Portraiture in Western Art

In his study of the history of Western art as emblematic of civilization, Clark locates the origin of portraiture in Flanders, with Jan van Eyck, a painter who "looked at the human face with a more dispassionate eye and recorded his findings with a more delicate hand" than any artist of the period and in a way more profound than was achieved by the generations of Florentine sculptors who followed. The northern Europeans of the Renaissance by no means abandoned portraiture, of course. It is almost a commonplace of Renaissance art history that one must take note of the fact that Rembrandt gave an account of his artistic life in significant part by way of the self-portrait. So important are Rembrandt's self-studies to the history of art that when a formerly unknown portrait of the painter is discovered, as happened in January 2003 when a restoration project revealed that a portrait of a Russian aristocrat concealed a Rembrandt study, the event makes international news ("Rembrandt Uncovered").

. . .
At minimum that analysis suggests the power of the persuasive image to convince those who observe it that the representation has been faithfully executed. It is in such a context that an art critic's declaration that a portrait "captures" the reality of the subject makes the most sense. It is also why the context of the portrait representation assumes importance in evaluating the persuasiveness with which the image has been developed. That feature of portraiture appears to hold true whether the medium of the image is oil paint, sculpture, or photograph. For example, Keeley is referring to black-and-white photographic portraiture when he comments that a portrait is "about a relationship between the subject and the artist. Photographers coax, direct and employ different techniques to create a relationship with their subject, in order to instill a certain visible temperament" (34). Photographer Richard Avedon's analysis of the rhetoric of portraiture is that it is "performance" (Henry 12), which is consistent with Aristotelian rhetorical theory. However, it is important to recognize that the artist has the role of impresario (despite the impulse to think of the subject who must "be there" for the photographer as the one onstage), th
. . .

Some common words found in the essay are:
Aristotle Rhetoric, Rembrandt Uncovered, Italian Renaissance, Western World, Richard III, , Arnason Prather, Europeans Renaissance, Richard Avedon's, Flanders Jan, social status, portraiture performance, art western world, real apparent, moral purpose, theatrical portraiture, renaissance art, means persuasion, relationship subject, portrait subject, artistic media, discern real apparent,
Approximate Word count = 1631
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)