The Medieval Portrait

In the Early Renaissance, portraits had a commemorative function. With the exception of devotional images—Christ, the Virgin, and saints on altarpieces, shown front-facing—portraits were in profile and no less canonical.

The model for such portraits came from antiquity: Roman coins, medals, and reliefs with imperial heads. The aim was triumph and glorification, which called for generalization and typification rather than strict truthfulness or realism. The medieval portrait preserved memory and exalted the great.

Leonardo da Vinci broke with this tradition in the very early 16th century with the Mona Lisa. The portrait’s new task became a dialogue that dissolves Quattrocento iconography, stasis, and stiffness. Mona Lisa is half-length, turned toward us in a three-quarter view, with a slight turn of the head, the hands set before her, space unfolding around the sitter, a psychological landscape, and a unified color world. The smile becomes an end in itself, and psychology emerges without imposed religious or ethical directives. Before the Mona Lisa, Leonardo painted the Lady with an Ermine, also three-quarter and with the hands visible, but she looks to the side and belongs to an earlier phase.

Soon after, the young Raphael saw the Mona Lisa in Florence, adopted its scheme, and painted the paired portraits of the Doni spouses. He added content that matched the High Renaissance: the human being as the center of the universe, made in the image and likeness of God. In each portrait Raphael depicts an exceptional personality, harmonious in body and spirit, and, above all, alive.

So the portrait was born in the modern sense.