How to Read Portraits

Useful if disjointed online lecture from ARTscapades giving an overview of portraiture from Roman times to now.

Kathryn Galitz from the Metropolitan Museum Art took the starting point of how important portraits still our to us from major exhibitions in the last few years to the controversy over the debate over the altered image circulated by the Princess of Wales earlier this year. We expect a portrait to be a visual truth but it is multi-faceted.

She talked about different uses of portraits over the year from the promotion of an image in the Roman world, through Renaissance wedding portrait to discuss how deception was often an accepted practice. She moved on to how the merchant classes often wanted to show a sense of self and their wealth and then looked at how portraits became more symbolic such as Van Gogh’s painting of his chair.

Galitz finished by looking at how artists have portrayed themselves from Rembrandt to Cindy Sherman, often playing with identity via their own image.