Roman-Egyptian Cartonnage Panel of Woman

Roman Egypt, ca. 1st to 3rd century CE. A veristic portrait of a woman stylistically related to Greco-Roman painting, though created for a strictly Egyptian purpose, the inclusion of honorable funerary dressings for mummies. This mask was made of plaster and/or cartonnage (a mixture of linen and glue) and painted with tempera in hues of white, yellow, red, and black. Her visage is hauntingly realistic, presenting naturalistic facial features and framed by a curly coiffure.

The subject holds both hands up in a gesture likely understood by the ancients and wears elegant garments and jewelry including a v-neck garment, a veil, and a red beaded necklace, earrings, and bracelet. A mask like this would have been placed over the face and fastened into the linen wrappings of an Egyptian mummy. Such portrait masks are significant, because they demonstrate conclusively that Greco-Roman individuals represented in encaustic paintings also subscribed to traditional Egyptian beliefs about the afterlife.

Interestingly, Roman Egypt was a multicultural society, and this provided great resources for portraiture. The sculptural style and painting technique of this example, for instance, speak to Greek traditions of realism with sensitive modeling that allows for shadows and highlights on the face. What's more, since virtually no paintings from the ancient Greeks have survived, mummy portraits - both paintings and painted masks like this example - are the only examples that can point to one of the purportedly highest achievements of Greek culture. Furthermore, the clothing, jewelry, and hairstyles depicted present fashions that embraced eastern Mediterranean preferences such as the profusion of curls that we see here