Abstract
The sight of the human face has always exerted a powerful attraction on us. Whether in painting or photography, in cinema or theater, the representation of the human figure awakens in the viewer a varied range of emotions that range from the simple identification of a person to the inexhaustible mystery of the work of art in museums, passing through the history of customs and the religious function of icons. Lotman warns us that precisely because portrait is the simplest genre, it is also the most sophisticated: “The portrait is a kind of double mirror: in it art is reflected in life and life is reflected in art”. In what was one of his last works, Lotman describes the trajectory of portraiture in painting through the ages. He says: “In essence, the entire set of portraits can be considered as a polysemic set of meanings of the word ‘human being’.” The portrait, crossing societies and trends, has never ceased to be that mystery that at the same time reveals and hides the soul.
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