Who actually commissioned portraits? There is no simple answer to this
question, and the varied functions of portraiture discussed in the last
chapter point to a myriad of possibilities. Portraits have been commis-
sioned by individuals and by groups or organizations—nearly always
those with wealth and power—to represent themselves or others. The
wealthy and powerful have never been the exclusive patrons of portrai-
ture, however. Complaints about portraits of the bourgeoisie, artisans,
merchants, and other labouring classes began as early as Lomazzo’s art
treatise of 1584 , which lamented the ubiquity of portraiture:
Merchants and bankers who have never seen a drawn sword and who should
properly appear with quill pens behind their ears, their gowns about them
and day-books in front of them, have themselves painted in armour holding
generals’ batons.
Although portraiture has always represented a wide range of classes and
professions, monarchs, emperors, popes, presidents, dictators, and
members of European court cultures have been the most avid patrons of
portraiture. The many portraits that exist of monarchs today—whether
their power is honorary or genuine—attest to the strong tradition of
rulers commissioning portraits of themselves. However, artists also
sought out individuals who were of a lower class, who had little or no
prominent public role, or who had distinguished themselves by their
creative ability, intellectual acumen, or talent, rather than their power.
Portraits of rulers
To the ruling elite, portraiture has always had an important function.
These individuals were fallible human beings with bodies that aged and
died like any others. But they also held highly visible public roles, and,
according to ancient ideas of rule, the physical body of the ruler was
symbolically overwhelmed by the powerful nature of the office that they
assumed. The division between the frail human body and the ideal
symbolic body of the monarch is what the historian Ernst Kantorowicz
has called ‘the king’s two bodies’.
Portraitists had to engage with the
co-existence of both physical and ideal in the body of the monarch; rep-
resentations of the visages and forms of people who held power needed
to signal their authority. This act of negotiation varied in different art-
historical periods; with occasional exceptions, however, portraits of
rulers continue to emphasize the ‘effigy’, or social role of the individual,
over the likeness or personality. Such depictions have been called ‘state
portraits’, as they serve a largely political function. As Marianna Jenkins
put it in her definitive study of state portraiture, ‘The primary purpose
is not the portrayal of an individual as such, but the evocation through
his image of those abstract principles for which he stands.’
This idea of the transcendent authority of the ruler was strongly
implicated in religious beliefs, and often the ruler was seen to derive
power directly from God. This was particularly true in seventeenth-
century Europe, when the theory of the Divine Right of Kings
endowed rulers with a God-given authority. However, such a legacy can
be traced back to the ancient world, when artists depicted Alexander
the Great clad in a panther skin, normally associated with gods, demi-
gods, and legendary heroes like Dionysus or Hercules.
This symbolism
created a visual association between the ruler and the higher order of
gods. Medieval and early Renaissance artists made similar connections.
One of the clearest ways of doing this was by representing the ruler in a
pose normally associated with depictions of Christ. Portraitists have
tended to favour poses that put their subjects into some sort of partial
profile, breaking up the stark symmetry of a frontal gaze by angling the
face and thus preventing the portrait subject from staring too glaringly
out of the canvas. However, in portraits of rulers the frontal pose was
used from the third century adand was associated with Byzantine
mosaics of Christ. Frontality was often combined with a seated pose
that further reinforced an aura of divinity and command, particularly if
the subject of the portrait was seated on a throne. This frontal, seated
pose was popular from the fifteenth century when Jan Van Eyck
included a monumental figure of God on a throne gazing forward on
the inside top panel of his Ghent Altarpiece(1432 ). Echoes of this God-
like pose appear in portraits of rulers from Richard II of England to
Napoleon . Each of these rulers was shown seated, facing the
viewer and displaying their authority through both the directness of
his gaze and the divine connotations of his pose. Although the stark
frontal view was not employed frequently in portraiture, the seated
figure was commonly used to represent power.
The poses chosen by portraitists to portray rulers have been remark-
ably consistent and convey as much about the authority of the subject as
the inevitable accompanying symbolic trappings. Other poses used
for rulers include the full-length standing position and the equestrian
portrait.
The full-length standing figure of the ruler owed its origins to repre-
sentations of saints, and it is notable that most formal portraits of rulers
before the nineteenth century show their whole bodies rather than just
a bust or head and shoulders. The many portraits of Queen Elizabeth I
of England are examples of this . Like her father, Henry VIII, Eliz-
abeth was highly conscious of her royal image, and as she aged and
consolidated her power her portraits became increasingly static, styl-
ized, and symbolic. Elizabeth’s portraits are a key example of the way
the monarchs’ symbolic status was more important than their physical
likeness. She attempted to control her image by issuing a proclamation
in 1563 that allowed only an approved representation, justifying this by
suggesting that the ‘errors and deformities’ of some of her portraits
‘grieved’ her subjects.
This established model showed Elizabeth frozen
in an ageless and emotionless beauty, surrounded by symbols of her
power and virginity, qualities which were portrayed as interdependent.
The portraits were always full length and took on the frontal formula of
earlier representations of Christ and the saints.
The full-length portrait of rulers has had a remarkable longevity.
It is interesting to note the way some portraits of the first American
president, George Washington, employed this European tradition for
rather a different purpose. Unlike a European monarch, the pres-
ident of the United States was democratically elected (although the
early American practice of democratic election did not mean universal
franchise). However, in Gilbert Stuart’s ‘Lansdowne portrait’, Wash-
ington is shown standing in a traditional full-length pose that still
held lingering associations with saints and divine right. The symbolic
trappings surrounding him this time are symbols of American freedom
and democracy. Washington stands next to an armchair which is deco-
rated at the top with an oval medallion containing 13 stars and stripes
representing the original colonies of America. The table leg includes
figures of eagles clutching arrows, an emblem borrowed from the Great
Seal of the United States. The books on the floor and table (with titles
such as Journal of Congressand Constitution ) allude to Washington’s role
in the political foundations of the American republic. Stuart used this
representation of Washington’s face in several portraits, and this partic-
ular image became inextricably associated with the idea of the first
president. As in the portraits of Queen Elizabeth, Washington’s face
became a sort of iconic motif even though, unlike Elizabeth, Washing-
ton did not issue any proclamations.
The equestrian portrait, however, was almost universally used for
male figures of authority. The model for the equestrian portrait was the
ancient Roman statue of the emperor Marcus Aurelius, which later
became a potent symbol of both leadership and the imperial power of
the ancient Roman world. This monument-cum-portrait format was
particularly popular in fifteenth-century Italy for commemorations of
military heroes, for example. The most notable of these, Donatello’s
statue of Gattamelata in Padua ( 1443 – 53 ) and Verrocchio’s Bartolom-
meo Colleoni in Venice (begun 1479 ), adopted the form of the Marcus
Aurelius statue for Cinquecento purposes. The monumental equestrian
portrait continued to be used for several centuries, not only in western
Europe but in other parts of the world as well. The same format
was also successful in painted portraits, most notably Titian’s portrait of
Emperor Charles V in the midst of his victory over the united Protes-
tant forces in 1547 and Van Dyck’s portraits of Charles I of
England. In each case, these monumental works expressed the majesty
of the leader, his control over nature, his military valour, and his tower-
ing stature above ordinary subjects. Whether seated on a throne,
standing in a full-length format, or sitting astride a horse, these differ-
ent types of poses became iconically linked with the power and
authority of the leader.
Most of the poses discussed so far represented the ruler’s entire body,
but a different strategy of projecting leadership focused on the isolated
head of the ruler, usually depicted in profile. Coins and medals provided
a schematic image of rulers from the fifth century bconwards, and
stamps became the modern equivalent of this form of dissemination. In
ancient Greece and Rome, the use of a ruler’s profile on coins became a
means of establishing his identity throughout his often geographically
dispersed empire. The self-conscious revival of the profile portrait in
fifteenth-century Italy led to its use again on coins and medals, but this
time the iconic authority of civic leaders was enhanced by the associa-
tion of the pose with the power of ancient imperial Rome.
Another common way leadership and power were signified in por-
traiture was by a blending of portraiture with history painting. History
painting—what the Renaissance theorist Leon Battista Alberti called
istoria —traditionally represented gods and heroes enacting great deeds,
or displaying moral virtue or physical valour. As history painting was
normally about people in the past, the representations of these people
were inevitably imaginary, and the life-likeness of portraiture was con-
trary in principle to the purpose of history painting. However, artists
were happy to blend the two genres and show living individuals amidst
historical or heroic characters. The boundaries between contemporary
people and timeless heroes or saints thus became blurred. This was a
common practice in Italian Renaissance art, in which the faces of high-
born men and women often stood in for saints and martyrs, or appeared
as witnesses to significant moments of Christian history. A notable
example is Ghirlandaio’s frescoes of the life of St Francis in the Sassetti
Chapel in Santa Trinità, Florence. Here the life of St Francis is told in a
complex iconographic programme, which includes familiar members of
the Tornabuoni family, who were patrons of the chapel, witnessing and
participating in Francis’ life and miracle working. Using a somewhat
different tactic, Andrea Mantegna created a history-like representation
of the Gonzaga family in his fresco devised for their private chambers
in their palace in Mantua. In this fresco Mantegna depicted the
interactions between the family members through detailed study of
their visages amidst an elaborate landscape setting.
The incursions of portraiture into history painting were consoli-
dated by the theory and practice of the eighteenth-century English
artist Sir Joshua Reynolds, who justified the prevalence of portrait prac-
tice by claiming that portraits could be raised to the level of history
paintings through an appropriate combination of symbolic trappings
and painterly technique. Reynolds contended that by devoting atten-
tion to the ‘general’ rather than the ‘particular’, artists could transcend
the mundane mimetic qualities of portraiture and create works of
lasting significance.
His own means of achieving this was by depicting
his subjects in the poses of ancient sculpture or old master paintings,
and dressing them in timeless garments that elevated the sitters by asso-
ciation with ancient deities . It is notable that many, but not all,
of Reynolds’s sitters were from the higher echelons of society, although
he was never asked to produce a formal portrait of King George III and
Queen Charlotte. The blurring of history painting with portraiture was
thus another way of signalling the power of the already powerful
through visual and historical associations.
Paradoxically, although people without power were slow to appro-
priate the portrait formats of rulers and aristocrats, by the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries it became increasingly common for monarchs,
the aristocracy, and the gentry to commission portraits of themselves in
domestic settings or intimate circumstances. In many instances, such
portraits still contained vestiges of standard power portraits, such as the
standing or seated full-frontal pose, or elaborate symbolic trappings.
However, these portraits were domesticated in a number of ways.
Portraits were more frequently set in private rooms or other intimate
spaces, rather than state rooms or theatrically curtained and columned
interiors. These portraits more often included children, or animals
shown playing or interacting with the adults and adding an air of
informality. This can be seen in Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun’s portraits of
the late eighteenth-century French queen, Marie-Antoinette. Vigée-
Lebrun did paint conventional formal portraits of her, showing her
standing in a full-length pose in contrived settings with the familiar
accompaniments of column and curtain. However, she also repre-
sented Marie-Antoinette with her children. Marie-Antoinette was a
monarch reviled by many of her subjects for her extravagance; through
portraiture, however, Vigée-Lebrun helped her manage her public
image, emphasizing her domestic virtues and maternal occupations in
order to counter her public reputation as the Queen who play-acted the
role of shepherdess while living in the splendour of the Versailles palace.
Vigée-Lebrun’s portraits veer between signalling this domestic image
and retaining a decorous formality in the figure of the Queen.
In England, by the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the royal
portrait in a domestic setting became a common foil for the more
formal portrait. It is important to realize that such informality was as
contrived as the more hierarchic signals of Divine Right. By having
herself represented as interacting with her family in the drawing room,
Queen Victoria for example could seem more familiar to her subjects
and provide a moral exemplum. Such images could also create a
publicly palatable image of a powerful Queen’s relationship with her
consort, Prince Albert.
A similar change of direction can be discerned in other sorts of insti-
tutional portraits of powerful people in England. While university
deans or vice-chancellors and captains of industry were once shown
uniformly in sombre suits or black gowns, standing or seated in tradi-
tional leadership roles, nowadays such individuals are represented just
as often in shirt sleeves or private domestic environments. This is partly
a matter of portrait practice, but it also indicates changes in the social
conception of leader from an exalted to an everyday figure. Neverthe-
less, these portraits project an image of a different kind of power and
authority, but one which is no less recognizable to the viewer. So
although portraits of rulers and other powerful figures have tended to
be formal, iconic, symbolic, and imposing, they can also be informal,
domestic, and familiar.
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