Descriptions Description Mummy portrait of a bearded man wearing a white tunic. To request a higher resolution file of this image, please submit an online request. Ross Accession Year 1924 Object Number 1924.80 Division Asian and Mediterranean Art Contact The Harvard Art Museums encourage the use of images found on this website for personal, noncommercial use, including educational and scholarly purposes. Acquisition and Rights Credit Line Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Pigments: Lead white, chalk, gypsum, carbon black, red and yellow ochres, natrojarosite Egyptian blue, gold Technique Painted Dimensions 29.3 x 13.2 cm (11 9/16 x 5 3/16 in.) Provenance Mr. View this object's location on our interactive map Physical Descriptions Medium Support: Imported European lime wood (Tilia europaea) Level 3, Room 3600, University Research Gallery Painting Date Early 2nd century CE PlacesĬreation Place: Ancient & Byzantine World, Africa, Fayum (Egypt) Period Roman Imperial period, Middle Culture Roman Persistent Link Location The works are now being sold on behalf of the Mosse Foundation, which represents the current heirs of Felicia Lachmann-Mosse.Identification and Creation Object Number 1924.80 Title Composite portrait of a man Classification Paintings Work Type In 1979, the University of Zurich acquired both portraits from Mrs. The Fayum portraits were acquired by Erich Maria Remarque, author of the World World I novel, All's Quiet on the Western Front, and his wife, the actress Paulette Goddard-Remarque. Their considerable art collection was seized and subsequently dispersed at auction. When Hitler’s party rose to power in 1933, 13 years after Mosse’s death, his daughter and sole heir, Felicia Lachmann-Mosse, and her husband, Hans Lachmann-Mosse, the publisher of the Berliner Tageblatt, were forced to leave Germany. It is likely that the Fayum portraits offered in this sale were a result of this relationship.
He sponsored digs led by Heinrich Karl Brugsch, whose excavations yielded the foundation for what is now the Cairo Museum. Mosse was a committed patron of the arts, particularly in the field of Egyptology. A successful entrepreneur, progressive political thinker and philanthropist, Mosse founded a publishing and advertising conglomerate that included the Berliner Tageblatt, an early and outspoken critic of the Nazi party. The two exceptional Fayum portraits in this story are from the Collection of Rudolf Mosse (1843-1920). Buste d'homme, painted in 1965 and sold at Christie’s in 2016, echoes the intense, confronting eyes found on mummy portraits from Graeco-Roman Egypt. Frida Kahlo also seems to visually quote the Fayum aesthetic in her Self-Portrait with Curly Hair (1935), sold at Christie’s in 2003 - her curled coiffure, provoking gaze and the inclusion of contemporary jewellery calling to mind the female portrait shown above. Like the female portrait, this piece can be dated to the Hadrianic period based on the hairstyle and facial hair.įayum portraits have been a source of inspiration for artists working in the modernist tradition, with Picasso known to have studied them carefully at the Louvre. His plain white tunic, however, shows no military accoutrements, which may be a result of the damage to his left shoulder. The careworn expression and unkempt hair of the man in the portrait above suggest that he might have been a soldier. Since a large number were found in the towns around the Fayum oasis in middle Egypt, these painted panels are traditionally called Fayum portraits, even though some have been found in many other parts of Egypt. It has also been suggested that they were painted close to the time of death and carried around the local city during a procession ( ekphora) celebrating the deceased before being taken to the embalmer. One discovery suggests that these painted portraits hung in frames in homes until eventually they were placed over the mummy. The ancient Egyptians believed that the transfigured spirit of the deceased aspired to dwell in perpetuity in the realm of Osiris, God of the Underworld. For this to happen the body needed to be preserved for the spirit to continue to exist. The time-honoured Pharonic tradition of mummifying the deceased continued for several centuries into the Roman period in Egypt, although in some regions, instead of placing the body in an anthropomorphic coffin of wood, stone or clay, the deceased was ornately wrapped in linen with a naturalistic painted wood portrait positioned over the head. Painted mummy portraits from Roman Egypt are among the most remarkable survivors from the ancient world, providing insight into Romano-Egyptian burial customs as well as style and fashion trends from the 1st-3rd century A.D.
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