Woman with Curly Hair

The artwork

The earrings, the gold necklace, the dark stripe on the shoulder: this woman wanted to be remembered with every sign of her elegance. You receive it printed on handmade Amalfi paper, in a handmade frame.

• The black curly hair, the large eyes, the gold chain around the neck.
• A delicate portrait, lovely in a bedroom or a living room.
• A gift for an elegant woman, or for anyone who loves antiquity.

She lived in Egypt around the middle of the second century AD, when the country was a province of Rome. Her face was painted with colours mixed into wax on a limewood panel just three millimetres thick, which was placed over the mummy's face among the bandages when she died. It is one of the portraits we call Fayum portraits, after the region of Egypt where many were found.

The painter dressed her in the Roman way. Over her tunic she wears a mantle, and down her shoulder runs the clavus, the coloured stripe that in Roman fashion was a sign of rank. She wears earrings and a gold chain around her neck: for a wealthy family, the portrait was also a way of showing who she had been.

The Louvre in Paris, which holds the original, bought it in 1893 from the collector Albert Daninos Pacha (pacha, or pasha, was a title of honour in the Egypt of that time). It may come from Philadelphia, a village in the Fayum, but the museum marks this with a question mark.

In a bedroom or a living room it brings home the gaze of a lady from eighteen centuries ago. It is a gift for an elegant woman, or for anyone who loves ancient Egypt.

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