point, then adjust: more pigment if the paint is too thin/runny, more egg medium if it's too dry or won't flow.
• Work light to dark or dark to light in thin layers - never try to lay tempera on thick; it will crack and flake.
• Use a rigid, absorbent support (true gesso panel is still the gold standard); avoid flexible canvas.
• Keep brushes small, soft (sable or synthetic sable), and well-loaded but not dripping - tempera is a controlled, deliberate medium, not a loose, gestural one.
• Store surplus dry pigment indefinitely; store mixed paint not at all.
• If a color seems dull or "sinks in" as it dries, that's normal for tempera's matte finish - traditional panels were sometimes given a final varnish once fully cured (weeks to months later) to unify gloss and saturate the darks.

Preparing Egg Tempera Paint With Natural Ultramarine (Lapis Lazuli)

Lapis lazuli is the semiprecious stone (mined historically at Sar-e-Sang, Badakhshan, in modern Afghanistan) from which the mineral lazurite is refined to produce genuine ultramarine blue - historically among the most expensive pigments in existence, prized well beyond gold by weight in the medieval and Renaissance periods.

Cennini himself called it, in his own words on the subject, essentially without rival among colors. Extraction is laborious: the raw stone must be crushed and the blue lazurite separated from the calcite and pyrite that dilute and dull it, traditionally by a wax-resin kneading process (a version of which is recorded in de Mayerne's notebook, where he wrote down a recipe he obtained from a painter named Nicholas L'Angevin and tested himself).

Because the refining is so labor-intensive, historical ultramarine was reserved for the most important passages of a painting - the Virgin's robe, for instance - and painters often bought it pre-ground from specialist colormen rather than grinding the stone themselves.

Genuine Lapis Lazuli pigment varies in shade from a pale, grayish "ultramarine ash" (the lower grades, richer in calcite) to a deep, saturated violet-blue (the finest, most lazurite-rich grade) - this grading by shade and purity is an old workshop practice, not a modern invention.

Historically, workshops bought their ultramarine pre-ground from specialist colormen precisely because the refining process was so demanding; hand-grinding raw lapis to workshop quality was a skill in its own right.

Famous Artists and Paintings That Used Lapis Lazuli in Egg Tempera

Because natural ultramarine was so costly, its use in a panel painting was often a direct sign of the patron's wealth and the subject's importance. Notable examples in egg tempera on panel include:

• Duccio di Buoninsegna, Maestà (1308–1311, Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, Siena) - one of the most celebrated uses of ultramarine in the whole Sienese school, especially in the Virgin's robe.
• Simone Martini and Lippo Memmi, Annunciation (1333, Uffizi, Florence) - its brilliant gold ground and saturated ultramarine drapery are a textbook example of the pigment's role in devotional imagery.
• Giotto di Bondone, Ognissanti Madonna (c. 1310, Uffizi, Florence) - egg tempera on panel, with ultramarine reserved for the Virgin's mantle.
• Cimabue, Santa Trinita Maestà (c. 1280–1290, Uffizi, Florence) - an earlier Trecento example of the same convention.
• Fra Angelico - Various panel works including the San Marco Altarpiece and Annunciation (Museo del Prado, Madrid) - Fra Angelico's blues are so associated with the pigment that "Fra Angelico Blue" is used today as an informal name for high-grade natural ultramarine.
• Sassetta - The Journey of the Magi and other panels (early-to-mid 15th century) - Sienese tempera work continuing the same ultramarine tradition into the Quattrocento.

Note that Giotto's large fresco cycles, such as the Scrovegni Chapel, used ultramarine too, but applied a secco (over dry plaster, sometimes with an egg or glue binder) rather than in true buon fresco, because natural ultramarine reacts badly with wet lime plaster - another reason the pigment is so closely tied to the tempera and secco traditions specifically, rather than to fresco proper.

Why Lapis Lazuli Mattered in Iconography and Traditional Art?

In Byzantine and later Western Christian art, blue pigment carried heavy symbolic weight, and ultramarine - the purest, most expensive blue available - became strongly associated with the Virgin Mary's mantle, and by extension with holiness, heaven, and truth.

Because raw lapis lazuli was rarer and costlier than gold by weight in the medieval period, commissioning a painting with generous ultramarine was itself an act of devotion and a display of the patron's means - contracts from the period sometimes specify exactly how much ultramarine the painter was required to use.

This convention carried directly into Orthodox icon painting, where natural ultramarine (or its modern equivalents) is still prized for robes of Christ and the Mother of God, continuing a color language that is centuries old and essentially unbroken.

Famous Egg Tempura Paint Techniques

• Verdaccio underpainting - A green-gray or brown-gray monochrome underlayer used to establish the full value structure (lights, mid-tones, shadows) of flesh and drapery before color is applied on top - central to the Cennini method and still taught today.
• Cross-hatching/hatching - Because tempera can't be blended wet, modeling of form is built with fine parallel or crosshatched strokes of slightly different value and hue, layered until the transition reads as smooth from a normal viewing distance - the defining "look" of tempera brushwork.
• Glazing in thin veils - Successive transparent layers of color, each drying almost instantly, build up depth and luminosity - light passes through the layers and reflects off the white gesso ground, giving tempera its characteristic glow.
• Scumbling -  A thin, semi-opaque layer dragged over a dry underlayer to cool, warm, or soften it slightly, without fully obscuring what's beneath.
• Egg-oil emulsion (tempera grassa) passages - Some painters mix in a little oil medium for final glazes or richer darks, combining tempera's precision with oil's depth.

Bibliography - Standard Reference Books on Tempera and Historical Painting Technique

 

For anything you want to quote directly, I'd go to these primary editions rather than blog or marketing summaries - Cennini and Thompson in particular are short, plainly written, and easy to work through directly.

Trying the Tradition Today

One of the biggest hurdles that stops artists from experimenting with historical mediums is the labor of grinding raw pigment by hand - it's slow, technique-dependent work, and it puts a lot of people off before they ever mix their first batch of paint.

Our De Mairo lapis lazuli pigments are refined fine enough that this step is largely removed: they're ready to use, needing only proper mixing with your chosen binder - egg yolk for tempera, gum arabic for watercolor, oil for oil paint - to give you workable, professional-grade color.

For anyone curious about egg tempera but hesitant to take on hand-grinding as a first step, our pigments are a practical way to get a genuine natural ultramarine experience without that barrier.