WTF is Encaustic Painting?

What is Encaustic Painting?

Encaustic painting is an art technique that uses hot beeswax mixed with powdered pigments. In the ancient world, artists applied this wax mixture to panel surfaces and blended its rich colors to create realistic paintings. As usual, the word “encaustic” is Greek in origin. It’s derived from the word enkaustikos, which means “to burn in.” There you go!

The Nitty Gritty of Encaustic Painting

To create a painting using the encaustic technique, artists used molten wax. They either left it pure or added resin, glue, egg, gum, or oil. After adding the powdered pigments, they applied the mixture quickly with a brush. Once the wax cooled, artists used hard tools, like palette knives, to blend, especially when working on skin tones for human figures.¹ Blend, baby, blend!

According to the curators at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met), ancient artists also used cold beeswax to paint. They made emulsified wax paint by adding the chemical compound alkalis. This allowed the wax to be suspended in egg or oil. The ancients called this “Punic wax.” Since the wax was cold, it took longer to dry and gave artists some breathing room. They could take their time during the painting process and fix mistakes. The Met believes that paintings lacking hard tool marks were made using cold wax.²

The Origins of Encaustic Painting

Now that we know how to make encaustic art, let’s delve into its origins. Encaustic painting first came on the scene in ancient Greece in the 5^th and 4^th centuries BCE. Panel painting was widely popular throughout the Greek and Roman world, with many famous Classical and Hellenistic painters using the encaustic technique. As wealthy patrons commissioned paintings for their homes, artists gained reputations for their skills. Unfortunately, however, no Greek encaustic paintings survive.³

Okay, so if we don’t have any surviving paintings, how the hell do we know they existed in the first place? Ancient writers, of course! Our man Pliny the Elder (23–79 CE) comes to the rescue.

Pliny the Elder Cues Us In

Pliny the Elder was the Roman author of Natural History, an encyclopedic scientific work completed in 77 CE. He devotes a good section to encaustic painting, where he discusses its Greek origins and famous artists who used the technique. Additionally, he tells us that this type of painting was also used for ornaments on warships and merchant ships.⁴

According to Pliny, there was no agreement on who actually invented encaustic painting, but he throws out some names, including Polynotus of Thasos, Nicanor of Paros, and Arcesilaüs of Paros. Pliny tells us that some painters, like Elasippus and Nicias of Athens, actually wrote the word “inburned” (aka encaustic) on their paintings.⁵

Pliny also notes that Praxiteles, a renowned sculptor, perfected the technique. Perhaps he’s referring to the ancient practice of painting statues.⁶ Yes—the ancient Greeks painted their statues. I know the sculptures in museums are all white marble, but they weren’t always. Painting sculptures—known as polychromy—was big in antiquity.

Lastly, Pliny discusses the painter Pausias of Sicyon in depth, because he had great success with encaustic painting. Pausias was known for small paintings, especially miniatures of kiddos and flowers. But he could also go big and was known for a large painting called “Sacrifice of Oxen.”⁷ As previously mentioned, none of these works survives, which is a major bummer.

Fayum Mummy Portraits

Luckily for us, the dry Egyptian climate preserved encaustic paintings for us to enjoy. We’re talking ancient Egyptian mummy portraits! These gorgeous, life-size portraits hail from the Greco-Roman period of ancient Egypt. This was the time Egypt was under Roman control, but Greek culture was still alive and well thanks to the previous Ptolemaic rulers, who originally hailed from Macedonia.

About 900 mummy portraits survive. They date from 30 to 300 CE and most originate from the Fayum region in Egypt. Because these realistic portraits were fitted into the wrappings of mummified remains, the dry environment of Egyptian tombs ensured their preservation. Many of these funerary portraits were painted on wood panel using the encaustic technique. To learn more about them, see Between Life and Afterlife: Mummy Portraits in Roman Egypt.

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Footnotes

1. Tuck, A History, 269; Metropolitan Museum of Art, “Portrait of a Thin-faced.” ↩︎
2. Metropolitan Museum of Art, “Portrait of a Thin-faced.” ↩︎
3. Lapatin, “Materials and Techniques,” 226-227; Osborne, Archaic and Classical, 10. ↩︎
4. Pliny, Natural History, 224. ↩︎
5. Pliny, Natural History, 234, 272. ↩︎
6. Pliny, Natural History, 272; Oxford Classical Dictionary, “Painting techniques.” ↩︎
7. Pliny, Natural History, 273-274. ↩︎

Bibliography & Further Reading

*Several of the following links are Amazon affiliate links, which means I earn a commission if you make a purchase, at no cost to you.

Lapatin, Kenneth. “Materials and Techniques of Art.” In The Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Art and Architecture, edited by Clemente Marconi. Oxford University Press, 2015.

Osborne, Robin. Archaic and Classical Greek Art. Oxford University Press, 1998.

“Painting Techniques.” In Oxford Classical Dictionary. Oxford University Press, n.d.

Pliny the Elder. The Natural History of Pliny. Translated by John Bostock, M.D., F.R.S. and H.T. Riley, Esq., B.A. Vol. VI. London: Henry G. Bohn, 1857.

“Portrait of a thin-faced, bearded man.” Metropolitan Museum of Art. Accessed 31 Oct. 2025.

Tuck, Steven L. A History of Roman Art. Wiley Blackwell, 2015.