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The Madonna has been depicted in a number of ways over the centuries. Initially she was painted using a technique called egg tempera, which is pigment ground into egg yoke, thinned with water and applied with short strokes. About the time of Jan Van Eyck a new technique blossomed that incorporated a layer of egg tempera painted beneath successive layers of oil glazes. This lent flesh tones a vibrant, life-like quality never seen before. Early Renaissance painters used green underpaintings which when pinkish flesh tone glazes were applied over the top created cool shadows when modeling lights and darks in human figures. A painting in the collection of the Portland Art Museum entitled "The Green Madonna" provides mute testimony to the care needed when cleaning old paintings.
While paintings are by their very nature meant to exist as long as possible they do age, and the aging adds value. Not only historic but the aging produces even more beautiful colors as the glazes grow more transparent allowing light to pass through and bounce back from the white of the gesso or lead white base paint. Also layers in old paintings react with one another and create a much-desirable, fine cracked effect called "craquelure."
Rare among the aging effects of oil paintings, however, is the aging of the Madonna herself. The accompanying reproduction of a painting entitled "The Madonna of Indianapolis" (provenance unknown) serves as probably the finest example of this phenomenon. The painting currently is in the hands of a private collector, but the image can be found in many gift shops that offer postcards when traveling to such vacation spots as Tampa, Florida; Gatlinburg, Tennessee; and Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.
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