AN EGYPTIAN PAINTED WOOD MUMMY PORTRAIT
AN EGYPTIAN PAINTED WOOD MUMMY PORTRAIT

ROMAN PERIOD, CIRCA EARLY 2ND CENTURY A.D.

Details
AN EGYPTIAN PAINTED WOOD MUMMY PORTRAIT
ROMAN PERIOD, CIRCA EARLY 2ND CENTURY A.D.
Painted in the encaustic technique, her long hair coiled up in a chignon on the top of her head, with short fringed curls around her face and across her forehead, wearing a white tunic with purple clavi, and mantle draped over her left shoulder, assembled from two or three different encaustic portraits, framed and glazed
4 1/8 x 7¼ in. (35.8 x 18.4 cm.) high
Provenance
Blanchard Antiquities, Cairo, 1906.
Anonymous sale; Sotheby's, New York, 25 June 1992, lot 44.
Anonymous sale; Christie's, London, 8 October 2000, lot 159.

Lot Essay

PUBLISHED:
H. Zaloscer, Portäts aus dem Wüstensand: Die Mumienbildnisse aus der Oase Fayum, Vienna, 1961, p. 66.
K. Parlasca, Repertorio d'arte dell'egitto greco-romano, Palermo, 1969, Serie B, vol. 1, pp. 57-58, no. 113, pl. 27, 3.
Catalogue of a collection of Egyptian antiquities brought together and presented ... by Mr. Edward Drummond Libbey, Toledo Museum of Art, 1906, p. 32, no. 172.
W. H. Peck, Mummy Portraits from Roman Egypt, Detroit, 1967, p. 36. D. L. Thompson, "A Patchwork Fayum in Toledo", American Journal of Archaeology, vol. 77, no. 4, October 1973, pp. 438-439, pl. 88.
D. L. Thompson, "Four 'Fayum Portaits' in the Getty Museum", The J. Paul Getty Museum Journal, II, 1975, p. 92.
J-E. Berger and R. Pintaudi, El-Fayum, Milan, 1985, p. 68, colour pl. on p. 69.

David L. Thompson (op. cit. AJA, 77) attributes this portrait to Hawara, and compares it to examples now in Baltimore (inv. 32.3), Brooklyn Museum (inv. 11.600 B), and the National Gallery, London (inv. 2913), all excavated by Petrie at Hawara.

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