TIMELESS FACES

Ancient faces, fragments of faces, death masks: how is it that they always seem about to speak? The vivacity of these, all in the Louvre, is incredible, after thousands of years. The Egyptian priest, top left, with his calmly serene expression and his eyes which must once have been painted in lifelike colours; the terracotta fragment of an Apollo's sensuous lips; the incredibly vivid gold funeral mask from Sidon, c500BC, below, with its fierce eyebrows...

And the quiet, steady gaze of this Egyptian, below, with her (his?) eyes filled with obsidian, teal glass eyebrows and eyeliner, and the half-amused twitch to the full lips, blissfully ignorant of the ravages of time, the savage crack down the shapely cheek where the wood has split - doubtless since leaving the charmed dry heat of Egypt which has preserved so many wooden artefacts, while almost all ancient European ones perished.