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Back to previous pageLOT 0068
Sold for (Inc. bp): £1,488
1ST-2ND CENTURY AD
14" (38 grams, 35.5cm).
A fabric-backed wooden veneer panel with painted portrait of a female in dark red robe with two-strand necklace of green beads, drop earrings.
PROVENANCE:
Property of a lady; acquired in the late 1970s on the London art market.
LITERATURE:
See Walker, S and Bierbrier, M. Ancient Faces: Mummy Portraits from Roman Egypt, 1997.
FOOTNOTES:
Paintings such as these take their name from a fertile and flourishing district of Roman Egypt whose population comprised of Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Syrians, Libyans and Jews. In this cosmopolitan environment the dead were mummified in the traditional Egyptian manner, but in a noticeable departure from the norm had a painted realistic portrait placed over the top. The Fayum portraits are by far the largest body of ancient easel painting to have survived from the Roman period with over a thousand examples being known. The hairstyle on this portrait would suggest a date during the reigns of the Emperors Trajan and Hadrian, 98 - 138 AD.
