PORTRAIT. - I. ARCHAEOLOGY. - The portrait was a characteristic of Roman art. Christians had no portraits either of the Savior or of the Blessed Virgin; of the Apostles only Peter (v.), Paul (v.) and Andrew (v.) had typical somatic features.
In the cemetery paintings, executed rapidly, no true portraits are found; in Domitilla there is a bust in a kind of triptych (Wilpert, Pitture, pl. 134). In Callisto the owner of a cubiculum had her face fixed on the vault above the entrance on canvas, while the bust was executed in fresco (ibid., pl. 134, 1). In the same cemetery there is a true portrait, that of the deceased Dionysias in the cubiculum known as that of the five saints (ibid., pl. 111). A few portraits are found in some cemetery frescoes of Naples (H. Achelis, Die Katakomben von Neapel, Leipzig 1936, passim) and in some gilded glasses such as the medallion of Brescia (v.), and one also in the Sacred Museum of the Vatican Library (W. De Grüneisen, Le portrait, Rome 1911, p. 76, figs. 87-88). A good portrait is that of the deceased Turtura in widow's dress, in Commodilla of the 7th century (B. Bagatti, Il cimitero di Commodilla, Vatican City 1936, p. 109, fig. 96). Some saints are represented quite early, such as St. Agnes with the appearance of a puella, according to the texts (v. AGNESE, fig., vol. I, col. 468); St. Ambrose (v. fig. vol. I, col. 985) and St. Augustine (G. Wilpert, Il più antico r. di s. Agostino, in Misc. Agostiniana, II, Rome 1931, pp. 1-3; v. AGOSTINO, fig., vol. I, pl. 39). While those of the other saints represented in the cemetery frescoes seem to be ideal types, such as Cecilia, Sebastian, Quirinus and Policamus, Sixtus II, Cornelius, Cyprian and Optatus in Callisto, Marcellinus, Peter, Tiburtius and Gorgonius in the cemetery "inter duas lauros"; Abdon, Sennen, Pollio, Pimenius and Milix in Ponziano; Simplicius, Faustinus in Generosa; the Sts. Felix, Adauttus, Merita, Stephen and Luke in Commodilla, Callisto, Sixtus, Lawrence, Hippolytus in gilded glasses, etc.
A certain number of truly artistic portraits are those offered us by some mummy covers from Fayyûm (G. Wilpert, La nimbe carré, in Mélanges d'archéologie et d'histoire, 26 [1906]; W. De Grüneisen, Le portrait, Rome 1911, passim). More refined and more artistic is the portrait of the deceased on Christian sarcophagi, where the models in use are continued either with the type of the "imago clipeata" in the center of the sarcophagus, or where the bust of one or more deceased, often the two spouses, are carved on a convex circular surface like a clipeus, or else the said image is carved as enclosed in a shell valve. Another fashion, also of Roman tradition, is that of the deceased represented in bust or standing, often clasping the volume of the "lex christiana", against the background of a drapery or hanging distinguished by the name of parapetasma, antiprodium, cortina, velum, to which an attempt has also been made to attribute a symbolic value, while it seems more likely to recognize in it a simple ornament (G. Bovini, I sarcofagi paleocristiani. Determinaz. della loro cronologia mediante l'analisi dei r., Vatican City 1949).
Enrico Josi
II. ART
During the centuries of the Middle Ages and then of the Renaissance, of the Baroque and modern age, the portrait underwent an evolution closely connected to that of the stylistic modes and the informative concepts of successive aesthetics. Thus the stylized or expressionistic modes proper to medieval figurative culture are succeeded by those informed by the various degrees of naturalism and verism, from the Renaissance to the modern age, until reaching those proper to contemporary art. The latter, in some of its currents, at times denies, through the individual decomposition of the human figure pursued by the artist, the very semblance of things. From this it follows that of the same human image, and in particular of that of a specific individual, representations apparently entirely arbitrary can today be given (v. CUBISMO; ESPRESSIGNISMO; FUTURISMO; MODERNA, ARTE). - See pl. LIV.
