Durability of Egg Tempera Paintings
Tuesday, January 12th, 2010Egg tempera was a primary method of painting until it was superseded, in the 1500s, by oil painting. Egg tempera paintings are extremely durable, and don’t darken with age as oil paintings do. Evidence of egg tempera’s long-term durability can be seen in ancient paintings we still have today. It was used by ancient Egyptians on sarcophagi and portraits; it was used by the ancient Greeks; all the surviving panel paintings by Michelangelo were painted with egg tempera.
DweezelJazz Art Egg Tempera Gallery Page 1
A few days before Christmas I experimented with my egg tempera paintings to see how durable the method is when painted on paper, a process I’ve described in detail in How To Paint With Egg Tempera. I tested around 7-10 paintings, ranging in creation from several years to 6 months ago.
I found that for any painting over a year old it was possible, without damaging the painting, to:
- rub a dry cloth across the painting
- wipe the painting with a very heavily, dripping wet cloth
I wouldn’t recommend rubbing hard or wiping the painting with a very wet cloth in general, but it was a great way to find out if the paintings were durable, even if it was a somewhat risky test!
I also pushed my nail on the surface of the paintings and dragged it a centimeter or so, and to my amazement, no paint came off. There was a small indentation on the painting where the nail had pressed hard into the surface, but it was otherwise untouched and the image was unblemished.
I discovered that it isn’t possible to do any of these things, without damaging it, to a painting that is less than six months old. Within six months of completion, it’s very easy to scratch or remove paint from the surface by rubbing it hard.
Luckily, it’s easy enough to fix scratches or blemishes if an accident occurs, by applying more paint, so that no damage or touch up is visible.
This turned out to be a very good thing one time when Jazzy, our african grey, decided she wanted to take a visit to the Maldives beach and finally (after many foiled attempts) managed to land on the painting when I wasn’t looking.
Jasmine took her job seriously as DweezelJazz Art mascot and she evaluated each painting. She clearly had her favorites, because she would sometimes become obsessed with getting close to some of the paintings in particular, the Maldives beach being one of them! She skidded across the surface and created quite a bit of damage only a week after I had finished the painting. Fortunately, I was easily able to fix it and there are no traces of birdie tracks in the sand.
The length of time it takes for an egg tempera painting to become durable will vary depending on environmental conditions. The best approach is to allow a year for the painting to ‘cure’ and set into the durable, long-lived, bright images that egg tempera paintings are renowned for.
