portraiture

Information about portraiture

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Roman-Egyptian funeral portrait of a young boy


A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and its expression is predominant. The intent is to display the likeness, personality, and even the mood of the person. For this reason, in photography a portrait is generally not a snapshot, but a composed image of a person in a still position. A portrait often shows a person looking directly at the painter or photographer, in order to most successfully engage the subject with the viewer.

Some of the earliest portraits of people who were not kings or emperors, are the funeral portraits that survived in the dry climate of Egypt's Fayum district. These are the only paintings of the Roman period that have survived, aside from frescos.

The art of the portrait flourished in Roman sculptures, where sitters demanded realistic portraits, even unflattering ones. During the 4th century, the portrait began to retreat in favor of an idealized symbol of what that person looked like. (Compare the portraits of Roman Emperors Constantine I and Theodosius I at their entries.) In Europe true portraits of the outward appearance of individuals re-emerged in the late Middle Ages, in Burgundy and France.

One of best-known portraits in the Western world is Leonardo da Vinci's painting titled Mona Lisa, which is a painting of an unidentified woman. The world's oldest known portrait was found in 2006 by a local pensioner, Gérard Jourdy, in the Vilhonneur grotto near Angoulême and is thought to be 27,000-year-old[1].

Self-portraiture

Main article: self-portrait
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Self-portrait by Vincent Van Gogh.
When the artist creates a portrait of him- or herself, it is called a self-portrait. Identifiable examples become numerous in the late Middle Ages, but if the definition is extended the first was by the Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten's sculptor Bak, who carved a representation of himself and his wife Taheri c. 1365 BC. However, it seems likely that self-portraits go back to the earliest representational art, and literature records several classical examples, now lost.

Portrait photography

Main article: Portrait photography
Portrait photography is a popular commercial industry all over the world. Many people enjoy having professionally made family portraits to hang in their homes, or special portraits to commemorate certain events, such as graduations or weddings.
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Portrait photograph of Thomas Dilward by Mathew Brady.
Since the dawn of photography, people have made portraits. The popularity of the daguerreotype in the middle of the 19th century was due in large part to the demand for inexpensive portraiture. Studios sprang up in cities around the world, some cranking out more than 500 plates a day. The style of these early works reflected the technical challenges associated with 30-second exposure times and the painterly aesthetic of the time. Subjects were generally seated against plain backgrounds and lit with the soft light of an overhead window and whatever else could be reflected with mirrors.

As photographic techniques developed, an intrepid group of photographers took their talents out of the studio and onto battlefields, across oceans and into remote wilderness. William Shew's Daguerreotype Saloon, Roger Fenton's Photographic Van and Mathew Brady's What-is-it? wagon set the standards for making portraits and other photographs in the field.

Politics

In politics, portraits of the leader are often used as a symbol of the state. In most countries it is common protocol for a portrait of the head of state to appear in important government buildings. Excessive use of a leader's portrait can be indicative of a personality cult.

Literature

Main article: Portrait (literature)
In literature the term portrait refers to a written description or analysis of a person or thing. A written portrait often gives deep insight, and offers an analysis that goes far beyond the superficial. For example, American author Patricia Cornwell wrote a best-selling book titled Portrait of a Killer about the personality, background, and possible motivations of Jack the Ripper, as well as the media coverage of his murders, and the subsequent police investigation of his crimes.

See also

External links

Portrait painting is a genre in painting, where the intent is to depict the visual appearance of the subject, most often a person. A well executed portrait is expected to show the inner essence of the subject (from the artist's point of view, of course) not just a physical likeness.
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portrait photography is to capture the likeness of a person or a small group of people, typically in a flattering manner. Like other types of portraiture, the focus of photograph is the person's face, although the entire body and the background may be included.
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sculpture is a man-made three-dimensional object intended for special recognition as art. A person that creates sculptures is called a sculptor.

Materials of sculpture through history


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Fayum mummy portraits (or Faiyum mummy portraits) is the name given to a large number of first to third-century paintings from Egypt. These are encaustic paintings, made with hot, pigmented wax on wooden, or in some cases cartonnage, panels, which were inserted into the
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Faiyum (Arabic: الفيوم; Coptic: ) is a city in Middle Egypt, and the capital of the Faiyum Governorate. It is located 130 Km southwest of Cairo and occupies part of the ancient site of Crocodilopolis.
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Fresco (plural either frescos or frescoes) is any of several related painting types. The word fresco comes from the Italian word affresco which derives from the adjective fresco ("fresh"), which has Germanic origins.
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As a means of recording the passage of time, the 4th century (per the Julian/Gregorian calendar and Anno Domini era) was that century which lasted from 301 to 400.

Overview


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Constantine I
Emperor of the Roman Empire

Head of Constantine's colossal statue at the Capitoline Museums
Reign 306 - 312 (hailed as Augustus in the West, officially made Caesar by Galerius with Severus as Augustus, by agreement with Maximian, refused
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Theodosius I
Emperor of the Roman Empire

Coin featuring Theodosius I
Reign August 378 - 15 May 392 (emperor in the east, with Gratian and Valentinian II in the west);
15 May 392 - 17 January 395 (whole empire)
Full name
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Leonardo da Vinci

Self-portrait in red chalk, circa 1512 to 1515. [a]
Birth name Leonardo di Ser Piero
March 15 1452(1452--)
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Mona Lisa, or La Gioconda (La Joconde)(divincia famous artist) is a 16th century portrait painted in oil on a poplar panel by Leonardo Da Vinci during the Renaissance in Italy.
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In common parlance, a pensioner is a person who has retired, and now collects a pension. This is a term typically used in the United Kingdom; someone of pensionable age may also be referred to as an 'old age pensioner', or OAP.
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Self-portraits, many now unrecognised, have been made by artists since the earliest times, in a wide range of media. By the Early Renaissance, during the mid 1400s, we can more frequently distinguish artists depicting themselves as either the main subject, or as important
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Gumhūriyyat Miṣr al-ʿArabiyyah
Arab Republic of Egypt


Flag Coat of arms
Anthem
Bilady, Bilady, Bilady
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Dynasties of Pharaohs
in Ancient Egypt
Predynastic Egypt
Protodynastic Period
Early Dynastic Period
1st 2nd
Old Kingdom
3rd 4th 5th 6th
First Intermediate Period
7th 8th 9th 10th
11th (Thebes only)

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Kanakht-Meryaten
The strong bull, beloved of the Aten

Nebty
name

<hiero>G16</hiero>
<hiero>wr:r-sw-t-i-i-Aa13:Axt:t*pr-i-t:n:ra</hiero> Wernesytemakhetaten
Great of kingship in Akhetaten

Golden
Horus
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14th century BC - 13rd century BC

1390s BC 1380s BC 1370s BC - 1360s BC - 1350s BC 1340s BC 1330s BC
1369 BC 1368 BC 1367 BC 1366 BC 1365 BC
1364 BC 1363 BC 1362 BC 1361 BC 1360 BC

- - State leaders - Sovereign states
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Events and trends


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Cave or Rock Paintings are paintings on cave or rock walls and ceilings, usually dating to prehistoric times. The earliest known rock paintings are dated to the Upper Paleolithic, 40,000 years ago, while the earliest European cave paintings date to 32,000 years ago.
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portrait photography is to capture the likeness of a person or a small group of people, typically in a flattering manner. Like other types of portraiture, the focus of photograph is the person's face, although the entire body and the background may be included.
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daguerreotype is an early type of photograph, developed by Louis Daguerre, in which the image is exposed directly onto a mirror-polished surface of silver bearing a coating of silver halide particles deposited by iodine vapor.
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For the periodical, see .
The 19th Century (also written XIX century) lasted from 1801 through 1900 in the Gregorian calendar. It is often referred to as the "1800s.
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Painterly is a translation of the German term malerisch, one of the opposed categories popularized by Swiss art historian Heinrich Wölfflin (1864 - 1945) in order to help focus, enrich and standardize the terms being used by art historians of his time to characterize works
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William Shew (1820-1903) made a name for himself as a Daguerrotype portrait artist in the United States. He maintained a mobile studio in a wagon that he called his "Daguerrotype Saloon.
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Roger Fenton (March 20, 1819 - August 8, 1869) was a pioneering British photographer, one of the first war photographers.

Roger Fenton was born in Heywood, Lancashire.
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Mathew B. Brady (ca. 1823 - January 15, 1896), was a celebrated American photographer whose rise to prominence occurred largely in the years preceding and during the American Civil War.
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For the comedy film of the same name, see .


Head of state or Chief of state is the generic term for the individual or collective office that serves as the chief public representative of a monarchic or republican nation-state, federation,
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cult of personality or personality cult arises when a country's leader uses mass media to create a larger-than-life public image through unquestioning flattery and praise. Cults of personality are often found in dictatorships but some can be found in some democracies as well.
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In literature, the term portrait refers to a written description or analysis of a person or thing. A written portrait often gives deep insight, and offers an analysis that goes far beyond the superficial.
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Literature literally "acquaintance with letters" (from Latin littera letter) as in the first sense given in the Oxford English Dictionary, or works of art, which in Western culture are mainly prose, both fiction and non-fiction, drama and poetry.
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Patricia Cornwell

Born: May 9 1956 (1956--) (age 51)
Miami, Florida

Patricia Cornwell (born Patricia Carroll Daniels
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