Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book begins with an examination of the historical conditions of the emergence, development, and transformation of the honorific in relation to the mind/body problem in Hellenic philosophy. It offers a historical overview of the origins and development of the Western portrait, beginning with the Egyptian and Greek portrait and stretching to the Renaissance. The book focuses initially on a selection of Greek and Christian myths of the origins of the portrait, in an effort to underpin the role and function of the portrait in these cultures. It traces the philosophical origins of Cartesian dualism in classicism, and presents an overview of anti-dualist positions, spanning from classicism to the present day. The book argues that every artist who has dealt with portraiture has dealt, to a variable extent, with the question of being and identity.