Woman in a Dark Mantle

The artwork

A woman from Antinoopolis looks at us with large, calm eyes, her hair gathered at the nape and small pearls hanging from her ears. You receive it printed on handmade Amalfi paper, in a handmade frame.

• The pale face, the dark mantle, the necklace and the pearl earrings.
• An intense and sober portrait that gives character to a study or a bedroom.
• A gift for anyone who loves Egypt and the history of Rome.

She lived at Antinoopolis, the city that the emperor Hadrian had founded on the Nile, in the time of his successor, Antoninus Pius, who reigned from AD 138 to 161. When she died her body was mummified in the Egyptian way and this portrait was placed over her face among the bandages, painted in encaustic, colours mixed with wax, on a thin panel of sycomore, the fig tree that grows along the Nile. It is one of the portraits we call Fayum portraits, after the region of Egypt where many were found.

The painter took care over every sign of her elegance: the braid coiled at the nape, the earrings with small clusters of pearls, the necklace of stones and the dark mantle over the tunic. The panel was found in the excavations at Antinoopolis in 1904 and 1905 and reached the Louvre in Paris in 1905, with the share of the finds assigned to the museum.

In a bedroom or a study it brings home a woman of almost nineteen centuries ago, with her calm gaze. It is a gift for anyone who loves Egypt.

Unique quality material

Print on handmade Amalfi paper
Sheet size: 29 x 42 cm (11.4 x 16.5 in)
With frame: 31 x 44 cm (12.2 x 17.3 in)
Material: artwork printed on very fine handmade Amalfi paper with deckled edges
Frame: dark brown with gold fillet, handmade, with glass