Fayum mummy portraits
The Gennadios medallion in New York, illustrated above, is a fine example of an Alexandrian portrait on blue glass, using a rather more complex technique and naturalistic style than most Roman examples, including painting onto the gold to create shading, and with the Greek inscription showing local dialect features. He had perhaps been given or commissioned the piece to celebrate victory in a musical competition. One of the most famous Alexandrian-style portrait medallions, with an inscription in Egyptian Greek, was later mounted in an Early Medieval crux gemmata in Brescia, in the mistaken belief that it showed the pious empress and Gothic queen Galla Placida (died 450) and her children; in fact the knot in the central figure's dress may mark a devotee of Isis. The portrait in the Brescia medallion also shares clear stylistic features with the Fayum mummy portraits of Roman Egypt, in addition to a Greek inscription in the Alexandrian dialect of Egypt. This is one of a group of 14 pieces dating to the 3rd century AD, all individualized secular portraits of high quality. Yet Jás Elsner (2007) contends that the Brescia medallion, likely depicting a family from Alexandria since the inscription is in the Alexandrian dialect of Greek, has a range of possible dates ranging from the early-3rd to mid-5th century AD, before it found its way to Italy where it adorned a 7th-century Christian cross.