Tempera is a painting medium binding pigment with egg yolk — the dominant european panel-painting technique before the rise of oil.
Tempera is a painting medium in which dry pigment is bound to a surface using a yolk-based emulsion, most commonly egg yolk thinned with water (egg tempera). The technique has been used since antiquity and was the dominant European method for panel painting from late antiquity through the 15th century, before the gradual triumph of oil. Tempera is applied in thin, semi-transparent layers, often built up with hatching strokes, since the medium dries within seconds and cannot be blended wet-on-wet in the manner of oil paint. The surface of a finished tempera painting has a distinct matte, slightly chalky luminosity, with a remarkable resistance to fading. Cennino Cennini's 'Il libro dell'arte' (c. 1390) gives the most detailed surviving period account of tempera technique. Duccio's 'Maestà' (1311), Giotto's panel paintings, and the Florentine altarpieces of the 14th and 15th centuries — including Botticelli's 'Birth of Venus' (c. 1485) — were painted in tempera. Andrew Wyeth in 20th-century America was the most celebrated modern tempera painter, using the medium for its precision and its sense of dry winter light.