Portraits and Selfies

Fayyum funeral portrait called "Il Bello"

Portraits of our fellow humans have been made almost since humans have existed, in all likelihood. Certainly portraits were painted and sculpted of the demi-god rulers who existed in those times as one way to inform those societies of their leadership--Ramses in Ancient Egypt, Constantine in Imperial Rome, the various popes during the Middle Ages were all sculpted, painted, drawn or otherwise represented.

Some portraits were death masks or paintings, like the astonishing Egyptian portraits from Fayyum and elsewhere. These portraits were painted with facility that matches that of European painters of a milleniium and a half later. The medium was encaustic, which uses melted beeswax as the vehicle for pigment. The encaustic paint is made and applied warm. These were images laid over the face of the mummy to be buried and date from the Ptolemaic (and Imperial Roman) era in Egypt, or 50BCE to around 400BCE. They remained obscure until the 19th century.

Portrait bust of an old Roman, ca 50 BCE

Other portraits from the Greco-Roman era were sculpted as actual portraits. Many representations of the Emperors and other leaders were idealized and almost mass-produced for export to the corners of the Empire. But there are many portrait busts yet in existence, These portraits are quite startling in their versimilitude--many of these busts are so realistic they include "warts and all."

Jan van Eyck, "Man in a Turban," oil, 1433

Self portraits, at least those whose creator is known,  had to wait for quite a long while, into the middle ages and Renaissance. There are known examples predating those times, but they are scant. Some say that the first self-portrait is the portrait by Jan van Eyck, "Man in a Turban," finished in 1433. The experts cite the direct and penetrating gaze as characteristic of self portraiture. Certainly the painting has ample evidence that it's indeed the image of the famous painter.

I wrote another entry about self portraits couple of years ago (linked below).






 

Jean-Baptiste Chardin "Self portrait with a Visor," pastel, 1776

As the Renaissance progressed and mirrors and optics improved, self portraiture became more common. Rembrandt von Rijn and many of his peers in the 17th century produced masterful self-portraits. So did later masters like Jean-Baptiste Simeon Chardin, whose self portraits in pastel dating from the 18th century are well-known. Others followed in the 19th century--everyone remembers Vincent van Gogh's multiple selfies.



In my art practice I've done self portraits too, for the same reason as van Gogh: no models available and nobody in the family with patience enough to sit for an hour or two more than once. In those circumstances the mirror becomes the portraitist's best friend. During my years of painting I've done a few self portraits myself, mostly oil paintings. One oil selfie was posted a couple of years ago and linked in the previous self portraits post below. Another idea was to do a self portrait from memory in the shortest time period possible. Mine took about five minutes, also linked below.

Here's another, dating from around the same time. In this case I scrubbed the oil paint very thinly onto a linen panel, not spending any time at all on detail and muting the colors carefully.

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Previous entries about Portraits
Memory Selfie
Self portraits