Portraiture and the Problematic of Representation

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.

"De 1442 à 1501, les Aragonais occupent le trône napolitain. Grâce à une riche documentation textuelle et iconographique, cet ouvrage retrace la construction de l’imaginaire monarchique dans le royaume de Naples, puis sa diffusion dans les cours alliées et ennemies. Les portraits physiques des cinq rois de la branche aragonaise de Naples, ainsi que leurs portraits symboliques, notamment héraldique et emblématique, permettent l’étude de l’incarnation d’une identité napolitaine. Au-delà du corps royal, l’unité de la Couronne se dit aussi dans les portraits des serviteurs de l'État et ceux de la familia royale, tout comme dans les rituels, la mise en scène des résidences royales et ducales, et par la création d’un nouveau visage topographique de la capitale et du royaume.
L’expression de la souveraineté s’inscrit dans un vaste mouvement méditerranéen, envisagé des années 1420 au XVIIe siècle, de Valence à Naples, Florence, Ferrare, Barcelone ou Marseille. Le mécénat des rois de Naples et de leurs proches, ainsi que leur choix iconographiques, apparaissent respectueux des traditions aragonaises, angevines et souabes, mais aussi résolument modernes en dialogue avec les Flandres, l’Espagne et l’Italie contemporaines. Seule monarchie de la péninsule, ces vaincus de l’histoire, déchus lors des Guerres d’Italie, lèguent à l’Europe moderne le triomphe et le portrait à l’antique, la chronique monumentale, le portrait de ville et le portrait monétaire."

Book review of: ‘Ann Jensen Adams, Public Faces and Private Identities in Seventeenth-Century Holland: Portraiture and the Production of Community. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. 398 pp, 73 b&w illus. ISBN 978-0-521-44455-2.’, in: Historians of Netherlandish Art: Newsletter and Review of Books (HNA Newsletter) 28, nr. 1 (apr. 2011), ISSN 1067-4284, pp. 32-33.

Automated facial recognition methods have become widely used as a way to ascertain the identity of individuals. Yet the methods by which facial recognition technologies (FRT) operate-the machinic performance of the perception of the human face-are often invisible to those under their gaze. This article investigates the machinic perception of the face through an FRT method known as eigenface, in order to both reveal and problematize the ways of seeing that underlie it. As part of its algorithmic processes, eigenface produces an image. This image can be understood as a portrait of machine recognition, making visible the processes through which the algorithm performs recognition and 'sees' the human face. The eigenface portrait reveals a way of seeing that is based on statistical processes of pattern recognition. An analogue antecedent of this application of statistics to the recognition of facial images can be found in the composite portrait. Through a discussion of composite portraiture in multiple disciplinary fields ranging from sociology to philosophy and the visual arts, this article experiments with providing a cultural and social translation of machine processes of visual perception. The discussion shifts the focus of enquiry towards the aesthetics of the algorithmic process in order to provide an entry point for critique and a possible reimagination on algorithmic knowledge production.

Since "Iconoclash" (see the review above), iconoclasm and related terms have been taken as fundamental, general categories for the interpretation of pictures. This essay is part of a project to historicize that interest, which I think goes to a late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century assumption about what pictures are.

[Revised March 2013]

ABSTRACT: This lecture (Part-2) continues the examination of Old Kingdom elite tombs, looking at (1) other types of middle-upper class tombs that emerge in Old Kingdom Egypt (i.e., rock-cut tombs; rock-cut mastaba tombs); (2) various reasons why such apparently “different” tombs emerge and whether they really are so different (i.e., identical components; non-structural elements); (3) ancient tomb robbing, robbers, and how some tomb builders/owners try to combat robbery (e.g., decoy chambers); (4) a brief discussion of changes in tomb design during the ED-Old Kingdom; (5) the sorts of texts and decoration (genres) found in middle-upper class tombs; (6) the artists and various techniques applied in decorating elite tombs (e.g., training; painting; relief work; stages; etc.); (7) the various ways in which Ancient Egyptian artists portrayed things (e.g., twisted profile; architecture); (8) the various types of decorative themes that emerged in Old Kingdom elite tombs; (9) the significance of the various decoration (genres) found throughout elite tombs (e.g., essential/key funerary elements [e.g., banquet scene] versus less crucial/non-essential things [e.g., daily life and other scenes]); (10) other things we can say about the elite tomb architecture, decoration, and their significance (e.g., nullifying potential dangers in decoration [depicting snakes without heads]; superstitions regarding completing funeral procession scenes); (11) the different types of elite burial chambers and examples of and changes in  decorated ones (versus mostly non-decorated ones); (12) some examples of non-royal sarcophagi (i.e., “stone coffins”: rectilinear boxes); (13) selected examples of non-royal, elite coffins (i.e., wooden, rectilinear boxes); (14) some "typical" mortuary furnishings (burial goods) found in elite tombs; and (15) the forms of and furnishings in middle class and lower class tombs and graves (only a brief summary to illustrate the burial practices of the bulk of Egypt's Old Kingdom populace).  The lecture ends with a series of text slides summarizing the main points from both parts 1-2 of the lectures on elite Old Kingdom tombs.  UPDATED: March 13, 2023. Much editing/formatting, plus some new images, and adding a selected set of sources (end slides)

The essay argues that the sublime, and especially the postmodern sublime, is an intricate and unresolved concept, and that it is not often coherent or necessary to import it into discourse on contemporary art.

This was also published as “Gegen das Erhabene," in Das Erhabene in Wissenschaft und Kunst: Über Vernunft und Einbildungskraft, edited by Roald Hoffmann and Iain Boyd Whyte (Berlin: Surhkamp: 2010): 97–113.

Grâce à l’émergence du gros plan, le visage a trouvé au cinéma un pouvoir expressif inédit, un lieu d’expérimentation et de représentation privilégié. Le cinéma classique, dont l’échelle de plans et les codes narratifs sont entièrement structurés par cette "unité expressive", a forgé un véritable langage du visage. Mais si la fonction identificatoire et immersive du gros plan s’est banalisée au point de devenir la pierre de touche émotionnelle du film, le cadrage du visage a une histoire très riche, révélant un face-à-face entre la caméra et la physionomie bien plus surprenant et varié que l’on ne pourrait l’imaginer. Nous envisageons ici les théories et pratiques du gros plan développées en amont et en marge de sa codification narrative classique: des "portraits vivants" aux "films à expressions faciales"; des "vignettes" de protogénérique aux "plans emblématiques" ; en passant par la réception critique des premiers gros plans (taxés de "monstrueux", "minimalistes" ou "révolutionnaires"), et jusqu’à leur interdiction –mêlée d’adoration.

Inwieweit die Im vorliegenden Beitrag wird der Versuch unternommen, in der typologischen Ähnlichkeit beider Porträtgattungen einen Ansatzpunkt zu finden. Darüber hinaus weisen die Beispiele aus der Porträtpraxis darauf hin, dass dem profanen Bildnis zum einen eine Behandlung zukommen konnte, die den Kultbildern analog war, und zum anderen mit dem Begegnungsproblem von Prototyp und Porträt Anhaltspunkte vorliegen, die für eine Präsenzerfahrung bei den Betrachtern sprechen. Die Bedeutung der 'virtus' des Heiligenporträts scheint für das profane Porträt nicht ausgeschlossen, nur ihre Qualität muss vorerst anders eingestuft werden, denn als mirakulös dürften sie nicht gegolten haben. Hierfür jedenfalls liegen keine konkreten Quellen vor, wenngleich sich der Verdacht aufdrängt, dass für die offensichtlich kultische Verehrung der beschriebenen Papstporträts (Julius II., Gregor XV.) eine gewisse Erwartungshaltung der Zeitgenossen an das Bildnis vorauszusetzen ist. In beiden Fällen ist von einem postumen Bildniskult die Rede, der eine Sakralisierung des jeweiligen Porträts möglich erscheinen lässt. Die Übertragungskausalität der 'virtus' vom Prototyp auf sein Porträt, wie sie für das Heiligenporträt belegt ist, ist für das profane Porträt offensichtlich dann nachweisbar, wenn der Dargestellte noch lebt und seinem eigenen Bildnis während des Zeremoniells nicht begegnen darf. Das Begegnungsproblem unter der Voraussetzung der Präsenzerfahrung, wie sie bei den Herrscher-Funeralien und den frühneuzeitlichen Reitermonumenten zu registrieren war, weist auf ein Forschungsdesiderat hin, das vermutlich ohne den zeitgenössischen virtus-Begriff nicht auskommen wird. Der Mehrwert des Porträts und seine Aura als samenartiges Kraftpotential (ratio seminalis) bezeichnet den theoretischen Rahmen, innerhalb dessen der Porträtbegriff weiter zu verhandeln ist.

Like Franz Joseph Gall and George Sand, the contemporaries of Franz Liszt (1811 – 1886) could have found that the physiognomy (physical appearance) and genius of the musician disclose those "capabilities with which they end up their elected ones". This light, intensely projected by Franz Liszt, compels us to examine the details of his face, and the moldings of his bust that comes from the historical collections produced in the tradition of the time.

Portraiture as a practice has undergone great changes over time. Portraits have been made in different media (from painting and sculpture to film and video), of different kinds of people (from kings and queens to peasants and workers), in a variety of materials (from the ancient Egyptian portraits on wooden panels to Marc Quinn’s self-portrait in blood), and have served a multiplicity of purposes (from glorifying or ridiculing a person to making an artistic or political statement). But what holds the practice of portraiture together? What is it that all portraits have in common and in virtue of which they are portraits? That is the central question of this paper. Starting from, and building on, a critical investigation of some recent philosophical attempts to define the portrait, the paper’s ambition is to arrive at an extensionally adequate account of portraiture, that is, an account that captures as much of the extension as possible of what we ordinarily think counts as a portrait. In section 1 Cynthia Freeland’s theory of portraiture is presented, while section 2 offers some objections against said theory. Freeland’s definition of a portrait as an image that presents a recognizably distinct individual who has emotional or conscious states, and who is able to participate in the creative process by posing, is shown to be too narrow in some respects and too broad in other respects. In section 3 the main features and strengths of Paolo Spinicci’s phenomenological approach to portraiture are articulated, while its particular shortcomings are highlighted in section 4. A discussion of certain subgenres of portraiture, such as animal portraits, deathbed portraits, baby portraits, abstract portraits, portraits in absentia, portraits of fictional characters, portraits in absorption, and the ‘portrait historié,’ will prove helpful in making the case against Spinicci and Freeland. Finally, in sections 5 and 6, an alternative account of portraiture is developed, one that seeks to addresses the numerous objections raised against the two competing theories. In a nutshell, it is argued that something counts as a portrait if it is the product of a largely successful intention to create a portrait, and that the intention to create a portrait necessarily involves having a substantive concept of the nature of portraits as well as having the intention to realise that substantive concept by imposing portrait-relevant features on an object. The main advantage of the proposed account is that it is broad enough to include all bona fide portraits, without being meaninglessly broad, and that it is able to accommodate both the changes and the continuity in the practice of portraiture.

Uno de los retratos más impresionantes pintados por el Greco a lo largo de su carrera es el del cardenal Juan Pardo de Tavera. Para pintarlo, dado que el cardenal había muerto en 1545 —cuando el pintor tenía unos 4 años—, el Greco recurrió a una mascarilla funeraria que el artista Alonso Berruguete sacó del cadáver de Tavera para tallar el retrato del cardenal para su tumba y también, probablemente, para pintar una efigie del prelado. Con sus obras, Berruguete y el Greco desafiaban los límites entre la realidad y su representación y entre la verdad y la ficción, traspasando los límites de las artes de la escultura y la pintura y subrayando sus diversas capacidades para materializar discursos que aunaban preocupaciones escatológicas y ambiciones puramente artísticas.

One of the most impressive portraits painted by El Greco throughout his career is the portrait of Cardinal Juan Pardo de Tavera. To paint it, since the Cardinal had died in 1545 —when the painter was around 4 years old—, El Greco turned to a funeral mask that the artist Alonso Berruguete had taken from the dead body of Tavera in order to carve the portrait of the Cardinal for his astonishing tomb and also probably for painting an effigy of the prelate. With their portraits, Berruguete and El Greco challenged the boundaries between reality and its representation, and between truth and fiction, crossing the boundaries of the art of painting, and underlining their diverse capacities to materialise discourses that combined eschatological concerns and artistic ambitions.

on portraiture. theory, practice and fiction. from francisco de holanda to susan sontag

NEW DATES – 18, 19 and 20 January 2022 | Faculty of Fine-Arts, University of Lisbon | Grande Auditório
In person and online event -  Due to recent developments in the Covid-19 situation, this event will mostly be held online


INTRODUCTION AND PRINCIPLE OBJECTIVES OF THIS CONGRESS

This colloquium intends to discuss the theory and practice of artistic, historical, anthropological, social and political experience on the topic of portraiture, as well as the fictional dimension contained within it. Located at the intersection of several disciplinary fields, the discussion(s) and papers will address the portrait as a concept, theme, process, object (monument and document) and device, in its multiple developments and in its successive conceptual, technological and contextual updates.

More than defining a temporal framework, the subtitle – From Francisco de Holanda to Susan Sontag – underscores the dynamic porosity on the researched topic in the fields of art and literature, as well as, in its mutual reversibility.

Francisco de Holanda, humanist and 16th-century Portuguese artist, is the author of Do Tirar pelo Natural [On Portraiture], the first treatise dedicated to portraiture in early modern Europe, which he concluded in 1549, in the decade following his return from a trip to Italy undertaken in 1538 to 1540, as member of the embassy of Ambassador D. Pedro de Mascarenhas. One objective for Holanda was to meet Michelangelo Buonarroti, in addition to observing and drawing fortresses and the most outstanding works of art across Italy. Upon his return, Holanda undertook writing Da Pintura Antiga [On Ancient Painting], concluded on October 13 (St. Lucas Day) 1548, as it is written at the end of Book II, followed by his second treatise, Do Tirar polo Natural [On Portraiture]. These two works were prepared for publication and were even translated into Spanish in 1563, by his friend, the Portuguese painter Manuel Denis. These treatises, written almost simultaneously, would only see publication, in Portuguese and Spanish, only in the 19th century. At the end of the Do Tirar polo Natural [On Portraiture], Holanda states that the text was completed on January 3rd, 1549, only a few months after the completion of the two Books of Da Pintura Antiga [On Ancient Painting]. In fulfilment of John B. Bury’s ground-breaking research, a bilingual edition of this portrait treatise, published by Paul Holberton Publishing in London, will be presented during this Congress.

Indeed, the two great pillars of Francisco de Holanda’s theory of art – the imitation of himself, nature and antiquity on one hand, and idea, on the other – have, precisely, as a point of departure, the artist’s creative process which Holanda discusses in his first two treatises. The importance of Do Tirar polo Natural [On Portraiture] for the theory of art, which Holanda explains and abundantly illustrates in his two books in On Ancient Painting, as well as in his drawings and illuminated albums, especially in As Antigualhas [On the Antique], makes Holanda’s need to write a portrait treatise fully justified. As an autonomous work, Do Tirar polo Natural [On Portraiture], complements Da Pintura Antiga [On Ancient Painting]. This treatise’s structure, in the form of dialogues, follows the model used in Book II of Diálogos em Roma [Dialogues in Rome], but here, instead of many interlocutors, is reduced to conversations between two protagonists, Brás Pereira and Feramando, the disciple and master, as well as the alter ego of Holanda. The themes and issues defined in Do Tirar polo Natural [On Portraiture], extend, deepen and, above all, specify in detail questions regarding portraiture; themes related to the representation of the human figure which Holanda took up in Chapters 38 to 41 in Book I of Da Pintura Antiga. These chapters lack the decisive contributions, which throughout the eleven, small dialogues of Do Tirar polo Natural [On Portraiture], Holanda describes as precepts for a painter to “portray” or “paint from life” the “persona” of a sitter. In Do Tirar, Holanda distinguishes the portrait as distinctive from other representations of the human figure.

In The Volcano Lover, Susan Sontag begins with documentation related to three historical figures from the 18th century, expanding them into a fictional extension where they appear as characters or doubles; emerging as figures stabilized in the credibility of portraits, thus questioning their presence throughout the history of art and the history of images. These figures are the diplomat, collector and volcanologist William Hamilton, his wife Emma Hamilton, lover of Admiral Nelson and the muse of the painter George Romney and Admiral Nelson. The portraits directly refer to those of William Hamilton, made by Joshua Reynolds, and those of Emma Hamilton, made by George Romney and Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun. The questions asked regard the genesis of the sensitive body, in the example of the statue of Condillac, and the metamorphosis of the statue in the myth of Pygmalion; the metamorphosis of beings in the morphological accidents of the earth and in natural objects that retain their name and history; the ideal portrait; the impossibility of describing the beauty of a face or a body, delegated to the rhetorical artifice of metaphor; the portrait as a theme and as a model; the genre of statues: action and stillness, narcissism and modesty; effigies: symbolic death; cameos: miniaturization of the portrait, living picture: representation staged inside a box or in a place surrounded by the frames of the paintings; the body in pose: support and object of the representation of a representation; the body as the embodiment of the work; the ephemerality of the body and the perpetuity of the portrait; the figure, the portrait and the recognition that erases or illuminates the name. And the ruin of it all, because ruin is the inevitable destiny of human bodies and their representations, some and others relegated to the future of our time.

The successful fruits of Italian Renaissance patronage
were often prominently displayed by the original owners, and written up favourably by their contemporaries and ours. By contrast, paintings and sculptures that displeased or, worse, disgraced their patrons, though occasionally mentioned in publications about the patrons or artists, tended to get lost in historical accounts. As a result, standard assessments convey
an unrealistically favourable picture. To facilitate a more
balanced understanding of the patronage process, this essay addresses the risks inherent in commissioned portraits made in Italy from the late fifteenth through the late sixteenth century, including paintings by Andrea Mantegna, Domenico Ghirlandaio, and Leonardo da Vinci. We focus on two broad categories of risks faced by patrons. First, portraits had the prime goal of presenting individuals in a manner both recognizable and favourable, but these two objectives often clashed. Second, though the commissioned works needed to convey an appropriate message, some were deemed to be confusing, irritating, or indecorous. Such failings often resulted from the selection, pose, placement, and/or attributes of the individuals portrayed. Patrons or owners who perceived failings in any of these subtle and subjective matters expressed disapproval by criticizing, rejecting, damaging, or even destroying a portrait.
The potential for negative reactions was a deterrent that
helped to promote the quality, timeliness, and appropriateness of commissioned art. Nevertheless, significant risks remained. Identifying these sources of risk enables us to better understand the strategies that patrons and artists employed to control them.

A critical consideration of a project "Adjustment of Colonial Terminology" to retitle paintings in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. The project was made public at the end of 2015 and the original version of this study was published as a response on my personal blog at the end of 2015. A single painting by Simon Maris previously titled, "Young Negro Girl" and re-titled "Young Girl with a Fan" was taken as the focus of the study. The blog post was then rewritten as a chapter of my book The Best I Can Do, published in spring 2016, and that version is the basis of the version published here on academia.edu with an important footnote which updates to the story to summer 2020. I have not tried to rewrite the original claims I made in the light of the subsequent (and still unfinished) research conducted by the Rijksmuseum. But I have now 2021 added a further long postscript setting that research within a discussion of Portrait and Genre paintings.

Although still ignored by studies, the images of Grand Tourists in Campania between the end
of 18th and the middle of 19th century are very precious to understand the developments of the
representation of the voyage in the Southern Italy. The UK ambassador William Hamilton has
been essential for the practice of portrait: he was able to use the view of the Gulf of Naples to
promote his image, his political prestige and also his collections of art. The Grand Tour portrait
became very important especially with German artists, like Kauffmann and Tischbein, friend and
guide for Goethe in the Southern Italy: they created the most powerful images of visitors in Campania
between antiquities and wild nature. But another form of representation, landscape, was
involved: in many works by Volaire illustrating the eruptions of Vesuvius is possible to find little
figures of astonishing tourists or curious people for the exceptional natural event. But also we can
find very often kings and queens in paintings showing the ruins of Pompeii and Paestum, lured
by the charm of the antiquities. The tourism – and the illustration of it – will change forever with
the coming of Garibaldi and the introduction of photography as new medium of representation.

The genre of portrait, associated with the visual arts and combined through different expressive techniques, represents an interesting field of application for the experimentation of a plurality of methods of investigation, each of them capable of contributing, from its particular approach perspective, to the overall understanding of polysemiche works of art related to the representation of the face and the human figure. The aim of this collection of studies on the history of portraiture, result of an intense Study Day held at the Department of Literature and Cultural Heritage of the University of Campania "Luigi Vanvitelli" on 12 October 2017, is to offer a brief but significant contribution exclusively from the historical-artistic perspective through eleven contributions by eleven Italian scholars - of different generations and interests - invited to confront each other, who again and who for the first time, with the genre of the portrait.

From the beginning of its academic study around 1870, Romanticism has been defined simultaneously as a historical period (chronologically restricted) and as a stylistic type (chronologically open). This paradox, consisting in the difficulty of reconciling historical temporality with the systematization of knowledge, can be traced back to the “temporalization” of history in the second half of the eighteenth century, when transhistorical aesthetic classification was destabilized and literary history developed as a distinct critical practice. But the troubled historical consciousness manifested in aesthetic theory of the time—in part as nostalgia for an irrecoverable past—also expressed itself artistically in forms at once engaged with and detached from history, notably stylistic simulacra of the past and, in poetry, failed or ironized revivals of the classical gods.

Abstract
Les saints, tant vivants que dans l’au-delà, forment un sujet actuellement très apprécié des études concernant l’Antiquité tardive. Dans le domaine iconographique, l’ensemble le plus magnifique de saints est représenté par les quinze portraits de martyrs en mosaïque conservés sur la coupole de la Rotonde de Saint-Georges à Thessalonique. Étrangement, le discours contemporain de l’iconographie hagiographique néglige largement ces images exceptionnelles. La raison en est probablement de l’incertitude de leur datation. Pourtant, qu’on les place dans les dernières décennies du ive siècle, aux alentours de 450, ou au début du vie siècle, ces mosaïques fournissent une importante information sur l’origine et le développement de la représentation des saints. Cet article pose le problème de la genèse de l’image individualisée du martyr, en particulier la question de son rattachement à une tradition authentique liée à son portrait funéraire. Une des caractéristiques distinctives des images du monument de Thessalonique est la variété des représentations : les portraits des martyrs sont nettement individualisés, différenciés par âge, chevelure, barbe, traits physiognomoniques, couleurs, etc. Toutefois, indépendamment de la question de l’origine et de l’authenticité de ces portraits, les couleurs particulières des tesselles utilisées pour rendre les chevelures et les yeux montrent que, dans la Rotonde, les mosaïstes ont donné la priorité à une esthétique de “lumière colorée’, principe qui leur a permis de représenter la beauté idéale des hommes saints dans l’au-delà.

The purpose of the essay is studying the phenomenon of likeness in ancient coin portraiture, ie the resemblance that, in a more or less clear way, can be noted between portraits of different personages engraved on coins. Reflections on different categories of likeness - women who look like men, men who resemble other men, men transformed into women to cite only a few examples – lead the author to speculate about the reasons for such, quite distinct similarities.
Some somatic similarities could concern the ideology of power and reflect a political situation, others could be purely genetic or even simply reconstructed on the basis of an already existing portrait, due to the lack of a prototype. The case studies ranging chronologically from the Hellenistic age to the late Roman antiquity and are taken from the familiar classical world but also from the less known Nabataean coinage.