The History of Portraiture

This is an Egyptian portrait from the late period of Ancient Egypt. Many portraits resembling this one were created during Egyptian reign as they were meant for funerals to place on top of the deceased to help them reach immortality.

The Mona Lisa is an iconic masterpiece done by Leonardo Da Vinci. It is one of the most recognizable and famous pieces in the world, and it is one of the most replicated and reinterpreted. Replicas were being made during Leonardo's lifetime by his students. Five hundred years after its creation, the Mona Lisa has been reproduced countless times on coffee mugs, postcards, t-shirts, and it has been reimagined with strange materials like seaweed, coffee, toast, Rubik's Cubes, and computer chips, to name a few.

Because Johannes usually painted women doing daily tasks, unaware or not looking towards the viewer, this piece stood out among his small 36 painting collection and brings comparisons to the Mona Lisa.

John Singer Sargent did this piece in hopes of enhancing his reputation but ended up being ridiculed for his choice to make one of her straps falling off her shoulder, causing him to repaint it.

This piece was commissioned by the sitter's husband, a Jewish banker and sugar producer, and ended up being stolen by Nazis in 1941. It was created with oil paint and gold leaf; the technique of using gold leaf dates all the way back to Ancient Egypt and Greece.

American Gothic is another very well recognized piece. Maybe not from hearing the name, but seeing the iconic man and woman standing next to each other with stark expressions sparks a memory in most people of having seen it before. While visiting his small hometown in Iowa, Grant Wood spotted a farm house with a single Carpenter Gothic style window and had an image of the people he thought would live there. He dressed his sister and his dentist up in the clothes he imagined and used them as models to portray the American Gothic people that he thought would match the window. Inspired by Flemish Renaissance art.

Dora Maar was a muse of Picasso and appeared in many of his pieces created in the 30's and 40's.

This is one of Andy Warhol's most noted works and shows why he was one of the leading artists in the pop art movement.

Kehinde Wiley is a modern portrait artist that has made a huge name for himself in the past two decades making highly naturalistic portraits of African American men and women. In 2017, he was commissioned by former president Barack Obama to do a portrait of him that was unveiled in 2018. This portrait done in 2006 is currently in the Milwaukee Museum of Art.