wax

wax. A malleable substance obtained from various animal, vegetable, and mineral sources, most commonly the matter secreted by bees as the material of honeycomb; when bleached and purified it can be used as a medium for sculpture. Since the 1830s, synthetic waxes, based on petroleum, have also been available. Wax has a long and varied history in sculpture, for it is widely available, extremely versatile, and has many advantageous qualities. It can be modelled, carved, or cast; it is easy and fairly clean to handle; it can readily be mixed with colouring matter (making it an excellent medium for naturalistic portraiture); ‘it is not subject to serious chemical or physical change, only shrinking and becoming slightly more brittle with age, it is not prone to fungal and insect attacks…it is easy to vary its consistency by the addition of hardeners, plasticizers, and solvents…It is a very tractable material permitting corrections, changes, or additions to the design at any stage. This makes it the ideal material for the production of sketch models for works finished in other materials’ ( E. J. Pyke, A Biographical Dictionary of Wax Modellers, 1973). However, it also has disadvantages. Compared with clay (see terracotta), the other material most often used for models, it is fairly expensive; it tends to become dirty, and it is easily broken or damaged by heat.

In addition to being employed by countless major sculptors to make preliminary models (several by Michelangelo survive, for example) and also as an essential part of bronze-casting by the ‘lost wax’ process (see cire-perdue), wax has been used since ancient times to produce finished works, particularly portraits and death masks. In the 18th century, exhibitions of waxworks (life-size, highly realistic figures of famous people, complete with real clothes and hair) became popular entertainments. Easily the most famous exponent of this kind of work was Marie Tussaud, née Grosholtz (b Strasbourg, 1 Dec. 1761; d London, 16 Apr. 1850), who, as well as producing casts from live people, made death masks of guillotined victims of the French Revolution. In 1802 she moved to England and toured for many years with an exhibition of her work until finding a permanent home for ‘Madame Tussaud's Waxworks’ in London in 1835. Initially it was located in Baker Street, and in 1884 (under her grandson's management) it moved to its present site in nearby Marylebone Road; some of her work can still be seen there. Other notable waxworks can be seen in London in the collection of royal funerary effigies at Westminster Abbey. Small portraits in wax were made in the Renaissance and became popular in the 18th and 19th centuries; they were mainly done as profile reliefs, paralleling the vogue for silhouettes.

Among serious sculptors who have used wax as their preferred medium, Medardo Rosso stands out. The most famous artist to use the material exclusively was probably Gaetano Giulio Zumbo (b Syracuse, 1656; d Paris, 22 Dec. 1701), who worked in various Italian cities, particularly Florence. He specialized in macabre tableaux on themes of death, with grimly realistic depictions of decomposing bodies. He also pioneered the use of wax models as tools in anatomical demonstration. This aspect of his work was developed with extreme sophistication in Florence in the 18th century, most notably in the work of Clemente Susini (1754–1814), who worked for the natural history museum ‘La Specola’, opened in 1775; examples of his extraordinarily detailed life-size figures (and of Zumbo's work) can still be seen there.