26 Inquiries inlo the encauilk PaiiUing of ikc Ancients. 



statues of the ancients, or of our modern stucco, is given to the 

 painting. 



If it is desired to paint in .several colours (which truly con- 

 stitutes painting), wax can be coloured, and all the different 

 tones requisite can be given to it. But this employ ecomcs 

 still more difficult, because these waxes can only be applied with 

 a pencil : it is therefore necessary to keep them in a soft state 

 approaching to fluidity, where there is the advantage of artifi- 

 cial heat, or the maintenance of a temperature kept up suffi- 

 ciently in the workshop. It would be possible, h>>wever, by 

 varying the proportions of the oil, to obrahi coloured pastes 

 which might be touched and retouched by the pencil, at the or- 

 dinary temperature of the atmosjjhere; only the drying up would 

 then be very slow, and I think that the wax, being brought to a 

 permanent state of fluidity by means of several drops of aika.U 

 Doured on the melted wax, would form a preferable mixture, be- 

 cause the wax still remains liquid, and as white as milk. It is 

 easy to incorporate on the palette the colours with this m.lk of 

 wax {lait de cire) ; it gives them a suitable consistency, and they 

 are used with a pencil like those which are prepared with drying 

 oil. M. Bachelicr, who suggested this vehicle for colours nearly 

 forty years ago, composed in this way pictures which have not 

 sensibly suffered in point of colouring. 



j\I. Castellan lately communicated to the Institute a new 

 method of painting, which strongly resembles that of tiie an- 

 cients : he begins by priming his base with a coat of melted 

 wax, taking care previously to heat and dry the stucco and 

 l)laster : he spreads the wax witli a brush, equalizes the surface 

 bv i)assing a gilder's stove over it, or the hot disk which the 

 ancients used ; pieces of new cloth and coarse brushes passed 

 over this surface terminate the work of i>riming. All the modi- 

 fications requisite for the priming of wood, plaster, and canvass, 

 are detailed in M. Castellan's memoir. He paints on those 

 primings with colours ground with olive oil and not drying oil. 

 The painting is dried by passing the stove over the pictuie, or 

 bv raising the temperature of the workshop to 30" or 40' of 

 heat; or lastly, by exposing the picture to the sun. Painting 

 on canvass requires for its desiccation a heat of 20" or 30" only. 

 M. Castellan glazes his pictures with a transparent varnish 

 v/hich is made by the solution of wax in a colourless volatile oil. 



Several paintings executed bv this process have been exposed 

 for several years to all the inclemencies of the air, without being 

 sensibly altered. Even the English lake, which fades so quickly 

 ill the sun, has not lost any of its intenseness of colour. 



The process proposed by M. Castellan appears to possess the 

 following advanta^^es. 



1. It 



