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Portrait of a boy
Roman Period, 2nd century A.D.
Encaustic on wood, h. 15 in.
Gift of Edward S. Harkness, 1918
18.9.2

The young teenage boy in this remarkably lifelike portrait looks calmly at the viewer, his head in three-quarter view. He is dressed in a white Roman tunic with a narrow purple clavus (a vertical stripe) over the right shoulder. A mantle of the same color as the tunic is draped over the left shoulder. The boy wears his dark brown hair short with short locks brushed to both sides of the forehead. The inscription in dark purple pigment below the neckline of the tunic is in Greek, which was the common language of the eastern Mediterranean at the time. Scholars do not completely agree on the translation of the inscription. The boy's name ("Eutyches, freedman of Kasanios") seems indisputable; then follows either "son of Herakleides, Evandros" or "Herakleides, son of Evandros." It is also unclear whether the "I signed" at the end of the inscription refers to the manumission (act of freeing a slave) that would have been witnessed by Herakleides/Evandros, or to the painter of the portrait. An artist's signature would be unique in mummy portraits.

Paintings of this type, often called Faiyum (fie-OOM) portraits (although by no means all of them come from the Faiyum oasis), are typical products of the multicultural, multiethnic society of Roman Egypt. Most of them are painted in the elaborate encaustic technique, using pigments mixed with hot or cold beeswax and other ingredients such as egg, resin, and linseed oil. This versatile medium allowed artists to create images that in many ways are akin to oil paintings in Western art. The boy's head, for instance, stands out with an impression of real depth from the light olive-colored background. His face is modeled with flowing strokes of the brush and a subtle blend of light and dark colors. Shadows on the left side of the face, neck, and garment and bright shiny spots on the forehead and below the right eye indicate a strong source of light on the boy's right. Most arresting are the eyes, dark brown with black pupils that reflect the light with bright spots. This manner of painting, which is very different from the traditional Egyptian style but was well known in Greco-Roman Egypt, originated in Classical Greece in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.

If the manner of painting on Faiyum portrait panels is Greek, their use is entirely Egyptian. When a person died, the portrait panel, whose previous function is yet unexplained, was placed over the face of the mummy with parts of the outermost wrapping holding it in place. This implies Egyptian beliefs about the afterlife. Roman Egypt, in fact, after having been ruled for three hundred years by a Greek (Macedonian) dynasty and a century or more by Roman administrators, was an extremely diverse civilization. The population consisted of Roman citizens and citizens of Greek cities such as Alexandria (both of these groups being made up of peoples of many different ethnicities) and declared native Egyptians. All these people, according to the scholar R. S. Bagnall, may well have considered themselves "as Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans simultaneously." The subjects of the mummy portraits, at least, clearly were dressed and coiffed like Romans, and many of them bore Greek names or names that were Greek versions of Egyptian names. When they died, however, they and their families found consolation in the ancient Egyptian beliefs about the afterlife.

Notice: age of the sitter, costume, inscription

Discuss: use of light and shadow to create three-dimensional form, technique, style, function, cultural fusion

Compare with: Sphinx of Senwosret III, Fragment of the head of a queen, and Yuny and his wife, Renenutet

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