donor portrait purpose

Donor recognition walls can display a lot of names, so they are most often installed after a large capital campaign. Hans Memlings portraits of Tommaso and Maria Portinari (14.40.626-27), painted around 1470, were also probably meant to flank the image of a saint in a small triptych, yet each likeness fills a whole panel and has the emphasis of a portrait in its own right. [21] By the mid-15th century this was no longer the case, and donors of whom other likenesses survive can often be seen to be carefully portrayed, although, as in the Memling above, daughters in particular often appear as standardized beauties in the style of the day. The second is the Constantine and Justinian panel in the southwest vestibule (see Fig. 680850). Yet, even had it been done during Justinians lifetime, there would have been no less of that historical awareness, because the image represents two events (the construction of the city walls and the church) and two personalities themselves divided by several hundred years, Constantine himself having died in 337. This depiction of the supplicant together with the deity as a living figure is not unique to Byzantium, however. Urbin. The Portrait in the Renaissance. The earthly ruler is substituted by a heavenly figure, the result being the typical Byzantine proskynesis contact portrait. These paintings were called donor portraits, and their purpose was to inspire the commissioner and their loved ones toward prayer. Rico Franses. There also existed a strong tradition for . Seriously. Although there is a superficial resemblance between ktetor portraits and donor contact portraits, this classification makes evident that, at their core, they are very different, precisely in terms of their relationship to the holy figures. Amongst a large bibliography, see also R. Cormack, The Emperor at St Sophia: Viewer and Viewed, in A. Guillou and J. Durand (eds. Yet, in terms of standard contact portraits, this image is still unusual. This is visible in the forward tilt of his shoulders, and his head leaning back to peer up at Christ through slightly furrowed brows. A hint of the same position appears in the brief article in The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium by Kalavrezou. Since there is no greater authority represented, there is no prickly path to negotiate in the relationship between varying grades of supreme power. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. They don't have to be an actual image, but they do need to conjure one - to consolidate everything you know about your donors, give them personality and form. See also Radoji, Serbischen Kunst, 81. In the discussion above we have been concerned with images that, although initially seeming to represent a ruler making a donation to a holy figure, on closer inspection were better labeled as quasi donor portraits or ktetor portraits. 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. Portraits of lay supplicants before a holy figure are found the length and breadth of the Byzantine world and its sphere of influence, and at all times. Collecting the data* you need to create your donor portrait. Urbin. Although none have survived, there is literary evidence of donor portraits in small chapels from the Early Christian period,[11] probably continuing the traditions of pagan temples. 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. The second subgroup of this category comprises images such as those of Manuel above, where no donation is shown, but in which the ardent desire for a relationship between the lay figure and the spiritual figure is evident. Pope Honorius I (died 638), mosaic in Sant'Agnese fuori le Mura in Rome, carrying a model of the church he built. [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. 37 D. Kleiner, Roman Sculpture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 29294. 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 666 in the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, of around 1120. 15035; Muse du Louvre, Paris), for instance, increases the sense of connection between sitter and viewer by placing the hands on the window ledge; the enigmatic smile departs from the perfect composure seen elsewhere. However, there are also other elements in the image that militate against it being defined as a true donor portrait. [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. My concern is . 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. 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. Christ sits while the emperor stands, yet their heads, and particularly their eyes, appear on exactly the same horizontal level. 3 G. Millet, La peinture du moyen ge en Yougoslavie, 4 vols. Here are some of the key pieces of information we think a good donor portrait should include: Demographic information:As a starting point you need to make sure youre capturing all the headline information you can: name, gender, date of birth, a current address, and contact information. In the imperial ktetor portrait, however, the direction of address is not from the lay figure toward Christ, but outward, from the emperor toward the observer. Early Netherlandish painters, bridging the gap between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, introduced a number of features we take for granted today. Should we, then, apply only the term ktetor, and not donor, to these latter images? This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. This speaks volumes about the change of tenor in the images. It exploits to a much greater degree the many expressive possibilities of the folding of the human body. 1.3).Footnote 7. Further, the specific action of Christ laying his hands upon the heads of the two emperors narrates how they come to have this power. 25 H. Buchtal, An Illuminated Byzantine Gospel Book about 1100 AD, Special Bulletin of the National Gallery of Victoria (1961), 1ff. A. Godley, Loeb Clasical Library 117 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981), 1:134. For example, the opening night selection, at 6 p.m. April 26 at the Lincoln Theatre, is the documentary "Hargrove," writer-director Eliane Henri's portrait of iconic jazz musician Roy . Also see K. Clark, Checklist of Manuscripts in the Libraries of the Greek and Armenian Patriarchate in Jerusalem (Washington: Library of Congress, 1953), 15 and 30, and Spatharakis, Portrait, 5759. The word ktetor derives from the Greek ktaomai, which in ancient Greek means to procure or to acquire, and by Late Antique times comes to mean to possess or to own.Footnote 1 These languages thus know these images as owners or possessors portraits. A PDF of this content is also available in through the Save PDF action button. the only contingency they did not envisage was what actually occurred, that their faces would survive but their names go astray. Displaying portraits in a public place was also an expression of social status; donor portraits overlapped with tomb monuments in churches, the other main way of achieving these ends, although donor portraits had the advantage that the donor could see them displayed in his own lifetime. Being both non-imperial and primarily religious, they do not have to occupy themselves with the difficult issue of the balance between power centers in the image. You might not find these in your online analytics, but the more opportunities you have to engage with your donors, talk to them and find out why they give to you, the more notes you can add to their profile. Mannerist artists adjusted these conventions to produce works like Bronzinos portrait of a young man (29.100.16) painted in the 1530s: the figure again appears half-length, but the expression is aloof rather than serene, curious pieces of furniture replace the barrier along the lower border, and the handsthe right fingering the pages of a book and the left fixed on the hipsuggest momentary action and bravado rather than quiet dignity. 27 B. Buchanan, Catalogue of Ancient Near Eastern Seals in the Ashmolean Museum, vol. 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. ), Byzantine Court Culture from 829 to 1204 (Washington: Dumbarton Oaks, 1997): see especially Maguires chapter The Heavenly Court, 24758. Instead, you should start by analysing your data as a whole. Paintings either depicted deceased saints or characters from the Bible, which were drawn from description and imagination rather than references. 456v, thirteenth century. Several significant differences are evident between this image and our Byzantine scenes, however, including, obviously, the presence of the sacrificial apparatus in the form of the altar. The result of this combination of the direct donation of the supplicant and the living, breathing quality of the recipient results in an immediate increase in the vividness of the donation and the reality of the contact between lay and holy. John of Damascus, John Chrysostom, and Gregory of Nazianzos (Fig. 1.6). This freshly unearthed image drastically alters the meaning of one of the artists most celebrated works. There would be a net benefit in classifying all the scenes in this way in that the phrase donor portrait would be reserved for images that show clearly and explicitly an offering being made. 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. Its important to keep a log of key meetings, conversations, email threads, and notes. 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. This is a deeply orthodox emperor, but not a humble one. 0.3 and 0.4). 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. 21 Pelekanides and Chatzidakes, Kastoria, 11; Velmans, Peinture, 8586. See further reading for Kocks. of your Kindle email address below. It is not to establish a relationship with an all-powerful Christ whose aid one desperately seeks at the most critical hour, but to impress the observer with their authority. [7], 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:[8]. 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. In a sense, the earlier scene serves to authenticate the unimpeachable heritage of the volume that appears in the later. Jacobs, Lynn F., "Rubens and the Northern Past: The Michielsen Triptych and the Thresholds of Modernity". A case-in-point is Albrecht Drers self-portrait from 1500. These scenes, however, are not the only ones demonstrating the overlapping concerns of the worldly and the spiritual. Jan van Eycks infamous Arnolfini Portrait (1434) emphasizes not only the faces of their sitters but their possessions as well: The ceremonial garb, wooden slippers, and partially lit chandelier indicate the couples married status. And he is certainly no supplicant. This difference between the images seems to match exactly the distinction between the Western and Eastern European languages. This is imperial iconography at its purest. It distinguishes clearly between those scenes whose primary goal is the putting in play of a distinctive relationship between the lay and spiritual worlds (the chief subject matter of this book) and those scenes where that relationship is not at stake to the same degree. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single entry from a reference work in OR for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Can you see a picture forming, an outline of your typical donor? 1.12). If a regular person was featured in a painting, they were depicted as partaking in a recognizable religious scene such as the birth or death of Christ. There is an intensity in his interaction with the holy figure that is entirely absent from the Dragutin and Oliver scenes. They were either depicted as themselves or as the reincarnations of gods, and they were always drawn in profile. In the first place, Christ is given the benefit of the uppermost, centralized placement, in contrast to the two emperors, who appear below him, and to the side. 1.4 and 1.5). Look at your headline numbers. Note that endowed funds have minimum required amounts. (Zurich: Artemis, 198199), vol. 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. 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. It should be stressed that this taxonomy is not conclusive and definitive. and ed. See also S. Kalopissi-Verti, The Peasant as Donor (13th14th Centuries), in J.-M. Spieser and E. Yota (eds. Gr. 13 The Vatican manuscript under discussion here is one of two imperial commissions of the Panoplia still extant, the other being Mosq. gr. Once we notice the gesture of St. Dionysios, we also see that several of the Fathers behind him make a similar gesture with their own scrolls, also proffering them toward the emperor. As is to be expected, almost nothing has survived from the iconoclastic period, the one exception perhaps being an icon of St. Irene with a very small supplicant in proskynesis beside her, dated by Weitzmann to the eighth or ninth century (Monastery of St. Katherine, Sinai, Fig. A painting in the Catacombs of Commodilla of 528 shows a throned Virgin and Child flanked by two saints, with Turtura, a female donor, in front of the left hand saint, who has his hand on her shoulder; very similar compositions were being produced a millennium later. Figure 1.8: Emperor Alexios Komnenos, Panoplia Dogmatica, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vatican, gr. 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. It is fully understandable that the gesture should have been carried over from imperial art, and that it became so popular.Footnote 40. II, 4546. [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. It is true that, within the overall pictorial schema of the church, the gift is ultimately destined for Christ in the apse, but the absence in the image itself of the figure for whom it is intended has certain consequences. If you dont know who they are (yes, there can be more than one segment or portrait) you are fundraising in the dark. ), A Patristic Greek Lexicon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961); F. W. Danker (rev. 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. Lets face it. 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. Endowed funds provide income every year in perpetuity to carry out the designated purpose of the fund. @kindle.com emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. [2] Gifts to the church of buildings, altarpieces, or large areas of stained glass were often accompanied by a bequest or condition that masses for the donor be said in perpetuity, and portraits of the persons concerned were thought to encourage prayers on their behalf during these, and at other times. It should be remarked as well that the proskynesis that we find in Byzantium is not quite the one that we find in Rome. Hostname: page-component-75b8448494-jf2r5 They dont 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. 1v, c. 1120. It makes sense, then, to retain the terms donor and donor portraits, but only for those contact images specifically showing donations. 26 J. Oates, Babylon (London: Thames & Hudson, 1986), 175. We have so far been concerned with exploring the broad range of images of lay portraits and holy figures in relation to the classifications of contact or ktetor scenes, using the kind of contact manifested between the figures and the power relations between them as defining features. Imperial ktetor scenes obviously differ in several respects from these coronations; yet, when viewed through the prism of power relationships, they share certain key features. Nothing could be further in spirit and feeling from our Byzantine images.Footnote 34, One further feature also plays a crucial role in determining the unique characteristics of many of the Byzantine images that, surprisingly, we do not find in the earlier examples: the proskynesis of the supplicant before the holy figure. Raphaels widely imitated portrait of Baldassare Castiglione (ca. A specific example taken from a large range of possibilities is the picture of a supplicant in proskynesis named simply George in the Church of Hagios Stephanos in Kastoria (1338, Fig. Even though still clearly within the context of pagan sacrifice, with its animal offering and the statue of the goddess standing upon the column, there is a major difference in that the scene contains no altar. Until the Reformation, paintings could be found only in churches and parishes. It thus places emphasis on an almost legal aspect of possession. The Sources: An Annotated Survey (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001), 66. If they are on different sides, the males are normally on the left for the viewer, the honorific right-hand placement within the picture space. [19] This innovation, however, did not appear in Venetian painting until the turn of the next century. Annunciation Triptych (Merode Altarpiece), Portrait of a Woman with a Man at a Casement, Tommaso di Folco Portinari (14281501); Maria Portinari (Maria Maddalena Baroncelli, born 1456), Filippo Archinto (born about 1500, died 1558), Archbishop of Milan, Guidobaldo II della Rovere, Duke of Urbino (15141574), With his Armor by Filippo Negroli, Portrait of a Young Man, Probably Robert Devereux (15661601), Second Earl of Essex, Princess Elizabeth (15961662), Later Queen of Bohemia, Portrait of a Woman, Probably Susanna Lunden (Susanna Fourment, 15991628), The Artist's Mother: Head and Bust, Three-Quarters Right, James Stuart (16121655), Duke of Richmond and Lennox, Don Gaspar de Guzmn (15871645), Count-Duke of Olivares, Rubens, Helena Fourment (16141673), and Their Son Frans (16331678), Everhard Jabach (16181695) and His Family, The Nude in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, The Nude in Western Art and Its Beginnings in Antiquity, Painting the Life of Christ in Medieval and Renaissance Italy, The Birth and Infancy of Christ in Italian Painting, The Crucifixion and Passion of Christ in Italian Painting, Peter Paul Rubens (15771640) and Anthony van Dyck (15991641): Paintings, Burgundian Netherlands: Court Life and Patronage, Mannerism: Bronzino (15031572) and his Contemporaries, Painting in Oil in the Low Countries and Its Spread to Southern Europe, Paintings of Love and Marriage in the Italian Renaissance, Patronage at the Later Valois Courts (14611589), Prague during the Rule of Rudolf II (15831612), Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle, Sixteenth-Century Painting in Emilia-Romagna, Sixteenth-Century Painting in Venice and the Veneto. Creating a lasting legacy 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. 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. 5 I. Kalavrezou-Maxeiner, Portraits and Portraiture: Donor Portraits, in A. Kazhdan (ed. Portraiture. And in this, there is truth. III: Codices 604866 (Vatican: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 193750), 109; P. Canart and V. Peri, Sussidi bibliografici per i manoscritti Greci della Biblioteca Vaticana (Vatican: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1970), 463. [6], Sometimes, as in the Ghent Altarpiece, the donors were shown on the closed view of an altarpiece with movable wings, or on both the side panels, as in the Portinari Altarpiece and the Memlings above, or just on one side, as in the Mrode Altarpiece. Published online: 26 October 2018. Power still radiates from the lay figure, but we are not told how he comes to be in possession of it. 1.29).Footnote 42 Here too, the emperor appears in procession, accompanied by religious figures and attendants as he participates in a religious ritual bringing gifts to the gods, but where no holy recipients are represented. 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.
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