Cirage

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Cirage - shoe polish

The Cirage [siʁaːʒə], of French cire and Latin cera (the wax ') or Latin ceratus (coated with wax') is always associated with beeswax or with the yellow-brown color of beeswax. Cirage can mean firstly a substance that is used for waxing, secondly a waxed-in object and thirdly an object that only looks as if it was covered with wax.

Painting: Cirage in dark yellow tones - Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn: Self-portrait with his young wife Saskia , 1635/36, oil on canvas, Gemäldegalerie Dresden
Painting: Cirage in shades of yellow - Vincent van Gogh: Wheatfield with reaper and sun , 1889, oil on canvas, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo

Origin of name and description

  1. In French, “le cirage” is a common term that means floor wax, polish or shoe polish , among other things . The products originally consisted mainly of wax (beeswax), today they also consist of other substances. In addition to the care products, wax paint or a wax coating can also generally be referred to as cirage. The substances are used to restore the shine, waterproofness and appearance of objects such as shoes or floors and thus increase their lifespan. The preservative effect is in the foreground.
  2. Cirage means “paintings made of one color and covered with yellow wax paint.” In the visual arts, some artists seal their finished painting, sculpture or photography with beeswax. At the same time, the wax also has an aesthetic effect because - applied thinly - it lets the colors shine. The cirage is not to be confused with the encaustic . There the artists mix the beeswax as a binding agent directly with the color pigments. The artisans also coat natural products such as fruit, flowers, leaves, pine cones or works on paper with wax to make them more durable. The term cirage is rarely used in this context today.
  3. In the fine arts, the cirage also refers to painting without beeswax, which is only kept in wax-like yellow or yellow-brown tones, also called yellow painting. In addition to the grisaille , blue camaïeu and purple camaïeu, it forms a subspecies of the camaïeu painting. Like the Camaïeu painting, it can be applied to glass, wood, canvas or porcelain.
Painting: Cirage in reddish yellow tones - Max Slevogt: Orang Utan , 1901, oil on canvas, Museum Pfalzgalerie Kaiserslautern, painting collection

While cirage is a common term in French today, it is rarely used in German-speaking countries, at most in crossword puzzles where a search is made for a six-letter word that means “coating with wax”.

history

Already in the third millennium BC The Egyptians used beeswax for the mummification of the dead and as a coating for their wall paintings or sculptures. As a result, the colors of Nefertiti , for example, are extremely durable and delight the viewer even after thousands of years. The Egyptian artists bound the pigments in wax (encaustic) and used them to paint the bust. Then they also covered the plastic with a layer of wax (cirage).

literature

  • Cirage in various dictionaries from 19./20. century

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Johann Christian August Heyse: General foreign dictionary. 1835, accessed on February 26, 2020 (German).
  2. ^ Johann Heinrich Zedler (ed.): Large complete universal encyclopedia . tape 6 . Halle and Leipzig 1733. Reprint: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, Graz 1994, ISBN 3-201-00031-0 , p. 87, keyword: Cirage .
  3. ^ Karen Kling: wax and photography. Retrieved on February 26, 2020 (German).
  4. ↑ Max Jürgen Kobbert: The book of colors . 1st edition. Primus Verlag, Darmstadt 2011, ISBN 978-3-89678-769-9 , pp. 212 .
  5. ↑ Covering with wax. Retrieved on February 26, 2020 (German).
  6. ↑ The cradle of the encaustic was in Egypt! The Encaustic Academy, accessed on February 27, 2020 (German).