34 For many more scenes of a similar type, see A. Comella, I relievi votivi greci de periodo aracaic e classico (Bari: Edipuglia, 2002). This can be seen most clearly in a three-way comparison between these scenes, imperial coronations, and regular (non-imperial) donor contact images. 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. Thus the ruler does not engage with Christ or beseech him. Figure 1.24: King Jehu before Shalmanesser III, Black Obelisk of Shalmanesser III, British Museum, London, c. 740 BC. [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. [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]. If youre swimming in numbers it can be hard to make sense of them, so think carefully about the fields you need, and keep your analysis focussed. They appear more impassive, and their royal demeanor is better maintained. In 2019, the university's Women & Science Initiative and Women in Science at Rockefeller came together in what is now called the Women & Science Portrait Initiative. However, the full spectrum of scenes that often bear the term also shows other variations that considerably affect their significations. Feature Flags: { ), Das byzantinische Herrscherbild (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1975), and H. Maguire (ed. [15] The Wilton Diptych of Richard II of England was a forerunner of these. The hand in the book confers an air of learned nonchalance on sitters both like and unlike Bronzinos fashionable young man: it occurs, for instance, in Titians sensitive portrait of the aged archbishop Filippo Archinto, painted in the 1550s (14.40.650). Each image, then, plays a delicate game, attempting to combine various factors in different proportions in order to achieve a precise, although not equal, degree of power and piety. Cambridge, Mass. The purpose of donor portraits was to memorialize the donor and his family, and especially to solicit prayers for them after their death. 17 O. von Simson, Sacred Fortress: Byzantine Art and Statecraft in Ravenna (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), 24. This process may be intensified if the praying beholder is the donor himself. During the Middle Ages the donor figures often were shown on a far smaller scale than the sacred figures; a change dated by Dirk Kocks to the 14th century, though earlier examples in manuscripts can be found. One of the most famous and striking groups of Baroque donor portraits are those of the male members of the Cornaro family, who sit in boxes as if at the theatre to either side of the sculpted altarpiece of Gian Lorenzo Bernini's Ecstasy of St Theresa (1652). Find out more about saving content to Dropbox. Donor portraits have a continuous history from late antiquity, and the portrait in the 6th-century manuscript the Vienna Dioscurides may well reflect a long-established classical tradition, just as the author portraits found in the same manuscript are believed to do. They are all focused on the altar, which is the culmination point of their procession, and the place where they will perform their sacred rite. An even closer visual correspondence between the forms of the ancient and Byzantine worlds can be found in a Gospel book in the Iveron Monastery in Mount Athos, where the Virgin Mary leads the supplicant by the hand to the enthroned Christ (Iveron ms. 5, fols. Analytics:The great thing about data is that its everywhere. Once youve collected your data, you need to use it. 38 O. Demus, The Mosaics of Norman Sicily (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1949), 82; E. Kitzinger, The Mosaics of St Marys of the Admiral in Palermo (Washington: Dumbarton Oaks, 1990), especially 10506 and 197206. (Paris: E. de Boccard, 1959), vol. Muz., Syn. This distinction is of major importance, and is investigated in detail in the book. Copyright 2007-2023 & BIG THINK, BIG THINK PLUS, SMARTER FASTER trademarks owned by Freethink Media, Inc. All rights reserved. The resurgence of portraiture was thus a significant manifestation of the Renaissance in Europe. 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. Instead, in these languages, the lay figures in the images are called ktetors, and the scenes go by the name of ktetor portraits. The earliest Renaissance portraits were not paintings in their own right, but rather important inclusions in pictures of Christian subjects. 1.13).Footnote 21 Obviously, a minimum level of wealth was required in order to pay for the commission, but clearly the practice of portraying oneself in the act of making a gift or praying for salvation was one that was broadly based.Footnote 22 In terms of gender distribution, the majority of the scenes are of men, but there are a significant number of women, appearing either singly (especially in manuscripts) or together with their husbands. 3 G. Millet, La peinture du moyen ge en Yougoslavie, 4 vols. In the coronation, however, rather than being lessened by their encounter with the ultimate power in the universe, the emperors come away from it with their own status enhanced. 1.16, 1.17, 1.18, 1.21, 1.22, 1.23). Gr. Figure 1.2: Despot Oliver, painting in narthex, Church of the Holy Archangels, Lesnovo, FYR Macedonia, 1341. . In this respect, both the Antioch mosaic and the Byzantine images can be contrasted to the standard Roman scene. She is an average, a stereotype that has no place in your fundraising strategy. 1.18).Footnote 29 Likewise, as we have seen, in the apse mosaic of San Vitale in Ravenna, Bishop Ecclesius, bearing a model of his church, has an angel present him to Christ (Fig. In other examples, a magnificent costume highlights the sitters wealth and fashionable taste (51.194.1). The elders in the story of Suzannah were some of the few figures respectable Venetians were unwilling to impersonate. Not one member of the retinue rocks his or her head back to gaze at the gods looming above. Ongoing data capture:It might sound obvious, but to collect data, you need to plan for it. Towards the end of his life, Francisco Goya began painting terrifying scenes directly onto the walls of his house. 1.2).Footnote 3 Oliver here stands next to a figure of the Archangel Gabriel. Market research:If you dont know much about your donors, there is no harm in asking. the only contingency they did not envisage was what actually occurred, that their faces would survive but their names go astray. It should be remarked as well that the proskynesis that we find in Byzantium is not quite the one that we find in Rome. Pope Honorius I (died 638), mosaic in Sant'Agnese fuori le Mura in Rome, carrying a model of the church he built. The second is the Constantine and Justinian panel in the southwest vestibule (see Fig. In Greek and the Slavic languages, however (to cite some of the languages of the places where many of these images originated, and, again, in which many studies are published), although the images are well known, donor portrait does not exist. Before iconoclasm, supplicants are generally represented standing. If there is a subsidiary piety dividend for Oliver and Dragutin in their scenes, then there is an equivalent social dividend for supplicants. (Washington: Dumbarton Oaks, 1966); H. Ahrweiler, Lidologie politique de lempire byzantin (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1975); M. McCormick, Eternal Victory: Triumphal Rulership in Late Antiquity, Byzantium and the Medieval West (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); and, for a view contesting the ideas of many historians of earlier generations, A. Kaldellis, The Byzantine Republic: People and Power in New Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). Their scale and composition are alone among large-scale survivals. ), Donation et donateurs dans le monde byzantin: Actes du colloque international de lUniversit de Fribourg (1315 mars 2008) (Paris: Descle de Brouwer, 2012), 12540. 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. In a coronation, the power flow and the narrative, so to speak, compound each other, each amplifying the other. 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. 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. 8 For a reading of the fine grading of power transmission in this scene and other coronations, see Hillsdale, Byzantine Art and Diplomacy, 25463. In Byzantium, however, the prostration can be much more complete, with the back parallel to the ground and the head lowered. Instead, his bearing is filled with authority, and, as is so often the case, the scene as a whole resorts to a series of formal devices to prevent any lessening of it. 1333. Networks and connections:In a world where youre just six degrees from your next big opportunity, you need to be flagging those networks and connections so that you can see (and start to join) the dots. In portraiture, the smallest touches can hold the greatest significance. hasContentIssue false, The Vicissitudes of Contact between Human and Divine, Introduction: Methodologies for the Study of Donor Portraits, The History and Problematic of the Donor Portrait, On Meaning in Portraits: The Knot of Intention and the Question of the Patrons Share, Awaiting the End after the End: Sin, Absolution, and the Afterlife, Exchange and Non-Exchange: The Gift between Human and Divine, The Literal, the Symbolic, and the Contact Portrait: On Belief in the Interaction between Human and Divine, Postscript: The Problem of Terminology Again: Donor Portraits and Contact Portraits. 31 M. Boatwright, Hadrian and the City of Rome (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), 190202. Two of these are also in the Church of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, the first being the scene already mentioned earlier, the emperor in proskynesis mosaic. Figure 1.4: Zoe and Constantine Monomachos before Christ, mosaic in south gallery of the Church of Hagia Sophia, Istanbul, 102850. ), A GreekEnglish Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000). Talking blindly to an assumption that may or may not be correct. In family groups the figures are usually divided by gender. Each emperor offers his gift unreservedly and leans forward respectfully, unafraid to appear in a less than dominant position. Donors give for many reasons, but donors stop giving for primarily one reason; they don't know how their gift is being used. We all employ heuristics to help us deal with the world. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. The panel is also the subject of a study by E. Dimitriadou, The Lunette Mosaic in the Southwest Vestibule of Hagia Sophia at Constantinople: A Reconsideration, Ph.D. thesis, Courtauld Institute of Art (2010). Typical of innumerable Roman examples is one of the second-century Hadrianic roundels reused on the fourth-century Arch of Constantine in Rome (after AD 130, Fig. 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. A comparable style can be found in Florentine painting from the same date, as in Masaccio's Holy Trinity (142528) in Santa Maria Novella where, however, the donors are shown kneeling on a sill outside and below the main architectural setting. Behind him, an attendant holding a pail brings up the rear (Fig. A. Godley, Loeb Clasical Library 117 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981), 1:134. 666), Thirty-Fourth Annual Byzantine Studies Conference. 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. A donor recognition wall is a wall that displays the names of all the donors who participated in a particular campaign. [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. Vatic. It thus places emphasis on an almost legal aspect of possession. From the upright monk in the Melbourne Gospels, who nonetheless inclines toward the Virgin and Child with some intensity, to the apparent abjection of the supplicant in ms. Lavra A 103, to the sincere concern of Theodore at the Kariye Camii (Fig. Integration:Doing a one-off spot analysis is fine, but youll get better, more insightful data if you can link incoming information straight to your CRM. Learning and logging professional details is a great way to start building out your donor profile and creating a picture that goes beyond headline demographics. 666), Thirty-Fourth Annual Byzantine Studies Conference. Get counterintuitive, surprising, and impactful stories delivered to your inbox every Thursday. More remarkable still is Drers position. 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.

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