A group of painted funerary monuments from Hellenistic Alexandria in the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Abstract

Examination and scientific analysis have elucidated the well-preserved figural painting on a collection of limestone funerary stelai and loculus slabs from Alexandria, Egypt, dating from the late 4th to 3rd centuries B.C. This paper presents new information about the preparation, design, and technique of these paintings, which display a lead white ground preparation, both incised and black preliminary drawing, and a masterful elaborate multi-layered painting process to build up color. The paintings’ generally bright colorful palette employs a wide range of pigments attested elsewhere in the classical Greek palette, and features, notably, the extensive use of mimetite, a geologically rare yellow lead arsenate mineral, uncommon in Greek and Roman painting and unknown in earlier Pharaonic painting traditions.