16 x 12"
Acrylic on Canvas
(Owing to scanner size limitations, half an inch is missing from the bottom and top--sorry!)

This was a commission for a friend of mine who's a fellow lover of all things ancient Egyptian. The portrait shows the family of Akhenaten, the Heretic Pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty who attempted to introduce monotheism to the passionately polytheistic nation. His ideas lived only so long as he did, but the exceptional art created during his reign preserved the beauty of his wife Nefertiti and their six daughters.
When doing a portrait, I rely on what I know about the person(s) in question to guide the way. The famous bust of Nefertiti in Berlin shows her with a necklace, but at least one relief and a statue fragment show her with an off-the shoulder garment that I thought more flattering given her long neck and posture. Equally meticulous are the signs of her age; I wanted the viewer to remember that Nefertiti had born six daughters (perhaps more that didn't survive infancy)been a queen and a mother for at least half of her life.
As for said daughters, they are, from left to right: Neferneferuaten (fourth born), an understandably distressed Meritaten (first born), a dimpled Meketaten (second), Neferneferure (fifth), Ankhesenapaaten (third, and future wife of King Tutankhamun), and baby Sotepenre (sixth). Ankhes has always been my favorite of the girls, so she tends to have more attention lavished on her. Akhenaten, while not handsome, had features--a sensual mouth, heavy-lidded eyes, high cheekbones--that should have made him so, and for this reason I find his face especially compelling. His countenance plays nicely against the softer, more streamlined faces of his wife and daughters, who overlap in the painting much as they did in the ancient reliefs. The princesses were often portrayed in play, while their parents were shown kissing and embracing. In one relief, Nefertiti even sits in the Akhenaten's lap, with at least two daughters gathered into hers. Whatever the family member's individual fates, they seemed to be genuinely close-knit for the time they were together.

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