Celebrity Portraits
Famous people have always been a sought after subject (or target) of professional artists, from the Renaissance to Pop-Art. Examples of portraitists and their pictures of celebrities include: Jan van Eyck: The Arnolfini Portrait (1434); Lucas Cranach the Elder: Diptych with the Portraits of Luther and His Wife Katherina von Bora (1529); John Singleton Copley: The Three Youngest Daughters of George III (1785, Buckingham Palace London); Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tisschbein: Goethe in the Campagna (1787); Joseph Lange: Mozart at the Pianoforte (1789); Sir Henry Raeburn: Sir Walter Scott (1823); Ilya Repin: Portrait of Leo Tolstoy (1887); Juan Gris: Portrait of Pablo Picasso (1912); Graham Sutherland: Portrait of Somerset Maugham (1949); Willem De Kooning: Marilyn Monroe (1954); Andy Warhol: Eight Elvises (1963). Other paintings of famous people include: the poet Anna Akhmatova painted by Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin; the actor Charlie Chaplin by Fernand Leger; and Bolshevik leader Lenin by Isaak Brodsky.
Another less formal type of portraiture is caricature, usually of politicians and celebrities, published in newspapers and other periodicals, like Time magazine, Vanity Fair and The New Yorker.
Nude Portraits
From Classical Antiquity, through the Renaissance to the 20th century, both the male and female nude have featured in portraiture, in painting, sculpture and engraving - Botticelli's Birth of Venus (c.1485) being one of the greatest. For other famous examples, see: Female Nudes in Art History (Top 20) and Male Nudes in Art History (Top 10).
Vanity Portraiture
Portrait artists were also commissioned by lesser nobles, cultural figures and businessmen to create a flattering likeness of them, reflecting their position in society. This type of easel-art flourished during the High Italian Renaissance, and in the Northern Renaissance among the Dutch and Flemish schools, as portable art media like panel paintings and canvases began to replace mural frescoes. Examples include: Duke Federico da Montefeltro and His Spouse Battista Sforza (c.1466) by Piero Della Francesca; The Family & Court of Ludovico II Gonzaga (c.1474) by Andrea Mantegna; Leonardo's Lady with an Ermine (Portrait of Cecilia Gallerani) (c.1490), and Mona Lisa (c.1503), wife of Francesco del Giocondo; Raphael's Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione (1515); Jan van Eyck's Virgin of Chancellor Rolin (1436); Portrait of Georg Gisze of Danzig (1532) by Hans Holbein the Younger; The Laughing Cavalier (1624) by Frans Hals; The Night Watch or The Militia Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq (1642) and The Syndics of the Clothmakers Guild (The Staalmeesters) (1662) by Rembrandt; Master Thomas Lister (1764) by Joshua Reynolds; Mrs Richard Brinsley Sheridan (c.1785) by Thomas Gainsborough; Portrait of Miss Amelia Van Buren (1891) by Thomas Eakins; and Portrait of Miss Dora Wheeler (1883, Cleveland Museum of Art) by William Merritt Chase (1849-1916).
Review of the Development of Portraiture
There are many portraits among the masterpieces of European painting from the fifteenth century to recent times and they are an important feature of the work of masters who excelled in other genres. Goya (1746-1828), the painter of Spanish life, of the bull-fight, of popular festival, of sinister omen, of the disasters of war, even of religious subjects would yet be incomplete in our view without his brilliant studies of the individual personality.
For the greater part of the medieval period, in an art dedicated to religion, such studies (had it been possible to make them) would have seemed an intrusion on the ground belonging to faith, an impertinence if nothing more. The sculptured effigies of kings and queens were memorial abstractions of authority. Manuscript illumination provided symbols rather than likenesses, until the later Middle Ages. The beginnings of characterization appear in royal portraits of the fourteenth century, the Wilton Diptych providing an example. Yet, beautiful work as it is in a delicate miniature style, seemingly related to that of the Franco-Flemish artist Andre Beauneveu (c.1330-1403), it poses a problem in the image it gives of the young and beardless Richard II. There is some evidence to show that the panel was painted at a later date when Richard was bearded and prematurely aged. Whatever the reason, this would imply that likeness was not such a primary concern as attitude and devotional content.
In Flemish painting of the fifteenth century the realistic portrait comes into being with a startling suddenness. The practice of including the likeness of the donor—prelate, noble or wealthy merchant—in the altarpiece destined for church or convent exercised the superb skills of Jan van Eyck (1390-1441), Roger van der Weyden (1400-64) and Hans Memling (1433-94). They painted purely secular portraits with the same power, foreign visitors to the Flemish cities being among their clients. The agent of the Medici at Bruges, Tommaso Portinari, appears with his wife and children in the great Adoration, now in the Uffizi, by Hugo van der Goes (1440–82). Sir John Donne, knighted by Edward IV during the Wars of the Roses, was portrayed with his wife and daughter in the Donne Triptych (1477) by Hans Memling, now in the National Gallery, London. An Englishman abroad, Edward Grimston of Rishangles, Suffolk, had earlier been the subject of a purely secular painting by Petrus Christus (c.1410-1473), the follower of Van Eyck at Bruges. The fellow-feeling between England and the southern Netherlands thus extended to art was to have a sequel in the long succession of Flemish painters settling in London in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Humanism, the Renaissance and the Reformation all contributed to the development of portraiture as an independent genre. The principle of the humanist philosophy that the proper study of mankind was man - logically gave the portrait a place of importance. The artists of the Renaissance were not only in accord with this view but by technical advance they improved the representation of character. The oil medium brought to Venice by Antonello da Messina (1430-1479) gave a new warmth and strength of modelling to the art. Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) demonstrated how light and shade could add to the suggestion of personality and psychology (sfumato). The Reformation gave an impetus to portraiture of another kind. The suppression of religious imagery in the reforming lands made painters more willing to offer their services as portraitists.
The career of Hans Holbein the Younger (1497-1543) shows the effect of the three forces. Born at Augsburg, he chose to work when young in the German-Swiss city of Basel which as well as being prosperous was a centre of scholarly humanism. It was there he made his illustrations for the Praise of Folly by Erasmus. He had the Renaissance capacity for varied undertakings, from mural decoration and altarpieces to designs for goldsmith's work and stained glass, though his bent towards portraiture was already marked. But in the upsurge of Protestant feeling at Basel, employment of a Catholic nature came to an end.
Like other artists he was 'without bread', as Erasmus observed in commending him to Thomas More in London. The interest of these friends (which he repaid by superb portraits of them) enabled Holbein to meet and portray in paintings and drawings a considerable sector of Tudor society in the two years of his first stay in England, 1528. His second stay of eleven years from 1532 to his death in 1543 brought him more definitely into the court sphere. He became painter to Henry VIII in 1536. No face in history is better known than the formidable visage with suspicious eyes and small cruel mouth painted by Holbein in the one picture (Thyssen Collection) - among a number of versions - that is certainly from his own hand.
In this century of shifting relations and alliances between despotic rulers, the portrait had its diplomatic function. Besides providing a reminder at home to officials and courtiers of the governing power, the ruler-image was a symbol of international exchange, the artist himself an international figure. This was the position of Titian (1485-1576), the portrayer of Charles V and Philip II of Spain: and of Anthonis Mor (1519-1576), the Latin 'Antonio Moro', who later became Sir Anthony More and painted Mary Tudor and Sir Thomas Gresham.
Before photography was invented - or personal acquaintance considered a necessary preliminary even to a royal marriage - the painted portrait served to convey the physical suitability of the prospective bride. Holbein was despatched to the continent to bring pack his pictorial report on the young but widowed Duchess of Milan and Anne, daughter of the Duke of Cleves, to assist Henry in making his choice. More than a description, his painting of the Duchess (London, National Gallery) became a masterpiece adding to the attraction of feature a splendid simplicity of design.
Another purpose of the court portrait was to indicate power and rank by the splendour of costume and profusion of jewellery. This was strongly characteristic of the Elizabethan period, and perhaps a requirement of the patron that features should have a stiff and ceremonially expressionless aspect while the wealth of accessories gave evidence of status. The queen herself seems to have thought along these lines in her injunctions against shadow conveyed to Nicholas Hilliard, against, that is, the facial modelling shadow would produce.
The almost Byzantine formal richness of such a work as the Ditchley Portrait by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger (1561-1636) was sought by court ladies in their lesser degree. The Flemish painters who came to England to escape religious persecution in the Netherlands and formed a Flemish colony in London were craftsmen supplying a requirement which limited their independence as artists. The genre of miniature portrait painting by its
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