Portrait

In visual arts, a portrait is a painting, drawing, photograph, sculpture, or other likeness of a particular person (or perhaps a group of people), with an accurate (or somewhat accurate) image of the human face. The word “portrait” sometimes refers to literary or historical writing which biographically depicts a person.

Quotes

• The unusual personality of Alexander the Great is reflected in an extraordinary number of portraits. They begin in his early youth, and do not end with his death. They continue during the Hellenistic and Roman periods, and all subsequent periods down to modern times. The portraits of Alexander not only reflect the different phases of his short life but become an artistic motif for all following periods.
  • Margarete Bieber, (October 1965)"The Portraits of Alexander". Greece & Rome 12 (2): 183–188. DOI:10.1017/S0017383500015345.

• The fact that some of the noblest and most highly esteemed examples that survive to us of the best days of painting are those of portraiture is sufficient demonstration of the dignity of the art itself. To produce a portrait is to do much more than make a mere study of a head. Qualities of composition, balance of light and shade, appropriate accessories, and many other elements of a pictorial æsthetic nature combine to give dignity to the canvas and mark it as a work of art.
  • Frank Fowler Portrait. Cassell Publishing Company. 1894. p. 10. 

• Independent portrait sculpture was revived around the middle of the fifteenth century in three main forms—the equestrian monument, the bust, and the medal. Equestrian monuments are over life-size, they were made by public decree, and were displayed in public places. Sculptured busts are life-size, were privately commissioned, and were displayed on private property. Medals are small in scale, they might be commissioned officially or privately, and they were intended for a selected audience that did not include the public at large but extended beyond the sitter's personal domain. ...
  None of these classes of portraiture had actually disappeared during the middle ages, but when they occurred they were included within some physical and conceptual context, such as church and tomb decoration, or ordinary coinage ...
  • Irving Lavin, (1970). "On the sources and meaning of the Renaissance portrait bust". The Art Quarterly XXXIII (3): 207–226. (quote from p. 207)

• ... It is part of the gift of time to us that a portrait, if only done ably, at last satisfies the generation which knew not the man portrayed. Even to old folk who once “saw Shelley plain,” and yet grow forgetful of the man's infinite variety, the portrait may serve.
  • Morley Roberts, W. H. Hudson: A Portrait. London: Eveleigh Nash & Grayson. 1926. p. 16. 

• "Commemoration" was a particularly important function of portraiture. Dürer's well-known dictum on the ability of paintings to preserve the likeness of men after their deaths was an expression of faith in the magical victory of art over time, as if painting could overcome death. It is significant in this respect that the portrait itself is descended from the tomb effigy or least was originally associated with this art form. Examples of likenesses of deceased persons — usually members of the high clergy — in the form of reliefs or sculptures on altar tombs date from as early as the high or late Middle Ages: the tombstone of Archbishop Friederich of Wettin (c. 1152) at Magdeburg cathedral, for example, or that of Siegfried III of Eppenstein (Mainz cathedral), shown in crowning two reduced-scale kings.
  Links between the portrait and the cult of the dead may be traced back to antique art. In Roman times wax masks were taken of the dead and kept in the shrine in the atrium of patrician villas.
  • Norbert Schneider, The art of the portrait: masterpieces of European portrait-painting, 1420-1670. Taschen. 2002. p. 28.  (1st German edition in 1992, Porträtmalerei. Hauptwerke europäischer Bildniskunst 1420-1670, 2nd edition, 1994; English translation by Iain Galbraith)

External links

• Encyclopedic article on Portrait on Wikipedia
• National Portrait Gallery (London) channel. YouTube.
• National Portrait Gallery (Washington, DC) channel. YouTube.