AN EGYPTIAN PAINTED WOOD MUMMY PORTRAIT OF A WOMAN

ROMAN PERIOD, CIRCA 100-140 A.D.

Details

AN EGYPTIAN PAINTED WOOD MUMMY PORTRAIT OF A WOMAN
ROMAN PERIOD, CIRCA 100-140 A.D.
Painted in the tempera technique, depicting an elderly woman, her graying black hair center parted, brushed around the face and toward the back of the head, wisps surrounding her hairline, her sallow complexion with several thick wrinkles, including two horizontal lines along the forehead, two vertical lines above the bridge of her long hooked nose, thinner aging lines along her cheeks and naso-labial folds, depicted with large dark brown eyes, the preserved pupil gazing upward, the lids rose-colored, below thick black brows, her full lips closed, with naturalistic shading denoting the contours and shadows throughout, wearing drop earrings threaded with three pearls, on a blue-gray ground
10 in. (25.4 cm.) high

Provenance

Augustus Pitt Rivers, Dorset, acquired in the 19th century.
George Pitt-Rivers, Dorset.
Property of Mrs. Stella Pitt-Rivers; Sotheby's, London, 10 December 1984, lot 154.
with Jack Ogden, London, 1985.
with Charles Ede, London.

Literature

K. Parlasca and H.G. Frenz, Ritratti di Mummie, Rome, 2003, Bd. 4, p. 82, no. 856, fig. 8, tav. 184.

Exhibited

Pitt-Rivers Museum, Farnham, Dorset.

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Descriptif du lot

This mummy portrait relates closely to examples said to be from er-Rubayat in the Fayum. Like the present example, the er-Rubayat finds are painted in tempera on wood, usually oak. For a mummy portrait of striking similarity, including subject, color palette, coiffure and wrinkles, see no. 79, p. 89 in Walker and Bierbrier, Ancient Faces: Mummy Portraits from Ancient Egypt.

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