Woman with Earrings
Description
Object Label: Traditional Egyptian burials included face masks, coffins, or mummy boards with an idealized image of the deceased. Later, in the Roman Period, much more lifelike portraits represented the individualized features of the embalmed person. These were placed within mummy wrappings directly over the head of the mummy. Portraits such as this are often referred to as “Fayum portraits” because a great number of them were discovered in the Fayum oasis in Egypt. However, the exact origin of Woman with Earrings and two similar portraits displayed in this gallery is not known. Caption: Woman with Earrings, 100–105 C.E.. Encaustic on wood, 15 1/4 x 9 1/8 x 1/16 in. (38.8 x 23.2 x 0.2 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Bequest of Mrs. Carl L. Selden, 1996.146.9.
AI image analysis GPT-4o-2024-08-06
Machine-generated from the object's image on May 2026. Not curatorial; treat deities, names, and signs below as the model's best reading, not authority.
A portrait of a woman with a focused expression, displaying distinctive curly hair and wearing a tunic.
This artifact is a detailed painting on a wooden panel, depicting a woman with prominent curly hair and wearing jewelry that suggests affluence. The style of the painting, known as a Fayum mummy portrait, is characterized by realistic facial features and fine detail, commonly associated with Roman-period Egyptian art. The woman is adorned with earrings and a necklace, and her attire consists of a garment with a visible shoulder seam.
Cross-references (2)
- BKM-Accession 1996.146.9 tier-2
- BKM-Object 4296 tier-2
About this record's data
- From the source institution — accession, description, dimensions, and dating are as catalogued by Brooklyn Museum — Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art.
- AI-inferred — the image-analysis panel (deities, names, signs) is machine-generated and may be wrong.
- Approximate location — most map points are plotted at the site centroid, not the exact findspot.
- Inferred links — cross-references marked with a match method other than explicit-source-field were matched by us, not stated by the source.