Getty Museum

Portrait of a Bearded Man

Date

A.D. 100

Medium

Tempera on wood

Culture

Romano-Egyptian

Department

Paintings

Institution

Getty Museum

Romano-Egyptian portrait of a man in tempera (animal glue) on a square panel of fig wood. Although the panel’s manufacture, appearance and commemorative iconography belong to the world of Romano-Egyptian funerary portraiture, this never served as a funerary mask inserted into mummy wrappings. The unpainted, beveled edge on all four sides of the square panel indicates it was once framed. Although rare, other framed portraits like this have survived. They are reminiscent of the tradition of *pinakes* described by the Roman author Pliny and seen in Campanian wall painting where they are depicted hanging on walls. The well-known framed portrait found by Flinders Petrie in his 1889 Hawara excavations (British Museum [1889,1018.1](https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/G_1889-1018-1)) was found in a tomb adjacent to a plain wrapped mummy. The man wears a traditional white tunic and mantle with a narrow *clavus* (woven stripe), basic Roman dress also worn by priests and commonly seen in other male funeral portraits. He holds symbols of his afterlife: a wreath of rose petals (associated with the cult of Isis) in his left hand and a spray of verdant olive leaves (symbolic of fertility) in his right. His upper and lower eyelids are outlined in black and edged with thick beige lashes. While the eyes are mostly original, the hair and beard are largely restored, as is the mouth and the lower part of the face. Despite the overpainting it is possible to see that his dark hair and beard were originally closely cropped, comparable with portraits dated to the late Flavian – early Trajanic eras of the second half of the first century AD, such as the portrait of Isidora in the Getty Villa collection ([81.AP.42](https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/9421/)) with her close-cropped hair formed by tight curls.

The authoritative record is held by Getty Museum. LinkedCulture surfaces this object and its connections; it does not alter institutional metadata.