Portrait of Eirene

The artwork

This young woman has a name, Eirene, and we know it because her family had it written on the panel, together with a prayer for her soul. You receive it printed on handmade Amalfi paper, in a handmade frame.

• The young face, the gold wreath in her dark hair, the earrings and the red garment.
• A gaze that brings warmth to a bedroom.
• A gift for someone dear, or for anyone called Irene.

Eirene lived in Egypt between AD 40 and 50, when the country was a province of Rome. When she died her body was mummified and this portrait, painted on a thin wooden panel with colours mixed into wax, was placed over her face among the bandages. It is one of the portraits we call Fayum portraits, after the region of Egypt where many were found.

The inscription says who she was: "Eirene, daughter of Silvanus; her mother is Senpnoutis". It then asks that her soul may live forever before Osiris-Sokaris, "the great god, lord of Abydos". Osiris was the Egyptian god who welcomed the dead, and Abydos the holy city of his cult. Her father's name is Latin, her mother's Egyptian and her own Greek, meaning peace: three names that hold the Egypt of that time, where Egyptians, Greeks and Romans lived side by side.

The original is in the Landesmuseum Württemberg in Stuttgart and is on show in the exhibition Il potere del ritratto. Egitto e Roma. I volti del Fayum, at the Museo dell'Ara Pacis in Rome from 5 November 2026 to 2 May 2027.

In a bedroom or a study it brings home a young woman of two thousand years ago, with her name. It is a tender gift for someone dear, or for an Irene.

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