Mummy Portrait of a Young Woman

about A.D. 170–200

Medium

Tempera on wood

Dimensions

34.9 × 21.3 cm

Status

In Museum Collection

Collect24 Art ID

C24-137266

A Romano-Egyptian funerary portrait of a woman painted in tempera (pigments suspended in animal glue) on a native Egyptian sycomore fig panel. A gray under layer is visible at the edges and bottom of the panel. The features, dominated by large heavy-lidded eyes, are composed with a range of finely applied linear brushstrokes varying in thickness from the eyebrows to the eyelashes to a variety of highlights on the cheeks, nose and chin. The accomplished painting of the head and neck is in strong contrast to the blocky impressionistic swaths of pink (madder) for her tunic and thick black (indigo) stripes for the *clavi* (woven stripes) traditionally associated with Roman citizenship. A pink or lavender tunic often appears as a major component of the costume of female funerary portraits and should generally be interpreted as a reference to the expensive purple hues of elite tunics worn with which these women wished to be eternally associated. Certain dyes, such as the madder used here, can run more pink than purple, and the shocking pink hue of this pigment is unusually bright. The woman’s jewelry consists of a plaited gold chain with a pendant and a pair of suspended pearl earrings,…