(WBBM NEWSRADIO) — Researchers have gathered at the Field Museum to study a 2,000-year-old portrait found with an Egyptian mummy in hopes of finding clues about the artist and other information.
The portrait is on wood. And Giovanni Verri of the Art Institute of Chicago said it’s believed to be the portrait of a child depicted as an adult. This portrait covered the face of the child’s mummified remains, he said, “so that the mummy itself would look like a living being with a face.”
“These are not the first portraits in the world,” Verri said. “However, they’re the first ones that start to look like they are the person that’s being depicted.”
Marc Walton of Northwestern University on Wednesday said the facial features are presented in a realistic way. The artist had to work with a small set of pigments available at the time, he said.
The researchers are using a special camera to help determine the composition of some of the pigments and where those materials may have come from.
Related
