Another use of portraiture was originally peculiar to the Greeks, but it became subsequently adopted by other nations. We refer to the practice of painting upon a metal shield the portraits of a family—often with the father in the centre—and of hanging it up as sacred to the gods. There are similar portraits extant, in terracotta, of Demosthenes in exile at Calauria, and of Thales. The ancients also painted portraits on wood in encaustic, and some portraits formed in mosaic still exist.
In proportion to the growth of luxury, and to the development of the arts, do we find the increased employment of portraiture. Every kind of work was decorated with a portrait. This was especially the usage of the Greeks under the successors of Alexander, at Alexandria, Antioch, and Pergamus; and with the Romans, towards the close of the Republic, and under the Emperors.
Engraved stones of seals and rings are exceedingly valuable in enabling us to identify antique busts and statues; their hardness having preserved them from injury. Very frequently they give the impression of being most accurate portraits. In the Greek Court is a large collection of casts of these extremely interesting works, which merit careful examination. Many of the heads are wonderfully beautiful—far surpassing in execution any similar work of the present time.
In like manner the portraits upon coins, being connected with writing, have been most useful in contributing to the knowledge and naming of antique busts and statues. Of these illustrations also, the visitor is enabled to study a very complete series from very early times.
The universal taste for portraiture exhibited by the ancients, and the encouragement to art which the vast wealth of many enabled them to afford, soon led to the formation of a gallery of portraits in every house of importance. Such a gallery contained portraits, both sculptured and painted, of great men in art, science, letters, and arms, and was called “The Pinacotheca.” The desire to render such a collection as complete as possible, led to the production of an infinite number of copies from those originally taken from the life: just as with us, houses are adorned with plaster-casts of the busts of Wellington, Shakspeare, and Milton.
It will now be understood how it has happened that so large a number of portrait-busts have remained to us from antiquity. Unless they had been multiplied in the manner described, the acts of ignorance and the accidents of time would have effaced all record of the features and aspect of the good and great in ancient story. Most of the works, executed in metal, were melted down and converted into money. One valuable mine, however, was happily discovered in the ruins of Herculaneum, completely preserved, and was removed to the Museum at Naples, where it still exists. Of several, so recovered, we possess fine copies in the Crystal Palace.
During the reign of Hadrian in Rome (A.D. 120), art enjoyed a revival—a Medicean period. A multitude of works of every kind were produced, and portraiture was carried to its height through the very zealous loyalty to which sculptors gave way, in their desire to flatter their imperial and magnificent patron, by representing the members of his family as so many gods and goddesses. The like encouragement was afforded under the dominion of Antoninus Pius (A.D. 140), and his adopted son, Marcus Aurelius; followed, unfortunately, by the destructive propensities of the odious Commodus, who would have limited portraiture to the representation of his own face.
We see the first efforts of portraiture in Christian art, in the representations—sculptured and painted—of saints in the early ages of the faith. Some examples of these will be found in the Byzantine and Mediæval Courts. A certain conventional form was adhered to in all these works, in which we remark especially a general elongation of the face and features, as if the aim had been to impress upon them the natural effects of emaciation from penance and fasting, the body and limbs being also subjected to the same treatment. The eyes are always almond-shaped, half closed, and sloping upwards from the nose. The portraits of Justinian, Theodora, Nicephorus, and Charles the Bald, on the façade of the Byzantine Court, bear evidence of their authenticity.
In forming our idea of an individual portrait painted in the early Christian period, we must never forget to allow for the formalities by which an artist of that time was inexorably directed. Statues and pictures were then produced (as indeed they are to this day by the monks of Mount Athos,) in accordance with rule and system—a sort of holy heraldry. At the time of which we now speak, we trace no general and popular use of portraits, such as we observed amongst the ancients, although they were still to be found in the hands of the most wealthy and cultivated. These were of an expensive kind, in mosaic and in miniature painting, the latter style being frequently employed when a valuable manuscript or missal was copied for presentation, and a portrait of the author or donor was usually painted upon it.
Mediæval portraiture shows a considerable advance upon the Byzantine, but is still inferior to the antique and to the portraiture of our own time. It was confined, almost exclusively, to monumental effigies, in which the artist was constrained to present the lifeless form, in the stiffness of very death—whether sleeping the sleep of eternal peace, or kneeling in the attitude of prayer. Some of the finest examples are to be seen in the Mediæval Court: of these more than one are doubtless portrait-statues of the time. The same may be said of some of the effigies of the Knights Templar, which exhibit great individuality, having been executed in a very hard kind of marble, that has well retained the features originally carved out of it. Busts of this period are exceedingly rare; inasmuch as portraiture of the kind was not in accordance with the religious feeling of the age. We must be content to take the effigies of mediæval art as portraits of the time; treated, of course, after certain conventionalities, but nevertheless truthful and most interesting.