fayoum portraits |old article about fayoum portraits

1880 's Some Ancient Greek Portraits 1889 Original magazine article.Removed from an antique magazine. Quite Scarce.

6 pages with 10 illustrations.

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habit doubtless survived under the Hel- lenic domination of the country, but, as these discoveries show, in a. modified form. The portraits were painted on separate panels of sycamore wood, which were placed upon the body and kept in position by the bands of linen employed as a shroud. The panels were about a foot or a foot and a half long, and six or eight inches broad. Inasmuch as almost all of the por- traits represent men or women between fifteen and forty, it is not easy to sup- pose that they were painted after the death of the person represented, for otherwise we should find pictures of infants and of a greater number of old persons, and, moreover, nearly every one represents the sitter in a condition of health and unimpaired strength. It seems more reasonable to suppose that the habit of portrait-painting was coin- mon, and that some one picture was chosen to be laid with the body in thQ tomb, although the fact that many wear the funeral dress makes a decision of this question more difficult. That these were evidently close portraits can be stoutly maintained by those who have Number 2. and accuracy of his views, makes us feel sure that the German in the familiar story who evolved the camel out of his inner consciousness, came nearer the truth than the Englishman who sailed to Africa to study the animal, or than the Frenchman who recorded the observa- tions he made at the Jardin des Plantes. Yet, without these odious international comparisons, it may be said that the portraits which have recently been dis- covered do most wonderfully bear out the accuracy of Helbigs statements. The~e portraits, about seventy in number, are some which were found near Fayoum, at a place called Rubaiyat, in July and August, 1887. There are about seventy in all, and they were taken from the graves at what appears to have been a favorite place of burial. It was an old Egyptian custom to represent upon the mummy case a likeness of the person contained within. On those of stone this was done by carving, and the art of painting was employed when the ma- terial was of wood or papier-mdch~. The Number 23.
seen them, and the accompanying illus- trations will doubtless corroborate this view. The pictures are, to be sure, of varying merit, but the first impression which the spectator receives is one of closeacciiracy. The various hues are well giv~n, from fairness through and be- y6nd~the different shades of the brunette to a very full admixture of African blood. The different degrees of skill seem ,at first to establish a wide differ- ence of date, for it is easy, too easy, to conjecture that the crude pictures were painted a century or so before the good ones, but, since similar inequalities may be found in every modern picture ex- hibition, it is fairer to conjecture that then, as in more recent days, some pre- ferred, from motives of economy or from lack of taste, incompetent artists, while others made a wiser choice. Even more weighty arguments leave the determination of the exact date of the portraits somewhat vague. They must have been painted before 395 A.D., when the edict of Theodosius forbade heathen funeral rites, and~ Professor Ebers is inclined to~ believe that some were painted possibly three or four centu~ ries before the Christian era, and others probably in the first two centuries after Number 43. Christ. This would bring them into the flowering time of Alexandrine art, when the Antinotts,f6r example, ~vas produced, in the reign of Hadrian, 117138 A.D. The best of the portraits certainly do not contradict the hypothesis that they belong to a period of brilliant art work. The quality that most distinguishes them is a directness, a simplicity, which is most attractive. There is, perhaps, a certain conventionality in the treatment of the eyes, which have a somewhat mo- notonous stare, but, with that exception the portraits are above all things nat- ural and evidently life-like. In all of them the person is painted quite, or very nearly in full face, and the shoul- ders form the lower limit of the picture. They are generally painted in encaustic, that is to say, in a mixture of pure wax and a liquid balsam, into which were Number 16

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Fayoum women on wooden panel " Fayoum Portraits" 2000 years ago.