Portraits are a tricky business. Millenia after the earliest known examples were created, we still cannot accurately define what portraits set out to accomplish. A likeness of a specific person is part of it. Yet there are celebrated portraits of heroic and religious figures that cannot possibly have had the aim, as none of the subjects posed for the artists and none of the artists so much as caught sight of the subjects.
Some works we think are portraits really are images of idealized types. Other pieces history has told us are portraits of famous people actually are inventions. Still other works are accurate likenesses but not portraits because the artist has given his model another identity, as when Lucas Cranach had a famous cardinal pose for him as a saint.
After the middle of the 19th Century, other considerations crept into what we call “modern” portraits. A few are assembled here. They rarely can be taken at face value.
