Portrait of a Woman. In the manner of the Fayum mummy portraits

Unknown artist

Late 19th – early 20th c. Encaustic on panel

The mummy portraits known as the Fayum portraits were painted in Egypt during the Greco-Roman period (30 BC–395 AD). These unique paintings were rediscovered in the third quarter of the 19th century, when Egyptian culture in general was under scrutiny. The modernity of the portraits and their good state of conservation caused a world-wide sensation. The fast brush-strokes used to portray the characters seemed innovative, and several artists of the modernist era, including Picasso, Modigliani and Matisse, were inspired by the portraits. The Fayum mummy portraits acquired a special place in collections of art and archaeological relics. The Fayum portraits were in great demand on the “art” market, which created favourable circumstances for forgeries.

The Mikkel Museum’s portrait of a woman with a frozen expression was made during the peak of Fayum mummy portrait fascination, i.e. at the end of the 19th or the beginning of the 20th century, not in the first century AD, as Johannes Mikkel believed. This has been proved by various material analyses: the support of the painting is a 100–150-year-old alder panel, and the zinc white that the paint contains was first used in the 1830s.