Girl with Golden Lips

The artwork

Her lips are gold: for the Egyptians, gold could turn the girl into a radiant spirit after death. You receive it printed on handmade Amalfi paper, in a handmade frame.

• The gilded laurel wreath, the large eyes, the earrings and the golden lips.
• A precious portrait that lights up a bedroom or a sitting room.
• A gift for a young woman or for someone dear.

She was painted in Egypt between AD 25 and 37, in the last years of the emperor Tiberius, the successor of Augustus: it is one of the oldest of the portraits we call Fayum portraits. The painter used encaustic, colours mixed with wax, on a lime wood panel, which was placed over the face of the mummy, among the bandages.

Two worlds meet in this face. The girl wears the hair and clothes of the Greek and Roman women of her time, with a violet mantle dotted with gold. But her family had her mummified in the Egyptian way, and the painter put gold on her lips and jewels. According to the Cleveland Museum of Art, in Ohio, which holds the panel, that gold was not meant to make her beautiful: it was to help her become an akh, the radiant and effective spirit that the dead became in the afterlife.

In a bedroom it brings home a girl of two thousand years ago, with the light of gold. It is a precious 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