ABSTRACT
The delicate magic of best portraits relies on subtle balancing of shapes and colours. And that miracle was performed through the craft of the painters. Andre Malraux ascribed the metaphysical power of the portraits to their proximity to the corpse. The portraits belong to the final phase of the Alexandrian school of painting, which flourished with the new city from the 4th century BC until the end of the 3rd century AD. Painters in Greek tradition were taught how to portray a human face with all its individual traits, its uniqueness, using techniques inherited from the great painters of the past. In Egypt these Greek-style painted portraits acquired a new meaning; they became their subject. The procedure is repeated, creating superimposed layers of wax, as many times as is necessary until the painter achieves the desired effect. The coloured waxes are blended in, and almost as if by magic achieve the same look as their counterparts in the Fayum portraits.
