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9780192842589

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a fascinating book...gorgeous examples Independent

`a fascinating book...gorgeous examples' Independent

The portrait resists classification as art. Durer used a portrait of himself with a painful sore to send to his doctor for an accurate diagnosis. Portraits of Elizabeth I showed her to be an ageless symbol of power; likeness and accuracy were secondary to their use as publicity tools. The ill-fated Marie Antoinette, as painted by Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun, looks like an overstuffed sofa dwarfed by the grandeur of the room in which she stands. The author looks at this genre from various perspectives looking at how portraits of women have differed from those of men. How the self-portrait frees the artist to be experimental. How artists have approached the problems of representing their subjects, and reconciled innovation with obtaining a likeness. This excellent, beautifully illustrated introduction to the genre disappoints only occasionally, when several paintings are described extensively but have no accompanying illustrations. (Kirkus UK)

Author Information

Shearer West is Professor of Art History at the University of Birmingham. Her books include Chagall (Bison, 1990), The Image of the Actor: Verbal and Visual Representation in the Age of Garrick and Kemble (Pinter, 1991), The Visual Arts in Germany 1890-1940 (Manchester UP, 2000), and Fin de Sie'cle: Art and Society in an Age of Uncertainty (Overlook, 1993). She is also the editor of The Bloomsbury Guide to Art (Bloomsbury, 1996).

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