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Fracture portraits manual#

Instead they chose to show themselves lavishly dressed and surrounded by letters, documents and writing materials.

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Fracture portraits manual#

However, any allusion to this merchandise is conspicuous by its absence, perhaps because it was too closely associated with manual labour. Like most merchants of the era, they are likely to have traded in a diverse range of goods. These good merchants can be seen in Hans Holbein's Portrait of Georg Gisze and Jan Gossart's Portrait of Jan Jacobsz Snoeck. 'You still have the Church, you also have guild regulations, and they have to adhere to what society expected of them, whether that was being a virtuous woman or a good merchant,' says Ubl. The growth of cities saw the rise of a mercantile elite which wanted to mirror the nobility by having their portrait painted.'Īnd while these newly-wealthy businessmen were keen to show off their success, there were certain expectations that had to be abided by for the sake of propriety. Humanism became very important, so the self did too in a way, but that was not everything. 'It was a period of innovation and stirring things up. 'There were many factors helping portraiture to flourish at that time,' Ubl tells BBC Culture. This has often been thought to be the result of a growing sense of individuality stimulated by an increasing interest in humanism, but Matthias Ubl, curator of the Rijksmuseum's recent Remember Me exhibition, cautions against this overly simplistic viewpoint. It was during the Renaissance that portraiture truly came into its own. The stunning life-sized mosaics of the Emperor Justinian and Empress Theodora in the church of San Vitale in Ravenna – which date from the 6th Century – are a particularly spectacular demonstration of power. Placed in temples of the imperial cult, they were designed to inspire awe and subordination.Īlthough few examples of portraiture survive from the Middle Ages, those that do served similar purposes as those from classical times. Imperial portraits were a valuable tool for propaganda. In both cases, attention was drawn to the person's lineage, which was of great importance in Roman society. In Ancient Rome portrait sculpture was used to commemorate the dead or celebrate the achievements of the living.

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It is thought they may have hung in people's homes during their lifetimes, and after death were placed over the head of their mummy in order to aid their journey to the afterlife. The 1st and 2nd Centuries AD saw the Fayum area of Roman Egypt produce astonishingly naturalistic portraits that appeared on mummy cases. The genre's origins can be traced back to ancient times, when it served a number of functions, from exalting those in power to remembering the dead.

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