5 The protohistory of portraits in words and images (sixth–fifth century BCE): tyrants, poets, and artists

Abstract

Ancient Greece marked a crucial turning point in the history of portraiture in Western culture. However, portraiture went through a long, complex, and irregular process of development. The representation of individuals not only reflects specific expressive and artistic conventions, but also implies a social idea of the body and its function. Moreover, it encompasses the construction of personal identity and its public recognition in a shared social context. Both visual art and words contribute to this form of representation, each through its own means of expression. Human images fill the spaces of the polis: the agora, places of worship, burial sites, festive and ritual contexts, and symposia. Visual experience interacts with the spoken word, and vice versa. Traditional poetic patterns correspond to conventional artistic ones, while preserving their specificities. One of the first developments in the history of portraiture took place in the Ionian and Athenian area between the sixth and the fifth century BCE. Our attention will be focused on the figure of the tyrant (particularly Peisistratos) as a catalyst of individuality, as well as on the individualising aspects of the poetry of those years, such as Anacreon’s verses. The first portraits tended to privilege the representation of diversity, deformity, and ugliness which deviated from traditional patterns. These were followed by the portrait masks - or, rather, caricature masks - of ancient comedy.