TEMPERA PAINTING IN VENICE AT THE BEGINNING OF THE XXth CENTURY : from Mario de Maria to Gennaro Favai (1879-1958) and from Cesare Laurenti to Guido Cadorin(1892-1976)

is paper considers a period between 1890 and 1950 in Veneto (Italy) with a particular focus on artworks by Gennaro Favai, Guido Cadorin and their teachers Mario de Maria and Cesare Laurenti. In this study, the binding media of 12 paintings were analysed and the results compared with the painters’ recipes. Together with artist Giovanni Soccol, a pupil and friend of both Favai and Cadorin, we reconstructed their tempera recipes and prepared some mock-ups for binding media analyses. is is the #rst time that paintings by de Maria, Laurenti, Favai and Cadorin have been analysed and most of their recipes published. All four painters used similar tempera media but it is important to highlight that many of their recipes also contain, among several ‘conventional’ ingredients (animal glue, egg yolk, drying oils, starch, etc.), flax seed water and mucilage. Organic analysis con#rmed that they all used di%erent binding media for bright and dark colours.