Marie Svoboda and Caroline Cartwright’s second volume of Mummy portraits of Roman Egypt, resulting from the international APPEAR (Ancient Panel Portraits, Examination, Analysis and Research) Project, collates 17 papers from the second APPEAR conference held at the Allard Pierson Museum, Amsterdam, in 2022. The book aims to deepen the understanding of the material and technical construction of the portraits—painted on thin wooden panels that are most often placed over the mummified or shrouded body of the deceased (dating approximately between the first century BCE and third century CE)—and move beyond solely stylistic or aesthetic approaches. It is highly technical in nature and presents new research from scholars, conservators and scientists, including: technical imaging; non-destructive analysis; collection histories and forgeries; wood analysis; and portrait production. The editors emphasise the importance of interdisciplinarity, with much of the work across the volume combining multiple technical and scientific analyses alongside conservation expertise.
The structure of the volume guides the reader first through a contextual history, then into detailed scientific study, and towards possible interpretations and uses for that study, focusing on artistic practice and insights into technique. The first six chapters—beginning with Jan van Daal’s ‘The histories they hold’ which combines Morellian storytelling with technical analysis—deal with ‘renewing’ material understanding of portraits in museum collections that have only briefly been studied in the past, if at all. These investigations range from the extensive (33 panels in the Louvre collection in Chapter 2), to the smaller scale (three panels in the National Museum of Athens in Chapter 5), and highlight the importance of new analysis. In addition, the research is not confined to mummy portraits, with contributions on votive panels and linen shrouds included, highlighting other genres of portraiture in a field that has often solely focused on funerary panels. A key theme is the limited provenance or records, with the application of new analysis presented as an opportunity to address these issues by building a better understanding of their production or secondary histories. This is illustrated well in Chapter 6, ‘Learning from lemons’ (Rogge & Cartwright), where two ‘mummy portrait panels’ are identified as forgeries based on the anachronistic medium and pigments used.
Four chapters are direct continuations of research that was published in the first APPEAR Project volume (Svoboda & Cartwright Reference Svoboda and Cartwright2020). A standout contribution is Cartwright’s ‘Seeing the wood for the trees’ (Chapter 7), where a comprehensive appendix of wood identifications of mummy portrait panels is included. This represents the most extensive data regarding portrait wood type published thus far and collates results that until now had been disseminated separately, making it a crucial resource for archaeologists and historians. Further chapters exploring the use of egg in surface coatings, and calculated viewing angles based on relative locations of portrait facial features both build on prior investigations, expanding analysis first discussed in 2020.
Further contributions explore artistic practice through integration of technical study—something that has long been a focus of the APPEAR Project. There is direct engagement with prior art-historical research such as David Thompson’s (Reference Thompson1976, Reference Thompson1982) by Branko van Oppen de Ruiter in Chapter 11, where 25 portraits are identified as potential works of the ‘St Louis’ painter or painters, skilfully integrating previous study and illustrating how scientific innovations can advance discussions surrounding the portraits. There is also a clear effort in Chapter 12 by Dorothy Mahon and colleagues to centre the painters themselves, considering the wider historical context of artistic talent and individual techniques, while documentary and literary sources such as Pliny’s Natural History are consulted by Giovanni Verri and colleagues (Chapter 13) to explore how materials identified in portraits may have been sourced and used.
The later chapters concern portraiture that has so far been explored only through art-historical means. This illustrates the strengths of the cross-institutional collaboration of the project, with Chapter 15 examining two strikingly similar portraits from the Detroit Institute of Art and Walters Art Museum, respectively. Such analysis is presented as a way to fill gaps in knowledge regarding unprovenanced portraits—the authors do not shy away from the reality of portrait panels that are disassociated from their mummified remains, and leave questions open regarding the relationship between artist and embalmer that remain difficult to answer due to this separation of mummy and panel. Investigations also cover ethical concerns surrounding portrait collections and their treatment, something highlighted in Agnieszka Kijowska and colleagues’ Chapter 16, which examines a portrait of a boy now in the National Museum of Warsaw that was ‘restored’ by an antiquities dealer using fragments of a completely different panel.
The final chapter brings together analysis with practice, where Kate Smith and colleagues discuss the ‘Facing forward’ exhibition in the Harvard Art Museum, and illustrate how results can be integrated into public display and interpretation. This contribution is useful not just to archaeologists but also to museum professionals and students, given its engagement with collections histories, which is a much-needed addition to discussions surrounding the portraits. It provides practical insight into the exhibition itself, such as the usage of mummy labels to highlight the personhood of the deceased, or the presentation of fragmentary and damaged portraits and ‘mummy brown’ paint to directly confront visitors with the ‘ugly’ truth of how panel portraits were collected.
The central achievement of the volume is the breadth of the techniques discussed. This is addressed by Rogge and Cartwright (Chapter 6), who favour low-cost, non-destructive analysis techniques as opposed to radiocarbon dating. While many of the contributions implement similar techniques, they represent new applications and new methodologies specific to the study of ancient panel portraits, which opens up new possibilities for future studies. It shows that results can be achieved across a spectrum of costs and accessibility options and provides a framework for other museums or heritage institutions that may wish to implement such techniques in the future, or scholars who wish to introduce them in their work. This breadth and depth often results in a volume being inaccessible to readers from other disciplines or those with limited technical knowledge—something that is unavoidable in an interdisciplinary collection of papers such as this one. In this book, these limitations are mitigated by the inclusion of a well-written technical glossary and, in many chapters, appendices that provide clear and concise descriptions of analysis undertaken. This is particularly welcome given the often-interdisciplinary nature of portrait study, combining art history, Egyptology and ancient history before scientific analysis is even considered.
There is also collaboration across the volume, with chapters referencing each other or those in APPEAR volume 1. Cartwright’s wood-typing work, for example, is consulted in several instances. Many chapters also engage with the art-historical scholarship that has long made up the bulk of interpretation regarding these types of portraits, and has often been solely stylistic in nature. The implementation of scientific techniques is presented as a complement to what has come before, and an opportunity to reshape how we understand the objects and the people producing them. It would have been nice to see a conclusion or plenary discussion to bring together the contributions in a holistic manner, given the potential for these results to impact on interpretation and display. I also think more could be said concerning the portrait subjects or owners, given the overarching focus here on the portrait artists, perhaps beginning to answer the why as well as the how behind portrait creation.
Ultimately, this volume presents the most up-to-date research available in the study of mummy portraits and brings together objects across collections in a way that is much needed for a better understanding of portrait panels and those producing them. It straddles a gap between investigation and interpretation, and sheds light on several portraits that have never been analysed. The accessibility of the results themselves, published in the APPEAR Project database and available for free in this volume, further evidences the collaborative nature of the project, and contributes greatly to the ongoing development of understanding portrait panel materiality.
