Portrait of a Woman, known as "L'Européenne"

In the year 130 the emperor Hadrian was travelling on the Nile when his young favourite, Antinous, drowned in the river. Close to the spot, on the site of an older Egyptian town, Hadrian founded a city in his name, Antinoopolis, and this portrait is said to come from there. The evidence is its style and the word of the dealer who sold it to the Louvre in 1951. The museum dates it between 100 and 150.

It is painted in encaustic, colours bound in hot wax, on a thin cedar board, and it was set into the linen wrappings of a mummy over the dead woman's face. Scraps of bandage and resin still cling to the back. The gold was laid on after the painting was finished, on her jewellery and around her neck. Her nickname, the European, is modern. It was given to her for her pale skin.