Vinegar

The Greek recipe for our pigment binder is half egg yolk, half vinegar. The water in the vinegar dilutes the greasy egg yolk to a pleasant viscosity, the acid in the vinegar protects the oh so delicious egg yolk from mold, bacteria and insects. But not against pets and wild animals as it will turn out.

Bernard Frinking made a Christ portrait or a Mandylion during the icon course at Hernen Castle, opinions differ on that. One day the castle lady's dog licked the icon away right up to the shelf.
In France, my sister had bought an old farmhouse, a ruin. I went there, during the day painting in the house, now habitable. At night, the Pantocrator icon I was working on went with me in a suitcase to the tent in the woods. After a night in which I had left it hanging from a nail in the studio, I found it with, yes, a missing blessing hand. Which one of my family ...!... I thought, and there were only four of us. Who picks an icon off the wall so roughly? When I looked more closely at the wall, I saw a stone sticking out so far that a small animal could have quite easily reached the blessing hand, freshly painted, ample egg added, mmm, delicious. The dormice that lived in the roof had done it. The thought of symbolism repaid much: the wild animals were licking the Creator's hand.