Technique and condition
The painter has used a single softwood panel as a support. He applied a gesso ground to the panel, possibly built up in several layers and finally scraped or sanded smooth. It is sufficiently thick to cover the wood grain, but ridges produced by the method of smoothing, run perpendicular to the wood grain.
The paint appears to consist of an egg tempera medium mixed with dry pigments by the artist. Large clumps of pigment particles give the paint a gritty appearance. The paint has been applied thinly by the artist in repeated small brush strokes with some use of thin washes. A thin, transparent brownish layer on top of the ground is visible through the thinnest areas of paint and at the edges of the forms. This plays an important optical role across the whole painting and may be an imprimatura or a method of sketching out the forms. The painting has not been varnished… (read more)
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John Downton
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