Benjamin Calau

Benjamin Calau (1724–1785)[1] was a German portrait painter, who used an encaustic technique.

[2] He usually painted in dark tones, often using as his medium a form of "Carthaginian" or "Punic" wax (cire éléodorique), which he had devised in an attempt to revive an encaustic technique used in antiquity and referred to by Pliny.

[4] He painted some portraits for Johann Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim's "Temple of Friendship",[5] a collection of paintings of the poet's friends (totalling more than 120 by the time of his death) that he kept in two rooms in his home in Halberstadt.

[6] In 1771 he went to Berlin, where the king awarded him the exclusive right to make and sell the Punic wax.

Lambert published the results of his researches in 1772 as Beschreibung einer mit dem Calauischen Wachse ausgemalten Farbenpyramide ("Description of a colour pyramid painted with Calau's wax").