Imagined after The Fayum Portraitists
An untitled study
After The Fayum Portraitists, made 2026-07-10. An AI-imagined work, credited after the artist and grounded in documented technique; not a historical work.
The statement
We have painted this face in wax on a wooden panel, just as we always do, so that it may be fixed over the mummified body and accompany this person into the afterlife. As Petrie found in his excavations at Hawara, our portraits are "still bound into the mummy wrappings over the faces of the dead," secured there for the Egyptian burial rite. We work in encaustic—the colors burned in with wax and applied with a heated tool, the method Pliny describes as established ancient practice.
We turn the head slightly to catch the light on one side, modeling the flesh in the Greco-Roman manner, but we state the eyes frontally with a few decisive dark accents that hold your gaze. The jewelry and the highlights come last, in small bright touches that make the head look up and out. We paint a specific individual—this hairstyle, these earrings, these wide steady eyes—not a type. The wax itself keeps the surface alive and immediate, buttery and loaded where we lay it on.
This is a particular face, met at close range. It must last.
Make your own
Ask The Fayum Portraitists for a picture of your own · About The Fayum Portraitists · The gallery