Fayum mummy portraits
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Encaustic on wood; 43.7 x 34 cm (17 1/4 x 13 in.)
Royal Museum of Scotland, National Museums of Scotland, Edinburgh
Fayum mummy portraits is the name given to a large number of paintings from the first to third century. These are encaustic paintings, made with hot, pigmented wax on wooden panels, which were inserted into the mummies of the deceased. Fayum portraits represent the mostly Greek inhabitants[1][2] of Egypt and are some of the most interesting examples of surviving Greek art[3] in Ancient Egypt. The surviving paintings are predominantly from the Fayum region in Egypt and were completed during Hellenistic and Roman periods in a province of Egypt which had been settled primarily by Greek colonists[4][5][6], many of whom were soldier-veterans. The practice was common and the painters of the Fayum were either Greek residents[7][8][9] dating from the Ptolemaic period of the late 4th century bc, or those who had inherited the Greek artistic tradition. The dry climate of the region preserved many of the paintings until today.
Most of the portraits depict the deceased at a relatively young age, and many show children. According to Walker (2000), "CAT scans of all the complete mummies represented [in Walker (2000)] reveal a correspondence of age and, in suitable cases, sex between mummy and image." Walker concludes that the age distribution reflects the low life expectancy at the time. The wax portraits were completed during the life of the individual and displayed in their home, this custom belonged to the traditions of Greek art[10]. After the person was deceased, the portrait panel was placed over the mummified individuals face.
Together with the surviving frescoes and objects from Pompeii and Herculaneum, and tomb frescoes in Macedonia, they are the best preserved paintings from ancient times and are renowned for their remarkable naturalistim. It is, however, debatable whether the portraits depict the subjects as they really were. Analyses have shown that the painters depicted faces in a repetitive and formulaic way, albeit with a variety of hairstyles and beards. They appear to have worked from a number of standard types without making detailed observations of the unique facial proportions of specific individuals which give each face its own personality.
Many musueums around the world have fine examples of Fayum mummy portraits on display, notably the British Museum, the Royal Museum of Scotland, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Louvre in Paris.
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[edit] Notes
- ^ Encyclopædia Britannica Online - Egyptian art and architecture - Greco-Roman Egypt
- ^ Encyclopædia Britannica Online - Fayyum
- ^ The Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Julia de Wolf Gibbs Addison, L. C. Page & company, p.242
- ^ Portraits of the Ptolemies: Greek Kings as Egyptian Pharaohs, Paul Edmund Stanwick, University of Texas Press, p.23
- ^ The Cambridge Companion to the Hellenistic World, Cambridge University Press, p.39
- ^ Encyclopædia Britannica Online - Fayyum
- ^ Egypt, Cherine Badawi, p.120
- ^ Restauração de Pinturas: aplicações da encáustica, Edson Motta, Maria Luiza Guimarães Salgado, p.93
- ^ The World Museums Guide, Barbara Cooper, Maureen Matheson, Barbara Rosen, Threshold Books Ltd, p.66
- ^ Encyclopedia Of Ancient Greece, Nigel Guy, Routledge Taylor and Francis group, p.601
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- Walker, Susan (Ed.): Ancient Faces. Mummy Portraits from Roman Egypt. New York, 2000. ISBN 0-415-92744-7.
[edit] External links
- Proportion and personality in the Fayum Portraits, A.J.N.W Prag, November 2002
