Description
Portrait peint à l’encaustique sur panneau de bois à sommet arrondi, représentant le défunt sous les traits d’un jeune homme en buste, en léger trois-quarts, coiffé d’une courte chevelure noire. Ses sourcils, épais et continus à la racine du nez, encadrent des yeux en amande au regard vif, rehaussé de blanc et tourné vers la droite. Le nez est droit et allongé, le philtrum profond, surmontant une bouche aux lèvres charnues. Il est vêtu d’une tunique claire ornée de clavi de pourpre, visible sur l’épaule droite.
Fentes du bois, éclats, manques et quelques reprises.
Dim. : 35,5 x 21 cm
Collection Charles Gillet (1879 – 1972), puis par descendance
“The Fayum portraits” emerged in Egypt during the Roman period, principally between the 1st and 3rd centuries AD. Painted on thin wooden panels, they were incorporated into the wrappings or cartonnage enclosing the mummy, at the level of the deceased’s face. Although their name refers to the Fayum region, where the first large number of examples were discovered, such portraits have also been found in several necropolises in Middle and Lower Egypt.
These portraits are distinguished by the naturalism with which the faces are rendered and by the desire to capture the individual features of the deceased. The figures are generally shown frontally or in slight three-quarter view, as in the present example, with particular attention paid to the gaze, carnations, hairstyles, jewellery and clothing. The encaustic technique, which uses wax as a binder, allows the faces to be modelled through subtle variations in texture, light and colour. Tempera, also employed, produces a more linear and matt effect.
The realism of the physiognomies, as well as the hairstyles, jewellery and clothing, reflects the influence of Graeco-Roman art. The function of these images, however, remained deeply rooted in Egyptian funerary practices, as they played a role in accompanying the deceased on their passage to the afterlife.
Thus, the portraits known as “Fayum portraits” provide a particularly eloquent illustration of the cultural syncretism of Roman Egypt, where the naturalism of Graeco-Roman portraiture meets the millennia-old funerary traditions of pharaonic Egypt.
