44 



On Architectural Colouring. 



the circumlithio of statues. The statue-painters were known as I 

 ty/cavvroci, i.e., artists who used wax. The advantages of its use on 

 marble, whether of architecture or of sculpture, with or without I 

 the addition of colour, were its permanence and transparency, and 

 its resistance of atmospheric influences. Examples of painted 

 surfaces from the Theseum, the Propylce, and the Pinacotheca at 

 Athens, were not long ago submitted to analysis by Mr. Farraday, 

 in England, and to a French chemist, M. Landerer, and in almost 

 every case wax was discovered by them as the medium of the s 

 colours. It was also the favourite medium for moveable pictures. 

 A mode of its use is illustrated in a small painting found at Pom- 

 peii, where an artist is represented mixing his colours on a stone 

 slab with a fire burning beneath it. It appears to have been the : 

 medium most common in use for architectural decoration by the 

 Homans as well as by the Greeks ; and it was used for all sorts of 

 artistic purposes throughout the middle ages. "Wax is prescribed 

 among the recipes of the Lucca MS. in the eighth century, and 

 in the MS. of Eraclius of the eleventh or twelfth centuries. In the 

 French MS. of Pierre de St. Audemar it is prescribed as a varnish 

 to protect vermilion from the damp and air. And throughout the 

 old documents of English works of art connected with painted 

 architecture, it is mentioned as an ingredient commonly supplied 

 to painters. 



In mediaeval art, the encaustic system of burning in the wax 

 does not appear to have been used north of the Alps. Wax is 

 prescribed in the French MS. of La Begue, in the fifteenth century, 

 to be mixed with white lead as a ground for painting ; and other- 

 wise used also with size and mastic. The receipt of an English 

 artist of the fourteenth century was found not long ago at Roches- 

 ter, describing its use, when melted with resins and other 

 materials. 



I am strongly convinced by the universal opinion of artists 

 employed in architectural painting, from the early days of Greek 

 art to those of the later middle ages in Europe, that wax was the 

 most highly valued ingredient in their hands. It was commonly 

 used by them as a ground for their work, a medium for their 



