ABSTRACT
The premodernist, representationalist, understanding of portraiture conjures images of faces depicted on canvas with paint and oils. The images range from formal paintings of historic figures hanging in national galleries to charcoal caricatures of a walk-up customer sold at amusement parks. Whatever the image, the portrait portrays an individual in facial close-up, focusing on the subject’s expressions and bringing out the contrastive detail required to reveal thoughts, attitudes, and moods. A well-done portrait will depict not only what is visible to the eye, but also some of the inner nature of the subject that can explain some features of the visual surface. Although visual portraits are perhaps most familiar to us, portraiture can be defined more generally as any attempt, in any medium, to represent people. Static images, film, and written text all can be used to construct portraits. However, while the design problem of representing people is common to various types of portraiture, the principles vary with the medium.
