Blog about portraits

Leonardo di Ser Piero da Vinci, most popularly known as Leonardo da Vinci, was an Italian Renaissance polymath. He was a painter as well as a sculptor, engineer and many more. He was born on the 15^th of April 1452, as an illegitimate son of Piero Fruosino di Antonio da Vinci, a notary, and Caterina, a peasant woman. He has no surname, ‘da Vinci’ means ‘of Vinci’, so in other terms his name means ‘Leonardo of Vinci’. In the earlier time of his life, he was educated in the studio of Verrochio, a renowned painter in Florence during that time. He then worked in service for Ludovico il Morro in Milan, and then later he spent his life in Rome, Bologna and in Venice. He spent the last years of his life in the home awarded to him by Francis I in France, teaching prospective painters.

Leornardo da Vinci is considered as one of the best portrait painters of all time due to his unique technique that makes a portrait painting look real and three dimensional. He used an innovative technique in his painting, especially portrait paintings, which other painters during his time don’t know of. One of the great things about da Vinci is his great knowledge about how humans register emotions through the face and through gestures; his in-depth understanding about anatomy and the like made it possible for him to paint precise body parts of each person in his paintings.

In the portraits that he painted, he used a technique called Sfumato, wherein the colors and edges are softened with dark glazes. It can also be called a subtle gradation of tone; it looks like the colors are fading thus, making the painting look more real. The application of the Sfumato technique was very prominent in da Vinci’s paintings; and he was the one who conceptualized the technique. Another style that he used in painting portraits is known as Chiaroscuro, which is a way of shading that uses the brightness of the color rather than color itself.

It can be observed that da Vinci always uses these techniques in his portrait painting, wherein he employs different shades of a specific color rather than using a lot of different colors. He expands the range of luminance in his portraits than using numerous hues as other artists do. Another da Vinci style is the use of Velatura technique in his portraits, where the colors or paints are mixed in a canvas rather than in a palette. This style gives a milky or foggy haze that makes what is underneath vague.

Undoubtedly, the most famous of his works is the Mona Lisa painting. It can be seen in this work of art that da Vinci used the Sfumato technique at the corner of the woman’s eyes and mouth to make it look alive and real. By this, the tones blend with one another and it eliminates sharp lines thus creating an atmospheric effect. The liveliness of the Mona Lisa painting was even more enhanced as da Vinci mixed the colors in a canvas and not in a palette.

In the later years of his life, he spent it living in Belvedere in Vatican, Rome. In 1516, he was given the permission to use of the manor house Clos Luce, which is near the King’s residence. He then spent the last three years of his life in the manor accompanied by his apprentice at the same time his friend Count Francesco Melzi and was supported by a total of 10, 000 scudi pension. Da Vinci’s life ended in the manor on May 2, 1519.

Author:   Shyxter

John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) was known for his great pieces of portraits during his generation. Most of his pieces are Edwardian Era inspired. You may be awed of the number of portrait paintings he has made throughout his career; he crafted 900 oil paintings and over 2, 000 watercolors along with countless sketch works and charcoal drawings. His original compositions have travelled across the globe like Venice to the Tyrol, Corfu, the Middle East, Montana, Maine and Florida.

John Singer Sargent is an American emigrant who went to school as a French artist in Paris before he moved to London. Sargent was globally acclaimed to be a great portrait painter in Paris but despite his brilliant credentials in portrait painting, his portrait work Madame X in Salon has raised some issues though he considered it as his best piece of all time.

The scandal affected him badly that he left Paris regardless of the stature of his career. He decided to settle in England and pursued his love for the arts. Sargent was an intellectual diversified painter, an Impressionist, a Classical Portraitist, a Landscape Artist, and a public Muralist. His paintings were criticized for he lacks trend and radical thought in his art pieces, but instead he worked within established styles in rich textured pallets. His brilliance in incorporating the elements in painting techniques was never acknowledged.

One of his most famous masterpieces is the portrait he made for President Theodore Roosevelt in an oil canvas. Prior to this painting, Sargent and Roosevelt roamed around the White House to look for a perfect lighting. In this portrait piece he used some nuanced blacks, grays, browns and creams. Sargent’s unique style of combining color elements made the portrait of President Roosevelt so vivid that it looked more lifelike; the pose was surreal of respect and dignity.

In his watercolor works, he derived his techniques from an artistic inspiration. Sargent used wax resists, challenging washes, and varied brushstrokes to express his subjects with intense accuracy and emphasis. He usually started with a pencil drawing, over which he layered the watercolor and sometimes added gouache (another water-based paint type).

Sargent always included sensual brushstrokes in his oil paintings, which was clearly seen in his portrait work for Pres. Roosevelt. His works were always a subject of criticism to the point that he was accused to be an admirer of the Post-Impressionists. Though Sargent denied it, he still considered El Greco as one of his painting influences.

Sargent never failed to stress out vital strokes to define the importance of his subject. Whatever object is involved, Sargent intricately employed these strokes in his portrait works. From the texture of the fur, the sheen of silk, the knots in the lace, the rays of the sun, even a rosy-colored cheek, Sargent embodied all the minute details in every stroke. He was not the kind to generalize it all in one stroke but he carefully defined each detail in a vivid manner. Sargent was not just a plain painter, he captured every detail of the moment and the result was always exceptional and brilliant. He is able to bring impact to every subject of his painting.

Sargent put passion with great intensity in all his artworks even though circumstances were tough; he never stopped to fulfill his passion in arts. Today as many painters have already emerged, Sargent’s brilliant artworks have infused art with clear and direct perspective on his subjects. His masterpieces conveyed clear messages and thought.

Author:   Shyxter

Raffaello Santi, more famously known as Raphael, was an Italian artist born on April 6,1483 in the artistic city of Urbino, Italy. Raphael’s father, Giovanni Santi, was also artistically inclined as a court painter and a poet. He was deeply influenced by his father’s passion for the arts. His mother, Magia, died early in 1491 when Raphael was just eight years old. He was completely orphaned when his father died in 1494, where he lived with his uncle Bartolome who was a priest.

Raphael was a multi-talented artist as he excelled in the fields of portrait painting, architecture, history, and poetry.  He is one of the 3 three greatest artists of the High Renaissance, an Italian period of remarkable artistic creation from the 1490s to the 1520s. He is most recognized for his Madonna paintings and murals in the Vatican Palace.

Raphael’s first art lessons were with his father and when he reached sixteen, he became a student of Pietro Perugino who was a well-known painter and teacher of the Italian Renaissance. According to art gurus, most of Raphael’s works clearly show the influence of his teacher Perugino. During that time, art experts found it hard to distinguish Perugino’s work from Raphael’s as the two artists seem to employ similar painting techniques. It is said that “probably no other pupil of genius has ever absorbed so much of his master’s teaching as Raphael did”. Raphael’s technique was just like his teacher, where he applied paint densely in oil varnish mediums.

At twenty-one, Raphael went to live in Florence where he studied the styles of Leonardo Da Vinci and Michaelangelo. Many say that he copied the style of these two artists, but as he progressed he was able to make a unique blend of his own technique and Florentine art. Raphael’s portraits have light atmospheres, balanced movements and compositions, and impeccable richness and clarity in color. He loved painting nature and portraits of people. In his paintings, he employed the faces of his family and friends and showed a great reverence for women.

One of Raphael’s most renowned paintings is the Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione, an oil painting of Baldassare Castiglione who was a humanist and an ambassador to the Pope. Castiglione and Raphael were good friends and in his portrait painting, Raphael perfectly illustrated the marks of an accomplished and well-respected personality. Raphael distinctly depicted his friend in the portrait as an elegant and intelligent gentleman.

The Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione showed a simple but unique blend of 4 shades only – white, black, gray, and a little bit of beige. The portrait was covered in a subtle light in which Castiglione’s shadow slightly fades at the right side. Raphael made sure that the face and penetrating gaze of Castiglione are the focus of the painting by purposely cutting the portrait at the hands of his model.

Raphael’s life was abruptly finished when he died of severe fever at the age of 37. A very interesting fact is that he was born on a Good Friday and died on the day of his birthday, April 6, 1520. Although he left behind an incomplete transformation in the world of arts, his skills as an excellent artist made a great mark in history.

Author:  Shyxter

Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez, known to the world as Diego Velazquez, is not only Spain’s most renowned painter but also one of the best artists of all ages. Born a few days before his baptism on June 6, 1599 in Seville, Spain, he was the eldest child of Jeronima Velazquez and Juan Rodríguez de Silva. Both his parents came from average nobility; as his mother belonged to the lesser gentry of the Hidalgo class while his father was a lawyer who came from a decent Portuguese ancestry. He carried the surname of his mother since it was a Spanish tradition that the firstborn male will preserve his mother’s heritage.

Velazquez had a religious upbringing and was given a good education by his parents. He took up language and philosophy trainings and eventually revealed his great interest for the arts. He studied under a highly spirited painter, Francisco de Herrera, and for one year Velazquez mastered using paint brushes with extended bristles. When he turned 12, he left Herrera’s school and became a trainee of Francisco Pacheco. Pacheco was just an ordinary artist teacher in Seville but his upfront practicality trained Velazquez to have a good eye on artistic angles and proportions. He stayed with Pacheco for five years and at the age of 19, he married his teacher’s daughter. He went to Madrid in 1622 and became the official portraitist of the Spanish royal family and other prominent European personalities.

This Spanish portraitist had a very distinctive style like no other European artist. Aside from portraits, Velazquez also made paintings about history, culture, religion, nature, and everyday life. Because of his varied works, he became known as the “noblest and most commanding man among the artists of his country”. The realism in his paintings was unparalleled, as the characters and settings on his portraits seem to breathe life. Velazquez was very good at color combinations, and his painting style showed a great balance of light and line elements. Because of this, his contemporaries regarded him as “the painter’s painter”. He has greatly influenced painters of the succeeding generation in the likes of Bartolome Murillo, Francisco de Goya, and Edouard Manet.

The Las Meninas, or Maids of Honour, is known to be the finest painting in the Western realm and one of the most bewildering too. There is a certain combination of realism and delusion in the painting that makes it complex and mysterious. It shows a room in the palace of King Philip IV with some of the characters looking directly towards the viewer of the painting. Velazquez showed himself in the picture but the main figure was the Infanta Margarita, the Spanish princess, with her maids and chaperones. According to art analysts, the Las Meninas painting portrays that “art and life are an illusion”. Velazquez might have wanted to convey that life for him is a dream too. The portrait can also be understood as a depiction of Velazquez’s career being the royal family’s Official of the Court, in which he served as such for most of his life.

Author: Shyxter

Known to be one of the most celebrated portrait painters in history, Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was born on July 15, 1606 in Leiden, Dutch Republic. He came from a well-off family and was given a good education by his parents. During his younger years, he studied at a Latin school and attended the University of Leiden at age 14. Studying in the university did not please him, as painting was what he really wanted to do. Rembrandt eventually left the university to pursue his great love for the arts and became a student of Jacob van Swanenburgh, a local history painter. He stayed with this Leiden master for 3 years, after which he met his greatest teacher Pieter Lastman in Amsterdam. His apprenticeship with Pieter lasted for only 6 months, but it taught him enough to become a master portrait artist like his teachers. He returned to his homeland in 1624 and at age 22, he started teaching and sharing his craft to aspiring students. This was the beginning of Rembrandt’s great journey towards prominence in the world of arts.

As seen on his paintings, Rembrandt is considered to be the most precise and insightful portrait painters who ever lived. That is why most of his contemporaries believe that he is indeed the greatest portraitist of the human face. With his expertise in shadow and light effects known as chiaroscuro, his human portraits exude a realistic and soulful representation of feelings unlike any other artist. In a personal letter, Rembrandt expressed what he wanted to realize in his paintings and that is to portray the greatest and most natural movement.

Rembrandt was also deeply spiritual and biblical in his paintings. He was a master portraitist of biblical stories and divine interpretations. The Blinding of Samson was one of his biblical masterpieces which he created in 1636 at Frankfurt. He impeccably combined worldly and spiritual aspects that show his deep understanding of human existence.

Rembrandt’s most renowned painting was the Night Watch, or commonly called The Shooting Company of Frans Banning Cocq. It is an oil-on-canvass type of painting which he completed in 1642. The Night Watch is notably displayed in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam as the most famous painting in their exhibition. The portrait is well-known because of 3 notable features: its huge size of 363 cm × 437 cm (142.9 in × 172.0 in), the dramatic light and shadow or chiaroscuro effect, and the depiction of a military activity that seemed to be moving rather than static. The painting shows many characters; the most notable of which are Captain Frans Banning Cocq who was dressed in black and Lieutenant Willem van Ruytenburch who was dressed in yellow. There were many other figures in the painting but Rembrandt seamlessly presented the picture with great balance. Rembrandt also used symbolisms on this painting, as exemplified by the girl dressed in yellow with claws of a dead chicken on her belt. The claws represented the Arquebusiers, the soldiers of the sixteenth century. The victory of the Arquebusiers is signified by the prominent yellow color in the portrait, with the defeat of the opponent as characterized by the dead chicken. With the lifelike and controversial effect of the Night Watch portrait, it is undoubtedly one of Rembrandt’s greatest works.

Author:    Shyxter

Ozias Humphrey was born in the Devon region of England (1742-1810), and he painted oils, pastels, watercolors, and portrait miniatures in the latter part of the 18^th century.  He traveled widely, studying in London and Bath and receiving commissions on his way to exotic destinations like India and Italy.  Arguably Humphrey’s best known work is the portrait in oils that was only recently attributed to him, referred to as The Rice Portrait.  It was put up for auction at Christie’s in April of 2007, but interest did not surpass the minimum bid that was set.  The owners rightly assumed that it should have great value given its intriguing story, although in a fluctuating economy like ours, it remains difficult to designate how much value.  It’s no Octopussy Faberge egg, I suppose.

The auction was a newsworthy event, anyway, because Ozias Humphrey’s Rice Portrait is an important historical piece.  The lovely full-length portrait depicting a young woman holding a green parasol and wearing a long princess-cut white dress with short sleeves and lace detailing is believed by some to be of Jane Austen (1775-1817).  Others dispute this claim, saying the clothing style is off by a decade.  The portrait had been reproduced as the frontispiece to the 1884 collection of her letters, which was published by Jane Austen’s great-nephew, Edward, Lord Brabourne.  Ever since, it has been associated with the famed novelist.

The realistic oil painting portrays details such as the blush and sweet look of a lady’s face, the soft reflection on her slippers, and outlines of several features of landscape behind her.  It covers a canvas sized 142.2 x 92.7cm (56 x 36.5 in).  Interestingly, Humphrey originally painted portrait miniatures, but failing eyesight caused him to need to enlarge his medium of choice, as with the Rice Portrait.  As well, if Humphrey did in fact come into contact with Jane Austen, she was not the only literary figure with whom he worked.  William Blake both wrote letters to and commissioned paintings by Ozias Humphrey.

Author: Julie Ann