SG : 2051
SCOTT :
C225
Fayum mummy
portraits
Mummy portrait of a young woman, 3rd
century, Louvre, Paris.
The single specimen of Gayet's mummy
portraits from Antinoopolis for which information on its
archaeological context is available. The heavily gilt portrait was
found in winter 1905/06 and sold to Berlin in
1907. Berlin,
Egyptian Museum.
Detail of a portrait within its mummy
wrappings, Metropolitan
Museum of Art. It was
discovered by Flinders Petrie in a burial chamber in
1911.
A portrait from the late 1st century
CE. Walters Art
Museum, Baltimore.
Man with sword belt,
British
Museum.
Portrait of a young boy, early 3rd
century, Antikensammlung
Berlin.
Portrait of an Egyptian
man
Depiction of a woman with curly hair,
wearing a violet chiton and cloak and pendant
earrings. British
Museum.
The plaited hairstyle of this elite
woman makes it possible to date this painting to the reign
of Trajan (98 - 117
CE). Walters Art
Museum, Baltimore.
Depiction of a woman with a ringlet
hairstyle, an orange chiton with black bands and rod-shaped
earrings. Royal Museum of
Scotland.
Portrait of a young man,
Pushkin
Museum.
Faiyum mummy portrait of a young
man. Antikensammlungen
Munich.
Portrait of a woman,
Louvre.
Mummy
portraits or Fayum mummy portraits (also Faiyum mummy portraits) is
the modern term given to a type of naturalistic
painted portraits on wooden
boards attached to mummies from
the Coptic
period. They belong to the tradition
of panel
painting, one of the most highly regarded forms
of art in the Classical world. In fact, the Fayum portraits are the
only large body of art from that tradition to have
survived.
Mummy
portraits have been found across Egypt, but are most common in
the Faiyum
Basin, particularly from
Hawara and Antinoopolis,
hence the common name. "Faiyum Portraits" is generally thought of
as a stylistic, rather than a geographic, description. While
painted Cartonnage
mummy cases date back to pharaonic
times, the Faiyum mummy portraits were an innovation dating to the
Coptic period on time of the Roman occupation
of Egypt.
They date to
the Roman period, from the late 1st century BCE or the early 1st
century CE onwards. It is not clear when their production ended,
but recent research suggests the middle of the 3rd century. They
are among the largest groups among the very few survivors of the
highly prestigious panel painting
tradition of the classical world, which
was continued into Byzantine and Western
traditions in the post-classical world, including the local
tradition of Coptic iconography
in
Egypt.
The
portraits covered the faces of bodies that were mummified for
burial. Extant examples indicate that they were mounted into the
bands of cloth that were used to wrap the bodies. Almost all have
now been detached from the mummies.They usually
depict a single person, showing the head, or head and upper chest,
viewed frontally. In terms of artistic tradition, the images
clearly derive more from Graeco-Roman traditions
than Egyptian ones.
Two groups
of portraits can be distinguished by technique: one
of encaustic (wax)
paintings, the other in tempera. The former
are usually of higher quality.
About 900
mummy portraits are known at present.[
The majority were found in
the necropoleis
of Faiyum. Due to the hot dry Egyptian
climate, the paintings are frequently very well preserved, often
retaining their brilliant colours seemingly unfaded by
time.
