go PAINTING MATERIALS
ranging from 63° to 70° C. and five specimens from wigs varied from 6oJ to 63° C.
The melting point of modern beeswax is from about 60.5° to 64.25° C. These
specimens, although light-colored and somewhat friable on the surface, had ap-
parently not undergone any considerable change. Partington (p. 140) has this to
say about Egyptian practice:
The process of encaustic painting (with a wax medium) was not in use in ancient
Egypt but appeared in the Ptolemaic Period for painting on wood, although
Herodotus says Amasis (559-525) sent a portrait of himself to Cyrene. The encaus-
tic paintings on wood on mummy cases are Greek and Roman. The encaustic
technique may have originated in Egypt; preparations of wax for preserving paint-
ings are said to go back to the XVIII dyn., and the names of most of the encaus-
tic painters of antiquity appear to be Alexandrian or Egyptian. The first literary
mention is after Alexander: a reference in a supposed ode of Anacreon (c. 550 B.C.)
is of doubtful date. Eusebius (264-340) calls the process Krjpoxvros 7pa^ (" drawing
in liquid wax "): it continued in use till the Middle Ages, but had declined after the
9th century A.D. The pigments (now in the British Museum) found at Hawara by
Petrie are really water colors, but it is probable that they would be similar to the
pigments used by the encaustic painter. The process, according to Petrie, was as
follows. The colours were ground in the wax, previously bleached by heating it
to its boiling-point, and fused in the sun in hot weather or in a hot-water bath,
which is mentioned by Theophrastos. The portrait was made on a wood panel,
previously primed with distemper, the wax colour being put on from a pot with a
lancet-shaped spatula or (more probably) with a brush, pressed out at the end of
the stroke.
This makes a description that fits with the appearance of the small mummy
portraits which, as a group, have taken their name from the Fayum district of
Egypt. In Greece, it is said, pictures in wax commanded large prices in ancient
times: 60 talents (about $85,000) was offered for one and 7,000,000 sesterses
(about $400,000) was paid for another (Schmid, * La Reconstitution du Procede
a TEncaustique,' p. 37).
Since the IX century A.D., wax has not been much used as a painting medium.
Eastlake (I, 156) speaks of its prevalence in the first centuries of the Christian
era when it appears to have superseded all other processes, except mosaic. The
Lucca MS. (VIII century) has more about mosaic than about wax painting, but
says that colors mixed with wax were used on walls and on wood. It is scarcely
alluded to in the treatises of the XII, XIII, and XIV centuries*
There has been argument about the type of wax used in ancient times as a
medium for painting. Some reports have attempted to show that the wax was
applied in an emulsified or a saponified state with water, and Berger has taken
the recipe for Punic wax as given by Pliny (XXI, 49) and by Dioscorides (II, 105)
to be proof that the medium was an emulsion. Studies by Eibner, Laurie, Schmid,
and others have, however, made this supposition very doubtful. It is barely