‘A Lost Chapter of Ancient Art’: Archaeometric Examinations of Panel Paintings from Roman Egypt

ABSTRACTAncient panel paintings on wood are, with the exception of the mesmerising mummy portraits, extremely rare. However, a small corpus of other types of Romano-Egyptian panel paintings is preserved in collections worldwide. The aim of this study is to explore the technical histories of these rare and intriguing artefacts. We present a comprehensive investigation of three Romano-Egyptian panel paintings from the collections of the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Denmark, including their construction, materials, pigments, binding media, and dating. The panels are examined by various methods of analysis to provide much deeper insights into the materials and techniques used for their production, and to answer questions of chronology and classification. In total, this work offers a more thorough understanding of their function, significance, and original appearance, as well as insights into the art of painting during the Roman period.KEYWORDS: Panel paintingsRoman Egyptmulti-spectral imagingwood identificationradiocarbon datingpigment identificationFTIRRaman spectroscopySEM-EDXproteomicsXRDalunite/natroalunite AcknowledgementsThis study forms part of the interdisciplinary research project ‘Sensing the Ancient World: The Invisible Dimensions of Ancient Art’, which has been generously funded by the Carlsberg Foundation. We are grateful for their support, and also grateful to the Kirsten and Freddy Johansen Foundation, who generously funded the establishment of a new laboratory at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, which has made this study possible. We would also like to take the opportunity to express gratitude to the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, conservator Rebecca Hast, and the technical staff for facilitating the study of the three panels. CB would like to express her gratitude to Marie Svoboda, Caroline Roberts, and Lucile Brunel-Duverger for sharing their immense knowledge on ancient panels paintings, in particular for enlightening discussions on the use of green and blue pigments. JS is grateful for discussions with Kaare Lund Rasmussen about oxalates and with Tom Egelund regarding the assessment of the paintings’ condition with raking light imaging. FTIR and Raman data were collected at the Center for Advanced Bioimaging (CAB) Denmark, University of Copenhagen; we are grateful for access to these facilities. Christophe Drouet, CNRS Senior scientist at the CIRIMAT Institute (University of Toulouse, France) kindly provided the raw FTIR reference data on a natroalunite-like compound. We would also like to thank Jens Soelberg from the Natural History Museum, Denmark for clarifying questions regarding acacia trees. FDG and LØB thank Meaghan Mackie for her help in analysing peptides by nanoLC-MS-MS and for her input and advice on the proteomic data. FDG and LØB would also like to thank Professor Jesper Velgaard Olsen at the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Protein Research for providing access to LC-MS-MS facilities and resources at the Center for Protein Research. LH acknowledges a Branco Weiss Fellowship as well as support from Ernst Göhner. Karin Wyss Heeb is to be thanked for conducting the cellulose preparation of the wood samples, Lukas Wacker and Irka Hajdas at ETH for analysis and data reduction of the graphite measurements.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Data availability statementThe mass spectrometry proteomics data have been deposited to the ProteomeXchange Consortium via the PRIDE [Perez-Riverol et al. Citation2022] partner repository with the dataset identifier PXD037269.Notes1 For example, the framed panel depicting a woman in the British Museum (no. 1889.1018.1) was recovered by William Matthew Flinders Petrie in a tomb at Hawara (Hart Citation2016, 82).2 Mathews and Muller’s corpus included five additional panels, not included by Rondot. These include the panel of Septimius Severus and family (Berlin, no. 31329), Goddess in mourning (British Museum, no. 1975.7-28.1), Fortuna-Tyche (Louvre, no. AF 10878-79), Nike from Dura-Europos (New Haven, no. 1929.288), and fragment 230 from a frame in Tebtunis. Yet, he omitted one painting of Isis and Hathor (Berlin, no. 12712), which he believed not to be a panel painting but part of a coffin or other furniture (Mathews and Muller Citation2016, Appendix 3).3 One panel at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek was for unknown reasons erroneously reported as lost by both Rondot and Mathews and Muller.4 For a thorough presentation of the find spots and archaeological sites where votive panel paintings have been recovered, see Rondot (Citation2013, 28–32). Mathews and Muller also included in their corpus the fourth-century BCE panel from Saqqara (British Museum, no. 1975.7-28.1), and the panel from 600 CE, which was recovered in Edfu in Upper Egypt (Louvre, no. AF 10878-79), both of which were excluded by Rondot.5 For example, a fourth-century Romano-Egyptian wooden sarcophagus in the J. Paul Getty Museum (no. 82.AP.75), has depictions of human subjects, painted in a tempera technique, and is very similar to contemporary panel paintings (Elston and Maish Citation2001).6 E.g. Brussels, Musées royaux d’Art et d’Histoire, E 7409; With griffin of Nemesis: Providence, Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Works of Art Fund, 59.030 (See also Tallet and Zivie-Coche Citation2012, 445).7 Examples include two portraits in the J. Paul Getty Museum, acc. nos. 78.AP.262 and 74.AP.11. We are grateful to Marie Svoboda for this information.8 Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliotek, Papyrus coll. no. G 807. Sörries (Citation2003, no. 37); Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, no. X 443. Sörries (Citation2003, no. 38); Malibu, J. Paul Getty Museum, no. 74.AP.20-22.9 Since alunite/natroalunite is a minor phase in this particular sample, which also contained some ground material, atomic positions could not be reliably refined in the Rietveld refinement (Rietveld Citation1969), to determine the species between alunite and natroalunite. The difference between the two species relies in the amount of Na residing in the M-coordinated polyhedral in the alunite structure (Drouet et al. Citation2004; Okada, Hirabayashi, and Ossaka Citation1982). Lattice parameters of the compound’s crystal structure could be determined as a = 6.9981(5) Å and c = 16.814(2) Å.10 Kindly provided by Christophe Drouet (University of Toulouse, France).11 As an example, two of the three painted panels at the J. Paul Getty Museum, which were formerly known as part of a triptych and dated to the first century CE, were recycled from old wood as they had dowel holes and other modifications unrelated to their use as painted panels (Cartwright, Spaabæk, and Svoboda Citation2011). Another example is a fragmented panel from the fourth century CE with a painted depiction of a man from the Metropolitan Museum of Art (no. 31.8.2), which is most likely a re-used panel from a coffin.Additional informationFundingThis work was supported by the Carlsberg Foundation under Grant CF17-0261 and by Kirsten and Freddy Johansen Foundation; L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Sciences Award 2016; and Novo Nordisk Foundation under Grant NNF14CC0001. L. Hendriks was supported by a Branco Weiss Fellowship and by the Ernst Göhner Foundation under Grant 2021-0936.