Portraiture

This volume is dedicated to the study of the in- and outside of princely residences and of their setup as the stage for a developing European early modern court culture. At a time of increasing aristocratization (1400-1700) and with many new nascent princely courts, both the princely person and the performance of princely power required an appropriate type of elaborate backdrop as its setting. Even though such an interest in the palace interior and its functions is not entirely new, interior architecture and court culture have only recently come to be seen as two sides of the same medal: embodiment and expression of the princely presence. Therefore, the essays included focus in particular on diverse types of functions that palaces and apartments, state rooms and privy chambers had to fulfil at certain periods and in certain residential contexts between the ages of feudalism and absolutism at courts in London, Edinburgh, Neuburg am Inn, Karlstein and Prague, Červený Kameň and Ludwigsburg. They compare and contrast specific local examples with international trends such as, for example, the palace and court ceremonial developed at or adapted to diverse circumstances
in Burgundy, Spain or Lithuania.
Consequently, the aim of this volume consists of the combination of personal and
dynastic ambitions with fashionable trends and court etiquette followed by royalty and minor princes alike during a period of calculated magnificence. It considers processional routes towards the presence of the ruler or towards its image. Thereby, it helps to define the complementary roles of residential interiors and of the courtly personnel at the same time.
The ten papers collected in this volume were first presented at the PALATIUM colloquium The Interior as an Embodiment of Power―The Image of the Prince and its Spatial Setting (1400–1700), organized by Stephan Hoppe, Krista De Jonge and Stefan Breitling and held in Bamberg in October 2013.
The full volume is freely available in open access
on the PALATIUM website: http://www.courtresidences.eu/

After a fifty-year search, a bust inscribed with the name FARINACIO, made of white Carrara and black Belgian marble, is identified as A PORTRAIT OF the famous Roman advocate of Beatrice Cenci and attributed to the young Gianlorenzo Bernini.  The bust is analyzed and its history traced from the time of its creation about 1619 in Rome to its transportation to the USA, first in Detroit, MI, then New York City, and finally in Princeton, NJ.  The essay includes a chart of Gianlorenzo’s works up to 1620, and a critical review of documents and inventories demonstrating his authorship of several other sculptures that have been erroneously disputed." Artibus & Historiae, No. 77, 2018, pp. 256-290.

This paper was presented during the first Rubenianum Work-in-Progress Workshop organised the 20 february 20.

The purpose of this paper is to present my initial hypotheses for answering the question of the role of exoticism in the expression of individuality in the 17th and 18th centuries. Through painted portraits with various exotic objects (porcelain, Persian carpets, oriental costumes, etc.) I will question the aesthetic, social and cultural functions of these objects. The dialectic of reality/representation will also be considered.

Never entirely analyzed until now, the pictorial iconography of Maria Carolina looks more vivacious and interesting than that of her sister Marie-Antoinette, queen of France, both for its various languages from different countries, as the Neapolitan late baroque, the French rococo, the German neoclassic, and for the iconography and the iconology, as shown by the suggestive presence of the Antique, the allusions to the maternity and even some Masonic references.

AVVERTENZA: Sulla base della normativa in materia di diritti d’autore, oltre che di una norma etica fondamentale, non è concesso utilizzare questo testo illustrato in qualsiasi forma – copia, citazione, riassunto etc. – senza menzionare la fonte.

WARNING: Under copyright law, as well as a fundamental norm of ethics, any use of this published paper – copy, citation, abridged version etc. – is not authorised without mentioning the source.

Cette communication a été présentée dans le cadre du colloque "Portraits et représentations des anciens Pays-Bas (XVIe - XVIIe siècles)" organisé par le CREHS et l'Université d'Artois les 8 et 9 novembre 2018. Les actes du colloque feront l'objet d'une publication.

Statistical data and photographic portraits are two techniques of explanation frequently used to narrate both the magnitude and the specificity of mass death. Numbers offer a census of the dead while photographic portraits promise an intimate glimpse into the specificity of lives lost. This paper analyzes the use of photographic portraits
in an installation in the so-called Central Camp Sauna building at the
Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum (ABSM). I analyze the portraits as
objects whose meaning and uses have been structured by their history
of material transformations, including their material condition in
the ABSM installation. I argue that the material relations between the
portraits and the other aesthetic elements of the installation tether
the evidentiary function of the photographs to the symbolic task of
representing absent – and thus abstract – others. This tethering of
faces and narratives makes visible a tension between the one and the
many, documenting the specificity of individual victims as well as symbolizing both the broader losses of community and the collectivizing
character of mass violence.

The Habsburgs: Images and Portraits II, Renaissance Society of America, Annual Meeting, Miami, Florida, 22-24 March 2007.

Jooris van der Straeten: Habsburg Court Portraitist in Portugal, Spain and France.
New Notes and Attributions

Jooris van der Straeten, born in Ghent, carved out an international career which spanned several decades (from 1552 to 1574), and several European courts (Portugal, Spain and France). He was fluent in Portuguese, Spanish and French, transforming himself into a versatile courtier, well adapted in Habsburg Spain as he was in Valois France. While other Habsburg court painters, Anthonis Mor and Alonso Sánchez Coello, worked primarily for male courtiers and the king, Philip II of Spain, van der Straeten strategically carved out a niche for himself, working primarily as a portraitist for queens, commissioned to paint his female patrons (Catherine of Austria, Isabel of Valois, Catherine de’ Medici, Louise of Lorraine), their royal woman and children. Aside from court portraits, his oeuvre includes religious works: an altarpiece with the Ascension of the Virgin is still in sitú in the Church of St. Nicholas in Plasencia (Valladolid). Straeten arrived in Lisbon circa 1552, possibly in the retinue of Anthonis Mor, who was sent to Portugal by the regent Mary of Hungary to paint the Portuguese royal family. According to Carel van Mander (1604), “Georges de Gand,” had been a pupil of Frans Floris (1517-1570) in Antwerp, where Straeten conceivably met Mor, whose Habsburg portrait style was so influential upon his contemporaries. Straeten’s portraiture combine Floris’s synthesis of Italian innovations with Mor’s northern precision and love of detail. As a painter active at three Renaissance courts, Straeten promoted a portrait style firmly grounded in Habsburg court ideology and dynastic politics.

This paper will re-evaluate Straeten’s contributions, highlighted by the discovery of new archival documents and rediscovered portraits in Spain, Portugal, France, England, the Czech Republic and Hungary.

The Venice Biennale provides many an interesting, and sometimes contradictory array of issues linked to the history of exhibitions, curating, and the importance of display. This paper focuses on the early edition of 1903.
Contrary to earlier Biennali in which sections were organised by nationality, in 1903 the rules of the game were slightly changed: in addition to regional sections as well as ‘international’ sections, the General Secretary Antonio Fradeletto decided to have one star show centring on modern portraiture whilst allowing Italian decorative arts for the first time. This paper focuses the ‘Sala del Ritratto Moderno’ (or 'Room of Modern Portraiture') both as an exhibition strategy and an act of curation. I analyse in particular Fradeletto’s choice of artists, the decoration of the room and the critical perspective provided in the catalogue to see how the Sala conveyed more than meets the eye.
By mostly using unpublished archival sources (ASAC), I aim to restore some ‘historical density’, to borrow Lawrence Alloway’s terminology, to the curatorial and strategic history of the early Venice Biennale.

In 1899 Irish suffragist Dorothea Roberts gave Bedford College a portrait of Millicent Fawcett (1847-1929) by the artist Theodore Blake Wirgman (Fig. 1). 1 That year Fawcett accepted an honorary LLD from the University of St Andrews, one of the first honorary degrees awarded to a woman, and Roberts's donation thus marked an important celebratory moment for the women's higher education movement. As a gift to one of the earliest women's colleges in the country, the portrait joined a growing collection of portraits of pioneering professional women at Bedford College. The art collections at the newly established women's colleges heralded a new kind of collector: collectives of educated women, staff, students, and alumnae. These women were not necessarily wealthy individuals, but as collectives they could commission artworks through the intricate networks that threaded between the different institutions promoting higher education for women. Some context is required to understand the circumstances by which these pioneering groups of university-educated women came to commemorate their history through their art collections. The movement for university

" Wearing Images " es el título del volumen monográfico número 6 de la revista Espacio, Tiempo y Forma, dirigido por Diane Bodart, David Rosand Assistant Professor of Italian Renaissance Art History de la Columbia University de Nueva York, que propone el siguiente tema: En las últimas décadas, los estudios sobre la materialidad y la eficacia de las imágenes, así como aquellos sobre las prácticas sociales y artísticas vinculadas a ellas, han permitido explorar hasta qué punto la fabricación, los usos, el manejo o la exhibición de imágenes contribuyeron a la activación de sus capacidad de hacerse presentes a través de su interacción con el espectador. Además, el creciente interés por el diálogo entre la historia del arte y la antropología de las imágenes ha resaltado los lazos estrechos entre el objeto artístico y el cuerpo: así, si el cuerpo puede ser el medio del objeto artístico animado, el objeto artístico puede a su vez llegar a actuar como sustituto del cuerpo animado. Pero, ¿qué ocurre cuando el cuerpo no es el medio, sino el soporte de una imagen específica?, ¿qué ocurre cuando incrusta otra imagen en su propia superficie, ya sea directamente sobre la piel, por ejemplo, sobre el vestido o sobre un adorno corporal? " Wearing Images " pretende investigar los diferentes modos de interacción entre la imagen y el cuerpo que la aloja durante la Edad Moderna (entre aproximadamente 1400 y 1800), en un periodo en el que algunas imágenes devocionales, políticas, dinásticas o familiares fueron exhibidas a través de medallas, joyas, insignias, adornos bordados o tatuajes. En el transcurso de procesiones o rituales públicos, se exhibían pegadas al cuerpo, como si fueran parte de él, por ejemplo a través de un motivo decorativo sobre una armadura o sobre un traje en una fiesta. Este volumen planteará cuestiones como el papel de las imágenes incrustadas en el cuerpo en la definición de la propia identidad, en la afirmación de la afiliación con un colectivo, o en la construcción de la individualidad; la dimensión apotropaica y el empoderamiento creado por el contacto entre el cuerpo y la imagen; la performatividad de imágenes adosadas al cuerpo en movimiento y la interacción que provocan entre el portador de la imagen y su espectador. También prestará atención a la representación del portador de imágenes, que incorpora una potencial estructura de repetición, con la consiguiente inserción dentro de una composición pictórica de una imagen dentro de otra imagen. Este volumen Wearing images integrará textos originales que investiguen sobre el acto de inscribir y portar imágenes sobre el cuerpo durante la Edad Moderna, a través de medios como los tatuajes, las joyas, las medallas, el vestido, las armaduras o los escudos. También se aceptarán trabajos sobre la representación de los propios portadores de imágenes. Las contribuciones podrán centrarse en un caso en particular o analizar un grupo de objetos. No existen restricciones geográficas, y pese a que la cronología se centra sobre todo en la Edad Moderna, se aceptarán análisis comparativos con otras épocas. Le rogamos difunda este Call for Papers. Si está interesado en enviar una contribución le rogemos consulte las normas para autores, y se registre en la web de la revista para remitirnos su propuesta:

Portrait is a very sought out and popular genre of photography, and not only at the present time. This was the case even in the times of photographers that could be described as pioneers in portrait photography as such. Nadar, Disdéri, and others popularized this medium and predestined its dominant role in society when the celebrities of that time came to gather in their ateliers. Over time, an artist's approach towards photographed subjects has also changed. Besides physical traits, a photographer also tries to capture something "behind" all this. In this paper, we address not only an analysis of interpretation points of view during the process of portrayal or its social function, but also a clarification of what an identity in portrait photography means and how it is reflected. We also enter the context of media, where human identity adjusts itself to a universal model, the so-called beauty myth, is abused and presented in the form of artificial icons and sex symbols. On the basis of theoretical grounds and the content analysis of selected authors and their works of art related to the topic of identity in a portrait, we have created a series of self-portraits, which are aimed at analysing the identity of an individual in comparison to the identity of their closest family members.

Les taillades, vaste gamme d’incisions opérées sur les étoffes, sont un reflet de l’impact de la réglementation protocolaire et somptuaire sur la créativité des tailleurs pour garantir l’originalité de paraître de leur noble clientèle. Alors, quand Christoph Amberger portraiture Charles Quint en 1532 avec une paire de gants dont un seul est entaillé, il crée une iconographie qui pose la question des frontières entre image de mode et illusion picturale et interroge les enjeux de cette effigie pour présenter l’empereur à la société de cour.

Charles Willson Peale was the first artist to have portrayed George Washington in uniform from life. Washington sat for Peale seven times — more than for any other artist. Beginning with his earliest works, Peale channeled his politics and those of his patrons through his brush. His portraits familiarized Americans and Europeans with Washington, presenting the man, the cause, and the republic as one and the same. Specifically, Peale’s commissions celebrating Washington’s earliest victories heralded American resilience. Peale portrayed Washington as the personification of the American struggle for independence while heralding his service and leadership as a republican general. As visual biographies of the first soldier of the republic, Peale’s wartime portraits of Washington, therefore, represent his most important contribution to the creation of American identity through art.

Greenberg Steinhauser Forum in American Portraiture, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institute

A pesar de los múltiples vaticinios que, desde los albores de los modernismos europeos y tras una reconocida crisis del sujeto y de su imagen, se acumularon sobre la muerte del retrato — ora por exceso, ora por defecto, en cuanto a sus capacidades representativas —, lo cierto es que el arte y la literatura contemporáneos parecen haberse mantenido de una forma general ilesas en relación a todas esas provocaciones apocalípticas: además de la ubicuidad de los actuales selfies fotográficos, el volumen de retratos y autorretratos producidos en nuestros días, fruto o no de pedidos, desafía toda enumeración. Además de en los espacios expositivos más tradicionales; en el cine o en los videojuegos, en series televisivas, en instalaciones y medios digitales, en composiciones literarias o musicales o en el ámbito del arte urbano, del arte textil o de las artes decorativas, los retratos se afirman como una especie de género invasivo, que encuentra en el contexto cultural contemporáneo terreno particularmente fértil a su propagación. Hasta tal punto de haberse convertido en inevitable anunciar la muerte de la muerte del retrato (Wright, 2005), reafirmando, con ello, supuestos impulsos ancestrales del ser humano para la autorrepresentación y para la contemplación colectiva. Si, en el contexto de una filosofía contemporánea del extrañamiento como la de Sloterdijk (2008), ha tomado particular relevancia la cuestión de la existencia, del Dasein, de la presencia humana en el mundo como «abismal excentricidade» (id.: 16), no parece que hayamos resuelto completamente la preocupación típicamente moderna de la identidad y la individualidad, que seguimos de un modo general considerando como una carencia primordial.

"Artistry and Industry: The Portraiture of George Peter Alexander Healy, 1830-1865." What do antebellum portraiture and industrialization have in common? In a word: Healy. George Peter Alexander Healy (1813-1894), a little-studied portraitist, painted the faces of hundreds of industrialists. Industry functioned in Healy's career as a source of patronage as well as inspiration, sparking the artist to redefine a genre and rethink marketability. The sheer duration and volume of his production (1830-1865), the high intensity of his itinerancy (crossing the U.S. annually from north to south and across the Atlantic), and the speculative nature of his production and exhibition practices make Healy a prime candidate for exploring how industrialization changed the practice of portraiture during the mid-nineteenth century. Existing historical scholarship has examined how industrialization changed people's lives socially, politically and economically, but it has not addressed its impact on art. Healy's career reveals the marriage of various old and new practices in the art system of antebellum America, showing how art benefitted from industrialization in creative ways. In three chapters, this study will look at Healy's production of painted portraits, his commercialization of prints after these portraits, and his use of new materials to understand how he engaged with industrial culture. Healy was an opportunist who quickly learned how to navigate the world of industry unfolding in front of him, applying industrial approaches to creation and marketability and seeking the favor of wealthy patrons. Healy pursued replication practices, attached himself to key industrialists, participated in world exhibitions, and engaged with speculative marketing practices. My dissertation helps reconsider the continued importance and modernity of portraiture, highlighting its groundedness in the historical development of industrialization.

Étude approfondie de l’iconographie textile et vestimentaire du portrait de François Ier peint par Jean Clouet afin de proposer une relecture d’une herméneutique plus complexe que ne l’ont laissé penser les recherches fondamentales de Cécile Scailliérez. Riche de découvertes inédites quant à l’habillement du portrait, c’est à la fois sa fonction, son commanditaire et sa datation qui ont pu être précisés.

This article weaves together images from an artistic research project with discussion of the critical and historical contexts which animated and informed it. The images are—for the most part—composites of late nineteenth and early twentieth century photographic portraits discovered by chance in the National Archive of Thailand. In November 2014 these were exhibited at H Project Space, a Bangkok gallery located in a neo-colonial Bangkok house built by an Anglo-Thai couple. For this, the composites were generated in real time using software designed by the author. These were projected at monumental scale to create two immersive spaces. In the interests of clarity, images from this exhibition and others generated during the visual research process are included here. The inquiry sought to raise questions about overlooked and taboo aspects of Thai history and to relate these to a political present characterised by mass censorship, curtailed freedom of expression and a heavily policed visual culture

En el imperio romano el retrato tendrá un protagonismo central; será uno de los ejes que vertebrarán buena parte de los valores que lo configuraron y que lo proyectaron hacia el futuro como un modelo casi permanente (que llega hasta nuestros días). Pues bien, dentro de la retratística romana, no fueron los bustos de mármol las imágenes que gozaron de mayor relevancia. Las imagines maiorum (imágenes de los antepasados), elaboradas en ceras polícromas y custodiadas en los atrios de los hogares fueron las que aglutinaron la esencia de la retratística clásica. La genealogía familiar, el poder, la gloria… quedaban impresos con particular energía en estas imágenes que, paradójicamente, sólo han llegado hasta nuestros días a través de las fuentes escritas: su materialidad cerosa, aquella que las dotaba de una vitalidad única, motivó que desaparecieran sin dejar apenas rastro. Sin embargo, la pieza en sí misma no era lo importante; su fuerza residía en su exclusividad, en el derecho a poder realizarlas (sólo reservado a una élite) o… al menos, esto es lo que creían en el Renacimiento.

Portrait photography is a complex and very dynamically evolving genre. Visual representation of a person is changing as significantly as their ontological status in the 21st century. The study focuses on the production of portraits, where the old conventions of portraiture are being transformed towards a new type of audience. It draws attention to new strategies stemming from the actual nature of the medium of photography characterized by interdisciplinarity and intermediality. Based on the nature of photography and its changing cultural tasks, the thesis clarifies the function and the ways of portrait production. It also explains image derivatives of portrait photography which could be identified as a group of sub-genres.

Based on an analysis of Robert Frangeš Mihanović’s sculptures housed in the Museum of Fine Arts in Osijek, the paper brings forth observations on some of the sculptor’s works.  Monument to the Fallen Soldiers of the 78 th  Šokčević Regiment was built in Osijek in 1898. The paper explores circumstances around its acquisition for the Gallery of Fine Arts in Osijek in 1963. The 1893 bust, A Roman (Civis Romanus), was the fi rst known portrait sculpture created by Frangeš. The paper compares versions of this bust made in different materials. A Roman is a specifi c and paradigmatic example of naturalistic portrait sculpture both within Frangeš’s oeuvre and a broader art historical context of Croatian sculpture. Along this classic work of portraiture, mention should be made of the sculpture titled Head of an Old Man from Osijek’s Museum of Fine Arts, only recently attributed to Frangeš. Both A Roman and Head of an Old Man were acquired for the Museum through Oton (Otto) Pfeiffer’s donation. A portrait of the artist’s grandmother, Baroness Josefi na Mihanović-Maasburg was created in 1894 as one of the fi rst known portrait sculptures in which Frangeš treated the face of an old person in a naturalistic manner. It was at the same time the earliest known of his relief portraits. Study of a Horse from 1916 was one of numerous sculptures depicting domestic animals from the artist’s animalistic series. Frangeš’s animal sculptures were at the time very popular, which arguably contributed to his success at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1900, and to the production of replicas in different materials (bronze, plaster) modelled on the 1899 originals. The sculpture based on a folk theme called A Spinner belongs to a group of Frangeš’s sculptures that form the segment of Croatian modern art characterised by a desire to shape and affi rm national identity. This small, intimate sculpture was dedicated to his wife Ženka Frangeš, who researched and promoted folk crafts.

Studie pojednává o estetice absence a zárodečně postmoderních strategiích uplatňovaných v povídce Richarda Weinera „Prázdná židle“ (1916), a to jak z hlediska narativní analýzy, tak na základě východisek filozofie médií a vizuální antropologie. V první části studie je osvětlena Weinerova diskurzivní strategie fingování, jež vykazuje společné rysy s postmoderní metafikcí a způsobuje cézuru mezi tím, co text říká a co skutečně dělá. Druhá část analyzuje ironizaci afektivního i tematického centra povídky a přináší nový pojem „dianarace“. Třetí část odkrývá intermediální afinity prázdné židle s portréty Vincenta van Gogha (1888) a zakladatelským dílem konceptuálního umění Josepha Kosutha (1965).
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This paper deals with the aesthetics of absence and pre-postmodern strategies as carried out in the short story “Prázdná židle [Empty Chair]” (1916) by Richard Weiner. Drawing on the methodological fusion of narrative analysis, media philosophy, and visual anthropology, I argue that Weiner’s text offers a specific “portrait of absence”, which is able to intensify the subject despite its physical non-presence. In the first part, Weiner’s discursive strategy of feigning, revealing common features
with postmodern metafiction and producing a rupture between what the text says and what it does, is explained. The second part analyzes an ironization of its affective and thematic center while bringing forth a new concept of “dia-narrative”. The third part explores the main figure of the empty chair in its intermedial relations with the portraits of Vincent van Gogh (1888) and the founding work of the conceptual art by Joseph Kosuth (1965).