282 plijjy's natueal htstoet. [Book XXXV. 



her day, Sopolis namely, and Dionysius,^^ with whose pictures 

 our galleries are filled. One Olympias painted also, but no- 

 thing is known relative to her, except that she had Autobulus 

 for a pupil. 



CHAP. 41. ENCAUSTIC PAINTING. 



In ancient times there were but two methods of encaustic^® 

 painting, in wax and on ivory,^^ with the cestrum or pointed 

 graver. "When, however, this art came to be applied to the 

 painting of ships of war, a third method was adopted, that of 

 melting the wax colours and laying them on with a brush, 

 while hot." Painting of this nature,^^ applied to vessels, will 

 never spoil from the action of the sun, winds, or salt water, 



CHAP. 42. THE COLOUBING OF TISSUES. 



In Egypt, too, they employ a very remarkable process for the 

 colouring of tissues. After pressing the material, which is wh ite 

 at first, they saturate it, not with colours, but with mordents 

 that are calculated to absorb colour. This done, the tissues, 

 still unchanged in appearance, are plunged into a cauldron of 

 boiling dye, and are removed the next moment fully coloured. 

 It is a singular fact, too, that although the dye in the pan is of 

 one uniform colour, the material when taken out of it is of 

 various colours, according to the nature of the mordents that 

 have been respectively applied to it: these colours, too, will never 

 wash out. Thus the dye-pan, which under ordinary circum- 



3* Probably the same painter as the one mentioned in Chapter 37 of this 

 Book. 

 ^ See Chapter .39 of this Book. Pausias painted in wax with the cestrum. 



36 "VVornum is of opinion that this must have been a species of drawing 

 with a heated point, upon ivory, without the use of wax. Smith's Diet. 

 j\ntiq. Art. Painting. 



37 This method, as Wornum remarks, though first employed on ships, 

 was not necessarily confined to ship-painting ; and it must have been a 

 very diflferent style of painting from the ship-colouring of Homer, since it 

 was of a later date even tlian the preceding methods. 



^8 Though he says nothing here of the use of the " cauterium," or pro- 

 cess of burning in, its employment may certainly be inferred from what he 

 has said in Chapter 39. Wornum is of opinion that the definition at the 

 beginning of this Chapter, of two methods apparently, " in wax and on ivory," 

 is in reality an explanation of one method only, and that the ancient modes 

 of painting in encaustic were not only three, but several. 



