Choosing between Tempera, Fresco, and Oils - Essay Example

Tempera in the High Renaissance meant to paint that was created by mixing pigment with egg yolk to create a thick-colored liquid that could then be applied with brushes to any surface. The egg yolk was the binding agent and artists would often also mix in other liquids such as honey, water, or milk to vary the consistency or increase opacity. One of the main properties of this type of paint is that it dries quickly, which is beneficial when one wishes to paint over specific areas but can be problematic when one is trying to blend shades on the canvas. This type of paint can’t be applied in heavy layers, though, and is generally not as bright or saturated as other forms of paint. What perhaps wasn’t known by the artists of the Renaissance, though, is that tempura maintains its original colors over time rather than darkening as many oil paints tend to do.

Frescoes are somewhat different from tempera paints or oils in that they utilize the material of the receiving surface as the binding agent for the pigments rather than an internal ingredient.  In fresco painting, painters would mix pigment with water and then apply these colors to the still-wet plaster wall where the painting was to be. The water would absorb into the wall and evaporate, leaving the pigment trapped within the plaster itself. Preparation of the wall had to take place at least a week in advance to allow the underlayer of plaster to dry first. Then only enough top layer of plaster was applied that the artist could reasonably paint in a given day, meaning about eight or nine hours of work, before the plaster hardened to the point where no more paint would be absorbed. This painting in segments makes it possible to still trace what the artist did from one day to the next.  Another problem with frescoes was that there could be no mistakes or the entire segment would have to be removed and started from the beginning.

Oil paint eventually emerged as the most preferred form of paint because of its many positive qualities. This type of paint used linseed oil as the binding agent. Different types of oils could be boiled with different types of resins to provide the paints with different finishes when dry, different drying times, or different lengths of color cohesion. This type of paint does take much longer to dry but provided masters with the opportunity to create subtle shadings and intricate lifelike details that just don’t seem evident in paintings using other media. The beauty and delicacy of paintings such as Leonardo’s Mona Lisa exhibit the kind of fine shadings that were possible with oil, bringing out the true mastery of the artist.  The slow drying time enabled artists to make corrections as they worked and allowed the painter to build up paint as a means of including textural effects in his paintings. Unlike fresco, oil paint could be used anywhere. Combined with the slower drying time, oil paints provided artists with the ability to take their work outside and work ‘on location’. This is the reason I believe oil paints are the most successful form of paint coming out of the High Renaissance.