Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 16.djvu/329

PORTOVIEJO. 277 PORTRAITURE. taken and burned by pirates. Its population is reported to be about 10,000. PORT PHIL'LIP. The harbor of Melbourne (q.v. ) , Australia. PORTRAITURE. In the fine arts the repre- sentation, by means of painting, sculpture, or en- graving, of the appearance of an individual or a group of persons. As regards size portraits may be busts, half figure, three-quarter or full length ; as regards the position of the countenance, they are full face, half profile, profile or profil perdu, if the face is further reversed. Portraiture is of very ancient origin. Sepulchral statues of the earliest Egj-ptian empire show that the art was even then highl}' developed. During the best period of Greek art, ideal portraits of individuals, of a certain likeness, but rather intended to rep- resent character types, were frequently executed, both in statues and in busts, as may be seen from the most celebrated surviving examples, the Lateran "Sophocles" and the bust of Pericles in the British Museum. Realism does not enter portraiture till the age of Lysippus, who was es- pecially celebrated for his portraits of Alexander the Great, copies of which survive in the well- known busts in the principal European museums. At the same time portraiture was first practiced in painting by Apelles, also celebrated for his likenesses of Alexander. The only surviving por- trait paintings of Greek art are those recently discovered in the Fa.^^um, of Grfeco-Egyptian workmanship, and dating from the second cen- tury .4.1). The realistic tendencies of the Etruscan Art Were favorable to portraiture, especially in bronze, the material in which the Etruscans excelled; a good example is the bust of Brutus in the C'apito- liiie Museum at Rome. Their art had a strong inrtuence upon the Roman, which was, however, even more infiuenced by Greece in the develop- ment of portraiture, which became the most char- acteristic form of Roman sculpture. As with the Greeks, the body was portrayed as a type, in the ideal fashion, the resemblance to the individual being confined to the face. Costumes and insignia were portrayed in the most elaborate fashion. Busts were especially popular, and it became quite the fashion to collect them. (See Bu.STS.) Beginning with the empire portraiture flourished at Rome until about the beginning of the third century, and about the time of Justinian, in the sixth century, it sank into disuse. A very com- mon form of portraiture under the empire was upon ivory diptychs, which Roman, civil, and ec- clesiastical officials distributed among their friends. This practice was continued by the By- zantines, who also used mosaics for portraiture, as may be seen in the celebrated examples of .Jus- tinian and Theodora in San Vitale, Ravenna. The chief use of portraiture during the middle age was for sepulchral figures, which were por- trayed recumbent, seated, or kneeling. Attempts at portraiture are often apparent in the faces of the statues of the Gothic cathedrals in France, and in the thirteenth century it attained a splen- did development in the statues of donors, erected in German cathedrals of the transitional period, as at Naimiburg and Bamberg. These likenesses were of an ideal character, but a more realistic portraiture was practiced in the latter four- teenth century, especially by the Netherlandish school, with centre at Dijon. The chief master was Claux Sluter, and the statues produced were the most realistic portraits imaginable. This sculpture had, in turn, a marked influence upon contemporary painting in the Netherlands. The work of .Jan van Eyck and his school, of the four- teenth century was highly characteristic and nat- uralistic, and most detailed in finish. In so naturalistic an age as the early Renais- sance, portraiture flourished to a high degree. It was first practiced at Florence by the sculptors, Donatello having revived the art in the form in his busts, which unite excellent characterization with an admirable naturalism, tempered by the antiijue. The art was continued by Desiderio da Settignano and Mino daFiesole.andwith high suc- cess in Ijronzes by Verroccliio. It was not practiced the flrst half of the fifteenth century l)y the paint- ers of Florence, but during the latter half Botti- celli, Ghirlandajo, Pollaiuolo, and others attained high success. It was, howevei', reserved for the fifteenth century to unite with realism and suli- jective conception an ideal rendering of the sub- ject, which made the portrait typical in the highest sense. This success was attained by most of the chief masters of the Renais.sance, such as Leonardo, Andrea del Sarto, Raphael, and Lo- renzo Lotto; among the Venetians by Giorgione, Palma Vecchio, Titian, Tintoretto, and by Morone of Brescia. During the same period the Germans practiced portraiture of quite a different type, less refined in form and more careful in detail, but with strong characterization in the work of men like Diirer. and with a ])erfect, objective real- ism in that of Holbein, who was chiefly active as a portrait painter in England. Since the sixteenth century portraiture has found its chief expression in painting. Even dur- ing the decline of the Italian and other schools, portraiture remained comparatively good, because in it the artist is compelled to adhere to nature. Mth the great development of painting in the seventeenth century portraiture assumed a new importance, especially in the schools which at- tained the highest development, namely those of the Xetherlan<ls and of Spain. In Holland Rem- brandt, by the skillful manipulation of light and shade and by skillful coloring, achieved highly realistic and characteristic results. Frans Hals, whose activity wa.s confined to portrait painting, portrayed his figures in full light, and with genial observation: while Van der Heist and many oth- ers did good work in portraiture. This school developed the group jucture. and heightened the elTect of the portrait "by an appropriate back- groiuid. The work of the Flemish school repre- sents a modification of the purely realistic con- ception by Italian refinement of color. .Rubens's portraits were of wonderful strength and charac- terization, while Van Dyke's were of a more re- fined and courtly character. In Spain portrai- ture attained the highest possible development in the works of Velasquez, who with the subtle in- tellectual observation and the highest technique portrayed the Spanish grandees from the stand- point of absolute realism. During the same period portraiture of good, though a more artifi- cial character, was practiced by the Eclectic schools, in Italy, and by the courtly painters of France. Although the eighteenth century was an age of decline in painting, portraiture found in France a characteristic, realistic expression in the works