Court Portraits Research Articles

IRANIAN ART OF THE QAJAR ERA: EUROPEAN INFLUENCES AND «PERSIAN STYLE» FOR EXPORT

The Qajar era (late XVIII-1925) gave the world a unique style, unmistakably recognizable in painting, crafts, and photography. Clumsy, striking the imagination with its amazing brightness of colors and bold artistic techniques, it was formed largely due to active interaction with European culture via respect for the Persian traditional styles. The article deals with the significance of Europe and the European in the formation and development of Qajar art, addressing two opposing processes. Borrowing Western methods and techniques, educational models and new products on the one hand, and European fashion for Persian things, which influenced local production and its transformation on the other. The first process is seen in easel painting and the fashion for "european«details in interior decoration, the second — in «re-creation» of an updated carpet and ceramic production in Persia. The illustrative effect will be provided by selected items from the collection of the State Museum of Oriental Art in Moscow, including court portraits, glass paintings, qalamkaras, tiles, etc.

Królestwo Boże (Józefa Czapskiego podróż do Hiszpanii w roku 1930)

The author of the article describes a trip to Spain made by Józef Czapski in 1930. This outstanding painter and essayist, witness to the Katyń massacre, co-creator of the Parisian magazine "Kultura" [Culture] and Polish intellectual life in exile, at the time of visiting Madrid and its nearby areas for nearly two months was still a young artist, looking for the painting poetics closest to his soul. The visits to the Prado brought him two great discoveries: the works of El Greco and Goya. For Czapski, El Greco is a captivating example of religious painting and simultaneously – fidelity to the vision, the way of seeing the world. Goya fascinated Czapski with the thematic and stylistic range of his art – from “official” court portraits to dramatic records of nearly surreal visions, reflecting the artist’s fundamental belief in human depravity. The trip to Spain also had another meaning for Czapski – it was in a way a journey in the footsteps of St. Teresa of Avila, broadly: a reflection on the role of mystical experience in the spiritual life of man. From these two perspectives: artistic and religious, the encounter with the Spanish culture appears to be one of the more important and fateful episodes in the biography of Józef Czapski.

Anna of Denmark’s Pointed Elbow: Refiguring Rank and Gender in the Early Modern Court Portrait

This essay offers a new reading of the pose of Anna of Denmark in the hunting portrait, Anne of Denmark (1617) by Paul van Somer. Specifically, it attends to the significance of the queen’s pointed elbow as a marker revealing the precedence of her rank over her gender in the composition of her identity (Fig. 1).1 To evidence this precedence, I will retrace the figural patterns encoded in the imaging of women’s bodies, their elbows akimbo – types, allegories, and portraits – across media such as printed emblems, within paintings, and performances such as the courtly masque.2 These patterns established the norms and paradigms of this portrait’s visual cultural context, a body of images informed by discourses of state, theology, medicine, and natural philosophy, which in turn imprinted the practices of royal portraiture. As Maria H. Loh has observed, Renaissance ‘facial identity was a very nebulous...

Нидерландское влияние в формировании традиций придворного польского портрета. Криптопортрет

The aim of the study is to consider the Dutch influence on the formation of the Polish court portrait traditions, as well as such a phenomenon as a crypto portrait. The scientific originality lies in the fact that at the moment there is an extremely limited number of studies devoted to the phenomenon of crypto portraits in altar donor images, as well as studies devoted to the investigation of the role and functions of the costume in religious art. As a result of this study, it has been revealed that in church painting and images of the Polish rulers, the “disguised portrait” (“identification portrait”) occupied a special place, at the same time the “disguised portrait” was of particular importance in religious painting of the Netherlands. It has also been revealed that in church painting, the manner of depicting rulers was mainly determined by aspirations of the rulers themselves, despite calls of the church. An important conclusion obtained is that in the 16th-17th centuries, self-portraits of artists, who disguised themselves as participants in group images of historic events, became widespread. At the same time, an artist performed the function of the intermediary between the viewer and what was happening in the picture.

Jan van Kessel II versus Jacques Courtilleau: Dos maneras de retratar a la reina Mariana de Neoburgo

Durante la última década del siglo XVII el retrato de corte español se movió entre el naturalismo y la idealización. Orbitó así entre la tradición que se arrastraba desde mediados de la centuria en la representación regia y los nuevos aires que llegaban de Francia. Dos pintores representan como nadie estas dos tendencias dentro de la retratística de la reina Mariana de Neoburgo, el flamenco Jan van Kessel II y el francés Jacques Courtilleau. Con este artículo queremos profundizar en sus modos pictóricos y añadir algunas obras en sus casi desconocidos catálogos.

‘Telling Objects’ – Miniatures as an Interactive Medium in Eighteenth-Century Female European Court Portraits

Miniatures were a popular medium of early modern material court culture and representation, symbolising social, dynastic or political affiliation while, at the same time, evoking a special bond between wearer and object. They were used as diplomatic gifts, as commemorative tokens of highly emotional events such as births, marriages and deaths, as substitutes for absent or deceased persons as well as proxy in marriage negotiations and betrothal ceremonies. By integrating these small objects – as a picture in a picture – into large-scale portraits, they were directly contextualised with the sitter, publicly conveying personal or political messages, thus becoming interactive telling objects. Set in sumptuous jewellery, as pendants, brooches or bracelets, they were worn as symbols of luxury and status as well as badges of sentiment, loyalty or propaganda. As objects of virtue, like souvenirs or snuffboxes, they were shown and perceived as items of economic, material and symbolic value but could also operate as hidden clues or dynastic emblems. In addition, the allusion to their origins as gifts or heirlooms, i.e. to the process of giving and receiving, as well as the open display of wearing, handling or regarding not only constituted a relation between sitter and object but also implemented a narrative structure. This essay would like to open the discourse on this specific interactive potential of miniatures by analysing different modes of display and context based on selected eighteenth-century female European court portraits.

Portraits of Human Monsters in the Renaissance: Dwarves, Hirsutes, and Castrati as Idealized Anatomical Anomalies

Portraits of Human Monsters in the Renaissance: Dwarves, Hirsutes, and Castrati as Idealized Anatomical Anomalies

The Duty to Display Princely Perfection: Portraits of Carlos II as Child-King

Extant likenesses of Carlos II accord with conventional representations of Philip IV’s other sons who survived infancy, princes Baltasar Carlos and Felipe Próspero. But while the two princes died before inheriting the throne, Carlos II actually succeeded his father as king. To acclaim the rule of a rey-niño, therefore, a new artistic genre evolved, the ‘palatine portrait’, which stressed the setting of a formal gallery as a classical stage on which to define the nature of majesty. This essay considers court portraits of the young Carlos II that mark notable thresholds of his life: his investiture with the Order of the Golden Fleece (1665); his tutoring in a Habsburg curriculum of formal studies under Queen Mariana’s guidance (1666); his physical education in traditional skills of the hunt and mastery of equestrian exercises (1670); his training in the use of his father’s administrative office; and his schooling in the arts of diplomacy which culminated in the attainment of his majority (1675).

Picturing Elizabeth I’s Triumph of Melancholy [with illustrations

This essay offers an account of how Queen Elizabeth I’s material virginal body was perceived by early modern culture, beginning with a discussion of her Corsham Court portrait and the artist’s focus on the melancholy ailments of the “virgin queen” Elizabeth. While most scholarship since Roy Strong’s commentary has reflexively associated the Queen’s material virginal purity with immaterial, Marian virginal immaculacy, the archives reveal that Elizabeth was widely known to suffer from various common virgins’ afflictions over her lifetime. Understood by her culture as a mundane, everyday disease, melancholy is documented repeatedly as a medical condition potentially contributing to Elizabeth’s death and it is also refashioned in the Corsham portrait as an explicit form of Petrarchan compliment to her virginal exceptionalism. Within a single work of art, the Corsham Court portrait demonstrates how complex cultural notions about Elizabeth’s virginal body are rendered visible. [K.P.]

El retrato cortesano como expresión de la monarquía en la segunda mitad del siglo XVII y principios del siglo XVIII en España

The article explores the influence of historical and political situation on the Spanish portrait tradition in the second half of the XVIIth and early XVIIIth century. The icono-graphical method was applied to the court portraits of these periods along with analysis of the historical and political tendencies. The author distinguished certain common features in the portraiture in the courts of Charles II and Philip V. The tradition of the Habsburg court portrait was continued in the reign of the Bourbon House. The state authorities of the last Habsburg and the first Bourbon exploited the portraits both as the manifest of their power and as the mechanism of representation of the rulers image.

EL RETRATO DE OSTENTACIÓN DE LAS ÉLITES CHILENAS DEL SIGLO XVIII: GUSTO ARTÍSTICO, ESTILO E ICONOGRAFÍA DE UNA SOCIEDAD EN TRANSFORMACIÓN.

A partir del siglo XVIII Chile experimento un cambio de gustos y de tendencias artisticas, bien testimoniado por el desarrollo del retrato de ostentacion como genero autono mo respecto del retrato de tematica religiosa. Se difundio en particular entre aquellas elites de intelectuales, eclesiasticos y politicos que querian manifestar su individualidad frente a la Monarquia Espanola, y que vieron en el retrato el vehiculo a traves del cual proclamar su emancipacion

“Medieval” and “Modern” Conceptions of the Colours of Light in Early Modern England and Isaac Oliver’s Portrait Miniatures

The usual distinction between ornamental and naturalistic styles is traditional when Nicholas Hilliard’s works and treatise The Art of Limning (c. 1600) are compared to Isaac Oliver’s, his pupil. However, the cultural context of the miniature court portrait in early modern England also shows two other traditions, i.e. the strategies to capture light in colours in two schools, one defining light as rays, another defining light as the limit between two colours. In either theory, the core of the subject is our perception of colours as/of/in light. This article will consider several early modern miniatures, but particular attention will be paid to two portrait miniatures by Isaac Oliver when he was at the height of his reputation not only as Hilliard’s pupil but also as an independent artist: John Donne (1616) and the Head of Christ (c. 1610).

Women’s Fashions and Politics in Seventeenth-Century Spain: The Rise and Fall of theGuardainfante*

AbstractWomen’s clothes were at the center of political debate in the Spain of Philip IV (r. 1621–65), and no garment inspired more controversy than the wide-hipped farthingale, or hoopskirt, known as theguardainfante. Considered scandalous with its reputation for hiding illicit pregnancies, theguardainfantewas banned in 1639. Nonetheless, theguardainfantebecame more popular than ever and turned into an enduring icon of Golden Age Spain during the reign of Philip’s second queen, Mariana of Austria (1649–65). Despite theguardainfante’s high level of visibility, most notably in court portraits by Diego Velázquez, very little is known about the historical experiences of the women who wore it. This article demonstrates that real women really did wear theguardainfantein a variety of contexts outside of portraiture and the theater. In Madrid and in cities throughout the Spanish empire, women of different stations and convictions participated in the political culture of their times by making, disseminating, and debating this controversial garment.

Porträts, Maler, Mäzene. Zur Geschichte des Porträts im 16.–17. Jahrhundert im Königreich Ungarn

The paper reviews the historical development of the portrait in Hungary in light of the early data on artists and works, changes in social demand, the emergence of diverse portrait functions and the changes in portrait iconography over the 17th century. The author concludes from the sources (inventories, last wills) that until the end of the 17th century the portrait was not a valued property but a fairly insignificant element of furnishing, except in a few art collecting aristocrats’ homes. In the second half of the 16th century, the portrait was often the document of social contacts. The earliest known painted portraits from the mid-16th century show members of the Hungarian upper nobility who belonged to the “supranational” aristocracy of the Habsburg Empire via some family relationship. Of these, the author devotes separate attention to portraits of a member each of the Thurzó, Zrínyi, Pálffy families, and to the one-time collection of portraits that probably passed from the wife of Ferdinand I., Anne of Hungary, to the wife of Count Ferenc Blagay and served as the model for several depictions in the portrait-book of Hieronymus Beck. There is mention again of the portrait of the Lord Steward of the Hungarian king’s household, János Krusics attributed to Giuseppe Arcimboldo by the author in 2008. Data in the inventories of several aristocratic households reveal that large, full-length portraits were painted from the second third of the 17th century. They were also specified by the occasion they were painted for, e.g. depiction of the deceased (31 catafalque portraits or their mentions are known from the 17th century), engagement, donation. Family series and ancestors’ galleries began to be formed in the last third of the 17th century under the inspiration of two sets of engravings, Elias Widemann’s portraits of 100 Hungarian noblemen (Vienna, 1652) and the “Mausoleum” of Hunnish-Hungarian leaders and kings (Nuremberg, 1664) ordered by Lord Chief Justice Ferenc Nádasdy. Both had a great influence on the development of 17th century Hungarian portraiture, first of all in terms of iconography. Finally, the paper discusses the alternative portrait representations of Hungarian aristocrats integrated in the court elite through the interpretation of inventories in Ferenc Nádasdy’s residences, pointing out the “double representation” they demonstrate one the one hand, and analyzing court portraits ordered with the aim of winning some political position or court dignity, on the other hand.

Ramos de olivos, estrellas y espejos: la iconografía literaria de las damas de la corte de los Habsburgo en la poesía femenina de la temprana modernidad española

Seventeenth-century Spanish poets Clara de Barrionuevo y Carrion, Antonia de Nevares and Beatriz Jimenez Cerdan highlight in their sonnets addressed to the most outstanding women of the Habsburg courts the remarkable political role carried out by these exceptional ladies. In their poems, the authors seek to laud the figures of Margarita of Austria, Philip III′s wife, on the occasion of the birth of her son; Isabella of Bourbon, Philip IV′s spouse, after her death, and Isabel de Velasco, wife of the powerful Count-Duke of Olivares. These poets do not limit themselves to praising these ladies for their ability to provide their husbands with heirs. On the contrary, through the use of an imagery richer than that commonly used in the Baroque artistic works, the poets underline not just the moral qualities that adorn the ladies, and that coincide with the ideal of the good wife developed by Vives or Fray Luis de Leon, but also their diplomatic contributions to the country and to the Crown. In contrast to the limited iconography in the court portraits of these women painted by artists such as Pantoja de la Cruz and Velazquez, whose main objective was to register the royal dignity and high status of their models, the poets utilize images such as the olive branch, the diamond, the sun and the mirror in order to convey the sense of moral exemplarity and political savvy of these women whom they praise and with whom they aim to be associated.

Giles Knox. Review of "Diego Velázaquez: The Early Court Portraits" by Javier Portús.

Giles Knox. Review of "Diego Velázaquez: The Early Court Portraits" by Javier Portús.

Power and Painting in Sixteenth-Century Ferrara: Titian's Portraits of Alfonso I d'Este

Around 1525, Titian (Tiziano Vecellio, ca. 1488–1576) painted the likeness of Alfonso I d'Este of Ferrara (1475–1534). The duke, attired in stunning furs, brocades, and jewels rests his arm on one of his famous cannons. The portrait so enchanted Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (1500–1558) that he requested it as a gift, and a slightly different replacement image was commissioned. This article examines the genesis and significance of these little-studied court portraits, in which the twin personae of the condottiere and magnificent diplomat-prince were cleverly conflated. Alfonso had survived two decades of almost constant threats to his state, and the portraits celebrate his resiliency. This study also considers Titian's portrait of the duke's plebeian mistress, Laura Dianti (ca. 1500–1573), whose image visually complements that of her noble lover in an unprecedented manner. I argue that Laura's image functioned to extend the ducal identity to express his passion for beautiful painting and his engagement with contemporary art theory.

Family Jewels: The Gendered Marking of Medici Women in Court Portraits of the Late Renaissance

Research Article| January 01 2008 Family Jewels: The Gendered Marking of Medici Women in Court Portraits of the Late Renaissance Heather L. Sale Holian Heather L. Sale Holian Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Mediterranean Studies (2008) 17 (1): 148–182. https://doi.org/10.2307/41167396 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Heather L. Sale Holian; Family Jewels: The Gendered Marking of Medici Women in Court Portraits of the Late Renaissance. Mediterranean Studies 1 January 2008; 17 (1): 148–182. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/41167396 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectivePenn State University PressMediterranean Studies Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright © 2008 Manchester University Press2008Manchester University Press Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Family Jewels: The Gendered Marking of Medici Women in Court Portraits of the Late Renaissance

Family Jewels: The Gendered Marking of Medici Women in Court Portraits of the Late Renaissance

The Later Stuart Portraits in the Suffolk Collection

Abstract The Suffolk Collection is an important group of some 50 paintings originally from Charlton Park, Wiltshire, famous for its early 17th-century portraits of the earls of Suffolk and Berkshire. It also includes a less well-known collection of late Stuart royal and court portraits, whose apparently anomalous presence was explained in 1878 as an addition, given from the royal collection by William III. This article argues that this story is highly implausible, and reveals that after the Restoration the Berkshire Howards, usually dismissed as nonentities, in fact occupied important positions at court, and had every reason to have acquired portraits of their royal patrons.