Man with a High Forehead

The artwork

Along the edges of this panel you can still see the marks of the linen bands that held it on the mummy's head, almost two thousand years ago. You receive it printed on handmade Amalfi paper, in a handmade frame.

• The high forehead, the serious gaze, the warm, shaded skin.
• A face of character that gives strength to a study or a bookcase.
• A gift for a father, a grandfather, or anyone who loves ancient history.

The man lived in Egypt between AD 40 and 50, when the country had only recently become a province of Rome. His face was painted with colours mixed into wax on a tall, narrow limewood panel, which was placed over the mummy's face and fixed with the bandages when he died. It is one of the portraits we call Fayum portraits, after the region of Egypt where many were found, and one of the oldest in its museum: it is the same age as the famous portrait of Eirene, kept beside it.

The original is in the Landesmuseum Württemberg in Stuttgart. It arrived with the collection of Ernst von Sieglin, a German industrialist with a passion for antiquity who lived from 1848 to 1927 and from whom all the museum's mummy portraits come. The painter portrayed the man without flattering him: the hair receding from the forehead, the white garment with the black clavus, the coloured stripe of Roman clothing, and over it a dark mantle.

In a study or next to a bookcase it is a portrait that gives the room authority. It is a gift for a father or a grandfather, or for anyone who loves 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