Portrait

A portrait is a painting, photograph, or other artistic representation of a person or object. Portraits are often simple "head shots" or "mug shots" and are not usually overly elaborate. The intent is to show the basic appearance of the person or object, and occasionally some artistic insight into his or her personality (if a person) — character, status, the place and time they lived, the environment in which they live or simply showing beauty. Artists over the years have created many portraits to express their feelings about themselves in self-portraits.

Portraiture is the process of painting, sculpting or photographing a portrait. The term is also used to describe the final result from the creative process. Portraiture is also a method of qualitative inquiry used in social science and educational research. Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot is the pioneer who first merged aspects of art and science to develop this technique.

Some of the earliest portraits of people who were not kings or emperors, are the funeral portraits that survived in the dry climate of Egypt's Fayum district. These are the only paintings of the Roman period that have survived, aside from frescos.

The art of the portrait flourished in Roman sculptures, where sitters demanded realistic portraits, even unflattering ones. During the 4th century, the portrait began to retreat in favor of an idealized symbol of what that person looked like. (Compare the portraits of Roman Emperors Constantine I and Theodosius I at their entries.) In Europe true portraits of the outward appearance of individuals re-emerged in the late Middle Ages, in Burgundy and France.

One of best-known portraits in the Western world is Leonardo da Vinci's painting titled Mona Lisa, which is a painting of an unidentified woman. The worlds oldest known portrait was found in 2006 by a local pensioner, Gérard Jourdy, in the Vilhonneur grotto near Angoulême and is thought to be 27,000 years old[1].

Portrait painting

Main article: Portrait painting

Portrait painting is a genre in painting, where the intent is to depict the visual appearance of the subject, mostly a person, whereas the portrait is expected to show the essence of the subject. The term 'portrait painting' can also describe a painted portrait. Portrait painting has a long history as an artform.

Portrait photography

Main article: Portrait photography

Portrait photography is a popular commercial industry all over the world. Many people enjoy having professionally made family portraits to hang in their homes, or special portraits to commemorate certain events, such as graduations or weddings.

Since the dawn of photography, people have made portraits. The popularity of the daguerreotype in the middle of the 19th century was due in large part to the demand for inexpensive portraiture. Studios sprang up in cities around the world, some cranking out more than 500 plates a day. The style of these early works reflected the technical challenges associated with 30-second exposure times and the painterly aesthetic of the time. Subjects were generally seated against plain backgrounds and lit with the soft light of an overhead window and whatever else could be reflected with mirrors.

As photographic techniques developed, an intrepid group of photographers took their talents out of the studio and onto battlefields, across oceans and into remote wilderness. William Shew's Daguerreotype Saloon, Roger Fenton's Photographic Van and Mathew Brady's What-is-it? wagon set the standards for making portraits and other photographs in the field. Contemporary artists Cindy Sherman, Barbara Kruger, Mitch Kern and others use portrait photography as a vehicle for cultural criticism.

Literature

Main article: Portrait (literature)

In literature the term "portrait" refers to a written description or analysis of a person or thing. A written portrait often gives deep insight, and offers an analysis that goes far beyond the superficial. For example, American author Patricia Cornwell wrote a best-selling book titled Portrait of a Killer about the personality, background, and possible motivations of Jack the Ripper, as well as the media coverage of his murders, and the subsequent police investigation of his crimes.

Self-portraiture

Main article: Self-portrait

When the artist creates a portrait of him- or herself, it is called a self-portrait. The first known in paint was by the French artist Jean Fouquet in c. 1450,[2] but if the definition is extended the first was by the Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten's sculptor Bak, who carved a representation of himself and his wife Taheri c. 1365 BC. However, it seems likely that self-portraits go back to the earliest representational art.

Politics

In politics, portraits of the leader are often used as a symbol of the state. In most countries it is common protocol for a portrait of the head of state to appear in important government buildings. Excessive use of a leader's portrait can be indicative of a personality cult. Contemporary painters may use the personality cult for their purpose for example the chinese painter Yan Pei-Ming. Portraying Mao he is using Mao's iconographic power developped by propaganda painting and also by paintings of Andy Warhol to increase his own image as a painter.

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