CategoriesMedium and Techniques
Encaustic
Painting with pigment mixed into hot wax and fused with heat, used for Roman Egyptian mummy portraits, early icons and modern paintings.
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About
Encaustic paints are pigments suspended in hot, molten wax, usually beeswax hardened with resin. The painter works while the wax is fluid, then passes heat across the surface to fuse each layer to the one beneath; the name comes from a Greek word for burning in. Once cool, the paint resists damp and does not yellow as oil can.
The finest early survivors are the mummy portraits of Roman Egypt, painted from the 1st to the 3rd centuries AD. Early icons at St Catherine's Monastery in Sinai, including a 6th-century Christ, use the same method. The technique then faded for centuries. Modern painters revived it for its body and glow: Diego Rivera used encaustic for his first Mexican mural, Creation (1922–23), and Jasper Johns set newspaper collage and plaster casts into wax in Target with Four Faces (1955). Look for a soft sheen and layered translucency.
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