Portraiture in Renaissance and Baroque Europe The resurgence of portraiture was thus a significant manifestation of the Renaissance in Europe The earliest Renaissance portraits were not paintings in their own right, but rather important inclusions in pictures of Christian subjects
What Makes a Portrait? - The Metropolitan Museum of Art Portraiture is about expressing the concept of a person Sometimes a portrait might be the absence of a person, focusing instead on their belongings or environment No matter what the subject, the positioning, facial expressions, composition, and lighting are just a few things that will affect the outcome of the photograph
Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle The development of Roman portraiture is characterized by a stylistic cycle that alternately emphasized realistic or idealizing elements Each stage of Roman portraiture can be described as alternately “veristic” or “classicizing,” as each imperial dynasty sought to emphasize certain aspects of representation in an effort to legitimize their authority or align themselves with revered
Portrait Painting in England, 1600–1800 - The Metropolitan Museum of Art Portraiture has played a dominant role in England since the Renaissance, when the arts declaimed the legitimacy of the Tudor dynasty, while the Protestant Reformation effected a drastic decline in commissions for religious images A relatively stable monarchy in concert with a powerful landed aristocracy provided continuity and patronage The portrait miniature flourished Portraits and
What’s in a Face? - The Metropolitan Museum of Art What’s the earliest known portrait? Some say it’s a sculpted piece of mammoth ivory from the last ice age, a 27,000-year-old cave painting in Vilhonneur, France, or a prehistoric rock painting in modern-day Australia While it’s impossible to know, one thing is clear: soon after people began making images, we began making images of other people Today, if you search for “portrait” on
Featured Publication: - The Metropolitan Museum of Art Written by a team of international scholars, The Renaissance Portrait provides new insight into the early history of portraiture in Italy, examining in detail how its major art centers—Florence, the princely courts, and Venice—saw the rapid development of portraiture as closely linked to Renaissance society and politics, ideals of the individual, and concepts of beauty
How to Read Portraits - The Metropolitan Museum of Art What do Taylor Swift and Vincent van Gogh have in common? According to art historian Kathryn Calley Galitz’s new book, How to Read Portraits, they are both masters of controlling their image through portraiture Her reexamination of a deceptively familiar genre explores what portraits can tell us about the artist, the sitter, and ourselves I spoke to Kathy about this publication—the
Roman Portrait Sculpture: Republican through Constantinian Roman portraiture is unique in comparison to that of other ancient cultures because of the quantity of surviving examples, as well as the complex and ever-evolving stylistic treatment of human features and character
The Renaissance Portrait: From Donatello to Bellini In the words of cultural historian Jacob Burckhardt, fifteenth-century Italy was "the place where the notion of the individual was born " In keeping with that idea, early Renaissance Italy was a key participant in the first great age of portraiture in Europe As groundbreaking artists strove to evoke the identity or personality of their sitters—from heads of state and church, military