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wildbrush's art.to.day - you entered my world of technical art info - |
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| Content: • Prelude • Scale and dimensions • The materials Supports: - Wood - Linen • Preparation of the surface - Linen • The painting media - Encaustic a. Wax used hot b. Wax used cold - Tempera • Colours and gilding • The four-colour palette • Additional colours and gilding • Distribution of the colours and of the gilding • The portraits as colourist paintings • Restoration and conservation |
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| Text
and pictures are taken from the book: "The Mysterious Fayum Portraits - Faces from Ancient Egypt", Euphorsyne Doxiadis, (pp. 93-102); © 1995 Euphorsyne Doxiadis, First Published by Thames & Hudson Ltd, 181 A High Holborn, London WCIV 7QX. ISBN 0-500-28217-X - Numbers which are set into brackets [ ] refer to pictures in the book. There are links to pictures when it is important to visualize the text. - If you are really interested in research about ancient techniques and use of the encaustic medium - this is the book for you. |
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| The
Fayum portraits were painted on wood or linen, usually in encaustic (wax
used hot or cold) but sometimes in tempera. One group of linen shrouds
from Antinoopolis may well have been painted in both - the portrait itself
in encaustic, and the surrounding scenes in tempera [93]. The
methods used by the painters are of the greatest importance not only for
the study of the portraits themselves but also because they can tell us
more about the technique of the Hellenistic tradition as a whole, of which
so few works have survived. The mummy portraits present a link between the painting of antiquity and that of Byzantium, and it is in the techniques used that this continuity can be seen most clearly. The existence of terms in Byzantine painting for particular features seen in the Fayum portraits is revealing, and helpful in considering their elements. It will be useful to look at some of those elements here, before considering the painting process in greater detail. The toned or dark ground is the main feature that mummy portraits and Byzantine icons have in common. In many of the portraits a layer of underpainting is visible, usually at the lower edge but occasionally at the top, showing as a wide horizontal band between the painted area and the bare wood [e.g.53]; it may also be seen on the painting itself where bits of pigment have chipped off. This underpainting consists of animal glue containing pigment (a mixture known as distemper) whose colour varies from light khaki to a dark, almost blackish brown. The wood colour itself may also serve as a toned ground. In some portraits, a second layer of preparatory grounds is added, in encaustic or tempera as appropriate. These grounds are laid as flat colours, differing for each major area of the portrait. The underpainting of the flesh areas is a khaki-green tone, the proplasmos; of the hair, a blackish-grey colour, usually pearl grey; of the background, or kambos, another colour; and of the garments yet another. The method of working from dark to light is the rule in both Byzantine icons and Fayum portraits. In the flesh areas the local colour, or sarkoma, is applied over the proplasmos. It is invariably lighter, and the highlights or psimithies are added on top of it, as are the glykasmoi, the rosy blushes, which make the transitions from the frontal to the side plane of the face more gradual. |
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| In
the case of tempera, while some exceptional portraits also have a dark
ground, the majority have as the primary layer a white preparation based
on gypsum or lime and animal glue which is a simple equivalent of gesso.
The chief difference between wax and tempera lies in the
application. It is much coarser in portraits done in hot wax, due to
the nature of the medium [31],
whereas tempera is applied more delicately, with much finer brushes, in a
series of cross-hatching strokes whose build-up normally gives the desired
tone [1, 51, 120]. Those works which, like the bare-shouldered man from Hawara [45], are obviously painted with wax applied cold (Punic wax) fall somewhere between the precision of egg-tempera - which this portrait resembles in the eyes, nose, mouth and moustache areas - and the thicker impasto (body) of wax, which is present in the zones of the hair, the skin and the background [see also 58]. To date, relatively few of the portraits have undergone laboratory analysis. 1) In what follows I shall draw on documentary evidence, contemporary theories, scientific research, and the conclusions of my own experiments. Simply looking at the portraits themselves has, for me, been most revealing of all. The visual, literary, and scientific studies complement each other, and only by considering them all can an investigation into the technique of the Fayum portraits give a rounded view. page 2 > |
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