Fayum Technique - Portrait of a woman in encaustic on wood
Height: 0.355m., width: 0.18m., thickness: ca 0.0015,m.
Provenance: Egypt, donation of I. Demetriou (1880-1886). Inv. no.: ΑΙΓ 1628
Date: Ca. 138-161 AD
Exhibition location: Egyptian Collection, ground floor, Room 40, Case 20 no. 2
Life-size portrait of a woman wearing a pinkish tunic and a necklace with emeralds and white pearls. Pigments in black, red, white, green, and grey colors and their tones are used to render the female flesh, drapery and jewellery, as well as shades.
The portraits from the Fayum are painted on wooden tablets (usually 1.5-2.0m. in thickness), mainly from the local sycamore fig, or linen textile and employ pigments mixed with hot or cold wax (encaustic method) or water-soluble ones (tempera). Occasionally these drawing techniques are combined. The busts were framed by the mummy wrappings. Some full-figure portraits on shrouds, left unbound, are also found.
On wooden panels, an underlying stratum of plaster and animal glue formed the base that took the tempera pigments. On linen, a layer of coloured animal glue, sometimes mixed with plaster, stiffened the painting surface. In encaustic, the artist drew either directly onto the wood or covered it with glue or wax.
Scholars do not agree about the form and manner of use of the three tools (branding tool=cauterium, graving tool=cestrum and paint-brush=penicillum) used in drawing with hot wax. Beewax, sometimes mixed with resins, was combined with pigments. Cold (Punic) wax was emulsified so that it could be diluted with egg or oil. Use of agents such as animal glues, resins or Arabic gum gave water pigments binding qualities.
White, yellow, red, and black were the basic colours which produced a wide range of tones. Blue, green, mauve and additions in gold leaf supplemented the chromatic repertoire.
