Portrait

See also: Portrait (homonymy)

A portrait is a pictorial work , sculptural, photographic, Cinéma tographic, televisual, radiophonic or Littéraire with descriptive aiming representing a person or a real or fictitious thing, from a physical or psychological point of view.

In the monumental Sculpture, the portraits have various functions, beyond the will to perpetuate the memory of a person and to want to create a historical image of the silent partner, the portrait often has an immediate function of representativeness. It often expresses the desire of ubiquity, of political or religious use: the portrait of the president of the republic which is in each French town hall in is an good example.

For a long time it was thought that the portrait was to be the most mimetic exercise of the figuration, but the attentive study of its history at the very least moderated this judgment. At the time traditional, the portrait remained however the kind depend on the subject and one the most codified of.

The portrait appears as of the fifth century before J.C on the currencies of kings de Perses. The use especially spread of it since the death of Alexandre Large the. He experienced at the time Roman a considerable development. With the Middle Ages it disappears from the currencies and returns only at the end of the fifteenth century, with the imitation of the Italy on the Monnaies known as “teston”. The use of the portrait of the medal was inaugurated by Pisanello in 1439.

At the origins of the portrait also the idea of dead and survival is. The portrait seems a desperate attempt to entreat the transitory duration of the life. In addition, the portrait is form of self-satisfaction which answers the pleasure of contemplating its own features. A long time the art of the portrait was monk and allowed the contact with the divine universe.

Various types of portraits

In each artistic discipline one finds various types of portraits :

The self-portrait

It is a portrait of the artist by itself, to see Autoportrait.

Portrait of things

It can be a question of the portrait of a city, an area, a State or a profession, even of an idea.

Policy

In policy, the portraits of the Heads of State often symbolize the State itself. In the majority of the countries the protocol requires that the portrait of the Head of the State appear in all the public buildings. An excessive appearance of such portraits is the mark of a Culte of the personality, into force in many dictatorships (the USSR, Iraq of Saddam Hussein, etc).

Politicians or the noble ones without being a Head of State nor king often made carry out their portrait, either by narcissism, or by mécenissme, it thus allowed large artists of living of their talent.

Nowadays, with the mediatization of the company, one does not conceive any more a political career without photographic portrait , Cinéma tographic ( videographic ), or Multimédia.

Arts person

In literature the portraits are written descriptions or analyzes of a person or a thing. A portrait often gives a vision and a very thorough analysis which goes well beyond the surface one.

pictorial

For the periods Baroque and Rococo, with the seventeenth century and eighteenth century, the portraits took an increasing importance. In a company increasingly dominated by the middle-class in the middle of powerful course, of the representations of individuals luxuriously vêtus beside the symbols of power and temporal richness contributed efficiently to the assertion of their authority. Van Dick and Rubens excelled in this kind.

At the same time, the growing interest for the comprehension of the human feelings generated concerned artists of the aspect of the emotions. The impressionists such as Monet, Degas or Renoir, which used mainly like models their family and friends, painted small groups or individuals alone, in the open air or in workshop. Characterized by their luminous surface and the richness of their colors, these portraits often present a character intimist, moved away from the official portrait.

The artists of the beginning of the century widened the fields of exploration of the portrait, by releasing it from the constraints of visual resemblance. Henri Matisse simplified the line and the colors to give them all their expressive force. Pablo Picasso carried out many portraits, whose several portrait cubists or the model is hardly recognizable. The art of the portrait in painting declined in the middle of the century, undoubtedly because of the interest growing for the abstraction and nonfigurative art. More recently, however, the portrait knew a revival.

If the portrait is an enthralling object of study, it is that it indeed concentrates the majority of the functions of painting. The first self-portraits of Western art appeared during the Rebirth, when the artists painted their own face being detached from crowd in background of narrative scenes. The kind of the self-portrait taken an increasing importance after the traditional period.

Gallery: Portrait in painting

This section does not claim to make an exhaustive inventory of all the portraits carried out during the history of painting. It is satisfied to present, as example, a choice representative of each time through some tables - known or less known - painters famous for their art of the portrait.

Nevertheless, it releases several types of portraits in painting: (example by this extract of the catalog of the Italian collections of the museum of the Art schools of Chambéry, France)

  • the portrait of pageantry: Man in armor of Bartolomeo Passerotti
  • the realistic portrait: old Woman , of Santi di Tito
  • the psychological portrait: Piero Soderini , Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio
  • the allegorical portrait: Vittoria Rinucinni , Anton Domenico Gabbiani
  • the portrait of family: Portrait of family, Bartolomeo Nazari

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