877 



ENCAUSTIC PAINTING. 



ENCAUSTIC PAINTING. 



878 



painting, the use of wax as a vehicle is usually understood, though it is 

 not implied in the term. Encaustic painting with wax and naphtha as 

 vehicles was practised among the Egyptians, but as Sir Gardner Wil- 

 kinson observes ('Anc. Egyptians,' iii. 12), "the time when it was 

 first known there is uncertain, nor can we conclude from a specimen of 

 Greek time that the same was practised in the Pharaonic age." Among 

 the Greeks it was practised from a very early period, but there has 

 been much discussion among the learned as to the methods employed 

 and the materials used by them. Pliny, in his ' Natural History ' 

 (xxxv. 39), gives a short account of the invention and nature of this 

 art. He says, " Ceris pingere ac picturam inurere, quis primus exeogi- 

 taverit non constat." But though he expressly says wax, some persons 

 have imagined that by cms he here means some composition different 

 from wax, and capable of bearing the fire, and that inurere means to 

 enamel. In a succeeding chapter (41) he says that there were anciently 

 two modes of encaustic painting, " cera et in ebore, cestro, id est, 

 viriculo, donee classes pingi coepere. Hoc tertium accessit, res^olutis 

 igni ceris, penecillo utendi." The two ancient kinds, " with wax aud 

 on ivory," seem to have been both executed by means of a " cestriun, 

 that is, a graver." The use of a brush in encaustic painting was not 

 introduced till ships began to be painted, " the wax being melted by 

 fire." It has been found extremely difficult to explain these three 

 processes in a satisfactory manner. Of the two most ancient kinds, 

 the first appears to have resembled painting, at least in its results ; the 

 second to have been either merely applying on a small scale aud in a 

 more careful manner the coarser mode of encaustic painting on wood, 

 or else what Sir Charles Eastlake describes as (' Materials for a Hist, 

 of Painting in Oil,' p. 151) " a sort of intaglio filled in with tints." The 

 third kind, with a brush, and melting the wax by fire, continued in use 

 almost or quite to the revival of painting in th 15th century. 



The Marchese Haus (' Pittura all' Enoausto '), assuming, with Pliny, 

 three kinds of encaustic painting, distinguishes as an essential point, 

 whether the cestrum (style, or graving tool) or the pencil was employed 

 in the execution. In the first mode, the wax was, he supposes, melted, 

 mixed with as much earth colour finely powdered as it could imbibe, 

 and then this was spread on woody or on a wall, with a hot spatula. 

 When it became cold, it was the ground, in which the designer cut the 

 lines with a cold pointed tool (style, cestrum), and thus, properly 

 speaking, it was not the painting but the wax ground that was burnt 

 in, and the name encaustic was improperly given to the painting. But 

 a more probable explanation is, that by means of a style the colours 

 prepared with wax were laid on to the prepared ground of the panel, 

 and then toned down and blended by a hot iron, the flat end of the 

 cestrum being probably used for the purpose. But the final burning 

 in, or inustion, as it is technically called, appears to have been an 

 essential part of the process. 



With regard to the second kind, encaustic painting on ivory, Professor 

 Grund, of Florence, who has devoted much attention to encaustic 

 painting, suggests (' Die Malerey der Griechen,' Dresden, 1811) that 

 when the practice of drawing on hard wax had been brought to some 

 degree of perfection, they proceeded to apply it on a small scale to 

 ivory, which was at that time in the highest estimation. Ivory tablets 

 were therefore covered with red or black wax, and the design cut in it 

 with the style, the object being to use the clear and smooth surface of 

 the ivory for the lines, that they might look the more beautiful. This 

 therefore was nothing more than applying to ivory what had previously 

 been done on wood, or walls. Eut the probability seems much greater 

 that this second mode was a species of intaglio : " The outlines first 

 drawn on waxed ivory (for the facility of correcting them where neces- 

 sary) were afterwards engraved in the substance ; and the finished and 

 shadowed design was filled in with one or more colours ; being ulti- 

 mately covered with a wax varnish by the aid of heat. Works so pro- 

 duced must have resembled the nielli, or, on a small scale, the sgraffiti 

 of the Italians, and were no doubt quite as excellent. . . . The heated 

 instrument with which the wax tints were blended was called rhabdwm : 

 it was probably flat at one end (like the extremity of the stylus) ; its 

 forms and sizes, indeed, may have been as varied as those of brushes 

 now. The encaustic painter who used the rhabdion or cestrum (for 

 the terms are employed sometimes indiscriminately) was provided with 

 a box with compartments, in which the variously tinted cakes or sticks 

 of wax colours were kept. The canterium was not necessary; the 

 rhabdion, heated in a small furnace kept at hand, supplied its place.'' 

 (Eaatlake, pp. 149-54.) 



The third kind is the applying the colours with the brush or pencil. 

 With respect to the manner in which this was executed, opinions 

 again differ. The received notion seems to be that the wax was dis- 

 solved, the colours mixed with it, and laid on with the pencil, anc 

 the painting then finished by careful approximation to the fire, whence 

 this kind of painting became properly encaustic. For this purpose a 

 hot iron, or a pan of coals (cauterium) was used. The painting was 

 commonly executed on wood, but also on walls. The point on which 

 there has been most difference of opinion among later writers who 

 have tieated of this third mode is, as to the means adopted for mixing 

 the wax with the colours so as to allow of their being used with 

 a brush. The modes suggested are resolvable into three : " 1. The 

 solution of wax by a lixivium, or in more general terms, by any means 

 which will allow of the pigment being mixed with water. 2. Thi 

 notation by means of heat in a fixed oil. 3. The solution by means o 



an essential oil." (Eastlake.) For all of these, certain authorities may 

 36 cited, but the last is that which on the whole appears to be the most 

 easible ; and it accords most with modern practice and chemical 

 analysis. Wilkinson, we have seen, states '.that in the encaustic 

 >ainting of the ancient Egyptians wax and naphtha were found. 



When painting had been greatly improved by the invention of the 

 >encil, a new method of encaustic was attempted. Encaustic wax 

 >ainting had hitherto been designing on a coloured ground : it now 

 jecame painting with wax colours burnt in. When the artist had 

 aid on the wax ground, aud traced the outlines with the style, he 

 iroceeded to the colouring. From the wax mixed with the colours he 

 separated with the hot style as much as he wanted to cover a certain 

 space, and spread it over the ground, put a second, third, &c., colour 

 next the first, so that he had local tint, half tint, and shade together, 

 which he softened into each other with the hot style. 



Encaustic painting did not come into use among the Greeks until 

 after the time of Alexander, when the arts were beginning to decline. 

 The works of all the greatest painters had been executed in tempera, 

 and tempera painting therefore continued to be regarded as the higher 

 _>rauoh of the art. For small works, however, encaustic was regarded 

 as the superior method, and the small painted tablets of Pausias, aud 

 the portraits of the female painter Lala, of Cyzicum, were held in 

 *reat estimation. But large pictures were also produced in encaustic, 

 .n Greece ; and ceilings and walls were painted in encaustic. Among 

 the Romans, encaustic painting, or at any rate painting with wax 

 colours, was so general that cera came to be an ordinary term for 

 painters' colours. Encaustic painting continued to be practised 

 luring the early centuries of Christianity, both in the Eastern aud 

 Western empire, almost to the exclusion of every other mode except 

 mosaic ; but eventually this last seems almost to have superseded it. 

 Encaustic was not wholly abandoned, however, as late as the 14th 

 century, though references to it in that and the previous centuries 

 are extremely rare. Before its final extinction the practice of using 

 a wax varnish with a final inustion appears to have been more 

 prevalent than that of encavistic painting proper. 



After the whole art of encaustic painting had long been lost, the 

 memory of it was recovered by Count Caylus, in France, who announced 

 to the Academy of Painting the method of painting in wax in 1752 : 

 a Mr. Bachelier however had actually painted a picture in wax in 1749, 

 and is the author of a treatise on the art and secret of wax painting ; 

 and he was the first who communicated to the public the method 

 of performing the operation of inustion, which chiefly characterises 

 encaustic painting. The count kept his method secret for a time, and 

 in 1754, exhibited at the Louvre a head of Minerva painted in the 

 manner of the ancients. This was much admired, and it was affirmed 

 that in wax painting the colours were more permanent, purer, and 

 brighter than in oil painting : an account of his procedure was pub- 

 lished in the ' Encyclopedic,' art. Encaustique. Several other persons 

 made essays in this art, one of the most indefatigable being the Abate 

 Vincenzo Requeno, who painted several works, and, in 1784, published 

 a book on the subject, which was reprinted with additions at Parma, 

 in 2 vols. 8vo. He was followed by painters and archaeologists at 

 Venice, Verona, Milan, and Rome, in each of which cities several 

 works were executed in encaustic, and accounts of greater or less 

 length and value published descriptive of the processes employed. 

 After a time, the attempts proving unsatisfactory, the process fell into 

 neglect, but some thirty years back it was again revived with con- 

 siderable energy at Munich, under the patronage of the late king 

 Ludwig, of Bavaria, and several public and private apartments were 

 painted in it. The fashion spread to Berlin, Heidelberg, Vienna, and 

 wherever the influence of the revived German school penetrated. It 

 has also been followed to some extent in France ; and many encaustic 

 works have been executed of late years in various parts of Italy. The 

 modes adopted by the painters of these countries have been very 

 various, but in all wax has been the distinctive vehicle, and almost 

 invariably the wax has been dissolved in turpentine or some other 

 essential oil (at least for mural painting) and coarse mastic or other resin 

 has been used for strengthening the vehicle with which the colours 

 are laid on the wall. The final inustion is omitted in some of the pro- 

 cesses. Notwithstanding the failure of many of the most promising 

 works executed in it, the process has its admirers and advocates ; and 

 many still believe that, with some improvements in the methods 

 hitherto adopted, it is capable of being rendered the most permanent, 

 as well as the most brilliant, style of painting. But it is, perhaps, 

 more fitted for decorative work than for painting of a higher order. 

 The complexities of the manipulation must cramp the hand of the 

 painter, and the firmness, decision, and sharpness of touch that indi- 

 viduality of handling in fact which are so great a charm in the work 

 of a great painter, can hardly be attainable in a process the last stage 

 of which removes all traces of the pencil. For decoration this artistic 

 individuality is less required, and the warmth and glow of the colours, 

 the shining surface, as well as the facility with which it can be 

 cleaned, are greatly in its favour. The fullest account of the modem 

 process, and that which judiciously carried out promises to be most 

 successful, is that of M. J. P. de Moutabert, ' Traite Complet de la Pein- 

 ture,' vol. viii. p. 526, &c. The work of Sir C. L. Eastlake, quoted 

 above, should also be referred to ; and much of value on the history of 

 the art, and on the ancient and modern processes, will be found in the 



