Among the earliest painted portraits that have come down to us are those generally known as the “Fayum portraits,” named for the place where most of them were found, in the Faiyum Basin south of Cairo. They date from the time of Roman rule in Egypt, from the late first century BC or early first century AD to perhaps the middle of the third century, and were probably painted by Greeks who had settled in Egypt. The nine hundred or so of these portraits that have survived can now be found in museums around the world.
These portraits are direct and evocative. They picture individuals—merchants, military officers, teachers, religious figures—who could afford to have their earthly identities so commemorated in death. They were painted in encaustic or tempera, using gold, black, red, and two ochres, on wooden panels to be affixed to the mummified remains of the dead, and were preserved remarkably well by the hot, dry Egyptian climate.
The Fayum portraits are surprisingly modern in effect, even though they were made some two thousand years ago and were ostensibly not intended for the contemplation of the living, but for the dead, in the spiritual world beyond. When we look at them now, we are caught in an illicit act: an intrusion into the borderlands.
It is significant, I think, that these portraits began to make their way into European collections at about the same time the first photographic portraits were made. Louis Daguerre made what many consider to be the first photograph of a human being in 1839, but the figure registers as only a shadow, really, a full-body profile of a man getting his boots cleaned, on the Boulevard du Temple in Paris. Since he was the only one on the dirty boulevard who was standing still, his was the only form that had time enough to make an impression, in the four minutes or so that Daguerre needed to expose the film. There is another tenebrous specter in that image, belonging to the bootblack kneeling before the man, but he or she is even more ephemeral and is seldom mentioned. From the very beginning, the essential question has been: Who deserves to be pictured, or mentioned?
Among the earliest painted portraits that have come down to us are those generally known as the “Fayum portraits,” named for the place where most of them were found, in the Faiyum Basin south of Cairo. They date from the time of Roman rule in Egypt, from the late first century BC or early first century AD to perhaps the middle of the third century, and were probably painted by Greeks who had settled in Egypt. The nine hundred or so of these portraits that have survived can now be found in museums around the world.
These portraits are direct and evocative. They picture individuals—merchants, military officers, teachers, religious figures—who could afford to have their earthly identities so commemorated in death. They were painted in encaustic or tempera, using gold, black, red, and two ochres, on wooden panels to be affixed to the mummified remains of the dead, and were preserved remarkably well by the hot, dry Egyptian climate.
The Fayum portraits are surprisingly modern in effect, even though they were made some two thousand years ago and were ostensibly not intended for the contemplation of the living, but for the dead, in the spiritual world beyond. When we look at them now, we are caught in an illicit act: an intrusion into the borderlands.
It is significant, I think, that these portraits began to make their way into European collections at about the same time the first photographic portraits were made. Louis Daguerre made what many consider to be the first photograph of a human being in 1839, but the figure registers as only a shadow, really, a full-body profile of a man getting his boots cleaned, on the Boulevard du Temple in Paris. Since he was the only one on the dirty boulevard who was standing still, his was the only form that had time enough to make an impression, in the four minutes or so that Daguerre needed to expose the film. There is another tenebrous specter in that image, belonging to the bootblack kneeling before the man, but he or she is even more ephemeral and is seldom mentioned. From the very beginning, the essential question has been: Who deserves to be pictured, or mentioned?
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