Mummy Portraits of Roman Egypt: Emerging Research from the APPEAR Project

The painted funerary portraits of Roman Egypt preserve individual faces with an immediacy unusual in ancient art, yet their materials, manufacture and later histories raise complex archaeological and conservation questions. Edited by Marie Svoboda and Caroline R. Cartwright, this Getty volume gathers research from the APPEAR project, an international initiative created to study these portraits across museum collections.

A small sample of wood may reveal where a panel came from; the pigments and binders can tell a different story from its painted surface. Conservators, scientists and curators use microscopy, technical imaging and materials analysis to understand how the portraits were made. They also follow their later histories through questions of provenance, restoration and authenticity—matters that can change what we think we know about a face painted nearly two thousand years ago.