Painting
4 materials · 5 steps
Gold-ground panel painting
Egg tempera on gessoed wood, with gold leaf laid on red bole and tooled to catch the light.
Duccio’s Madonna and Child on a tooled gold ground
Materials & tools
- Poplar panel
- Gesso
- Red bole and gold leaf
- Egg tempera with mineral pigments
Italian painters of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries worked on wooden panels covered with layers of gesso. The areas to be gilded were coated with red bole, and gold leaf was laid over it and burnished, then punched or incised with patterns. Figures were painted in egg tempera, built up in small strokes from green underlayers to the final flesh tones.
The Met: Italian Painting of the Later Middle AgesThe process
Step by step
- 1
Prepare the panel with cloth and gesso
- 2
Incise the design and apply bole
- 3
Lay and burnish the gold leaf
- 4
Tool the haloes and borders
- 5
Paint in tempera from underlayers to highlights