Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Ancient art influences modern icons

http://tinyurl.com/824zp
"The famous Faiyum portraits are named after a fertile land in Roman Egypt peopled, during the first three centuries AD by a diverse community of Greeks, Romans, Syrians, Libyans, Nubians and Jews. One of the customs of those people was to embalm the bodies of their dead and to cover their faces with either wood or linen, on which they painted the portrait of the deceased. They are the famous Faiyum portraits that commemorated the dead and which have become known today for the intensity of their sitters' expressions and the luminosity of the colors. It is this intensity of the human gazes that caught the interest of religious icon painter Adamadia Billia-Giannopoulou and threw her into a decade-long, painstaking project that involved copying the originals by using the traditional encaustic technique. More than 50 of her laborious works will be presented for a few days in «Faiyum 'Eternal Glances',» her one-woman show at the Cultural Center of the Embassy of Egypt in Athens".
See more on the Kathimerini English Edition website, above.

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