Egypt has unveiled a restored version of the Tondo of the Two Brothers, one of the most prized of the Fayoum portraits and a painting from the 2nd century, and confirmed that a large part of the collection will travel abroad for the first time. The pieces will go on show in Rome from November 2026 to May 2027. Officials presented the restoration at a press conference at the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir on Sunday.
Specialists from Rome worked for three weeks alongside conservators from the Egyptian Museum, where the collection is usually kept. Aly Abdel Halim, the museum’s director general, said the work called for careful handling because termites had damaged the wooden support and the painted surface was fragile. The team was able to recover the features of the brother shown on the right of the image.
The tondo stands out among the portraits for its circular shape and for showing two people instead of one. Experts rank it among the most vivid surviving faces from Roman-era Egypt. Its artist mixed pigments with molten wax. Fayoum portraits were mostly painted on thin wooden panels and placed over the faces of the dead inside their mummy wrappings, combining Egyptian funerary custom with Greek and Roman artistic styles.
Sherif Fathy, Egypt’s minister of tourism and antiquities, described the project as “an important example of what can be achieved through international cooperation”. He also pointed to the long historical and cultural ties between Egypt and Italy. The Rome exhibition is being organised by MondoMostre, whose chairman, Tomaso Radaelli, said it will include more than 110 objects, among them painted panels, funerary shrouds, masks, marble portraits, plaster casts and ancient jewellery. That range will give audiences in Rome a broad view of funerary art from Roman-era Egypt.
The loan marks a break with past practice, since the collection has never before left Egypt. The Fayoum portraits are among the Egyptian Museum’s best-known holdings, and sending them to Rome for seven months gives Egypt a high-profile showcase for its Roman-era heritage in a major European capital. For travellers planning a trip to Cairo over the winter, it also means parts of the collection will be away until May. On Sunday the restored tondo was already on view in Cairo, where visitors were photographed filming other portraits in the galleries, including one known as Demos.
