Funerary Portrait of a Young Girl (c. 25–37 CE): Art, History and Details

Funerary Portrait of a Young Girl (c. 25–37 CE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Transforming the spirit—not beautifying the mortal body—may have been the purpose of adding golden lips and jewelry to this painting. Egyptian-style burial customs and arts persisted throughout Greek, Roman, and Byzantine rule over Egypt (305 BCE–641 CE). The woman depicted in this panel lived between cultures. Her or her family’s choice of mummification reflected historical Egyptian practices of creating a physical “duplicate” for the deceased’s soul to rest in, and their decision to color her lips gold here may symbolize how death transformed her into an akh (effective spirit). In contrast, the choice of her clothing and hairstyle showed her embrace of contemporary ideals of Hellenic (Greco-Roman) Egyptian identity.

Object facts

• Title: Funerary Portrait of a Young Girl
• Date: c. 25–37 CE
• Culture: Egypt, Roman Empire, late Tiberian
• Type: Painting
• Technique: encaustic on linden wood
• Dimensions: Overall: 39.4 x 17.4 cm (15 1/2 x 6 7/8 in.)
• Collection: Egypt - Greco-Roman
• Department: Egyptian and Ancient Near Eastern Art
• Accession number: 1971.137

A detail from the museum

This painting can be dated based on the hairstyle popular at the end of the reign of Emperor Tiberius (reigned 14–37 CE).

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Kirby, Daniel P. et al. “Characterization of an unusual coating on funerary portraits from Roman Egypt circa 100–300AD.” Heritage Science 11, 1 (2023).
• Lee, Sherman E. "The Year in Review for 1971." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 59, no. 1 (1972).
• Cooney, John D. "Portraits from Roman Egypt." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 59, no. 2 (Feb. 1972).

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.