[25] 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,[26] 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. Paintings uncovered from the ruins of ancient Egypt show that the worlds first portrait painters did not strive for accuracy but instead rendered their subjects in a highly stylized manner. King, 129. These little gems of information are a great way to start bringing the people behind your data to life. 2.1 and 0.2). Alexios shows no deference. This leaves only one candidate for the status of a true imperial contact portrait: the emperor in proskynesis mosaic in Hagia Sophia. [6] Additional family members, from births or marriages, might be added later, and deaths might be recorded by the addition of small crosses held in the clasped hands. So far we have been at pains to differentiate images into categories. History 1.12). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. the only contingency they did not envisage was what actually occurred, that their faces would survive but their names go astray. 21 Pelekanides and Chatzidakes, Kastoria, 11; Velmans, Peinture, 8586. 6th-century donor portrait of Anicia Juliana, the Byzantine princess who commissioned the illuminated manuscript known as the Vienna Dioscurides. Vatic. A donor portrait or votive portrait is a portrait in a larger painting or other work showing the person who commissioned and paid for the image, or a member of his, or (much more rarely) her, family. Using your data to create a great donor portrait. See further reading for Kocks. They don't have to be an actual image, but they do need to conjure oneto consolidate everything you know about your donors, give them personality and form. It is often passionate and exaggerated, leaving little doubt that the physical exertions required to enter the position could only be motivated by the most powerful feelings toward the figure being adored. But in devotional subjects such as a Madonna and Child, which were more likely to have been intended for the donor's home, the main figures may look at or bless the donor, as in the Memling shown. In some of these diptychs the portrait of the original owner has been over-painted with that of a later one. 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. If no particular trends in relation to the relative sizes of figures can be discerned, there is another area where a distinctive difference appears when scanning the images chronologically. West, Shearer. [3] To do so during prayer is in accord with late medieval concepts of prayer, fully developed by the Modern Devotion. If the Dragutin and Oliver portraits, in their attempts to cross traditional imperial iconography with donor portrait forms, end up looking more regal than humble, the Hagia Sophia panels aim more for the middle ground. Small donor with enthroned Madonna and Child, ca 1335, Giovanni di Paolo's Crucifixion with donor Jacopo di Bartolomeo, named in the inscription and with his coat of arms at left. A mid-fourth-century scene from a floor mosaic of the Constantinian Villa at Antioch, however, marks a decisive step in the transition from the standard Roman sacrifice representation to the Byzantine donor portrait (Fig. In a true contact portrait, the direction of flow of the narrative begins with the supplicant and passes towards the holy figure. : Byzantine Studies Association of North America, 2008). However, from now on it will refer only to those images that form a subgroup of the new category that we are designating as contact portraits. In each of these scenes, the men hold bags of money and the women hold scrolls granting privileges to the church. As early as 1336, the Italian poet Petrarch commissioned the Sienna-based painter Simone Martini to create a painting of his muse, countess Laura de Noves. [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.' (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1945), vol. In fact, the range that they demonstrate in this respect is far greater than perhaps any other iconographic type in the Byzantine repertoire. Click here for more information about how we use cookies on our site or read our privacy policy here. 1.9)? These were derived from frescoes by Pellegrino Tibaldi a century early, which use the same conceit. Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. In this respect, both the Antioch mosaic and the Byzantine images can be contrasted to the standard Roman scene. An example is Robert Campins Annunciation Triptych (Merode Altarpiece) (56.70) of about 142732, in which the man and woman in the left wing have the specificity characteristic of portraiture. Although donor portraiture is a mode of expression that dates to antiquity, in the medieval period an increasingly prosperous upper middle class used this genre more frequently. In other examples, a magnificent costume highlights the sitters wealth and fashionable taste (51.194.1). 13 The Vatican manuscript under discussion here is one of two imperial commissions of the Panoplia still extant, the other being Mosq. Fols. This freshly unearthed image drastically alters the meaning of one of the artists most celebrated works. See also H. Hunger (ed. Figure 1.18: Worshiper, deities, and god, impression of cylinder seal (Old Akkadian Worship Scenes), Old Akkadian, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, c. 23502200 BC. 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. Stained-glass window depicting Beatrice of Falkenburg (died 1277) as benefactress to the Franciscans, is the earliest surviving stained-glass donor portrait (Burrell Collection). Instead, he is subject to power, a petitioner. This new class in turn founded many new churches.Footnote 20 We will also consider further reasons for this increase in relation to a burgeoning interest in questions concerning the afterlife, in Chapter 3. A donor portrait or votive portrait is a portrait in a larger painting or other work showing the person who commissioned and paid for the image, or a member of his, or (much more rarely) her, family. Submissive, kneeling figures there are aplenty in the art of the early Christian period, of Rome, and of the ancient Near East, from where the gesture is said to have arisen.Footnote 35 It is a striking fact, however, that the posture is generally adopted in front of earthly potentates such as emperors and kings, not gods. 38 O. Demus, The Mosaics of Norman Sicily (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1949), 82; E. Kitzinger, The Mosaics of St Marys of the Admiral in Palermo (Washington: Dumbarton Oaks, 1990), especially 10506 and 197206. That means you need to put some time aside to look at what your data qualitative and quantitative is telling you. The purpose of donor portraits was to memorialize the donor and his family, and especially to solicit prayers for them after their death. The emperors perform deeds fitting to their office and duty, and these intrinsically have a religious dimension, as the image makes clear. 39 On the manuscript and its miniatures, see K. Lake and S. Lake, Dated Greek Minuscule Manuscripts to the Year 1200, 10 vols. Gr. We can see this in the portrait in Melbourne, where, even though standing relatively upright, Theophanes bows his head deeply and hikes up his shoulders as he stands before the Virigin and Child. But over time you will build not one, but a series of donor portraits a data-driven analysis of your audience and a deeper understanding of the people that give to your cause. 24 S. Eustratiades, Catalogue of the Greek Manuscripts in the Library of the Lavra on Mount Athos, Harvard Theological Studies 11 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1924), 11. Muz., Syn. Donor Portrait A portrait in a larger painting or other work showing the person who commissioned and paid for the image Humanism Intellectual movement during the Renaissance that emphasized secular over religion Foreshortening 5 I. Kalavrezou-Maxeiner, Portraits and Portraiture: Donor Portraits, in A. Kazhdan (ed. While representation of the middle class was considered the norm in Holland, other, more politically conservative European countries saw their painters stick with royalty and nobility. Each, in effect, constructs the images in a distinctive way. English, French, and Italian (to cite some of the languages in which studies on Byzantine art appear) call these scenes donor portraits and the lay figures donors (donateurs, commitenti). The Church Father closest to Alexios, St. Dionysios the Areopagite, extends a scroll toward the emperor the front edge of the scroll clearly overlaps the painted frame of the image who lifts a hand to receive it. 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. If there is a subsidiary piety dividend for Oliver and Dragutin in their scenes, then there is an equivalent social dividend for supplicants. Instead, the scenes adopt some of the same vocabulary that makes the coronations successful: the emperor is upright, frontal, dignified, authoritative, and, not least, bathing in the glow of Christs blessing. An indication of some of the issues involved in defining the type is given not only by the images themselves, but by the names by which they are known. There also existed a strong tradition for . The position is located in either Kyiv or Uzhgorod. The image articulates these positions through a number of pictorial devices. [11] In subsequent centuries bishops, abbots and other clergy were the donors most commonly shown, other than royalty, and they remained prominently represented in later periods. As you start to find the basic shape, dig into the details and look for commonalities across your supporter base. [20] Normally the main figures ignore the presence of the interlopers in narrative scenes, although bystanding saints may put a supportive hand on the shoulder in a side-panel. An Old Babylonian seal in the Oriental Institute Museum in Chicago represents the sun-god Shamash on the right, and a worshiper bearing a kid in his left arm, his right arm raised in prayer (17001530 BC, 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. In the earlier of these scenes, Christ appears between the empress Zoe and her husband, Constantine Monomachos. As Brubaker points out, however, this cannot be the case for the Constantine and Justinian panel, because the mosaic is dated to the tenth century, a minimum of 300-plus years after the death of its most recently living lay figure, Justinian, who died in 565. Donor Portraits in Byzantine Art. Because Dorothy Donor never existed. Yet even here, the Byzantine gesture can be more extreme. A hint of the same position appears in the brief article in The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium by Kalavrezou. [24] The most notorious of these is the portrayal as the Virgin lactans (or just post-lactans) of Agns Sorel (died 1450), the mistress of Charles VII of France, in a panel by Jean Fouquet. ), Antioch Mosaics (Istanbul: A Turizm Yaynlar, 2000), 20204. Website pop-up screens, donation forms, resource downloads, newsletter sign-ups, event registration, cookies, social media polls and questionnaires when you think fundraising, think data and make sure youve got the systems in place to catch it (and the permission to use it!). This distinctive power configuration, too, is the key criterion for distinguishing not only between true or quasi donor portraits, but between true contact portraits in general and all other images containing contemporary portraits of lay figures together with holy figures. (Boston: American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 193439), vol. Rather, the difference seems to reside in where the attention of the Greek sacrificants is directed. An image such as this, showing both ownership and royal power, relates strongly to imperial iconography in general, and a comparison between these portraits and some of the key images in the imperial repertoire proves highly illuminating. Here are five ways to collect the data you need to get started. Consider, for example, the portrait page in a Lectionary in the Greek Patriarchate in Jerusalem (1061, Megale Panhagia 1, fol. 666Synodal 387, fol. Figure 1.8: Emperor Alexios Komnenos, Panoplia Dogmatica, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vatican, gr. It is as though the composer of this scene thought that in the earlier panel, not only had imperial status not been given its full due, but neither had the donation. The Antioch and Byzantine scenes, however, are functioning in a transformative, less earth-bound, mode that might be better called symbolic or metaphoric (which, as mentioned, we will investigate further in Chapter 4). Learning and logging professional details is a great way to start building out your donor profile and creating a picture that goes beyond headline demographics. Often, even late into the Renaissance, the donor portraits, especially when of a whole family, will be at a much smaller scale than the principal figures, in defiance of linear perspective. 666), Thirty-Fourth Annual Byzantine Studies Conference. To save content items to your account, [16], A particular convention in illuminated manuscripts was the "presentation portrait", where the manuscript began with a figure, often kneeling, presenting the manuscript to its owner, or sometimes the owner commissioning the book. Rulers were the only individuals considered worthy of being immortalized on canvas. Talking blindly to an assumption that may or may not be correct. There are, however, three more scenes that seem to fall rather more definitively into the ambit of imperial donor or contact portraits that require further examination. 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. Ktetor focuses on the fact that an object is owned by someone. Essentially talking blindly to an assumption that may or may not be correct. Additionally, this direction of address travels along the power gradient inversely from the donor portrait, moving from greater power to lesser. 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 this scene, then, an effort has been made to preserve something of the genuine contact of the true donor portrait, but not so much as to make the emperors seem like petitioners. Cambridge, Mass. please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. 42 Kleiner, Roman Sculpture, 9099. 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. Here a close partnership is clearly established between Christ and his earthly counterparts, the emperors (Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vatican, Urb. This relation of the lay figures to the primal force that is Christ in terms of power is a key factor not only in the coronations, but also in non-imperial donor portraits; yet it also makes the scenes in some senses iconographic opposites. Dragutin and Oliver do not seem to be addressing Christ or Gabriel. 1.10). A donor portrait or votive portrait is a portrait in a larger painting or other work showing the person who commissioned and paid for the image, or a member of his, or (much more rarely) her, family. 1.17).Footnote 27. [4] To do so during prayer is in accord with late medieval concepts of prayer, fully developed by the Modern Devotion. It consists of several chapters of the Panoplia, an anti-heretical work in all likelihood composed at the behest of Alexios himself from the theologian Euthymios Zygabenos.Footnote 13 Alexios is thus reading to Christ from this work that he has commissioned, a work that not only attacks heresy, but also is based on nothing but the most orthodox of sources. 33 This is National Archaeological Museum, Athens, no. But what if we told you she doesnt exist? 11 For more on the subject of the interweaving of the two components of the dual agenda in luxury icons, with an emphasis on the social prestige accruing to donors, see T. Papamastorakis, The Display of Accumulated Wealth in Luxury Icons: Gift-Giving from the Byzantine Aristocracy to God in the Twelfth Century, in M. Vassilaki (ed. Portraiture in Renaissance and Baroque Europe. InHeilbrunn Timeline of Art History. [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. Figure 1.12: Supplicant before St.Irene, icon, St. Katherines Monastery, Sinai, eighth or ninth century. Instead, the sacrifice itself has been suppressed, and has been re-figured as a direct, immediate donation. In Byzantium, however, the prostration can be much more complete, with the back parallel to the ground and the head lowered. In addition to these rather public aspects of identity, portraits may also suggest the sitters inner psychology or state of mind. Figure 1.5: John Komnenos and Irene with the Virgin, mosaic in south gallery of the Church of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, 111834. To round out this examination of the chief characteristics of contact portraits, a further remarkable feature deserves comment. In the same volume, see Catherine Jolivet-Lvy, Collective Patterns of Patronage in the Late Byzantine Village: The Evidence of Church Inscriptions, 14162. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/port/hd_port.htm (August 2007). See also Radoji, Serbischen Kunst, 81. The making of a portrait typically involved a simple arrangement between artist and patron, but artists also worked on their own initiative, particularly when portraying friends and family (18.72; 1981.238; 1994.7). Considering all that has been said about the desire for contact, it should come as no surprise to find that this is the last of such scenes in Byzantine art. 1 See the relevant entries in H. G. Liddel and R. Scott, A GreekEnglish Lexicon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996); G. W. H. Lampe (ed. 1.11); afterwards, they tend to show more intensity and fervor in their approach. [30], 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.[31]. 1.6). But in devotional subjects such as a Madonna and Child, which were more likely to have been intended for the donor's home, the main figures may look at or bless the donor, as in the Memling shown. To fundraise well, you cant rely on sectoral averages. Yet it is also the case that in using each of its terms universally for all the scenes, each language grouping blurs the very fine distinctions that the iconography is at such pains to make. If anything, the reverse is true. Dragutin and Oliver, however, simply hold their churches in front of their chests. Cinema Columbus Film Festival returns with city-wide showings On the one hand, these variations are rendered possible because these portraits of lay figures do not have to adhere to the rules governing the representation of holy figures in their eternal truth. Hans Memling was one of the most prominent and productive Netherlandish artists of the later fifteenth century. Ist. And each gift object is indicated clearly by gesture, the outer hand and fingers of each donor stretched out toward it. The five children holding crosses had died; the two in black-trimmed white garments apparently before the painting was done, on the others the crosses were probably added later. Although large numbers of the scenes do not survive from the pre-iconoclastic period, the tradition was already clearly thriving in the sixth and early seventh centuries. Furthermore, the royal couple, less bold, insistent, and assertive than, say, Oliver, turn toward him, and incline their heads respectfully, Zoe more than Constantine. donor portrait Except where otherwise indicated, Everything.Explained.Today is Copyright 2009-2022, A B Cryer, All Rights Reserved. In their standing posture, they are about a head taller than Christ is seated, making for the clever compromise of appearing to be bigger than Christ within the picture, even though we know that Christ is larger in absolute terms. Portraiture. There can be no doubt that a close communication is taking place between the two of them. III, 2627. On fol. And he is certainly no supplicant. Figure 1.16: Worshiper approaching Shamash, Old Babylonian seal, the Oriental Institute Museum, Chicago, 17001530 BC. First Steps Miniatures were given as gifts of intimate remembrance, while portraits of rulers asserted their majesty in places from which they were absent. Yet despite this, this scene should not be considered a true donor portrait either. (Paris: E. de Boccard, 1959), vol. The Rijksmuseum employed an AI to repaint lost parts of Rembrandts The Night Watch. Heres how they did it. The second of these deities in turn holds the hand of a worshiper who carries a kid on his right arm. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108290517.002, A GreekEnglish Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, Die Monumentalmalerei in Serbien und Makedonien, Geschichte der Serbischen Kunst: von den Anfngen bis zum Ende des Mittelalters, Portraits and Portraiture: Donor Portraits, Court Ceremonies and Rituals of Power in Byzantium and the Medieval Mediterranean: Comparative Perspectives, Early Christian and Byzantine Political Philosophy, Lidologie politique de lempire byzantin, Eternal Victory: Triumphal Rulership in Late Antiquity, Byzantium and the Medieval West, The Byzantine Republic: People and Power in New Rome, Miniature delle omelie di Giacomo Monaco (cod. It is also significant that in this image, as Brubaker states, the gift itself comes to represent the relation of the emperor to the Virgin, and through her, to God It makes visible the legitimacy of imperial power itself.Footnote 16 We should not confuse this gift with that of the true contact portraits that are the subject of this study. See also F. Cimok (ed. The only thing worse than not enough data is too much of it. Muz., Syn. With every campaign, every new event, you should be thinking data capture. More Than a Portrait on the Wall - Capital Research Center 2, fol. Creating a lasting legacy Broad brush strokes combined with bold colors give the portraits an impressionistic effect. In other words, giving works best when donors feel like their . A summary is not available for this content. please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. An apt example is the dual coronation of John II Komnenos and his son Alexios in a Gospel book of the first half of the twelfth century. Now that people were able to capture each others likenesses instantly and with greater precision than any human hand ever could, modern painters much like the ancient ones finally returned to abstraction. gr. [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. In this scene Constantine has in his hands a model of the walled city of Constantinople, in reference to his construction of the city walls, while Justinian has a model of the Church of Hagia Sophia, in reference to his reconstruction of the building. Alexios, it would seem, is not giving the book to Christ, as has generally been thought, but reading to him from it.Footnote 12. 1v, 1061. However, even when no proskynesis is present, there is generally a different atmosphere to the later scenes than the earlier ones. 2) Dutch portraiture. 25 H. Buchtal, An Illuminated Byzantine Gospel Book about 1100 AD, Special Bulletin of the National Gallery of Victoria (1961), 1ff. 1.4 and 1.5). They were either depicted as themselves or as the reincarnations of gods, and they were always drawn in profile. After many centuries in which generic representation had been the norm, distinctive portrait likenesses began to reappear in Europe in the fifteenth century. They are your audience, the people reading your direct mail, visiting your website, or following you on social media. . Positiveness, thinking out of the box, testing new opportunities, and overcoming my fears are all grounds why I consider myself a professional and interesting person. Not sure if youve got the right information to work with? 1333. It thus places emphasis on an almost legal aspect of possession. Donor portrait usually refers to the portrait or portraits of donors alone, as a section of a larger work, whereas votive portrait may often refer to a whole work of art intended as an ex-voto, including for example a Madonna, especially if the donor is very prominent. 2) (Rome: Danesi, 1910); Spatharakis, Portrait, 7983; H. Evans and W. Wixom (eds. See also F. T. van Straten, Hier kal: Images of Animal Sacrifice in Archaic and Classical Greece (Leiden: Brill, 1995). Ist. All rights reserved. This reading provides a solution to the unusual features that appeared when the image was taken as a donor portrait. The terms are not used very consistently by art historians, as Angela Marisol Roberts points out,[1] and may also be used for smaller religious subjects that were probably made to be retained by the commissioner rather than donated to a church. Figure 1.4: Zoe and Constantine Monomachos before Christ, mosaic in south gallery of the Church of Hagia Sophia, Istanbul, 102850.