During the Middle Ages the donor figures often were shown on a far smaller scale than the sacred figures; a change dated by Dirk Kocks to the 14th century, though earlier examples in manuscripts can be found. This uneven chronological distribution of the images sets natural limits to the time-frame of this study, since most of the images and, indeed, related discourses and texts used in our investigations fall between the late eleventh and fifteenth centuries. The more we look at the Dragutin and Oliver scenes, however, the less they appear to concern a true donation, and the more appropriate the term ktetor seems to be. Interestingly, if we turn to a detailed study of the images we find some significant variations of iconography that correspond to the distinction that the languages draw. 31 M. Boatwright, Hadrian and the City of Rome (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), 190202. Central Europe (including Germany), 14001600 A.D. Central Europe (including Germany), 16001800 A.D. Eastern Europe and Scandinavia, 14001600 A.D. Eastern Europe and Scandinavia, 16001800 A.D. Florence and Central Italy, 14001600 A.D. Florence and Central Italy, 16001800 A.D. Great Britain and Ireland, 14001600 A.D. Great Britain and Ireland, 16001800 A.D. Venice and Northern Italy, 14001600 A.D. Venice and Northern Italy, 16001800 A.D. 82nd & Fifth: Tipping Point by Stijn Alsteens, The Artist Project: Il Lee on Rembrandt van Rijns portraits, The Artist Project: Julie Mehretu on Velzquezs, The Artist Project: Liliana Porter on Jacomettos, The Artist Project: Nina Katchadourian on Early Netherlandish portraiture, The Artist Project: Paul Tazewell on Anthony van Dycks portraits. All Rights Reserved. As you start to find the basic shape, dig into the details and look for commonalities across your supporter base. In family groups the figures are usually divided by gender. All the other scenes would go by the name ktetor portraits. This second aspect of portraiture comes across in the considerable conservatism of the genre: most portraits produced in Renaissance and Baroque Europe follow one of a very small range of conventional formats. But when we make a hasty generalization, we risk making a big error in our thinking. 5 I. Kalavrezou-Maxeiner, Portraits and Portraiture: Donor Portraits, in A. Kazhdan (ed. Although all images bespeak both themes, they do not do so with equal emphasis. This speaks volumes about the change of tenor in the images. However, by and large, the classification does capture the majority of the scenes in the corpus. They are your audience, the people reading your direct mail, visiting your website, or following you on social media. John of Damascus, John Chrysostom, and Gregory of Nazianzos (Fig. All rights reserved. Franses uses the theories of Pierre Bourdieu in particular, notably his contentions that contradictory structures of belief are . The Mosaics of the Southern Vestibule, Gifts and Prayers: The Visualization of Gift-Giving in Byzantium and the Mosaics at Hagia Sophia, The Languages of Gift in the Early Middle Ages, Architecture and Ornamental Mosaics in the South Vestibule of St Sophia at Istanbul: The Secret Door of the Patriarchate and the Imperial Entrance to the Great Church, Sacred Fortress: Byzantine Art and Statecraft in Ravenna, Writing in Gold: Byzantine Society and its Icons, The Monastery of Saint Catherine at Mount Sinai: The Icons, Byzantium in the Iconoclast Period (ca. The 6th-century mosaic panels in the Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna of the Emperor Justinian I and Empress Theodora with courtiers are not of the type showing the ruler receiving divine approval, but each show one of the imperial couple standing confidently with a group of attendants, looking out at the viewer. It corresponds to no. It is this difference in the way in which the direction of the narrative and direction of power flow run either against each other or coincide with each other that determines whether an image is a true or quasi donor portrait. 2) Dutch portraiture. The frescoes are in the Poggi Chapel, in, Ainsworth, Maryan W. "Intentional Alterations of Early Netherlandish Painting". Yet, in terms of standard contact portraits, this image is still unusual. Donor portraits are often queer, stray figures, painted at the bottom of images of the Virgin and Child or of a Crucifixion scene. More remarkable still is Drers position. Here we return to the issue of the dual agenda of these images, as making claims both religious and social, although not necessarily in equal degrees. To fundraise well, you cant rely on sectoral averages. My concern is . [28], Although donor portraits have been relatively little studied as a distinct genre, there has been more interest in recent years, and a debate over their relationship, in Italy, to the rise of individualism with the Early Renaissance, and also over the changes in their iconography after the Black Death of the mid-14th century.[29]. Furthermore, donor portraits in Early Netherlandish painting suggest that their additional purpose was to serve as role models for the praying beholder during his own emotional meditation and prayer not in order to be imitated as ideal persons like the painted Saints but to serve as a mirror for the recipient to reflect on himself and his sinful status, ideally leading him to a knowledge of himself and God. Figure 1.8: Emperor Alexios Komnenos, Panoplia Dogmatica, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vatican, gr. Simply to appear in these scenes is to declare that one has sufficient funds to found the building, or pay for the manuscript or icon. At the heart of the image is the same urgent desire for contact with the holy figure that Theodore makes manifest. There also existed a strong tradition for . Hints of personality are especially evident in seventeenth-century portrayals of less exalted persons, such as Rembrandts portrait of the craftsman Herman Doomer (29.100.1), Velzquezs picture of his assistant Juan de Pareja (1971.86), and Rubens seductive likeness of a woman who may have been his sister-in-law (1976.218). Ownership of an object is relinquished, and is transferred to someone else. In non-imperial scenes such as the one showing Theodore Metochites, there is a standard dichotomy of the weak and the strong, the donor usually appearing in a deliberately submissive position, requesting a favor from the holy figure. After all, as patrons of expensive pieces of art, royals expected to be portrayed in a way that glorified them. History See also S. Kalopissi-Verti, The Peasant as Donor (13th14th Centuries), in J.-M. Spieser and E. Yota (eds. In the Early Middle Ages, a group of mosaic portraits in Rome of Popes who had commissioned the building or rebuilding of the churches containing them show standing figures holding models of the building, usually among a group of saints. One of the most famous and striking groups of Baroque donor portraits are those of the male members of the Cornaro family, who sit in boxes as if at the theatre to either side of the sculpted altarpiece of Gian Lorenzo Bernini's Ecstasy of St Theresa (1652). The first shows King Dragutin, holding a model of the Church of St. Achilleos at Arilje in Serbia, along with his wife, Queen Katelina, and King Milutin, from 1296 (Fig. From: donor portrait in The Oxford Dictionary of the Renaissance Subjects: History Early Modern History (1500 to 1700) Reference entries I, 23642. There is thus not much by way of personal contact between the figures, nor is there any real sense of a donation taking place. In these the portrait may adopt a praying pose,[14] or may pose more like the subject in a purely secular portrait. If this image is not a contact-donation portrait, then, what of the mosaic panel in the southwest vestibule of the Church of Hagia Sophia, representing the emperors Constantine and Justinian (Fig. In the Early Middle Ages, a group of mosaic portraits in Rome of Popes who had commissioned the building or rebuilding of the churches containing them show standing figures holding models of the building, usually among a group of saints. Donor portraits do just that. 1162) e dellevangeliario greco Urbinate (cod. The emperor does not have to concede anything to a more powerful figure, yet he still appears as pious, fulfilling his religious duty. This reading provides a solution to the unusual features that appeared when the image was taken as a donor portrait. Here are five ways to collect the data you need to get started. This is imperial iconography at its purest. Look at your headline numbers. The image articulates these positions through a number of pictorial devices. Oliver looks entirely regal, proud, and majestic every inch the king. Theodore, for example, leans forward imploringly, his brow knitted in consternation, as Christ remains sealed within his own energy field. The conventional aspects of portraiture ensure that each example will bear some resemblance to the next, and yet this general similarity makes the distinctive qualities of each one the more salient. 39 On the manuscript and its miniatures, see K. Lake and S. Lake, Dated Greek Minuscule Manuscripts to the Year 1200, 10 vols. 1.28).Footnote 41 This scene is in many ways the equivalent of the later panels in the south gallery of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul that we have already looked at, in that it represents an official act of imperial support for the church, rather than a personal supplication (see Figs. . [22] In an often-quoted passage, John Pope-Hennessy caricatured 16th-century Italian donors:[23], In Italy donors, or owners, were rarely depicted as the major religious figures, but in the courts of Northern Europe there are several examples of this in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, mostly in small panels not for public viewing. [8], At least in Northern Italy, as well as the grand altarpieces and frescos by leading masters that attract most art-historical attention, there was a more numerous group of small frescoes with a single saint and donor on side-walls, that were liable to be re-painted as soon as the number of candles lit before them fell off, or a wealthy donor needed the space for a large fresco-cycle, as portrayed in a 15th-century tale from Italy:[9], And going around with the master mason, examining which figures to leave and which to destroy, the priest spotted a Saint Anthony and said: 'Save this one.' Rogier van der Weyden, Deposition, c. 1435 ( Prado, Madrid) [27], Donor portraits in works for churches, and over-prominent heraldry, were disapproved of by clerical interpreters of the vague decrees on art of the Council of Trent, such as Saint Charles Borromeo,[28] but survived well into the Baroque period, and developed a secular equivalent in history painting, although here it was often the principal figures who were given the features of the commissioner. 9 On these panels in general see T. Whittemore, The Mosaics of Hagia Sophia at Istanbul: Third Preliminary Report, Work Done in 19351938: The Imperial Portraits of the South Gallery (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1942). There may not be a connection between the lay and holy figures, but there can be no doubt as to who the owner of the building is. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000. Figure 1.23: Worshipers bring a goat to an altar to sacrifice to Hygieia and Asklepios, National Archaeological Museum, Athens, shortly after 350 BC. In Byzantium this is the general rule for imperial images, for the reasons discussed above. See also H. Khler and C. Mango, Hagia Sophia, trans. Sometimes the sitters beauty or demeanor is emphasized, as in Nicholas Hilliards miniature portrait of a young man (35.89.4) with luxuriant curls and a straightforward gaze. Nicolas Rgnier: Self-Portrait with a Portrait on an Easel. The fundamental idea of a mortal approaching a deity stretches all the way back to cylinder seals of the ancient Near East, and already, the scenes look very familiar. In order to understand how this development comes about, and indeed, in order to appreciate the distinctive character of the Byzantine iteration of these scenes, it is beneficial to look at examples of contact portraits in the artistic traditions preceding Byzantium. Rather, it is concerned with differing grades and types of power. gr. It speaks not only of the status of the emperor, but is an explanation of that status, telling how it comes to be. Figure 1.25: Conquest and Clemency relief of Marcus Aurelius, Museo del Palazzo dei Conservatori, Rome, AD 17680. The central panel shows the Incredulity of Thomas ("Doubting Thomas") and the work as a whole is ambiguous as to whether the donors are represented as occupying the same space as the sacred scene, with different indications in both directions. Figure 1.2: Despot Oliver, painting in narthex, Church of the Holy Archangels, Lesnovo, FYR Macedonia, 1341. 33 This is National Archaeological Museum, Athens, no. As Olivers portrait plainly shows, ktetor-ship is very much intertwined with the worldly aspects of power, status, and social privilege. The funeral portraits are a clash between Roman, Greek, and Egyptian styles. In Byzantium, however, the prostration can be much more complete, with the back parallel to the ground and the head lowered. Further, once we undertake a careful scrutiny of the images, we might also ask whether these two terms that we have been discussing, donor and ktetor, are themselves the most relevant categories to apply to the range of images we have so far seen. 1) The purpose of donor portraits was to memorialize the donor and his family, and especially to solicit prayers for them after their death. As you start to find the basic shape, dig into the details and look for commonalities across your supporter base. 28 On presentation scenes, see H. Frankfort, Cylinder Seals: A Documentary Essay on the Art and Religion of the Ancient Near East (London: Macmillan, 1939), 7475. Fols. } Throughout Byzantine history, a steady stream of pictures in manuscripts, mosaics, ivories, and coins proclaimed the supreme rank of the emperor, and declared his almost-godly standing.Footnote 6 The clearest statement of this is to be found in the numerous divine coronations emanating from the royal palace in Constantinople. 1.24).Footnote 36 A further instance of this appears in the Conquest and Clemency relief, originally from the Arch of Marcus Aurelius, which represents a common trope in Roman sculpture, of defeated barbarians kneeling before the mounted emperor (Museo del Palazzo dei Conservatori, Rome, AD 17680, Fig.
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