Encaustic painting

The encaustic is an artistic Technique, be applied hot to the bound in wax pigments on the surface to be painted. The technique has a much longer history than that of the oil painting. It had its heyday in the art of ancient Greece and Rome. In the imagination of the artist's own materialized thoughts with everlasting fires were burned on the painting surface.

The word encaustic is used for more than two and a half millennia and is derived from the Greek word enkauston, "burned ", from, this, in turn, " burn " of enkaio.

While today electrically heated painting devices are used, either cold colors with hot filling, the heated over glowing braziers " cauteria ", applied and then by heat radiation were baked ( by red-hot iron ) or applied hot liquid on stone, wood or ivory in Greek antiquity. Waxes molten beeswax were used with or without the addition of drying oil ( walnut oil ), color pigments were mostly imported from Egypt and Sudan.

The encaustic was a very sophisticated technology in their handling of the artists of the time, but just allowed them the flower of ancient Greek painting. In late antiquity, it was replaced by other painting techniques and came about in the 6th century AD into oblivion. Have been preserved the famous Egyptian mummy portraits that show a unique luminosity and freshness today. Also a few very ancient Christian icons in encaustic technique have been preserved, for example, in St. Catherine's Monastery on the Sinai or the Maria Advocata in Rome. Most encaustic painted icons, however, fell victim to the Iconoclastic Controversy. In later times was used for egg tempera icons instead of encaustic. Excellent evidence of encaustic are the famous Egyptian mummy portraits in the British Museum in London and the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, wall paintings in Pompeii and in the Neue Pinakothek in Munich. Even on the Column of Trajan in Rome traces were discovered of encaustic.

Only the rekindled interest in the early modern period of ancient art and ancient cultures attracted the attention of artists and researchers for this long-forgotten painting technique. Since the oil paintings of the old masters threaten inevitably lost by darkening and shrinkage cracks to go, it was totally fascinated by the durability of encaustic painting. Numerous researchers tried to air out the few surviving literary sources, the mystery of the wax technique. Violent disagreements arose - this is entwined the discussions about the legendary Punic wax, which does not, however, necessarily must have been the binder of the ancient encaustic. Ultimately, the encaustic art will never be able to be properly researched to much she has disappeared into the darkness of the past. Mysterious sounds like the old recipe, after the legendary wax was boiled in sea water and then subjected to the action of the sun and moon. By boiling the beeswax in salt water, the wax is removed from almost all the impurities present in natural beeswax, thereby making it harder, but more brittle on the one hand. This withdrawal is not grown ingredients for other causes bleaching of the wax.

In the 20 th century internationally renowned artists such as Jasper Johns, Fernando Leal Audirac, Christine Hahn, Robert Geveke, Martin Assig, Dorle wolf or Norimichi Akagi created with encaustic works.