The evolution of portrait painting – I

In this article we will follow the evolution of portrait painting over time: from the abstract face of Byzantine iconography, to the face of realism, to the distorted one of expressionism. Portraits are subject to conventions that differ from one era to another, from one place to another. According to the degree of exigency towards the idea of ​​particularity, associated with the notion of portrait, we can highlight numerous examples, since ancient times or we can deny its existence until the emergence of the realistic genre.

The portrait as a genre in art (or painting) emerged relatively late. In cave art, for example, the idea of ​​a portrait could not yet be spoken of. However, the first anthropomorphic representations, for example in cave paintings in southern France and Spain or even in North Africa, are found, in an entirely exceptional way, in human figures – men and women – stylized and schematized to the maximum.

Cave painting

In Mesopotamian culture, the representation of the human figure will respond to a practical need, to give expression to a positive and active spirit, will represent only what is visible, in a realistic way using a well-acquired technique. The Assyrian artist mainly sought to render a subject focused on the praise of royal power, bravery and skill of the king in hunting or war. The human figure remains without inner life: immobile, impassive, closed, monotonous.

Assyrian portrait

The art of Ancient Egypt is hermetic, closed to any suggestions coming from outside. We will encounter in portrait painting the same principles as in bas-relief: the combination of the frontal view of the human body with the view in profile; the calm, serenity and solemnity of expressions. The artistic purpose of all Egyptian art is to be against personalization, and as for the external purpose of Egyptian portraits, coming from tombs, it is based on representations of life after death.

Egyptian portraits

Minoan (Cretan) portraits were executed in such a vivid style, giving off a rococo atmosphere, that they take us back to modern times.

Cretan portraits

In Ancient Greek Art we have few portrait references, but the Greeks were the first of all times to consciously represent their ideal man. They were the ones who made possible the structure of thought called, today, humanism.

Detail of Greek vase portraits

A special place in the history of portrait painting is occupied by the expressive paintings from Fayoum on wooden panels executed in the encaustic technique, between the 1st and 4th centuries. With large and painfully expressive eyes, they calmly gaze, for over centuries, at effigies of still young beings. Although similar, they nevertheless have characteristics that individualize them, depending on the vision of each anonymous master who used his talent, artistic level, critical spirit, sensitivity and knowledge acquired in various pictorial techniques.

Fayoum Portraits

Roman portraiture is also unique compared to that of other ancient cultures, as a result of the survival over time of a significant amount of work, as well as a complex and continuous stylistic evolution of the rendering of human character. Most Roman portraits represented the individuality of the subject in an honest but tenacious way, from the recesses of the skull to the drooping jaws, and the imitation of flesh and bone was remarkable. Some portraits even had a piercing gaze, appropriate to the experience-worn features of the interior and exterior of each individual depicted. Portraiture manifested itself more clearly in sculpture than in painting.

Roman portraits

Byzantine art imposed its specific canons, influenced in its evolution by Greco-Roman, Oriental and Egyptian art through its specific rigor. The specific features of Byzantine painting are: the abandonment of spatial illusion, the absence of volume and weight of bodies, the indifference to anatomical accuracy, the intentional repetition of gestures, the "moral" perspective giving the characters a height according to their importance, the predominance of frontality, a kind of hieratic detachment of the figures, the long rows of characters and the use of flat tones. We are in the presence of an art that aims above all to instruct the faithful.

Byzantine portraits

In the Renaissance, a profound transformation took place in the system of pictorial representation of space, determining the emergence of a new type of relationship between man and the universe, thus taking place a desacralization of the medieval metaphysical space and a secular approach to the real physical space. Studying Renaissance portraiture, we observe the predilection of artists, at first, for the representation of the bust portrait, followed by the portrait with hands, eloquently represented, after which we will have the portrait up to the knees and finally the whole figure. At first, the portrayed character seems detached from the place and environment, but later it becomes a familiar, autonomous being, by elaborating the background with a landscape or interior. The more firmly integrated the portrayed model appears in its status, profession or social category, the stronger the general impression left by the portrait. At first, painters preferred the male physiognomy, but later they also approached the female one, remaining, in the end, the approach to the face of children, most often represented in family portraits.

Renaissance portraits

Baroque painting tried to penetrate more and more with the exploration into the inner being of man, brought to the forefront the contrasts of light and shadow, the combined color of the reflexes, the laying of pigments in the form of juxtaposed spots blurring any contour. Thus the painting must be viewed from a distance so that the spots of color merge in the eye, suggesting a more fluid, more lively image, compared to the crystalline firmness of the language of the Renaissance period. Baroque portraiture is characterized, first of all, by verisimilitude.

Baroque portraits

After 1800, however, neoclassicism had as its leading figure in the field of portraiture by far Jacques Louis David (1748-1825). Portraiture leads David towards his profound nature, towards the observation and energetic expression of reality.

Marat assassinated - Jacques Louis David

Also during this period the psychological portrait was born, as evidenced by the work of the great portraitist of Spanish painting: Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828). His portraits manifest themselves by opening up all the possibilities that the nuances of individual psychology imply. It can be noted that his characters are like mannequins perfectly substitutable with others. His figures are like masks.

Goya portraits

The Romantic period in painting, has in the foreground Eugene Delacroix (1798-1863) who was an ardent romantic in his youth. He evolves towards a serene classicism, without denying anything essential; he is interested in the life of the soul and the spirit.

Portrait of a woman - Eugène Delacroix

Romantic painters expressed themselves not only through melancholy, but also through violence and passion, not in action, but in the act of painting. The romantic portrait has something frozen in it, reflecting that part of the "face" of society that is in opposition to art. It thus creates a world of imaginary, but literary representations par excellence.