1.9.4.2 Portraiture Digest

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QUICK LINKS: 250-1500 1501-1550 1555-1699 1700-1784 1785-1849

Jump to Part 2 Portraiture

Examples of Portraiture

500 years, women in art © Philip Scott Johnson

Male self portraits © Philip Scott Johnson

ultcult was particularly moved by the two Philip Scott Johnson © mini-movies above, they morph through some of the most significant portraits across the years.

Portraiture is the second in the French hierarchy of genres. It is an old art form going stretching back 5,000 years to ancient Egypt and of course became a staple for coinage. A drawn, painted, etched or sculpted portrait became the ways mankind recorded the appearance of someone.

But portraits are not mere photographs, they encompass other issues, for instance, showing off the power, wealth and importance of the subject, perhaps they have also tended to flatter or exaggerate the beauty and virtue of the individual, or are composed to illustrate the taste, education and other qualities. They have other features, for example, most of Picasso’s pictures of women have been identified as portraits of his lovers. (Based upon tate.org.uk)

[250]

Portraiture 250-1500
Roman Empire, Early Renaissance, High Ren., Northern Ren.
Note: the image sources are accredited at the linked page

Mummy portraits	van Eyck Turban	Arnolfini Portrait (in mirror)
Fouquet Charles VII	della Francesca Sforzas	da Vinci Ginevra de’ Benci
Botticelli Giuliano de Medici	Lady with Ermine	Dürer Self Portrait

[1501]

Portraiture 1501-1550
High Renaissance, Northern Renaissance and Mannerism
Note: the image sources are accredited at the linked page

da Vinci Mona Lisa	Raphael Castiglione	Raphael Pope Leo X…
Holbein Thomas More	Holbein Lady Squirrel…	Luther and wife
Thomas Cromwell	Holbein Henry VIII	Bronzino Bia de Medici

[1555]

Portraiture 1555-1699
Mannerism, Baroque and Dutch Golden Age
Note: the image sources are accredited at the linked page

Allori Maria de Medici	Unknown artist Elizabeth	Unknown artist Julienne Gabrielle
El Greco Felix Paravicino	Hals Laughing Cavalier	Van Dyck Charles I
Velázquez Pope Innocent X	Vermeer Girl Pearl Earring	Vermeer Girl Red Hat

[1700]

Portraiture 1700 -1784
Baroque and Rococo
Note: the image sources are accredited at the linked page

Ruigaud Louis XIV	Nattier Madame Pléneuf	Lundberg François Boucher
Boucher Mme Pompadour	Kauffman David Garrick	Reynolds George Clive Family
Gainsborough Blue Boy	Le Brun Marie Antoinette	Reynolds Ladies Waldegrave

[1785]

Portraiture 1785 -1849
Neoclassicism, American Colonial, Romanticism
and Victorian Art
Note: the image sources are accredited at the linked page

David Lavoisier and wife	Stuart GeorgeWashington	Blake, Isaac Newton
Ingres Napoleon	Ingres Paganini	Stieler Beethoven
Géricault Envious Woman	Géricault Kleptomaniac	Maclise Charles Dickens

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