In encaustic painting, molten beeswax is combined with a tempering agent – usually damar, a plant resin that gives the cooled surface strength – and then pigmented. This molten mixture, or encaustic medium, is applied to a painting surface and then fused, or remelted, so that it becomes one with the layers below. It is this build-up of layer upon layer of wax that gives encaustic work its luminosity.
Derived from the ancient Greek word 'enkaustikos,' encaustic means 'to heat' or 'to burn in.' It is an art form that can be traced back to 800 B.C. when Greek shipbuilders used pigmented wax to waterproof and decorate their warships. Ancient Greek artists also painted with pigmented wax on clay and marble sculptures and on flat panels.
The oldest existing examples of encaustic panel paintings are the Fayum Portraits dating back to Greco-Roman Egypt – 100 B.C. to 200 A.D. These life-sized head and shoulder images were painted on thin wooden panels. The portraits were later mounted on mummy casing which were then entombed. The hot, dry, dark tombs provided an environment ideal for preserving these paintings. Over 900 of these well-preserved portraits are housed in museums around the world – most of them discovered in the Faiyum Basin region of Egypt.