Studio: international art (84.1922)

THE PRACTICE OF TEMPERA PAINTING

"BEAUTY AND THE BEAST." TEMPERA
PAINTING BY JOHN D. BATTEN

(By permission of the Publishers, The
Autotype Fine Art Co., London)

t ,«make them stick on. Fresco painting w-«
called painting without tempera; ever"
other kind of painting was called painting in
tempera, at that time, that is to say, 1400.

Cennino speaks of colours tempered
with oil, tempered with yolk or white of
egg, tempered with size, tempered with
fish glue, tempered with gum, and in each
case the oil, the egg, the size, the gum is
called its tempera. You will note that
these temperas, these substances, added to
enable the pigment to hold on to the wall,
the panel, the canvas, the parchment, the
paper, are all organic substances. Fresco
was, until the recent invention of water-
glass painting, the only manner of painting
that did not rely for the adhesion of its
pigments on some organic substance, a

You will now understand why I said

that the distinction between painting in
fresco and painting in secco was the most
fundamental difference that could be
marked between methods of painting.
But if there is no adhesive added to the
colours to make them hold on, why do
they hold on in fresco i That they hold
on with remarkable tenacity is very
evident, and I suppose more evident to
you here in Oxford than to others, for
within this building you have specimens
of pure fresco painting done at Knossos
on a purer lime plaster than has ever been
employed since, and this painting has held
for, I suppose, three or four thousand
years.* True it has been buried, but even

* The actual specimens of Miuoan fresco exhibited
at the Ashmolean Museum are fewer and smaller
than I had supposed. I notice that the larger
examples are described as "facsimile."—J.D. B. a

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