Eye to Eye: European Portraits 1450–1850

Posted: 17 Jan 2012  |  By: Patricia Anderson - Editor

Eye to Eye: European Portraits 1450–1850
Richard Rand & Kathleen M. Morris
Yale University Press
ISBN 978-0-300-17564-6
160 pp
RRP $69.95

Fixing a likeness of someone has been with us for millennia. It gathered momentum with the unflinching realism of Roman portraiture in marble, where every furrowed brow and facial deformity was given exact expression, then it faltered for nearly 1000 years. Why? Christianity in Europe effaced the value of the individual in favour of anonymous generic worshippers with wide eyes and stylised features focused on heavenly rewards — in frescoes, in carvings and in stained glass windows.

By the fifteenth century, mankind again became the subject of enquiry, thanks to the world of antiquity exposed in excavations in Greece and Italy and the resurfacing of texts from the ancient world which Moslem scholars had saved and copied. The ‘humanist’ momentum gathered pace as man himself — and his earthly achievements — became worthy of documentation again.

The ultimate expression of individual appearances from the mid-1400s to the mid-1800s is documented in a remarkable volume published this year by Yale University Press. It was written to coincide with an exhibition of the same name Eye to Eye: European Portraits 1450–1850, at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts. The text is by Richard Rand, a curator of paintings and sculpture, and Kathleen M. Morris, a curator of decorative arts — which seems more than appropriate as so many of the portraits dazzle with precious accessories such as gold, gemstones, pearls and richly embroidered fabrics.

Apart from the handsome production of the book, with its dense buttermilk-coloured paper and its extraordinarily fine reproductions of the portraits in question, what holds the reader’s attention is the transmutation of ground pigments and various oils applied to a wooden or linen surface hundreds of years ago, which created, over and over again, these miracles of exactitude. The people represented here are very real indeed — they do everything except speak to us.

Take, for example, Parmigianino’s Portrait of a Man, whose grave expression suggests sombre thought. One languid and well-manicured hand — pallid and with perfect nails —balances a gold embossed volume on his lap with one thumb slipped inside to hold the pages apart. The work is a miracle of simplicity with light pooling on his graceful features and his ungloved hand.

Clearly, those who could afford to sit for portraits of this kind were wealthy, well placed, or celebrated for a particular historical or cultural achievement. Some — in a mediaeval equivalent of Facebook — were quite likely providing the equivalent of a photo to be approved of by some prospective suitor.

Works simply called Portrait of a Young Man or Portrait of a Young woman have provided as much forensic excitement for curators and specialists as works produced by hands unknown. One such portrait by Thomas de Keyser, one of Amsterdam’s most successful portrait painters before the arrival of Rembrandt, places a young determined woman close to the front of a tiny (barely ten inches ) panel in oil. Her head is tilted in speculation or perhaps defiance. The viewer can feel the starched ruff against her jaw and the waxed surface of the chair rest on which her firm hand is poised. These visual marvels are repeated page after page in this rewarding book.

Images from top:

book cover, Giovanni Battista Moroni, Portrait of a Young Woman, c.1564.

Parmigianino, Portrait of a Man, c.1530.