The Mysterious Fayum Portraits

Between roughly 100 BCE and 300 CE, the inhabitants of the Fayum oasis in Roman Egypt produced a body of portrait painting so astonishing in its realism, its psychological presence, and its technical accomplishment that it seems to leap across two thousand years and address the viewer directly, person to person, across a gap that no other ancient art manages to bridge. These are real people, individually seen — young and old, beautiful and plain, confident and apprehensive — painted with an intimacy and a skill that had not been seen before and would not be seen again until the Renaissance.

This Thames & Hudson volume presents the complete collection with the full-colour photography and expert scholarship these extraordinary objects demand.

Essential for anyone interested in ancient art, portraiture, or the relationship between painting and mortality. Published by Thames & Hudson.