This striking portrait of a young man was
painted in the encaustic technique on wood.
Although the majority of the painted surface has
deteriorated over the centuries, the young man’s
eyes are remarkably intact, staring back at us
through the ages. The dark brown eyes, his
thick eyebrows, and dark curly hair are all facial
features characteristic of the people depicted on
such portraits. Like an old photograph that has
faded over the years, we recognize something
familiar in this work, and in the eyes of this man,
something we recognize in ourselves too.
It was common practice among elite members of
Roman society in Egypt to commemorate their
loved ones with a commissioned portrait. Painted
in either the encaustic technique, by which the
pigment was suspended in molten wax, or in
tempera, on very thin panels of wood, these
images represented the deceased wearing the
latest fashions in clothing with their hair coiffed
in the most popular, contemporary styles current
in Rome.
These portraits, such as ours, were proudly
displayed in the home during the sitter’s life
time, but were removed and entrusted to the
funerary priests upon death so that the portrait
might be incorporated into the bandages of the
deceased’s mummy. Our example is unusual in
that it is still attached to the linen bandages, the
adhering to which, coupled with the
extraordinary paper thinness of the wooden
panel itself, contributed over the centuries to its
present state. Nevertheless, one still senses the
presence of the sitter because of the emphasis
given to the large eyes which continue to cast
their glance deep into the distance. This
concentration on the eyes as windows of the soul
so characterizes many of these so-called Faiyum
portraits, and so impressed the early Christians
that such eyes became a fixed feature of
Byzantine icons, which are to be regarded as the
artistic heirs of such Faiyum portraits. On the
basis of parallels for the style, we can assign our
evocative portrait to the second century AD.
References:
E. Doxiadis, The Mysterious Fayyum Portraits.
Faces from Ancient Egypt (New York 1995),
particularly pages 45-46, for a succinct
discussion about the influence of these Faiyum
portraits on Byzantine art, and page 195, number
6, for an example in Munich which is dated to
the period of the Roman Emperor Hadrian and
appears to share stylistic characteristics with our
portrait.
