Original pigment tempera and gold leaf icon with extensive punchwork on solid oak with sunken field. 4.3 x 5.0".

All of the colours in this icon are genuine pigments that were available over 600 years ago.
The yellow/green background is made from lead-tin yellow II and malachite. The black is lamp black which used to be made from collected soot. The browns are yellow ochre, gold ochre and raw umber. The red is made from cinnabar with rose madder used to darken it, the blue is made from ground up lapis lazuli, the gold highlights on clothing is lead-tin yellow I and the white is lead white which I made myself over a period of about a year from some roofing lead.

Look at the way that the punchwork brings to life the gold leaf. The sunken field acts as the painting and rest as the frame. The frame is part of the real world and the painting is an 'other' world. The halo overlaps into the real world to suggest that the 'other' world is making its way into our world. This device was used quite a lot in the medieval and renaissance periods, up until the Italian renaissance started around a hunderd years later.

You can see here how the sunken field works.

The whole thing is made on a solid oak support which was made from English quarter-sawn oak. The sunken field was hand carved out and makes a frame with a picture. The whole thing was then scored and sized and then linen was laid over it.

Once that had dried, gesso was then spread over the surface in around 6 to 10 layers then, when that had dried, it was sanded flat and then the flat areas were scraped until they had a mirror finish and the curved areas were sanded with paper going up to 1,000 grit.

Next, it was marked out using silverpoint and then halos were marked with dividers. Next, it had around four layers of bole painted where gold was to go and when that was dry, it was sanded smooth with very fine grit paper. Next, it was water gilded and when that was dry, it was burnished and the punchwork done. Then, it was painted.