Tempera: Egg-Based Paint, the Pre-Oil Standard

Look closely at a 15th-century Italian panel painting and the surface has a quality that oil paintings never quite match. The colors are clear and flat, with a matte finish that seems to glow rather than shine. Each brushstroke is distinct, because the paint dried so fast that the painter could not blend on the surface. The lines are crisp, the detail is extraordinary, and the gold leaf backgrounds reflect light with a hardness that makes the figures in front of them look like they are floating in a different space. This is egg tempera, the medium that dominated European panel painting for over 300 years before oil paint replaced it.

Tempera is paint made by mixing pigment with a water-soluble binder, most commonly egg yolk. The egg yolk emulsion, which contains proteins, lipids, and water, forms a durable film when it dries through protein coagulation and lipid oxidation. The paint dries rapidly, within minutes, to a hard, matte surface that cannot be reactivated with water once dry. Egg tempera was the primary painting medium in Europe from the early medieval period through the 15th century, when oil paint gradually replaced it. The word "tempera" comes from the Latin "temperare," meaning to mix or blend in proper proportion.

This entry covers how egg tempera works, its history from Byzantine icons to contemporary revival, the artists who defined it, and why it fell out of use without ever fully disappearing.

What Is Tempera and How Does It Work?

Egg tempera is made by mixing powdered pigment with egg yolk and a small amount of water. The yolk is the binder. It contains about 50% water, 30% lipids, and 16% protein, primarily lipovitellin and phosvitin. When the paint is applied, the water evaporates and the proteins coagulate, forming a hard, insoluble film. The lipids in the yolk contribute to the film's flexibility and water resistance. The result is a paint layer that is chemically stable, resistant to moisture, and capable of surviving for centuries without the yellowing or cracking that affects oil paint.

The drying time is the most important practical characteristic of egg tempera. The paint becomes touch-dry within minutes. This means the painter cannot blend on the canvas the way an oil painter can. Instead, tempera painters build up tones through many thin, parallel strokes, a technique called "hatching." The gradual accumulation of cross-hatched strokes creates the appearance of smooth tonal transitions, but the transitions are an optical effect, not a physical blend. Up close, the surface reveals thousands of distinct brush marks.

The surface is matte. Egg tempera does not form the glossy, resinous film of oil paint. This matte quality means that tempera paintings photograph differently than oil paintings, and they look different under museum lighting. The colors appear flat and even, without the depth that oil glazes create. This flatness was not seen as a limitation by the painters who used tempera. It was the desired effect, part of the aesthetic of clarity and precision that defined Italian Renaissance panel painting.

Recent research has expanded our understanding of tempera's mechanical properties. A 2024 study in npj Heritage Science measured the modulus of elasticity, strain at break, water vapor sorption, and hygroscopic expansion of egg tempera paints as a function of relative humidity. The study found that egg tempera paints are more brittle than distemper (animal glue) paints, gessoes, and aged oil paints, and that they undergo a transition from brittle to ductile states as humidity increases. This brittleness has direct implications for conservation, as tempera paintings on panel are vulnerable to cracking when the wood support expands and contracts with humidity changes. Read the study at Nature.

A 2025 study in npj Heritage Science developed a new analytical methodology for profiling phosphorylated proteins in tempera binders, applying it to a 16th-century painting and a 13th-century polychrome crucifix. The research revealed considerable variability in the protein modifications of historical samples, deepening our molecular understanding of how tempera paint films form and age. Read the study at Nature.

History and Origins

Egg tempera is ancient. The earliest known egg tempera paintings date from the 1st to 3rd centuries CE, including the Fayum mummy portraits from Roman Egypt. These portraits, painted on wooden panels attached to mummified bodies, demonstrate the medium's durability. Many Fayum portraits survive with their colors intact after 2,000 years, a level of preservation that oil paintings from the 19th century do not always achieve.

In the Byzantine tradition, egg tempera was the standard medium for panel icons from the 6th century onward. The icons of Mount Athos, Sinai, and the Byzantine churches of Constantinople were all painted in egg tempera on prepared wood panels. The medium's fast drying and matte finish suited the stylized, linear quality of Byzantine icon painting, where clarity and symbolic precision mattered more than naturalistic blending.

In Western Europe, egg tempera became the dominant panel painting medium during the 13th and 14th centuries, particularly in Italy. Cennino Cennini's Il Libro dell'Arte (c. 1390-1410) is the most detailed surviving treatise on tempera technique, describing every step from preparing the gesso ground to mixing the paint to applying gold leaf. Cennini's treatise is the primary source for our understanding of how tempera was practiced in the late medieval and early Renaissance period.

The transition from tempera to oil was gradual. In 15th-century Italy, painters experimented with mixed media, combining egg tempera with oil to create "tempera grassa," a hybrid that dried faster than pure oil but slowly enough to permit some blending. A 2023 study in ACS Applied Polymer Materials examined the rheological properties of tempera and tempera grassa paints, showing how the addition of oil to egg yolk changes the paint's working properties and drying behavior. A 2024 dissertation from the University of Delaware by Kristin deGhetaldi traces the early development of oil painting during the Quattrocento, documenting how painters gradually shifted from tempera to oil over the course of the 15th century. Read the dissertation at UDSpace.

By the 16th century, oil had largely replaced tempera in Italy, but tempera never died out completely. Orthodox icon painting continued to use egg tempera without interruption. In the 19th and 20th centuries, tempera experienced a revival among painters who wanted its matte finish, fast drying, and archival stability.

Key Artists and Masterworks

Fra Angelico (c. 1395-1455)

Fra Angelico's The Annunciation (c. 1438-1445, Museo di San Marco, Florence) is a high point of egg tempera painting. The clarity of the colors, the precision of the architectural perspective, and the delicate gold halos all depend on tempera's specific properties. The paint surface is matte and even, with no glossy reflections to distract from the image.

Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510)

Botticelli's The Birth of Venus (c. 1485, Uffizi, Florence) is the most famous tempera painting in the world. The smooth, matte surface, the delicate modeling of Venus's skin, and the flat, decorative quality of the foliage all come from tempera's characteristics. Botticelli built up the flesh tones through thousands of fine hatching strokes, creating a luminosity that is different from oil's glaze-based depth. A 2022 study in Scientific Reports used palaeoproteomics to identify proteinaceous binders in a painting from Botticelli's workshop, confirming the use of egg-based tempera. Read the study at Nature.

Duccio di Buoninsegna (c. 1255-1319)

Duccio's Maesta (1308-1311, Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, Siena) is the great Sienese tempera altarpiece. The panel, which stood on the high altar of Siena Cathedral, demonstrates the medium's capacity for rich, flat color and precise detail at a monumental scale. The gold ground, applied as gold leaf over bole, creates a surface that reflects light differently from any painted background.

Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009)

Wyeth was the most prominent 20th-century reviver of egg tempera. His Christina's World (1948, Museum of Modern Art, New York) is painted in tempera, and the medium's matte finish and fine detail suit the painting's austere, precise realism. Wyeth chose tempera specifically for its archival stability and its capacity for the fine, controlled detail that his work demanded. He worked on prepared panels, building up tones through the same hatching technique that 15th-century Italian painters used.

Edvard Munch (1863-1944)

Munch experimented with egg tempera alongside oil and other media. His The Scream (1893, National Gallery of Norway, Oslo) uses tempera and pastel on cardboard, and the medium's matte, flat quality contributes to the painting's raw, unmediated appearance. Munch's interest in tempera was part of his broader experimentation with unconventional materials.

Tempera vs. Oil: Why the Shift Happened

Oil paint replaced tempera not because oil was objectively better but because oil offered properties that suited the changing needs of Renaissance painters. Oil's slow drying allowed for blending and sfumato, the soft transitions that Leonardo da Vinci used in the Mona Lisa. Oil's transparency enabled glazing, which created optical depth. Oil could be applied thickly for impasto or thinly for detail. Tempera, with its fast drying and matte finish, could not match oil's range of surface effects.

But tempera has properties that oil lacks. Tempera colors do not yellow over time. Tempera surfaces do not crack in the same way oil does. Tempera paintings from the 14th century often look fresher than oil paintings from the 19th century. The medium's archival stability is extraordinary. A 2024 study in Progress in Organic Coatings characterized the viscoelastic properties of ochre-based egg tempera paints, finding significant brittleness but also strong correlation between liquid and solid-state behavior, which helps conservators predict how tempera paintings will respond to environmental stress. Read the study at ScienceDirect.

See Tempera in Person

Egg tempera paintings are best seen in the museums and churches where they were originally displayed. The Uffizi in Florence holds Botticelli's The Birth of Venus and Primavera. The Museo di San Marco in Florence has Fra Angelico's frescoes and panel paintings in their original monastic setting. The National Gallery in London has a strong collection of early Italian tempera panels, including works by Duccio and Sassetta.

When you look at these paintings, notice the surface. The matte finish, the crisp lines, the flat gold grounds, and the fine hatching that builds up form through accumulated strokes rather than blended transitions. This is what painting looked like before oil changed the rules. For more on the medium that replaced tempera, read our entry on oil painting, or explore our entries on gouache and fresco to see other pre-oil and water-based mediums.