The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Romano-Egyptian painters · portraits in encaustic and tempera on thin wooden panel, made to be laid into the linen wrappings of mummies over the face · frontal or three quarter heads and busts at or near life size · Roman Egypt, first to third century CE · found in cemeteries across the province, the Fayum basin above all, and brought to Europe from the 1880s · dispersed now among many museums · the unit scored is the panels as one body, the painted shrouds and gilded masks of the same culture being context
Mode
Funerary portrait painting as a practice: Greek panel painting set into an Egyptian burial, under Roman dress and fashion
Mythos
The dead transfigured and kept for the life beyond, wearing in that life the face they wore in this one
Phase
Painted in Roman Egypt over some two and a half centuries, the first to the third century CE; buried in dry sand; found and brought to Europe from the 1880s, through Theodor Graf and Flinders Petrie’s excavations at Hawara
Presentation
Thin wooden panels painted in pigment bound in beeswax or in a water soluble binder, one head and shoulders to a panel, laid into the linen wrappings over the face; most now separated from their mummies and shown framed
Register
Grave and quiet; a direct gaze, frontal, turned at once toward the viewer and past
Scale
One face to a panel, at or near life size; a body of hundreds of persons across a province and two and a half centuries
Governing Proposition
In Roman Egypt families of the provincial elite had their dead prepared in the Egyptian way and then laid over the face, in the wrappings, a painted panel: not the idealised and gilded mask of the old burial but a likeness of a particular person, painted in the Greek manner with light and shadow and the light set in the eye. The wager of the practice is that the dead would wear their own face in the life beyond, and that a portrait made for the grave could meet, face to face and person by person, whoever came after.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
In Roman Egypt, from the first century CE to the third, the dead of the provincial elite were prepared in the Egyptian way, wrapped in linen, and given a face. The face was a portrait painted on a thin wooden panel, a head and shoulders at or near life size, frontal or turned a little, and it was laid into the wrappings over the face of the body. Many panels have their upper corners cut away so that they would sit in the linen. Where the old burial had put an idealised mask, gilded and timeless, the face of the dead made divine, these burials put the likeness of a particular person.
The work scored here is those panels as one body: the portraits in encaustic and tempera on wood, painted over some two and a half centuries by painters whose names are not known, and found in cemeteries across the province, the Fayum basin above all, at Hawara and at er-Rubayat, ancient Philadelphia, and also at Antinoopolis, Saqqara, Thebes and other sites. The painted linen shrouds of the same culture and the gilded cartonnage masks are context, and count only where they show how a panel was meant to sit. The body is weighed as a whole: its summit in the encaustic panels of the late first and the second century, and its floor in the many workshop panels of ordinary quality and the flatter tempera panels of the third.
Each panel holds one person and nothing else. There is no setting and no story: a face, the hair, the neck, the edge of a tunic or a mantle, a necklace or a wreath, and a dark or neutral ground. The eyes are large and set a little high, and they look out. Laid in the wrappings, the panel was the face of the body, seen where the face had been, so that the dead would wear in the life beyond the face they had worn in this one. Most panels are now cut from their mummies and hung in frames, and the full form, face in body, survives whole in only a minority of cases.
Movement II
Most of the finest panels are painted in encaustic, pigment bound in beeswax; others, more of them in the later group, in tempera, pigment in a water soluble binder. In the best encaustic heads the flesh is built in warm wax, laid in short directional strokes that follow the planes of the face. Shadow is placed with economy under the jaw and at the eye socket. The hair is a few dark strokes against a lighter ground. Gold leaf is laid for wreaths and jewellery. Last of all come the highlights, on the nose, on the lower lip and in the eye, so that light seems to sit on the skin.
The medium is part of what the work knows. Wax holds pigment with depth and sheen, so that flesh looks like flesh under light, and what the panels keep is precisely the look of living skin, a warmth that no other ancient medium has carried to us. A sculpted bust would keep the form and lose the colour and the gaze; a drawing would lose the presence; a profile would refuse the address. The frontal head at life size, on a panel about the size of a face, was the one form that could be laid where the face had been and still look out. The format was a convention of the practice and not invented for what it knows, and that holds the form below the top.
At their best the panels stand with the finest portrait heads of any age before the Renaissance, and their height is of one kind, grave and quiet. The gaze seems turned at once toward the viewer and past, and the placed white touch in the eye makes the face present across eighteen centuries. The costs are charged to the body. The quality is uneven; many panels are workshop production of a standard type; the anatomy of neck and shoulders is often summary; many panels are pleasant rather than elevated; and the later tempera panels are flatter and harder, and rarely rise.
Movement III
Met together, the faces are an assembly of the dead: bearded men, young women with pearl earrings and jewelled necklaces, youths with gold wreaths, boys, and a few small children, one after another, each looking out. Each is a particular person, with a particular nose, a scar, a squint, a first beard, an earring, and each asks to be met as a person and not as a type. That address is in the object and not only in its viewers: a likeness was commissioned to lie over a body and to face whoever came after.
A society is disclosed in the same stroke. The manner of the painting is Greek, the hair and dress are Roman, the burial and its gods are Egyptian, and they are held in one object without contradiction, the mixed elite of a province made visible person by person. Rank is there in dress and jewellery and in the military baldric some men wear; history is there because the hairstyles follow the imperial court, so that each face carries its century; the family is implied by the care of the burial and by the children. What the panels do not hold is everything outside one head: no labour, no natural order, no event and no relation between persons inside the frame.
Take the two most distant faces: an early second century encaustic head of a young woman, modelled in depth with gold at her neck, and a third century tempera head of a man, flat, outlined and staring. One law holds them, the face of a particular person at life size, frontal, made to be laid over the face of the dead and to meet the living, and across men, women and children and two and a half centuries nothing breaks it. The range of persons is wide. The range of form is narrow, one format repeated, and at the scale of the body a hundred more or fewer men of one type would change little of what it says.
Movement IV
The panels lay in dry sand for some sixteen to eighteen centuries, and the sand kept them: many still have their colour and their wax surface remarkably intact. Most of the surviving body was found or brought to Europe from the 1880s, through the portraits the dealer Theodor Graf obtained from er-Rubayat and through Flinders Petrie’s excavations at Hawara, in seasons in 1887 and 1888 and again in 1910 and 1911. They are now dispersed among many museums, the British Museum, the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, the Louvre, the Metropolitan, the Berlin collections, the Petrie Museum and the Getty among them. Together they are the largest surviving body of ancient panel painting.
What survives is what the sand chose, and most of the practice is gone. The wood has split and warped in places, and the wax and tempera are abraded or flaked in some, though much of the body is stable. The greater loss is of the form: most panels are now separated from the bodies they were made to lie on, so that the face in the body is seen in only a minority of cases. For sixteen centuries no one knew the panels were there, and they have been present to attention only since the late nineteenth century; fame since then is presence, and lifts their standing only a little.
Some 140 years of study have followed, and the questions stay open. Whether the panels were painted from life and kept in the house before burial, or painted at death, is argued and not settled. So is who the sitters were, Greek, Egyptian, Roman or mixed, and what the faces say about identity in a province. The dating rests chiefly on hairstyles, beards, dress and jewellery set against dated imperial portraiture, and how far it should be trusted is itself a question; so is how the workshops were organised and how many hands can be told apart. Much of this yield is archaeological rather than depth in the image, and many single panels, once seen, are seen.
Movement V
The practice joined two inheritances: the Egyptian funerary mask, idealised and gilded, and the Greek panel portrait of the Hellenistic and Roman world, almost wholly lost elsewhere. The turn was real, in what a burial could hold and in what a portrait was for, and the families who chose it took the religious stake on their own dead. It was a practice and not a wager by one maker, gradual and collective; the painting followed a proven Greek manner; and the turn, once made, was repeated for two centuries. Within those centuries it shaped funerary practice in one province and moved no wider field that can be shown.
In the panels of the third century the face changes. The modelling flattens and simplifies, the outline hardens, the eyes grow larger, and the stare is frontal and fixed. That manner points toward the earliest Christian icons, and the encaustic icons of the sixth century at Sinai are widely held to descend from the same tradition; the line is argued and not proved, and it is credited here at less than its full claim. Beside the icon the panels look toward, The Trinity of Rublev, at 8.9 on this desk, stands above them on every axis but The Imperishable.
The reach that came later is delayed and real: from the finds of the 1880s, through exhibition and study, into the modern idea of ancient painting, with books such as Euphrosyne Doxiadis’s of 1995 and the attention of painters. Among single heads of ancient Egypt, the Bust of Nefertiti, at 8.3, outscores the body on necessity and finish, and the body outscores it on what it discloses of persons and what it did later; the Terracotta Army, a funerary body of individual likenesses scored as one work, stands a tenth above at 8.4. The faces still look out from their frames, each a different person, each laid once over the face of someone who died.
Act III · The Twelve
Judged at two scales. A single panel resists subtraction almost wholly: a face, the hair, the neck, the edge of a tunic or mantle, a necklace or a wreath, a dark or neutral ground. Nothing is narrative and nothing is setting; every element is the person or the sign of the person’s rank and care. The eyes, large and set slightly high, cannot go, nor the highlight on the nose and lower lip that makes the flesh. What could go is little: some jewellery painted to inventory rather than to see. At the scale of the body the test fails more often. A hundred more or fewer bearded men of the same type would change little of what the body says, and its size is permitted by burial and finding, not compelled by an argument.
Score: 8.2 / 10
Credited through image as fully as through words. A particular person, with a particular nose, a scar, a squint, a first beard, an earring, is set face to face with whoever comes after, and the face asks to be met as a person and not as a type. A society is disclosed in the same stroke: a Greek manner of painting, Roman hair and dress, Egyptian burial and gods, held in one object without contradiction, the mixed elite of a province made visible person by person. And the panels show that death in this world was faced by keeping the living face. Held below the gate because the disclosure is of persons and a society more than of an articulated condition, and much said of mortality and the gaze is brought by modern viewers.
Score: 8.4 / 10
Elevation is of one kind, grave and quiet, and it recurs. The best encaustic heads hold a stillness in which the gaze seems turned at once toward the viewer and past; the wax gives the flesh a depth and warmth that no other ancient medium has carried to us, and the light in the eye, a placed white touch, makes the face present across eighteen centuries. Met in a room of them, the effect rises with number: one face after another looking out, an assembly of the dead. The gold of a wreath or a gilded ground adds a cold radiance to some. But there is no grandeur and no terror, the range is narrow, many panels are pleasant rather than elevated, and the later tempera panels rarely rise.
Score: 8.3 / 10
Built rather than evoked, and built in the object rather than painted in the image. The panel was laid into the wrappings over the face of a body prepared in the Egyptian way, so that a Greek portrait of a living person took the place of the idealised mask, the face of the dead made divine. The archetype of the Egyptian burial, the dead transfigured and kept for the life beyond, is load-bearing: the portrait is the face that body would wear in that life, and the gold wreaths and gilding carry the transfiguration into the image. The particular stays particular. Held below the gate because the myth is the rite’s, which the painter served rather than built, and a panel cut from its mummy keeps it only by inference.
Score: 8.4 / 10
The inheritance is twofold: the Egyptian funerary mask, idealised, gilded and timeless, and the Greek panel portrait of the Hellenistic and Roman world, almost wholly lost elsewhere. The departure is the joining of them: an individual likeness, painted naturalistically with modelled light and shadow, set where an Egyptian burial had put a god’s face. That is a real turn in what a burial could hold and in what a portrait was for. The stake was religious, and the families who chose it took it on their own dead. Held lower because the swerve was collective and gradual, a practice and not a wager by a maker; the painting followed a proven Greek manner, and the turn, made once, is repeated for two centuries.
Score: 8.2 / 10
Substitute a different form and much of what the body knows goes. The frontal head at about life size, on a panel the size of a face, looks straight out; laid in the wrappings it was the face of the body, seen where the face had been. Encaustic is part of the knowledge: wax holds pigment with depth and sheen, so that flesh looks like flesh under light, and what is kept is precisely the look of living skin. A sculpted bust would keep the form and lose the colour and the gaze; a drawing would lose the presence; a profile would refuse the address. Held below the top because the format is a convention of the practice, not invented for what it knows, and the full form, panel and mummy together, survives in only a minority.
Score: 8.5 / 10
Evidence over promise: some 140 years of study since the main finds, and a scholarship that keeps opening. The questions stay open and are about the work: whether panels were painted from life and kept in the house before burial, or painted at death; who the sitters were, Greek, Egyptian, Roman or mixed, and what the portraits say about identity in a province; how far dating by hairstyle should be trusted; how the workshops were organised and how many hands can be told apart; what the relation is to the later icon. The faces themselves yield on return, each a different person. Held a step below because much of the yield is archaeological rather than of depth in the image, and many single panels, once seen, are seen.
Score: 8.4 / 10
The field is the painting of Roman Egypt and the Roman world in the first to third centuries. The intrinsic force is high: the body carried the Greek painted portrait into the Egyptian tomb and made of it the most sustained practice of individual likeness in ancient painting, frontal and direct. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: within its centuries it shaped funerary practice in one province and moved no wider field that can be shown; in the later panels the frontal stare and enlarged eyes point toward the earliest icons, and the encaustic icons at Sinai are widely held to descend from the same tradition, a line argued and not proved; and from the 1880s exhibition, study and Euphrosyne Doxiadis’s book of 1995 carried it into the modern idea of ancient painting.
Score: 8.4 / 10
Weighed on form, then presence, then fabric, at some eighteen to nineteen centuries. Form: the form of the body is whole and legible across its surviving panels, many with colour and wax surface remarkably intact, preserved by the dry burial; it is the largest surviving body of ancient panel painting. Loss is charged: what survives is what the sand chose, most of the practice is gone, and most panels are now separated from their mummies, so that the full form, face in body, stands in a minority of cases. Presence: buried and unknown for some sixteen centuries, present only since the late nineteenth, and now dispersed across many collections. Fabric: wood split and warped in places, wax and tempera abraded or flaked in some, much of it stable.
Score: 9.1 / 10
Judged as command of encaustic and tempera on panel, to the same anchors as every medium. At its best the making is load-bearing: flesh built in warm wax laid in short directional strokes that follow the planes of the face; shadow under the jaw and at the eye socket placed with economy; the highlight on the nose, the lip and the eye laid last, so that light seems to sit on the skin; hair rendered in a few dark strokes against a lighter ground; gold leaf for wreaths and jewellery. The best panels stand with the finest portrait heads of any age before the Renaissance. The costs are charged to the body: the quality is uneven, many panels are workshop production of a standard type, neck and shoulders are often summary, and the later tempera panels are flatter and harder.
Score: 8.6 / 10
Take the two most distant elements: an early second century encaustic head of a young woman, modelled in depth with gold at the neck, and a third century tempera head of a man, flat, outlined and staring. One law holds them: the face of a particular person, at life size, frontal, made to be laid over the face of the dead and to meet the living. Across men, women, youths and children, across Greek, Egyptian and Roman sitters and two and a half centuries, nothing breaks that law, and the range in persons is the body’s strength. But the range of form is narrow, one format repeated, and narrowness is not coherence; the change in technique over time is a change of execution under the same law, and is charged lightly.
Score: 8.3 / 10
The orders held are several: the individual consciousness, as a face that addresses; the family, implied in the care of the burial and the presence of children; the social order and the state, in rank, dress, jewellery, the military baldric of some men and the hairstyles that follow the imperial court; history, since the faces change with the fashions of Rome and so carry their century; the sacred, in the burial, the wreaths and the gods of the wrappings; and a mixed culture, Greek, Egyptian and Roman. The body integrates them in one practice, more than a single bust can hold. What holds the axis lowest is the form: each image is one head, with no labour, no natural order, no event and no relation between persons inside the frame.
Score: 7.3 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
8.3 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier IV · Canonical
Strongest Dimensions
The Imperishable at 9.1, The Made at 8.6 and The Living Form at 8.5. The largest surviving body of ancient panel painting, kept by the sand with colour and wax often intact; a making in warm wax whose best heads stand with the finest portraits before the Renaissance; and a form, the frontal face at life size laid where the face had been, that knows the look of living skin and could know it no other way.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 7.3: the person, the family, rank, the state’s fashions, the sacred and a mixed culture are held in one practice, but each image is one head, with no labour, no natural order, no event and no relation between persons inside the frame. Below the rest, The Inevitable and The Swerve at 8.2: a body whose size was permitted by burial and finding rather than compelled, and a turn made collectively, once, and repeated for two centuries. The three are one fact: a single format, repeated across hundreds of persons.
The Necessity Cap clears at 8.2 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears: The Living Form at 8.5, The Made at 8.6, The Inner Law at 8.3, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet: The Imperishable at 9.1 clears the bar of 8.5, but The Unconcealment at 8.4, The Archetypal Deep at 8.4 and Pressure on Tradition at 8.4 fall short by a tenth, and The Swerve at 8.2 by three tenths. The Universal Minimum is met (no axis but The Encompassed falls below 8.2, against 7.5) and The Encompassed, which is exempted, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 7.3. Four of the five summit conditions are met. The gate fails because the disclosure is of persons and a society more than of an articulated condition, the myth is the burial’s rather than the painter’s, the swerve was a practice and not a wager, and the reach in its own centuries stayed within one province. The twelve sum to 100.1, an average of 8.34 that displays 8.3, in the band of Tier IV and short of the 9.0 the summit also requires.
Basis · a reading from knowledge of the panels as they stand in their collections and of the history of their making, finding and study; no image or written source was consulted, and knowledge of individual panels is held less firmly than knowledge of the body and its types. The work scored is the Fayum mummy portraits as one body: the portraits in encaustic and tempera on wooden panel, painted by anonymous painters in Roman Egypt in the first to third century CE and found in cemeteries across the province, the Fayum basin (Hawara, er-Rubayat) above all. The author is recorded as Romano-Egyptian painters; no single maker is credited. Not in the unit: the painted linen shrouds of the same culture and the gilded cartonnage masks, which are context and are weighed only where they show how a panel was meant to sit. Most panels now stand separated from their mummies, framed, in many collections; the separation, the long burial and the damage to wood and paint are weighed only as facts of survival, under The Imperishable, and none is charged to the painters. Whether the panels were painted from life, and the descent of the icon from them, are given as argued and unsettled. Nothing is quoted: no inscription is used. Facts that could not be verified are not given, among them the number of surviving portraits, the usual dimensions of the panels, the woods used, the binder of the tempera, the panels said to carry inscriptions naming the dead, and the writings on the portraits by later authors other than the one named.