Giotto di Bondone Discovering Great Artists

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Giotto's (ZHEE-O-TO) paints were made from egg yolks mixed with clay, minerals, berries, or even ground insects to make colored pigments.

Giotto di Bondone - When Giotto was a young boy tending sheep in the mountains of northern Italy, he drew pictures to help pass the time. A traveling artist discovered Giotto's drawings and offered him an apprenticeship. There Giotto learned how to make paintbrushes and art tools, which minerals could be used to create different colors of paint, and worked on drawings and small parts of paintings. Eventually Giotto left to find work on his own. He became the chief master of cathedral building and public art in Florence, Italy. Giotto is best known for painting people who appeared three-dimensional rather than flat.

Many paintings of Giotto's time were made with egg tempera paint on special panels of wood. There were no art stores, so each artist had to make paint by grinding minerals, clay, berries, or even insects into fine powder and mixing this pigment with egg yolk and water. Egg tempera makes a thin, fast drying coat of bright color. The paint is very strong and long lasting. Giotto's beautiful egg tempera paintings are over 700 years old!

Young artists explore Giotto's technique of painting with egg tempera with a homemade recipe made with crushed chalk.

1. Break off small pieces of colored chalk and grind them into powder in an old bowl with a round rock. NOTE: Avoid breathing the chalk powder.
2. Put the colored powders into the cups of a muffin tin, egg carton or paint palette.
3. Crack the egg and separate the yellow yoke from the clear egg white.
4. Put the yolk in a clean bowl and mix it with 2 teaspoons of water. Whip it with a fork until the mixture is froth yellow.
5. Add spoons of egg-water to the powdered chalk and stir with a paintbrush until you make a smooth, runny paint.
6. Now use the egg tempera paint to make a painting!

copyright © 2005 MaryAnn Kohl
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