Customer Reviews

Mysterious Fayum Portraits

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This is a beautiful book for anyone interested in Hellenistic Greek or Roman painting or portraits from any time. These are the first portraits in which the subjects look directly at us as we regard them. They are a haunting glimpse into the lives of people dead for 2000 years. This book is full of big color illustrations. Doxiadis does a fine job of tracing the history of the discovery, theories about, and conservation of these images.

I first saw this book in the Getty Villa reading room, and aquired it here at a nice discount. A art history book written by an artist, what a concept! This is a hauntingly beautiful book that invites the owner to open it again and transport themselves back several millenia. These paintings are so wonderful it is easy to understand how "the experts" thought them fakes when they first appeared! The text is almost as much a pleasure to read as the paintings are to view. Some of the paintings are surprisingly contemporary and possess much of what artists pride themselves in accomplishing during the last 125 years or so.

I checked this book out from the library so many times, that noone else got to read it. If you are an artist or someone who wants to work with past lives, or a novelist, this is the book for you.
for the portraits in this book, painted in Alexandria m during the Greek/roman period of Eygpt's history, are wonderful! The Writer analyses each painting from a painter's perspective , breaking down the colors and pigments used in those times, for instance black is often burnt wine. the illusion of Gold was made with yellow orche / white and a darker color. I tried painting many of the pictures myself.

My art teacher brought this book to class and I couldn't put it down. It's a little pricey but worth every cent. I go to another place in my head while looking at the portraits imagining what their lives must have been like. I feel as if they are people I know. The text is good, too. This was obviously a labor of love for the author.