Looking Deeper

Diego Velazquez, "Pope Innocent X," 1650

The greatest portraits that have been painted are those that dove beneath the surface likeness and searched for an inner person. Somehow the painters of these masterpiece portraits penetrated the sitter's psyche, probed for a glint of the inner self showing on the surface. There is an old story about the famous portrait of a pope done by Diego Velazquez. The pope in question was a hard and iron-willed man who involved himself in the English Civil War in order to cleave Catholic Ireland away from Protestant England. And at that time too he was in open warfare with the Duke of Parma. When he saw his portrait he is supposed to have ordered it taken away because it was too real.

Rembranst, "Self Portrait," 1657

His contemporary, Rembrandt, painted revealing late self portraits that gave the viewer a look at the exhausted, near-defeated inner man. The self portrait of 1657 is a perfect example. Here he shows us how he has aged, his face drooping in folds and creased with worry. There is uncertainty and an unsettled look about the man in the painting. It may help to know that this was the year that everything imploded--the year before he transferred much to his son but had to sell many of his belongings. There would be other sales and further losses in the three years that followed. Here he shows us how it must have felt to face his ruin.

My own studies of heads and faces are often intended as drawing or painting practice--working on manual skills--but many times I also try to explore more deeply into the individual in question. Sometimes the idea is to give the viewer a sense of how the sitter might have felt or behaved. For example, not long ago I did a study of Anne Frank, the girl who wrote such an eloquent diary and who died in the Holocaust. Most of the snapshots of her show a thin and dark girl, gangly as a colt. In those prewar images she looks carefree and untouched by the world, but I wondered what expression she might have had in the last years of her life, or if she had survived. The result was this digital sketch (left).


As time goes on my intent is to transfer these kinds of studies into paintings.