Old-World Artistry

Wax isn’t just for candles, crayons, and envelope sealing. Its ability to capture intricate details creates works of art to be admired.
By Ella Mercer

The smooth and malleable properties of wax have been valued since antiquity for the diversity of its applications. One field of use—the production of death masks used to commemorate the ancestral dead—was obtained by melting honeycomb, which was then bleached using various additives such as sodium bicarbonate. During the Renaissance, Italian artisans developed techniques of producing colored miniature portraits by mixing wax with pigments, with which they achieved astonishingly realistic likenesses of their subjects. One inventor of this new genre was northern Italian Antonio Abondio who attained mastery in this technique and lent his works a vibrancy through the addition of pearls and precious stones. These miniature wax portraits were popular gifts in noble and bourgeois circles and portrait medallions of royal rulers served political purposes of legitimizing the claim of rulers, disseminating the image of the sovereign, and ensuring that it would survive beyond their death.

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