Portrait of a Child from Antinoe

The artwork

He is a child, with very short hair and two tunics one over the other: one of the most tender portraits to have come from Roman Egypt. You receive it printed on handmade Amalfi paper, in a handmade frame.

• The round face, the dark eyes, the white tunic with purple stripes.
• A gentle portrait, lovely in a bedroom or a hallway.
• A gift for anyone who loves archaeology and true stories.

The child lived in Egypt between AD 175 and 225, when the country was part of the Roman Empire. He lived in Antinoe, ancient Antinoopolis, the city that the emperor Hadrian had founded on the Nile in memory of his young favourite Antinous. His face was painted with colours mixed into wax on a small sycamore panel and, when he died, placed over the mummy's face. It is one of the portraits we call Fayum portraits, after the region of Egypt where many were found, and like almost all of them it shows a young person: people died young back then, and children most of all.

It was found by the French archaeologist Albert Gayet in the excavations at Antinoe in 1904 and 1905. At the time finds were divided between Egypt and the excavators, and so in 1905 the portrait arrived at the Louvre in Paris, where it still is. The museum also records a figure painted behind the child. The date comes from the style: scholars compared it with portraits of known date.

In a bedroom or a hallway it brings home a child's gaze across eighteen centuries. It is a tender gift for anyone who loves history and real faces.

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