Fayum
Detail of a Fayum funerary portrait that will go up for sale at Sotheby's New York
as part of its Old Masters sales.
A funerary portrait from Roman Egypt, featuring a strikingly modern-looking male subject with piercing hazel eyes and graying hair, sold for more than double its high estimate on Thursday during Sotheby’s Masters Week sales in New York.
The painting, which brought in $889,000 with fees, is one of 900 or so known as the Fayum mummy portraits, created during the 1st and 3rd century AD and placed on the deceased’s mummified bodies like a mask.
Archaeologists found dozens of them in the late 19th century.
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