Mysterious Fayum Portraits

Rating:
Summary: A wonderful art book on the first great portrait painters.
Review: 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.