Panel Portrait of a Man

This first century funerary portrait, called a Fayum portrait, shows a man wearing a white robe with a white cloth draped around his neck. He is from Roman Imperial Egypt’s Greco-Egyptian community, and this painting would likely have been attached to the head of his mummy.

Fayum portraits, like this one, were commonly made with encaustic paint on wood. Here, the man’s face is bisected by the vertical striations in the wood grain. Researchers have found that artists used both indigenous timbers, including the fig tree, and imported hardwoods like cypress, cedar, or limewood to make the panels. Hardwoods are more malleable, and may have been more valuable. These hardwoods were cut into thin planks which made them easier to mold onto the mummy or coffin when incorporated into its wrappings.