Il Potere del Ritratto. Egitto e Roma. I volti del Fayum

The exhibition compares funerary masks and portraits from the Fayum and other regions of Egypt with works from the Roman tradition. It features more than one hundred and ten works, including panels, shrouds, funerary masks, marbles, plaster casts and ancient jewellery. The Fayum portraits are among the most celebrated painted images of antiquity, yet they are rarely seen in Italy. Fewer than a thousand survive worldwide. They are wooden panels just a few millimetres thick, painted in tempera or encaustic, that is, with pigments dissolved in hot wax. They were then placed over the face of the deceased, between the wrappings of the mummy. These are fragile works, which are rarely lent. Here you will find almost fifty of them brought together. For the first time, Egypt has lent almost all the panels in its collections, none of which have ever left the country before. Among them is the Tondo of the Two Brothers, which Italian restorers restored in Egypt on the occasion of the exhibition.