Portrait
Portrait
Portraiture, the art of representing the physical or psychological likeness of a real or imaginary individual. The principal portrait media are painting, drawing, sculpture, and photography. From earliest times the portrait has been considered a means to immortality. Many cultures have attributed magical properties to the portrait: symbolization of the majesty or authority of the subject, substitution for a deceased individual's living presence or theft of the soul of the living subject.
"The Salon will imperceptibly become nothing more than a portrait gallery. They take up almost a third of this one," observed Diderot. This enthusiasm for the portrait testifies to the Age of Enlightenment's sustained interest in mankind. Alongside recognised portraitists, other painters - Boilly, Boucher, David, Danloux, Duplessis, Fragonard, Greuze, Gros, Prud'hon, Vincent, Wicar - eagerly tried their hand at this sought-after and thus profitable genre. Rigaud, Alexis-Simon Belle, Aved, Nattier, Francois-Hubert Drouais, Tocque, Ducreux, Adelaide Labille-Guiard and Elisabeth-Louise Vigee-Lebrun worked for the court of France, while Louis-Michel Van Loo found custom at the Spanish court. Roslin was much esteemed by the aristocracy, as was Largilliere by the upper middle classes, Perronneau by the bourgeoisie involved in international business and Aubry by artists. Francois Gerard became the Bonaparte family's favourite portraitist under the First Empire. The pictorial quality of this genre was often coupled with a genuine iconographical interest, with portraits of architects, men of letters, musicians, actors, painters or sculptors, prelates, politicians, royalty and scholars.
Parallel to these realist portraits, generally reserved for the bourgeoisie and artists, the mythological portrait also enjoyed a certain amount of success, especially at court.
The Self-Portrait
Two conflicting objectives characterize portrait art in all cultures: the desire to represent the subject accurately and the desire to transform or idealize the subject. The conflict is particularly manifest in the self-portrait, the genre that gives the artist the greatest freedom from external constraints. Because the artist is his or her own cheapest and most available model, the self-portrait is the finest opportunity to make the most flattering statement or the most penetrating revelation of character of which he or she is capable. More deeply acquainted with this subject than with any other, artists are nevertheless forced to view themselves as mirror images and, as with less immediate subjects, through the distorting glass of their understanding. Since the 6th cent. B.C. artists have often portrayed themselves with the identifying attributes of their profession such as palette, brush, and easel. During the Renaissance pictorial signatures abounded in which artists worked themselves into crowd scenes or somewhere else within a composition. Striking examples are Botticelli's confrontation of the viewer in his Adoration of the Magi (Uffizi); Ghiberti's two busts, youthful and aged, on the Doors of Paradise of the Florence cathedral baptistery; and Michelangelo's Nicodemus figure in the late Pieta (Cathedral, Florence). Durer was among the first masters to reveal a psychological self-awareness by means of the self-portrait, an insightful approach brought to new heights in the works of Rembrandt. Other artists, notably Jordaens, Rigaud, Ingres, and Reynolds, asserted their social and material success in their images of themselves. The classic of self-aggrandizement is Courbet's Painter's Studio (1855; Louvre). An interesting modern example of the genre is James Ensor's strange Self-Portrait (Uffizi), in which the artist appears as the only real being among a host of grotesques.
The Evolution of Portrait Painting
Portrait art has taken many forms; variation in styles and tastes has contributed as much to portrait art as to other modes of artistic expression. The Egyptians made sculptured monuments that were idealized portraits of their monarchs intended to grant them immortality. Such ideal likenesses were painted onto sarcophagi of lesser persons as well. In Asia this religious use of the portrait was widespread until the 15th cent., when realistic Western portraiture began to influence Eastern art.
In Europe the principal medieval portraitists known by name were the French court painters Fouquet and Limousin. Limousin's enamel portraits of Francis I are among the masterpieces of enamel work. The profile medals and coins of rulers, common in the early Renaissance, were greatly simplified likenesses, as were the profile portraits of donors within devotional compositions.
Master painters such as Pollaiuolo and Piero della Francesca excelled at the profile view. The Flemish and German masters developed the three-quarter and frontal portrait types, which allowed greatly increased contact between subject and viewer and enhanced the illusion of vitality. These conventions were soon adopted generally. The powerful equestrian portrait was developed in Italy. Verrocchio's sculpture of Bartolomeo Colleoni is an outstanding example of this genre, whose major practitioners also included Donatello, Titian, Uccello, Velazquez, and Bernini.
The portrait subject was eventually revealed at full length by such masters as Holbein, Titian, Tintoretto, and Veronese, thereby increasing enormously the compositional possibilities. The Italian mannerists Bronzino, Pontormo, and Parmigiano expressed a cold splendor in their studies of the aristocracy. The Elizabethans favored the miniature, worn in a locket or set in an elaborate frame on a tiny stand. The foremost masters of this intimate and delicate form were Hilliard, Holbein, and Oliver.
The giant among all makers of portraits was Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn. In nearly 80 self-portraits he created a detailed psychological autobiography, from his joyous and exalted youth to his agonized old age. This series forms an introspective monument unique in art history. Rembrandt's portraits of others are equally penetrating. The principal baroque portraitists other than Rembrandt include Bernini, Hals, Rubens, and Van Dyck. They were followed by the French neoclassical masters David and Ingres; the Italian sculptor Canova; the English painters Hogarth, Raeburn, Lawrence, Romney, and, most notably, Gainsborough and Reynolds; the brilliant Spanish delineator of character, Goya; and the German Kneller.
