Benjamin Calau

Benjamin Calau (* 1724 in Friedrichstadt, † 1785 in Berlin) was a visual artist in Berlin in the 18th century.

Life

Calau's father, the painter Christoph Callau / Kallau († 1753), taught him and his two brothers also artistically active in drawing. From 1749 to 1771 Benjamin was living in Leipzig - there he was in 1755 Electoral Saxon court painter. Before 1770 he made numerous experiments in the field of wax painting and the " encaustic painting". This already existing since ancient times and described by Pliny the Elder in his Naturalis historia method had been lost since the 6th century. Calau not reconstructed the Roman encaustic, but he developed his own, useful in practice method to paint in wax. To this end, he gave in 1769 the font Extensive testing, such as dissolve the Punic or Eleodorische wax out.

In Berlin, was fascinated by that technique so that Calau since 1771 has been located there. Here he brought it to the court painter of Frederick II and was a member of the Academy of Arts. In 1772, he received a Prussian privilege for the distribution of its wax colors, over whose exact composition today nothing more is known. In just that wax color painting he made also nine portraits of the famous " Temple of Friendship " of the poet Johann Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim in Halberstadt. In his last years Calau, who worked early in his Berlin period in the arts and crafts area, with the wax colors especially porcelain and earthenware and was eventually painted wallpaper producer.