Description

Fayum

Fayum portraits (Fayum is a region in Egypt) are painted portraits made from the 1st to the 3rd century A.D and were discovered in an excavation near the Nile in the 20th century. They are made either with tempera or the encaustic technique (melted wax with colored pigments).

Their painting style is the naturalistic ancient Greek and it derives from Apelli (personal painter of the Great Alexander).

Those portraits, although they were made to cover the face of bodies that were mummified for burial, (origin of the tradition of pictures on graves), also decorated the houses of the people shown, during their lives.

Egyptians believed that preserving the painting would immortalize the soul of the deceased.

The 900 Fayum portraits were found and are now displaced in all the great museums of the world, being the precursor of Byzantine art. 

Mairi Anni, born in Patras, studied graphic arts and interior design in AKTO- Art and design.
She was taught hagiography at the studios of Kostas Afifa in Monastiraki and Thanasis Tsamados in Kalamata.
She worked as a hagiographer in churches in Kalamata, Diakopto, Patras, and Arachova.
Also, she took part in painting exhibitions in Athens, Arachova along with the art association "Kostis Palamas" in Patras, where she has lived and worked for the last few years.