3-035-817 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Panel with Painted Image of Serapis, A.D. 100-200. Additional Info: Romano-Egyptian painted panel of the Greco-Egyptian divinity Serapis in tempera (animal glue) pigment on a fig wood panel. This panel pairs with the Isis panel having been cut from the same piece of wood and painted by the same hand. Together with that panel, it originally served as the left door (to Isis’s right) of a small devotional shrine, the sides and back of which are missing. The panel’s good surface condition indicates it must have been protected by its closed position facing inward. It has been Carbon 14 dated to the first century BC-AD, but its stylistic date of around 180-200 indicates that a secondary use may be possible for the original wooden panel at the time it was fabricated into two doors.