Novelist Dan Brown in his blockbuster novel “ The Da Vinci Code ” committed an error, he claimed that Da Vinci's' masterpiece The Last Supper was a fresco which in fact it wasn't, It was what we call a tempera.
Had it been a fresco (a technique where the painting is done when the plaster on the wall is still wet therefore the colors intermingles permanently with the plaster and is permanent.) it wouldn't have weathered and wouldn't be falling off the way it has been for all these years.
Leonardo Da Vinci chose to adopt this style, which we now know as tempera. Egg yolk and vinegar were mixed with oil colors and painted on dry plaster. That way it made it easy to be redone when necessary. However this technique proved to be disastrous, the painting almost immediately began to fall off the plaster.
The term tempera in modern times is also used by some manufacturers to refer to ordinary poster paint, which is a form of gouache that has nothing to do with real egg tempera.
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