To have your own likeness painted.
Long before photographs or smartphones, people asked painters to capture their faces and the faces of the people they loved.
In this post, I trace the history of portraiture: from Egypt some 2,000 years ago, to the merchants of Europe, to Zen temples in Japan, and to the museums of today. Why have people wanted their portraits painted? That is the question I would like to think about.
A gaze painted in Egypt 2,000 years ago
Among the oldest portraits that survive today are the Fayum mummy portraits of Egypt.
They are thought to have been painted while Egypt was under Roman rule, from around the late 1st century BC to about the 3rd century AD. They were painted on wooden panels, either in encaustic, a technique that mixes pigment with beeswax, or in tempera, which uses egg, and were set over the faces of mummies.
Between 1887 and 1911, the British archaeologist Flinders Petrie found many of them at Hawara in the Fayum region. Fewer than 1,000 are known today. They are held in museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the British Museum in London, the Louvre in Paris and the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.
Faces with large eyes, looking straight at us. Even after 2,000 years, they tell us that this person was here.
When merchants had their portraits painted
In 15th-century Europe, most paintings were religious works made for churches. Amid this, merchants who had grown wealthy began to have their own portraits painted.
A famous example is The Arnolfini Portrait, painted by Jan van Eyck in 1434. According to the National Gallery in London, the couple are probably Giovanni di Nicolao di Arnolfini, an Italian merchant working in Bruges, and his wife.
Every object in the room was carefully chosen to show the couple’s wealth and standing. Above the round mirror on the back wall, the painter wrote his signature. The National Gallery bought the painting with a government grant in 1842.
A curator at the museum has said that truly convincing portraiture began with Van Eyck’s work in the 1430s.
Rembrandt’s Night Watch, painted for a whole company
In 17th-century Holland, guilds and civic militias often commissioned group portraits that showed all of their members in a single painting.
The best known is the so-called Night Watch, completed by Rembrandt in 1642. Its formal title is Militia Company of District II under the Command of Captain Frans Banninck Cocq. The captain and his men commissioned it for their militia hall in Amsterdam and shared the cost. A shield in the background lists the names of those who paid for the painting (the shield was added later).
In fact, the painting does not show a night scene. The varnish darkened over the years and made it look like night, which is how it came to be called the Night Watch. Today it is one of the most treasured works in the Rijksmuseum.
Japanese portraits: chinso, passed from master to disciple
One of the most important forms in the history of Japanese portraiture is the chinso, the portrait of a Zen master.
A master would write an inscription on his own portrait and give it to a disciple who had inherited his teaching. Chinso are thought to have been treasured as proof that the teaching had been passed on (scholars hold a range of views on exactly how they were used). Disciples hung these portraits for memorial services, such as on the anniversary of their master’s death.
From the late 12th century, Japanese monks who had studied in China began bringing home portraits of their Chinese masters. From the late Kamakura period, chinso were painted widely, especially in the Rinzai school.
Jingo-ji Temple in Kyoto holds three portraits that are National Treasures. One of them has long been known as the portrait of Minamoto no Yoritomo. It was traditionally attributed to Fujiwara no Takanobu, a master of the nise-e likeness style, but today scholars continue to debate both the painter and the sitter. Even so, the dignified, nearly life-size figure continues to hold viewers.
Museums devoted to portraits
There are museums made just for portraits.
In 1856, the National Portrait Gallery was founded in London. It is often described as the world’s first national gallery dedicated to portraits. Its first acquisition was the Chandos portrait, traditionally said to show Shakespeare.
In Washington, D.C., the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery stands as well. In 2018, when the portraits of former President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama were unveiled, crowds came to see them. That fiscal year, the museum welcomed more than 2 million visitors, a record and about twice its annual average of roughly 1.1 million since 2013.
A single portrait can still move this many people. I believe portraits continue to hold great power.
What portraits have carried forward
The Egyptian mummy portraits carried forward the fact that a person had lived. The Arnolfini portrait, the life a couple had built. The Night Watch, the bond among comrades. The chinso, a teaching passed from master to disciple.
Looking back, we can see that portraits were never only about recording a face. What a person valued, how they lived, and to whom they wished to pass that on: portraits have always carried such wishes.
What I paint, too, is more than a person’s appearance. As I listen to each person, I sense what they treasure, the path they have walked and where they hope to go, and I give it color and form.
You can find paintings for yourself or someone dear to you on the PERSONAL ORDER ART page, and paintings for a company or business on the BUSINESS ART page.
Sources
Wikipedia (Fayum mummy portraits); Brooklyn Museum (Woman with Earrings); Molecules (2021, radiocarbon study of a mummy portrait)
The National Gallery (Jan van Eyck, The Arnolfini Portrait, 1434)
Rijksmuseum (Night Watch in detail); Encyclopaedia Britannica (The Night Watch)
Kyoto National Museum (exhibition notes on chinso); The Metropolitan Museum of Art (Portrait of Kyūzan Sōei); Kotobank (chinso, inka) — in Japanese
Canon Tsuzuri Project (Jingo-ji three portraits); Wa-gaku web (Jingo-ji three portraits); artscape (portrait said to be Minamoto no Yoritomo) — in Japanese
Wikipedia (National Portrait Gallery, London)
Hyperallergic (Obama Portraits Double Annual Attendance at the National Portrait Gallery); Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery (50th anniversary announcement)
