portraiture, coptic. [The tradition of portraiture that developed in pharaonic Egypt and in Rome continued in Coptic Egypt among many other elements of pharaonic and classical art. Portraits were created in stone, in textiles, and especially in paint— on wood panels, on fabric, and on walls. Most of these were associated with funerary art.
This entry consists of two articles, one on the mummy portraits of the proto-Coptic period (third to early fifth centuries) and one on Coptic portraits in various media (late fifth to late seventh centuries).] Portraiture of the Third and Fourth Centuries The dry climate of Egypt preserved artistic work in perishable materials such as wood and textiles. Thus a great number of portraits on wood and cloth remain from the late Roman and proto-Coptic periods. They belong almost exclusively to funerary art, since they were attached to mummies. Mummies provided with portraits were discovered primarily in the Fayyum and its environs and more rarely in Antinoopolis. Many of these "mummy portraits" were paintings done in tempera or encaustic on wooden panels or on a linen shroud. An extensive category consists of masks, carved or molded, divided into groups according to material and typology (Grimm, 1974). These portraits were placed over the face of the mummy in such a way that the deceased appeared to be alive and looking out of a window. This impression was enhanced by the custom of setting the mummies upright and presenting them for a long time in the house, perhaps in a kind of ancestor room. Frequently burial took place many years later.
In the first and second centuries these Romano-Egyptian portraits, some showing just a bust, some a full figure, had a naturalistic style, but in time they became marked by a certain stiffness. Strongly expressive physiognomies occur more and more rarely as in a portrait by a leading master painted about 300 now in Würzburg (Drerup, 1933, p. 62, no. 26, pl. 16; Parlasca, 1980, p. 23, no. 497, pl. 121, 1). Many portraits are of modest quality with no individual character. From the end of the third century the unquestionable expressiveness of many portraits is attained more and more through new stylistic means. The faces are generally typecast and have simplified linear contours. Above all they are dominated by unnaturally large, boldly emphasized eyes, as in a late fourth-century portrait of a boy in a private collection (Parlasca, 1980, p. 63, no. 655, pl. 155, 2). An example of a shroud portrait is Ammonios in the Louvre, Paris (Coche de la Ferté, 1952, pp. 16ff, ill. 17; Parlasca, 1977, no. 422, pl. 105, 2). Examples of fourth-century masks are a bust of a woman probably from near Thebes now in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo (Grimm, 1974, pp. 94ff, pl. 111, 4) and a shroud with a molded mask from Dayr al-Bahri in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (Grimm, 1974, pp. 95ff, pl. 112, 2). Three (of a projected four) volumes of all known mummy portraits and fragments have been published (Parlasca, 1969, 1977, 1980).
The forerunners of all these mummy portraits are the anthropoid coffins and shrouds of pharaonic and Ptolemaic times, which were connected with the worship of Osiris. Egyptians believed that every dead man became the murdered Osiris, god of the underworld, and by virtue of that identity participated in Osiris' resurrection. It was evidently still known at the threshold of the Coptic period that mummies equipped with painted portraits or masks were connected with this pagan belief in resurrection (Parlasca, 1966, pp. 206ff). It is certainly no accident that there are no Christian portrait mummies. (The portrait of Ammonios in the Louvre is no longer thought to be Christian.) There was no natural continuity of these pagan beliefs into the Christian-Byzantine period, which is called Coptic. But these Romano-Egyptian portraits can be called proto-Coptic because they already show the unrealistic, expressive style of Coptic Christian art.
In this proto-Coptic period, there are only a few "adapted" Christian clay coffins. Possibly these exceptions arose even before the final prohibition of pagan cults, at the end of the fourth century. (Parlasca, 1966, pp. 210, 291). Only in recent times has a so far unique example of a Christian painted sarcophagus become known. The J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu, California, obtained parts of a simple wooden sarcophagus, on one long side of which the deceased—a six-year-old boy named Ammonios—is represented lying on a couch. On both sides appear four childlike pages. The complete absence of pagan symbols (wooden coffins in the imperial period always bear motifs from the world of the Egyptian cult of the dead) shows that the boy belonged to a Christian family. The upper part of the dead boy's body stands out clearly against the background. The field left open in the mattress-pattern has the effect of a rectangular nimbus. The style of the painting, especially the stylized portrait, suggests a late fourth-century date. It may be roughly contemporary with the late mummy portraits.