Fayum mummy portrait (c.140-160 AD) - British museum, EA5619

Fragmentary portrait of a woman in tempera on limewood: only the central part of the panel is preserved, with a fissure through the length of it and minor cracks to either side and through the lower lid of the proper right eye. The background is creamy grey.The woman wears a white tunic and mantle with sandy-beige shading indicating the folds. The neck is drawn in brownish red. Curved over her left breast is a broad lilac clavus. At the crown of the head is a painted gold hairpin, outlined in brownish red. By the proper left cheek is a pearl, probably the innermost of a series suspended from a bar earring. Around the neck is a painted gold chain, again drawn in brownish red.The black hair is looped around the face in mid-Antonine fashion, with three short corkscrew locks hanging from the centre parting; a similar style appears on a marble bust of a woman from Alexandria. The line of the finely drawn arched eyebrow is continued to a prominent bony nose. The lips are thin and of a refined appearance. The surviving eye is enormous, with a brown pupil on a cream ground, and individually painted lashes. The complexion is pinkish ochre, with shading in strokes of red and ochre; the diagonal strokes are repeated in the hair.