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Fayum

Mummy portraits were painted portraits on wooden boards attached to Egyptian mummies from the Roman period. They are some of the only surviving examples of panel painting from the classical world. The portraits covered the faces of mummies and depicted individuals in a realistic style derived from Greco-Roman art. About 900 portraits are known today and most were found in the Faiyum region of Egypt.

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42 views

Fayum

Mummy portraits were painted portraits on wooden boards attached to Egyptian mummies from the Roman period. They are some of the only surviving examples of panel painting from the classical world. The portraits covered the faces of mummies and depicted individuals in a realistic style derived from Greco-Roman art. About 900 portraits are known today and most were found in the Faiyum region of Egypt.

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waskito land
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Mummy portraits or Fayum mummy portraits are a type of naturalistic painted portrait on wooden

boards attached to upper class mummies from Roman Egypt. They belong to the tradition of panel
painting, one of the most highly regarded forms of art in the Classical world. The Fayum portraits are
the only large body of art from that tradition to have survived. They were formerly, and incorrectly,
called Coptic portraits.
Mummy portraits have been found across Egypt, but are most common in the Faiyum Basin,
particularly from Hawara and the Hadrianic Roman city Antinoopolis. "Faiyum portraits" is generally
used 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 time
of Roman rule in Egypt.[1] The portraits date to the Imperial Roman era, from the late 1st century BC
or the early 1st century AD 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 panel painting tradition of the classical world, which continued into Byzantine,
Eastern Mediterranean, and Western traditions in the post-classical world, including the local
tradition of Coptic Christian 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.[2] 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 Greco-Roman artistic traditions than Egyptian ones.[3] 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.[4] The majority were found in the necropolis 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.

History of research[edit]
Pre-19th century[edit]

Mummies' discovery by Pietro Della Valle


The Italian explorer Pietro Della Valle, on a visit to Saqqara-Memphis in 1615, was the first
European to discover and describe mummy portraits. He transported some mummies with portraits
to Europe, which are now in the Albertinum (Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden).[5]
19th-century collectors[edit]
Although interest in ancient Egypt steadily increased after that period, further finds of mummy
portraits did not become known before the early 19th century. The provenance of these first new
finds is unclear; they may come from Saqqara as well, or perhaps from Thebes. In 1820, the Baron
of Minotuli acquired several mummy portraits for a German collector, but they became part of a
whole shipload of Egyptian artifacts lost in the North Sea. In 1827, Léon de Laborde brought two
portraits, supposedly found in Memphis, to Europe, one of which can today be seen at the Louvre,
the other in the British Museum. Ippolito Rosellini, a member of Jean-François Champollion's 1828–
29 expedition to Egypt, brought a further portrait back to Florence. It is so similar to de Laborde's
specimens that it is thought to be from the same source.[5] During the 1820s, the British Consul
General to Egypt, Henry Salt, sent several further portraits to Paris and London. Some of them were
long considered portraits of the family of the Theban Archon Pollios Soter, a historical character
known from written sources, but this has turned out to be incorrect.[5]
Once again, a long period elapsed before more mummy portraits came to light. In 1887, Daniel
Marie Fouquet heard of the discovery of numerous portrait mummies in a cave. He set off to inspect
them some days later, but arrived too late, as the finders had used the painted plaques for firewood
during the three previous cold desert nights. Fouquet acquired the remaining two of what had
originally been fifty portraits. While the exact location of this find is unclear, the likely source is from
er-Rubayat.[5] At that location, not long after Fouquet's visit, the Viennese art trader Theodor Graf
found several further images, which he tried to sell as profitably as possible. He engaged the
famous Egyptologist Georg Ebers to publish his finds. He produced presentation folders to advertise
his individual finds throughout Europe. Although little was known about their archaeological find
contexts, Graf went as far as to ascribe the portraits to known Ptolemaic pharaohs by analogy with
other works of art, mainly coin portraits. None of these associations were particularly well argued or
convincing, but they gained him much attention, not least because he gained the support of well-
known scholars like Rudolf Virchow. As a result, mummy portraits became the centre of much
attention.[6] By the late 19th century, their very specific aesthetic made them sought-after collection
pieces, distributed by the global arts trade.
Archaeological study: Flinders Petrie[edit]

Detail of a portrait within its mummy wrappings, Metropolitan Museum of


Art, discovered by Flinders Petrie in 1911.
In parallel, more scientific engagement with the portraits was beginning. In 1887, the British
archaeologist Flinders Petrie started excavations at Hawara. He discovered a
Roman necropolis which yielded 81 portrait mummies in the first year of excavation. At an exhibition
in London, these portraits drew large crowds. In the following year, Petrie continued excavations at
the same location but now suffered from the competition of a German and an Egyptian art dealer.
Petrie returned in the winter of 1910–11 and excavated a further 70 portrait mummies, some of them
quite badly preserved.[7] With very few exceptions, Petrie's studies still provide the only examples of
mummy portraits so far found as the result of systematic excavation and published properly.
Although the published studies are not entirely up to modern standards, they remain the most
important source for the find contexts of portrait mummies.
Late-19th- and early-20th-century collectors[edit]
In 1892, the German archaeologist von Kaufmann discovered the so-called "Tomb of Aline", which
held three mummy portraits; among the most famous today. Other important sources of such finds
are at Antinoöpolis and Akhmim. The French archaeologist Albert Gayet worked at Antinoöpolis and
found much relevant material, but his work, like that of many of his contemporaries, does not satisfy
modern standards. His documentation is incomplete, many of his finds remain without context.
Museums[edit]
Today, mummy portraits are represented in all important archaeological museums of the world.
Many have fine examples on display, notably the British Museum, the National Museum of Scotland,
the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Louvre in Paris.[8] Because they were mostly
recovered through inappropriate and unprofessional means, virtually all are without archaeological
context, a fact which consistently lowers the quality of archaeological and culture-historical
information they provide. As a result, their overall significance as well as their specific interpretations
remain controversial.[8]

Materials and techniques[edit]


A majority of images show a formal portrait of a single figure, facing and looking toward the viewer,
from an angle that is usually slightly turned from full face. The figures are presented as busts against
a monochrome background which in some instances are decorated. The individuals are both male
and female and range in age from childhood to old age.
Painted surface[edit]

Mummy portrait of a man from Fayum. Encaustic on limewood, AD 80–100. British Museum

Mummy portrait of a woman from Fayum, Hawara, modern-day Egypt. Encaustic on wood, AD
300–325. British Museum
The majority of preserved mummy portraits were painted on boards or panels, made from different
imported hardwoods, including oak, lime, sycamore, cedar, cypress, fig, and citrus.[9] The wood was
cut into thin rectangular panels and made smooth. The finished panels were set into layers of
wrapping that enclosed the body and were surrounded by bands of cloth, giving the effect of a
window-like opening through which the face of the deceased could be seen. Portraits were
sometimes painted directly onto the canvas or rags of the mummy wrapping (cartonnage painting).
Painting techniques[edit]
The wooden surface was sometimes primed for painting with a layer of plaster. In some cases the
primed layer reveals a preparatory drawing. Two painting techniques were
employed: encaustic (wax) painting and animal glue tempera. The encaustic images are striking
because of the contrast between vivid and rich colours, and comparatively large brush-strokes,
producing an "Impressionistic" effect. The tempera paintings have a finer gradation of tones and
chalkier colours, giving a more restrained appearance.[8] In some cases, gold leaf was used to depict
jewellery and wreaths. There also are examples of hybrid techniques or of variations from the main
techniques.
The Fayum portraits reveal a wide range of painterly expertise and skill in presenting a lifelike
appearance. The naturalism of the portraits is often revealed in knowledge of anatomic structure and
in skilled modelling of the form by the use of light and shade, which gives an appearance of three-
dimensionality to most of the figures. The graded flesh tones are enhanced with shadows and
highlights indicative of directional lighting.

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