If you’ve left plates coated with egg for a while, you’ll know how difficult its residue can be to remove. No one knows when people first took advantage of this in paints, but earliest surviving examples date from late classical times. By the Renaissance, egg yolk was popular as a binder in artists’ paints, and the technique of egg tempera was used to create many of the masterpieces of the day.

Pure egg tempera technique uses the proteins, fats and other constituents of the yolk of fresh hens’ eggs as its binder; being water-based, water is its diluent. Applied thinly to an absorbent ground such as powdered chalk in a gesso, this quickly sets to form a hard if not brittle paint layer which, unlike glue tempera, can’t readily be removed by water.

Because egg tempera forms such a hard paint layer but is applied thinly, it’s prone to cracking unless the support is rigid and doesn’t change dimensions over time. Early egg tempera paintings were almost exclusively made on wood, but more recently stretched canvas has been used instead. That can lead to cracks and eventual mechanical failure of the paint layer. Egg tempera on wood panel was the favoured combination for easel paintings during the early Renaissance, particularly in Italy.

The finest paintings in egg tempera use only fresh eggs; as eggs age, particularly when they’re not refrigerated, separating the yolk becomes more difficult, and the resulting paint layer doesn’t appear as strong.

Since the nineteenth century, some paint manufacturers such as Sennelier have offered tubed paints with egg as their main binder, but with the addition of some drying oil to form an egg-oil emulsion. These have some of the properties of pure egg tempera, but are more versatile in their handling, and can be used like gouache and even, to a degree, like oil paints. These appear to have been derived from recipes recorded during the Renaissance.

Earliest European examples of egg tempera, such as Margarito d’Arezzo’s The Virgin and Child Enthroned, with Scenes of the Nativity and the Lives of the Saints from the middle of the thirteenth century, often incorporate extensive gilding and today might appear ‘primitive’.

Even the earliest paintings in egg tempera can be remarkably well preserved, such as Duccio’s Healing of the Man born Blind from the early fourteenth century. Although it only forms a thin paint layer, egg yolk is sufficient to preserve high levels of chroma in the pigments.

As the modelling of flesh and clothing became more realistic, egg tempera proved more than sufficient for the task.

One of the finest early works painted entirely in egg tempera is the anonymous Wilton Diptych in London’s National Gallery. Thought to have been made in France at the end of the fourteenth century, its exquisite detail would have been painted in multiple thin layers using fine brushes, much like miniatures painted on vellum.

But it was in Italy that painting in egg tempera reached its apogee, with masters like Masaccio, in his Santa Maria Maggiore Altarpiece from about 1428-29 (above) and Piero della Francesca’s Baptism of Christ (below) of a decade later.

During the fifteenth century, egg tempera was progressively replaced by oils in Italy, as it had been earlier in the Northern Renaissance.

Uccello’s large panel of the Battle of San Romano incorporated some drying oils, including walnut and linseed, although it was still fundamentally painted in egg tempera.

By the end of the fifteenth century, many studios had changed to oils. Among the last large egg tempera paintings are Botticelli’s Primavera (above) and The Birth of Venus (below), from the 1480s. The craft labour involved in producing these large works must have been enormous. Although Primavera was painted on a panel, Venus is on canvas, making it more manageable given its size of nearly 2 x 3 metres (79 x 118 inches).

In the closing years of the fifteenth century, Michelangelo kept to the hallowed tradition of egg tempera on wood in this unfinished painting of the Virgin and Child known now as The Manchester Madonna. This shows how he painstakingly completed each of the figures before moving onto the next, and the characteristic green earth ground.

By this time, the only common use for egg tempera was in the underpainting before applying oils on top. This remains a controversial practice: performed on top of gesso ground it can be successful, but increasingly studios transferred to oils. Egg tempera didn’t completely disappear, though. With so many fine examples of how good its paintings both look and age, there were always some artists who have chosen it over oils.

Some nineteenth century movements that aimed to return to the more wonderful art of the past experimented again with egg tempera. In the late 1870s, John Roddam Spencer Stanhope started to use the medium, and made one of his finest works, Love and the Maiden (1877), using it.

A later exponent who was rigorous in his technique was Adrian Stokes, who used it to great effect in this landscape of Autumn in the Mountains in 1903.

But for my taste, the greatest painter in egg tempera since the Renaissance has to be one of the major artists of the twentieth century: Andrew Wyeth (1917–2009). As his works remain in copyright, I recommend that you browse his official site, where you can see just how effective egg tempera can be in the hands of a great master. It may not be as popular as in the past, but egg tempera still has a great deal to offer.

Few small pieces of cloth have such a broad range of associations, from the blindfold used in teasing games, to that covering the eyes of someone about to be shot. In paintings a blindfold is also the clearest visual statement that its wearer can’t see.

From classical civilisations onwards, it has been widely held that love is blind, and accordingly depictions of Cupid often show him wearing a blindfold.

Piero della Francesca’s fresco showing Cupid Blindfolded (1452-66) illustrates both the ancient saying and the Roman concept of an infant archer with spectacular wings.

This is maintained by Botticelli in the Cupid shown at the top of his Primavera (Spring) (c 1482).

The controversial Félicien Rops transferred this into a contrasting image.

Pornocrates, or Woman with a Pig from 1878 is his best-known work, showing a nearly-naked woman being led by a pig tethered on a lead like a dog. She wears a blindfold, and an exuberant black hat, suggesting she is a courtesan or prostitute. In the air are three winged amorini, and below is a frieze containing allegories of sculpture, music, poetry and painting.

The other classical figure likely to be blindfolded is the personification of Fortune.

Giovanni Bellini’s Allegory of Winged Fortune (1490) may look weird, but features the following symbols:

• the blindfold represents Fortune’s salient characteristic, her blindness in dispensing good fortune and misfortune;
• ill fate is normally associated with a peacock tail, wings, and lion’s paws;
• the two pitchers represent the dispensation of good and bad fortune;
• abundant and long hair at the front of the head, and little at the back, symbolises Kairos, the moment of opportunity, which can be seized by the hair when approaching, but once passed cannot.

In history paintings, a blindfold is almost universally the sign of seriously bad fortune.

Paul Delaroche’s convincing painting of The Execution of Lady Jane Grey (1833) shows the fate of a contender for the crown of England following the early death of King Edward VI at the age of just 15 in 1553. As he had no natural successor, he had drawn up a plan for a cousin, Lady Jane Grey, to become Queen. Her rule started on 10 July 1553, but King Edward’s half sister Mary deposed her on 19 July. She was committed to the Tower of London, convicted of high treason in November 1553, and executed on Tower Green by beheading on 12 February 1554 at the age of just 16 (or 17).

Lady Jane Grey and the Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir John Bridges, take the centre of the canvas. She is blindfolded, the rest of her face almost expressionless. As she can no longer see, the Lieutenant is guiding her towards the executioner’s block, in front of her. Her arms are outstretched, hands with fingers spread in their quest for the block. Under the block, straw has been placed to take up her blood.

At the right, the executioner stands high and coldly detached, his left hand holding the haft of the axe which he will shortly use to kill the young woman. Coils of rope hang from his waist, ready to tie his victim down if necessary. At the left, two of Lady Jane Grey’s attendants or family are resigned in their grief. Lady Jane Grey wears a silver-white gown which dominates the entire painting, forcing everything and everyone else back into sombre mid tones and darker.

Although Delaroche made one major alteration to history, as she was actually executed in the small court-like space within the Tower known as Tower Green, he otherwise appears to have been faithful.

Antonio Gisbert’s huge painting of The Execution by Firing Squad of Torrijos and his Companions on the Beach at Málaga (1888) shows a terrible scene: the summary execution of nearly fifty people on 11 December 1831.

General José María de Torrijos y Uriarte was highly successful in his military career, and during liberal government in 1820-23 was Captain General of Valencia, and Minister for War. When that regime came to an end in 1823, General Torrijos first fled to France, then to England, where he lived in London, being assisted by the Duke of Wellington, then Prime Minister.

From 1827, the liberal Spanish exiles organised themselves for a popular uprising in Spain, and in 1831, Torrijos and his followers travelled to Gibraltar in readiness. They supported several attempts at insurrection in early 1831, each of which was brutally suppressed by the absolutist government under Ferdinand VII. The Governor of Málaga then tricked General Torrijos into believing that he was a supporter of the planned insurrection. On the morning of 2 December, General Torrijos and fifty-nine others landed at Málaga after a surprise attack by the ship Neptune. They intended to encourage a liberal uprising, and had brought a printed manifesto and several proclamations which they intended to promulgate.

They were eventually ambushed after several days of walking, on 4 December, and surrendered, hoping that the situation in Málaga had improved. They underwent no trial, but at 1130 on Sunday 11 December 1831, all 49 who had been captured were shot dead by a firing squad on the beach.

Our sense of sight is celebrated in a peculiar, ancient, and widespread game played by children and adults alike: blind man’s buff (or bluff). This involves putting a blindfold on the ‘victim’, who is then required to ‘tag’ one of the sighted players. It was recorded in ancient Greece, and more recently is known from much of Asia, including Japan, throughout Europe, and the Americas.

The game also rejoices under many fascinating names: in ancient Greece it was known as copper mosquito, in Bangladesh as blind fly, in Germany as blind cow, and in France as Colin-Maillard, after a tenth century warrior.

Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s Blind-Man’s Buff (1750-52) shows a red-faced young woman wearing the blindfold, being teased by her young man, and a child using a simple fishing rod. Her torso is tightly constricted by a tubular corset which gives her what appears to be an anatomically impossible figure, and if she’s not very careful, she will fall down the stone steps in front of her.

Francisco Goya shows a more usual form of Blind Man’s Buff (1788), in which the sighted players hold hands and form a ring around the blindfolded ‘victim’. Although this should provide them with more safety, this group has chosen to play on the bank of a river.

Konstantin Makovsky’s Игра в жмурки (Blind Man’s Buff) (c 1895) shows another variant being played indoors.

As we all should really be on holiday, I’m taking a long weekend to look at the stories of three green pigments, starting today with the oldest and most elusive of them, the mineral malachite.

Because green is a secondary colour, it might seem better mixed from blue and yellow, as it has been in various recipes such as Prussian green. But the painter always prefers using single pigments for the purity of their chroma, and the fact that the more pigments that get mixed, the closer the colour comes to muddy grey.

Given the shortage of lightfast bright greens, it’s surprising how little-used malachite green is in European painting, despite its rich colour. For a while it rejoiced quietly under traditional names including chrysocolla, green verditer, and even green bice, but it only ever became popular in Japan and China.

As a natural mineral, malachite is not uncommon, and a reliable source of pure pigment, which is chemically basic carbonate of copper. Malachite green was known to the ancient Egyptians, who appear to have used it as eye-paint. Found abundantly in Japanese and Chinese paintings from the seventh century onwards, it wasn’t used much in Europe until the Renaissance. After that, it almost died out in Europe until the nineteenth century, when it enjoyed a brief revival.

Two versions of the painting by Watanabe Kazan 渡辺崋山 of Sato Issai 佐藤一斎（五十歳）像 show malachite green at its finest.

This version from 1824, now in the Freer in Washington, is known to use malachite green with a slightly blue shade and deep in colour.

This smaller and earlier version from 1821, now in Tokyo, is a lighter, more yellow shade. I’m not aware of its pigment having been analysed, but I’d be surprised if it was straight malachite green.

The biggest problem with its adoption in Europe was the popularity there of oil paint. The pigment worked well where it could be ground quite coarsely and used in water-based media like fresco and egg tempera, but the finer you grind it, the paler it becomes. Oil painters like smooth buttery paints with fine pigment particles, which sadly didn’t work for malachite green.

The rich, almost emerald green robes of Spinello Aretino’s Virgin Enthroned with Angels from about 1380 contain malachite green, here in tempera medium.

Among its earliest appearances in oil paint is this spectacular centre panel of the van Eyck brothers’ Ghent Altarpiece, famous in its own right as the Adoration of the Lamb (c 1425-1432).

Continuing use of egg tempera in the Southern Renaissance helped it survive. Piero della Francesca’s famous The Baptism of Christ (after 1437), made in egg tempera on poplar wood, relies on the pigment for its greens. Microscopic examination of the paint layer here shows coarse mineral particles typical of natural malachite.

In Francesco del Cossa’s Saint Vincent Ferrer from about 1473-75, it has been identified in the dark green grass at the foot of the painting. This too was made using egg tempera.

However, microscopy of this paint layer shows that these pigment particles don’t seem to have been fractured as if they have been ground, but are globular, as occurs when the malachite green has been made by a process of precipitation. Such artificial malachite green didn’t appear in European paintings until after about 1430, just in time for Francesco del Cossa.

Although he painted in oils, Tintoretto was an enthusiastic user of malachite green. To obtain the range of greens seen in the rich and varied colours of vegetation in his Saint George and the Dragon from about 1555, he used this pigment with copper resinate glazes, a technique found in other paintings of the period.

Tintoretto’s vast oil painting of The Last Judgment (1560-62) in the Chiesa della Madonna dell’Orto, Venice, has been found to contain malachite green, I suspect in the band of green depicting the Flood just below the centre. The detail below makes this a bit clearer.

When painting the frescoes formerly in the Villa Aldobrandini between 1616-18, Domenichino and his assistants relied heavily on malachite green. It has been formally identified in this section, showing Apollo pursuing Daphne, where it’s the mainstay colour remaining, and is suspected in most of the others.

Although only classed as moderately permanent, these and other examples of very old frescoes show how well malachite green has retained its colour after four centuries or more. But with the rise of oil painting in European art, it fell from favour.

One of those who participated in its revival in the nineteenth century was Pierre-Auguste Renoir, whose painting of Chrysanthemums from 1881-82 shows how it could still be used in oil paint. But by then there was a much wider choice of more modern green pigments; the revival was short-lived, and malachite green has hardly been used since.

Reference

Rutherford J Gettens and Elisabeth West Fitzhugh (1993) Artists’ Pigments, vol 2, edited by Ashok Roy, Archetype. ISBN 978 1 904982 75 3.