Woman by the Malibu Painter

The artwork

We do not know her painter's name: scholars call him the Malibu Painter, after the villa on the California coast where the Getty Museum keeps this portrait. You receive it printed on handmade Amalfi paper, in a handmade frame.

• The black curls, the large eyes, the earrings and the necklace of pearls and green stones.
• A luminous portrait that brings warmth to a bedroom or a sitting room.
• A gift for a woman who loves art.

She was painted in Egypt between AD 75 and 100, when the country had been a province of Rome for about a century. The painter used encaustic, colours mixed with wax, on a lime wood panel two millimetres thick. Like the other portraits we call Fayum portraits, it was placed over the face of the mummy, among the bandages, so that the woman would keep her appearance in the afterlife.

The name comes from Malibu, California, where the Getty Museum shows its antiquities. Scholars attribute three portraits to this unknown master, recognising his hand in the way he paints light, shadow, noses and mouths; two come from Hawara, the cemetery of Arsinoe, the main city of the Fayum, where he probably worked.

In a bedroom it brings home a woman of almost nineteen centuries ago and her nameless painter. It is a refined gift.

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