Donor portrait
Encyclopedia
They are very common in religious works of art, especially paintings, of the Middle Ages
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
and Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
, usually shown kneeling to one side, in the foreground of the image. Often, even late into the Renaissance, the donor portraits, especially when a whole family is shown, will be at a much smaller scale than the principal figures, in defiance of linear perspective. By the mid 15th century donors began to be shown integrated into the main scene, as bystanders and even participants.
Placement
Stained glass
The term stained glass can refer to coloured glass as a material or to works produced from it. Throughout its thousand-year history, the term has been applied almost exclusively to the windows of churches and other significant buildings...
were often accompanied by a bequest
Mass bequest
A bedquest for a Mass is when a person leaves a bequest in their will for a Mass to be said for the repose of their soul....
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. Displaying portraits in a public place was also an expression of social status; donor portraits overlapped with tomb monuments
Funerary art
Funerary art is any work of art forming, or placed in, a repository for the remains of the dead. Tomb is a general term for the repository, while grave goods are objects—other than the primary human remains—which have been placed inside...
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.
When a whole building was financed, a sculpture of the patron might be included on the facade or elsewhere in the building. Jan van Eyck
Jan van Eyck
Jan van Eyck was a Flemish painter active in Bruges and considered one of the best Northern European painters of the 15th century....
's Rolin Madonna is a small painting where the donor Nicolas Rolin
Nicolas Rolin
Nicolas Rolin was a leading figure in the history of Burgundy and France, becoming chancellor to Philip the Good .-Biography:...
shares the painting space equally with the Madonna and Child, but Rolin had given great sums to his parish church, where it was hung, which is represented by the church above his praying hands in the townscape behind him.
Sometimes, as in the Ghent Altarpiece
Ghent Altarpiece
The Ghent Altarpiece or Adoration of the Mystic Lamb is a very large and complex Early Netherlandish polyptych panel painting which is considered to be one of Belgium's masterpieces and one of the world's treasures.It was once in the Joost Vijdt chapel at Saint Bavo Cathedral, Ghent, Belgium, but...
, 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 Merode Altarpiece. 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. In family groups the figures are usually divided by gender. Groups of members of confraternities, sometimes with their wives, are also found. Additional family members, from births or marriages, might be added later, and deaths might be recorded by the addition of small crosses held in the clasped hands.
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:
And going around with the master mason, examining which figures to leave and which to destroy, the priest spotted a Saint Anthony and said: “Save this one.” Then he found a figure of Saint Sano [Ansanus] and said: “This one is to be gotten rid of, since as long as I have been the Priest here I have never seen anyone light a candle in front of it, nor has it ever seemed to me useful; therefore, mason, get rid of it.”
History
Late Antiquity
Late Antiquity is a periodization used by historians to describe the time of transition from Classical Antiquity to the Middle Ages, in both mainland Europe and the Mediterranean world. Precise boundaries for the period are a matter of debate, but noted historian of the period Peter Brown proposed...
, and the portrait in the 6th century manuscript the Vienna Dioscurides
Vienna Dioscurides
The Vienna Dioscurides or Vienna Dioscorides is an early 6th century illuminated manuscript of De Materia Medica by Dioscorides in Greek. It is an important and rare example of a late antique scientific text...
may well reflect a long-established classical tradition, just as the author portraits found in the same manuscript are believed to do. 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. Another tradition which had pre-Christian precedent was royal or imperial images showing the ruler with a religious figure, usually Christ or the Virgin Mary in Christian examples, with the divine and royal figures shown communicating with each other in some way. Although none have survived, there is literary evidence of donor portraits in small chapels from the Early Christian period,, probably continuing the traditions of pagan temples.
The 6th century mosaic
Mosaic
Mosaic is the art of creating images with an assemblage of small pieces of colored glass, stone, or other materials. It may be a technique of decorative art, an aspect of interior decoration, or of cultural and spiritual significance as in a cathedral...
panels in the Basilica of San Vitale
Basilica of San Vitale
The Church of San Vitale — styled an "ecclesiastical basilica" in the Roman Catholic Church, though it is not of architectural basilica form — is a church in Ravenna, Italy, one of the most important examples of early Christian Byzantine Art and architecture in western Europe...
in Ravenna
Ravenna
Ravenna is the capital city of the Province of Ravenna in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy and the second largest comune in Italy by land area, although, at , it is little more than half the size of the largest comune, Rome...
of the Emperor Justinian I
Justinian I
Justinian I ; , ; 483– 13 or 14 November 565), commonly known as Justinian the Great, was Byzantine Emperor from 527 to 565. During his reign, Justinian sought to revive the Empire's greatness and reconquer the lost western half of the classical Roman Empire.One of the most important figures of...
and Empress Theodora with courtiers are not of the type showing the ruler receiving divine approval, but each show one of the imperial couple standing confidently with a group of attendants, looking out at the viewer. Their scale and composition are alone among large-scale survivals. Also in Ravenna, there is a small mosaic of Justinian, possibly originally of Theoderic the Great in the Basilica of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo
Basilica of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo
The Basilica of Sant' Apollinare Nuovo is a basilica church in Ravenna, Emilia-Romagna . It was erected by the Ostrogoth King Theodoric as his palace chapel, during the first quarter of the 6th century...
. In the Early Middle Ages
Early Middle Ages
The Early Middle Ages was the period of European history lasting from the 5th century to approximately 1000. The Early Middle Ages followed the decline of the Western Roman Empire and preceded the High Middle Ages...
, a group of mosaic portraits in Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
of Popes who had commissioned the building or rebuilding of the churches containing them show standing figures holding models of the building, usually among a group of saints. Gradually these traditions worked their way down the social scale, especially in illuminated manuscript
Illuminated manuscript
An illuminated manuscript is a manuscript in which the text is supplemented by the addition of decoration, such as decorated initials, borders and miniature illustrations...
s, where they are often owner portraits, as the manuscripts were retained for use by the person commissioning them. For example a chapel at Mals
Mals
Mals is a comune in South Tyrol in the Italian region Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol, located about 80 km northwest of Trento and about 70 km northwest of Bolzano, on the border with Switzerland and Austria.-Geography:...
in South Tyrol
South Tyrol
South Tyrol , also known by its Italian name Alto Adige, is an autonomous province in northern Italy. It is one of the two autonomous provinces that make up the autonomous region of Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol. The province has an area of and a total population of more than 500,000 inhabitants...
has two fresco
Fresco
Fresco is any of several related mural painting types, executed on plaster on walls or ceilings. The word fresco comes from the Greek word affresca which derives from the Latin word for "fresh". Frescoes first developed in the ancient world and continued to be popular through the Renaissance...
donor figures from before 881, one lay and the other of a tonsure
Tonsure
Tonsure is the traditional practice of Christian churches of cutting or shaving the hair from the scalp of clerics, monastics, and, in the Eastern Orthodox Church, all baptized members...
d cleric holding a model building. In subsequent centuries bishops, abbots and other clergy were the donors most commonly shown, other than royalty, and they remained prominently represented in later periods.
Donor portraits of noblemen and wealthy businessmen were becoming common in commissions by the 15th century, at the same time as the panel portrait was beginning to be commissioned by this class - though there are perhaps more donor portraits in larger works from churches surviving from before 1450 than panel portraits. A very common Netherlandish format from the mid-century was a small diptych with a Madonna and Child, usually on the left wing, and a "donor" on the right - the donor being here an owner, as these were normally intended to be kept in the subject's home. In these the portrait may adopt a praying pose, or may pose more like the subject in a purely secular portrait. The Wilton Diptych of Richard II of England
Richard II of England
Richard II was King of England, a member of the House of Plantagenet and the last of its main-line kings. He ruled from 1377 until he was deposed in 1399. Richard was a son of Edward, the Black Prince, and was born during the reign of his grandfather, Edward III...
was a forerunner of these. In some of these diptychs the portrait of the original owner has been over-painted with that of a later one.
A particular convention in illuminated manuscript
Illuminated manuscript
An illuminated manuscript is a manuscript in which the text is supplemented by the addition of decoration, such as decorated initials, borders and miniature illustrations...
s 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. The person presenting might be a courtier making a gift to his prince, but is often the author or the scribe, in which cases the recipient had actually paid for the manuscript.
Iconography of painted donor figures
Jan van Eyck
Jan van Eyck was a Flemish painter active in Bruges and considered one of the best Northern European painters of the 15th century....
integrated, with vaying degrees of subtlety, donor portraits into the space of the main scene of altarpieces, at the same scale as the main figures.
A comparable style can be found in Florentine painting from the same date, as in Masaccio
Masaccio
Masaccio , born Tommaso di Ser Giovanni di Simone, was the first great painter of the Quattrocento period of the Italian Renaissance. According to Vasari, Masaccio was the best painter of his generation because of his skill at recreating lifelike figures and movements as well as a convincing sense...
's Holy Trinity
Holy Trinity (Masaccio)
The Holy Trinity, with the Virgin and Saint John and donors is a fresco by the Early Italian Renaissance painter Masaccio. It is located in the Dominican church of Santa Maria Novella, in Florence.-Description:...
(1425-28) in Santa Maria Novella where, however, the donors are shown kneeling on a sill outside and below the main architectural setting. This innovation, however, did not appear in Venetian painting until the turn of the next century. Normally the main figures ignore the presence of the interlopers in narrative scenes, although bystanding saints may put a supportive hand on the shoulder in a side-panel. But in devotional subjects such as a Madonna and Child, which were more likely to have been intended for the donor's home, the main figures may look at or bless the donor, as in the Memling shown.
Before the 15th century a physical likeness may not have often been attempted, or achieved; the individuals depicted may in any case often not have been available to the artist, or even alive. 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.
Magi Chapel
The Magi Chapel is a chapel in Palazzo Medici Riccardi of Florence, Italy. It includes a famous cycle of frescoes by the Renaissance master Benozzo Gozzoli, painted in 1459-1461....
by Benozzo Gozzoli
Benozzo Gozzoli
Benozzo Gozzoli was an Italian Renaissance painter from Florence. He is best known for a series of murals in the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi depicting festive, vibrant processions with wonderful attention to detail and a pronounced International Gothic influence.-Apprenticeship:He was born Benozzo di...
(1459-61), which admittedly was in the private chapel of the Palazzo Medici, is dominated by the glamorous procession containing more portraits of the Medici and their allies than can now be identified. By 1490, when the large Tornabuoni Chapel
Tornabuoni Chapel
The Tornabuoni Chapel is the main chapel in the church of Santa Maria Novella, Florence, Italy. It is famous for the extensive and well-preserved fresco cycle on its walls, one of the most complete in the city, which was created by Domenico Ghirlandaio and his workshop between 1485 and...
fresco cycle by Domenico Ghirlandaio
Domenico Ghirlandaio
Domenico Ghirlandaio was an Italian Renaissance painter from Florence. Among his many apprentices was Michelangelo.-Early years:Ghirlandaio's full name is given as Domenico di Tommaso di Currado di Doffo Bigordi...
was completed, family members and political allies of the Tornabuoni populate several scenes in considerable numbers, in addition to conventional kneeling portraits of Giovanni Tornabuoni and his wife. In an often-quoted passage, John Pope-Hennessy caricatured 16th century Italian donors:
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. The most notorious of these is the portrayal as the Virgin lactans (or just post-lactans) of Agnès Sorel
Agnès Sorel
Agnès Sorel , known by the sobriquet Dame de beauté, was a favourite mistress of King Charles VII of France, for whom she bore three daughters....
(died 1450), the mistress of Charles VII of France
Charles VII of France
Charles VII , called the Victorious or the Well-Served , was King of France from 1422 to his death, though he was initially opposed by Henry VI of England, whose Regent, the Duke of Bedford, ruled much of France including the capital, Paris...
, in a panel by Jean Fouquet
Jean Fouquet
Jean Fouquet was a preeminent French painter of the 15th century, a master of both panel painting and manuscript illumination, and the apparent inventor of the portrait miniature. He was the first French artist to travel to Italy and experience at first hand the Italian Early...
.
Heraldry
Heraldry is the profession, study, or art of creating, granting, and blazoning arms and ruling on questions of rank or protocol, as exercised by an officer of arms. Heraldry comes from Anglo-Norman herald, from the Germanic compound harja-waldaz, "army commander"...
, were disapproved of by clerical interpreters of the vague decrees on art of the Council of Trent
Council of Trent
The Council of Trent was the 16th-century Ecumenical Council of the Roman Catholic Church. It is considered to be one of the Church's most important councils. It convened in Trent between December 13, 1545, and December 4, 1563 in twenty-five sessions for three periods...
, such as Saint Charles Borromeo
Charles Borromeo
Charles Borromeo was the cardinal archbishop of the Catholic Archdiocese of Milan from 1564 to 1584. He was a leading figure during the Counter-Reformation and was responsible for significant reforms in the Catholic Church, including the founding of seminaries for the education of priests...
, but survived well into the Baroque period, and developed a secular equivalent in history painting
History painting
History painting is a genre in painting defined by subject matter rather than an artistic style, depicting a moment in a narrative story, rather than a static subject such as a portrait...
, although here it was often the principal figures who were given the features of the commissioner. A further secular development was the portrait historié, where groups of portrait sitters posed as historical or mythological figures. One of the most famous and striking groups of Baroque donor portraits are those of the male members of the Cornaro
Cornaro
The Cornaro, also known as Corner, are an illustrious patrician family in Venice, from which for centuries senior office-holders and Doges sprung...
family, who sit in boxes as if at the theatre to either side of the sculpted altarpiece of Gian Lorenzo Bernini
Gian Lorenzo Bernini
Gian Lorenzo Bernini was an Italian artist who worked principally in Rome. He was the leading sculptor of his age and also a prominent architect...
's Ecstasy of St Theresa
Ecstasy of St Theresa
The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa is the central sculptural group in white marble set in an elevated aedicule in the Cornaro Chapel, Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome...
(1652). These were derived from fresco
Fresco
Fresco is any of several related mural painting types, executed on plaster on walls or ceilings. The word fresco comes from the Greek word affresca which derives from the Latin word for "fresh". Frescoes first developed in the ancient world and continued to be popular through the Renaissance...
es by Pellegrino Tibaldi
Pellegrino Tibaldi
Pellegrino Tibaldi , also known as Pellegrino di Tibaldo de Pellegrini, was an Italian mannerist architect, sculptor, and mural painter.-Biography:...
a century early, which use the same conceit.
Although donor portraits have been relatively little studied as a distinct genre, there has been more interest in recent years, and a debate over their relationship, in Italy, to the rise of individualism with the Early Renaissance, and also over the changes in their iconography after the Black Death
Black Death
The Black Death was one of the most devastating pandemics in human history, peaking in Europe between 1348 and 1350. Of several competing theories, the dominant explanation for the Black Death is the plague theory, which attributes the outbreak to the bacterium Yersinia pestis. Thought to have...
of the mid-14th century.
Further reading
- Dirk Kocks, Die Stifterdarstellung in der italienischen Malerei des 13.-15. Jahrhunderts (The Donor Portrait in Italian Painting of the 13th to 15th centuries), Cologne, 1971
- John Pope-Hennessy; The Portrait in Renaissance Art, London, 1966