Portrait painting is one of the most ancient types of fine art. But, despite its considerable age and competition with photography, the genre does not lose its relevance.
What is called a portrait?
Interest in depicting a person's appearance, his appearance, in addition to painting, is inherent in literature, sculpture, and graphics. But it was only in the visual arts that the portrait managed to take shape into an independent genre with its interest in the features of a living face.
However, the idea of a real portraitist includes not only a reliable transfer of external similarity, but also the disclosure of the inner world, the nature of the model, as well as a demonstration of one's attitude towards it. Thus, the development of ancient portraiture since its inception has been influenced by two significant factors: the development of technical skills in depicting the human body and the idea of the unique and inimitable world of each person.
The specifics of the historical portrait
The varieties of portraits that existed in different eras are very diverse. The specificity of portraiture is very flexible and tends to interact with other genre models. This is how a historical portrait arises, the peculiarity of which is that the artist turns to the image of a significant historical person, depicted not from nature, but on the basis of auxiliary material or his own imagination.
The depiction of iconic historical figures began to interest artists even during the Renaissance in Europe. The art of historical portraiture in Russia becomes relevant in the 18th century with the development of classicism. Hence its characteristic features such as splendor, pretentiousness and obligatory ideological and didactic significance, since in the appearance of a historical person the viewer should see the ideal of beauty, strength and service to the Fatherland.
The historical portrait reaches special heights in Russian art in the 19th century. It is enough to refer to the textbook painting "Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich the Terrible" (1879) by Vasnetsov to note how powerful a historical portrait can be in terms of aesthetic and moral impact. Reported as it was preserved in the memoirs of contemporaries, the image of the tsar reveals from the canvas both frightening decisiveness and the wisdom of an unbending will.
An example of a historical portrait
"Portrait of Peter the Great" (1838) by the famous artist Paul Delaroche was created more than one century after the death of the Russian emperor. Emphasized idealization, heroization and allegorism, presented in this historical portrait, become iconic features of the genre.
Peter is depicted here not as an everyday person, but as a wise and fearless commander, which is contained in the left hand depicted on the map of the Russian Empire and holding a saber in his right. Behind the emperor there are heavy clouds approaching in the direction of his menacing gaze, which give a special globality to the image of this man, in the words of Pushkin, "who has put Russia on its hind legs."
