encaustic painting

encaustic painting. Technique of painting with pigments mixed with molten wax. It is a laborious method, but it produces a very durable and stable surface, as wax resists moisture and does not yellow with age. The name derives from a Greek word meaning ‘burnt in’—a reference to the fact that the paint was bonded to the support by passing a heated metal rod close to it, probably immediately after the paint was applied. It was one of the principal painting techniques of the ancient world; the first great practitioner is said to have been Pausias in the 4th century bc, and the most remarkable surviving examples are the mummy portraits from Faiyum, dating from the early centuries ad. Pliny (in the 1st century ad) describes two methods that were already ‘ancient’ in his day (one of them on ivory) and a third newer method that had been devised since it became the practice to paint ships; he records that it stood up to sun, salt, and winds. Encaustic was evidently also employed for colouring statues, but it was not used for painting directly on walls, for which fresco was the standard technique. The older methods described by Pliny were done with a knife or spatula; the newer technique with a brush. Signs of the brush can be seen in some of the Faiyum portraits.

Encaustic was the commonest painting technique in the early centuries of the Christian era but it fell into disuse in the Middle Ages, to be replaced by tempera and eventually oils. There have been various attempts to revive it (e.g. by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, who painted several scenes in encaustic in the Residenz at Munich in the 1830s). Jasper Johns has used encaustic in his Flag and Target paintings, but the time-consuming technique finds few exponents today, even though electrical heating equipment makes it more manageable.