Portraits

India Matysiak

General meaning

A portrait is a painting, photograph or sculpture in which the face and its expression is predominant. The intent is to display the likeness, personality, and even the mood of the person. For this reason, in photography a portrait is generally not a snapshot, but a composed image of a person in a still position. A portrait often shows a person looking directly at the painter or photographer, in order to most successfully engage the subject with the viewer.

Some historySome of the earliest surviving painted portraits of people who were not kings or emperors, are the funeral portraits that survived in the dry climate of Egypt's Fayum district. These are almost the only paintings from the classical world that have survived, apart from fresco, though many sculptures survive, and portraits on coins.The art of the portrait flourished in Ancient Greek and especially Roman sculpture, where sitters demanded individualized and realistic portraits, even unflattering ones. During the 4th century, the portrait began to retreat in favour of an idealized symbol of what that person looked like. (Compare the portraits of Roman Emperors Constantine I and Theodosius I at their entries.) In the Europe of the Early Middle Ages representations of individuals are mostly generalized. True portraits of the outward appearance of individuals re-emerged in the late Middle Ages, in tomb monuments, donor portraits, miniatures in illuminated manuscripts and then panel paintings.

An examplePose - He will take Rome to greater conquest, power and wealth. You can see his hand is pointing upwards/forwards, this basically shows that he’s going to take Rome forward to greater conquest and wealth.Clothing - He seems to be wearing soldier clothing, this shows that he is trying to say he will help with wars, is strong, will help to defend Rome and is a man of the people. Facial expression - As you can see he doesn’t really have a facial expression, his face is very blank and emotionless. Although, at the same time he looks calm and like a honest trustworthy man. No crown - This shows that he’s not trying to play the role of the king, and he is just trying to show that he is like every other person. He isn’t even wearing the laurel crown which roman victors wore.Small angel (putti) – This shows that he is such a good man even god, and angels favour him.

More history..

For many years it was only kings, queens and high status people that got their portraits done. Poor people would not get their portrait done because they were very expensive to be painted. From 1400 wealthy ‘ordinary’ people started to get their portrait painted. In 1837 the first permanent photographic process was discovered. The photograph could record exactly what the person looked like and tell their expressions much better than a painting.

Kertesz

Photographic portraits can also capture

fleeting moments more easily than painting.

August Sander

A ‘conventional’ portrait (rather like a traditional painted portrait

The change

Paintings then started to change, they started to become more abstract and less like portraits. I think this is because they were almost trying to compete with pictures, as there was something that was invented that was a lot easier and cheaper than paining. So the painters can to start making something better and different to normal portraits.

Self portrait by Van Goth, 1885.