It is an endlessly arresting encounter when your eyes meet a seemingly familiar face, looking out across the millennia. With their life-like colour and unerring gaze, the paintings on thin wooden panels that depicted the dead of Roman-period Egypt have an immediacy to them, seducing us to believe we are seeing the portrait of an individual from antiquity.
Portrait of a woman, early Antonine period (AD 138-160) based on hairstyle. Size: 42.5cm tall
Around 1,000 of these paintings on imported limewood are known, but only about 100 are attached to the mummies of the deceased, where they still cover the face. Most of the images are painted in encaustic, mixing hot wax and pigment, but temp
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