Shroud of a Child from Antinoopolis

The artwork

A child in sandals, with a necklace round the neck, looks out at us from the linen cloth that wrapped the small body almost eighteen centuries ago. You receive it printed on handmade Amalfi paper, in a handmade frame.

• The child's face, the necklace with its pendant, the garlands and the small figures all around.
• A rare and precious image that gives character to a study or an entrance hall.
• A gift for anyone who loves Egypt and its mysteries.

It is a shroud, the large cloth that wrapped the mummy, painted in the third century AD at Antinoopolis, the city that the emperor Hadrian founded on the Nile in memory of Antinous, the young man he loved, drowned in the river. Egypt was then a Roman province. The painter used two techniques: tempera for the cloth and, for the face, encaustic, colours mixed with wax, as in the panel portraits we call Fayum portraits.

Around the child the painter drew the signs of Egyptian protection: at the top the winged sun disc with the sacred cobra, at the sides small figures that seem to be gods, and garlands of leaves all around. The shroud was found at Antinoopolis in 1908 and removed from the mummy before 1912. Today it belongs to the Louvre in Paris, which has lent it to 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 study it brings home a small face that a family wanted to protect forever. It is a precious gift for anyone who loves ancient history.

Unique quality material

Print on handmade Amalfi paper
Sheet size: 40 x 60 cm (15.7 x 23.6 in)
With frame: 42 x 62 cm (16.5 x 24.4 in)
Material: artwork printed on very fine handmade Amalfi paper with deckled edges
Frame: dark brown with gold fillet, handmade, with glass