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2000-year-old ‘Mona Lisa of the Middle East’ anticipates sale

Oct 10, 2024, 6:35pm EDT
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The News

A 2000-year-old portrait of a Graeco-Egyptian woman dubbed the “Mona Lisa of the Middle East” is expected to sell for seven figures at Frieze London this week. One of several mummy portraits unearthed in 1888 in the Egyptian city of Fayum, formerly part of the Roman Empire, the brushwork in Portrait L is so refined it recalls the Renaissance masters — its seller originally thought the painting was of a 17th-century noblewoman.

The mesmerizing gaze of its subject is thought to have inspired the exquisite, treacherous painting in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. “Her kohl-lined eyes seem to try to catch yours, to pull you into that moment in her life,” The Times wrote.

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