As our Marcus Aurelius example demonstrates, when conquered peoples kneel before the Roman emperor in submission, they are still relatively dignified, with backs and heads upright (see Fig. In neither of the pictures just discussed, then, the Alexios and the Justinian and Constantine scenes, are the imperial images to be taken as true contact portraits, despite first appearances to the contrary. John Oliver Hand, Catherine Metzger, Ron Spronk; https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Donor_portrait&oldid=1146536408. Here, this dichotomy is absent. If there is a subsidiary piety dividend for Oliver and Dragutin in their scenes, then there is an equivalent social dividend for supplicants. Website pop-up screens, donation forms, resource downloads, newsletter sign-ups, event registration, cookies, social media polls and questionnaires when you think fundraising, think data and make sure youve got the systems in place to catch it (and the permission to use it!). Hans Memling was one of the most prominent and productive Netherlandish artists of the later fifteenth century. See also A. Beihammer, S. Constantinou, and M. Parani (eds. Urbin. On closer inspection, however, there are some important differences between them. In the discussion above we have been concerned with images that, although initially seeming to represent a ruler making a donation to a holy figure, on closer inspection were better labeled as quasi donor portraits or ktetor portraits. on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Vatic. Often, even late into the Renaissance, the donor portraits, especially when of a whole family, will be at a much smaller scale than the principal figures, in defiance of linear perspective. and ed. So far we have been at pains to differentiate images into categories. At the same time, their frontal perspective and accentuated facial features serve as precursors to Byzantine icon painting. . Once we have better defined the category as a whole, we will turn our attention to its chief characteristics, its emergence and development within Byzantine art, and an overview of the scholarship on the subject. [5], Sometimes, as in the Ghent Altarpiece, the donors were shown on the closed view of an altarpiece with movable wings, or on both the side panels, as in the Portinari Altarpiece and the Memlings above, or just on one side, as in the Mrode Altarpiece. If a regular person was featured in a painting, they were depicted as partaking in a recognizable religious scene such as the birth or death of Christ. Lets face it. You need to get to know your donors and create your own donor profiles so that when youre designing your next campaign you know exactly who youre talking to. But when we make a hasty generalization, we risk making a big error in our thinking. In order to understand how this development comes about, and indeed, in order to appreciate the distinctive character of the Byzantine iteration of these scenes, it is beneficial to look at examples of contact portraits in the artistic traditions preceding Byzantium. Follow these and use them to create sub-groups and start segmenting your audience. Art is a rich area in which to study psychological life through the lens of cultural psychology. These little gems of information are a great way to start bringing the people behind your data to life. In the perilous mountains of Tibet, archaeologists unearthed ancient hand and footprints that seem to be the creative work of children. ), Donation et donateurs dans le monde byzantin: Actes du colloque international de lUniversit de Fribourg (1315 mars 2008) (Paris: Descle de Brouwer, 2012), 12540. Jacobs, Lynn F., "Rubens and the Northern Past: The Michielsen Triptych and the Thresholds of Modernity". The hand in the book confers an air of learned nonchalance on sitters both like and unlike Bronzinos fashionable young man: it occurs, for instance, in Titians sensitive portrait of the aged archbishop Filippo Archinto, painted in the 1550s (14.40.650). [9] Another tradition which had pre-Christian precedent was royal or imperial images showing the ruler with a religious figure, usually Christ or the Virgin Mary in Christian examples, with the divine and royal figures shown communicating with each other in some way. But over time you will build not one, but a series of donor portraits a data-driven analysis of your audience and a deeper understanding of the people that give to your cause. Look at your headline numbers. John and Irene are more upright and frontal than Zoe and Constantine, and their size relative to the holy figures has been increased. Yet it is also the case that in using each of its terms universally for all the scenes, each language grouping blurs the very fine distinctions that the iconography is at such pains to make. Donor portrait usually refers to the portrait or portraits of donors alone, as a section of a larger Alchetron Sign in Neha Patil (Editor) Of course, with thousands of donors in your system, we dont expect you to create a profile for each one. These images share some elements of the contact-laden donation of Theodore, but ultimately have more in common with coronation iconography. Alexios shows no deference. She is an average, a stereotype that has no place in your fundraising strategy. There would be a net benefit in classifying all the scenes in this way in that the phrase donor portrait would be reserved for images that show clearly and explicitly an offering being made. The emperors perform deeds fitting to their office and duty, and these intrinsically have a religious dimension, as the image makes clear. Yet there is also a crucial difference between these scenes: the Justinian panel shows a gift-bearing procession, but includes no recipient. Market research:If you dont know much about your donors, there is no harm in asking. The discoveries at Faiyum give art historians an impression of what naturalistic portraits looked like before the Renaissance, a period which continues to define the genre to this day. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/neth/hd_neth.htm, https://books.google.com/books?id=H-Fngn-m6-0C&pg=PA98&lpg=PA98&dq=%22donor+portrait%22&source=web&ots=bp4HescUA-&sig=1lj10erLxRS_3RUavFBFBGMVfDg&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=10&ct=result#PPA97,M1, http://www.nga.gov/cgi-bin/pinfo?Object=56+0+none, https://books.google.com/books?id=xT9w9uHtyWwC&pg=PA303&lpg=PA303&dq=%22donor+portrait%22&source=web&ots=X0VdBSRZBR&sig=UXiG-4YSsd-pfK2tVbS2u-_IZeA&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=5&ct=result#PPA302,M1, http://employees.oneonta.edu/farberas/arth/arth214_folder/burgundian_frontispieces.html. There also existed a strong tradition for . 1.7). Figure 1.26: George of Antioch before the Virgin, mosaic, originally probably in narthex, Church of the Martorana, Palermo, c. 1140. *A note on GDPR:In order to collect, process, store, and use personal data and information for supporters located in the EU, you need to have the right consent (a specific, informed and unambiguous indication of the subjects wishes). 2r, c. 1120. Here are some of the key pieces of information we think a good donor portrait should include: *A note on GDPR: In order to collect, process, store and use personal data and information you need to have the right consent (a specific, informed and unambiguous indication of the subjects wishes). This is visible in the forward tilt of his shoulders, and his head leaning back to peer up at Christ through slightly furrowed brows. The 6th-century mosaic panels in the Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna of the Emperor Justinian I and Empress Theodora with courtiers are not of the type showing the ruler receiving divine approval, but each show one of the imperial couple standing confidently with a group of attendants, looking out at the viewer. Now, the idea of drawing near to a spiritual figure is grafted onto an already-existent iconography showing kneeling, submissive figures before an earthly potentate. gr. [7] Additional family members, from births or marriages, might be added later, and deaths might be recorded by the addition of small crosses held in the clasped hands. 387. The Rijksmuseum employed an AI to repaint lost parts of Rembrandts The Night Watch. Heres how they did it. The reasons for this discrepancy are instructive. Here are five ways to collect the data you need to get started. 387; Vatican, BAV, Vat. 0.1, at first sight they all seem to belong within one of the categories suggested earlier, that of the gift-bearing scenes. Submissive, kneeling figures there are aplenty in the art of the early Christian period, of Rome, and of the ancient Near East, from where the gesture is said to have arisen.Footnote 35 It is a striking fact, however, that the posture is generally adopted in front of earthly potentates such as emperors and kings, not gods. Before the 15th century a physical likeness may not have often been attempted, or achieved; the individuals depicted may in any case often not have been available to the artist, or even alive. In these the portrait may adopt a praying pose,[14] or may pose more like the subject in a purely secular portrait. 12 See, for example, Spatharakis, Portrait, 125. 1.24).Footnote 36 A further instance of this appears in the Conquest and Clemency relief, originally from the Arch of Marcus Aurelius, which represents a common trope in Roman sculpture, of defeated barbarians kneeling before the mounted emperor (Museo del Palazzo dei Conservatori, Rome, AD 17680, Fig. But over time you will build not one, but a series of donor portraits a data-driven analysis of your audience and a deeper understanding of the people that give to your cause. The panel is also the subject of a study by E. Dimitriadou, The Lunette Mosaic in the Southwest Vestibule of Hagia Sophia at Constantinople: A Reconsideration, Ph.D. thesis, Courtauld Institute of Art (2010). 387; Vatican, BAV, Vat. In a sense, the earlier scene serves to authenticate the unimpeachable heritage of the volume that appears in the later. Towards the end of his life, Francisco Goya began painting terrifying scenes directly onto the walls of his house. But what if we told you she doesnt exist? Published online by Cambridge University Press: Donor portraits are very common in religious works of art, especially paintings, of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, the donor usually shown kneeling to one side, in the foreground of the image. The traditions of portraiture in the West extend back to antiquity and particularly to ancient Greece and Rome, where lifelike depictions of distinguished men and women appeared in sculpture and on coins. Note that endowed funds have minimum required amounts. The chief contention of the first section of this chapter is that not all the scenes commonly included in the designation belong there. Although many are of the high administrative classes, there are also a number of simple citizens with no particular status or rank who appear in the images as well. If this image is not a contact-donation portrait, then, what of the mosaic panel in the southwest vestibule of the Church of Hagia Sophia, representing the emperors Constantine and Justinian (Fig. It should be easy for someone to manage and withdraw their consent at any point, and you should be prepared to exclude and delete information if you do not have the permission you need. During the Middle Ages the donor figures often were shown on a far smaller scale than the sacred figures; a change dated by Dirk Kocks to the 14th century, though earlier examples in manuscripts can be found. In the earlier of these scenes, Christ appears between the empress Zoe and her husband, Constantine Monomachos. A portrait was often commissioned at a significant moment in someones life, such as betrothal, marriage, or elevation to an office. The Justinian scene, rather, is cut from the same cloth as the earlier Roman image that appears on the south frieze of the Ara Pacis Augustae in Rome (1319 BC, Fig. Your current browser may not support copying via this button. Figure 1.28: Emperor Justinian and entourage, mosaic in apse, Church of San Vitale, Ravenna, consecrated 548. 2, fol. Visual documentation includes donor portraits (images where the features of the patron are included in the work), inscriptions, coats of arms, and other imagery that represents the family or the community of the person or people paying. But in devotional subjects such as a Madonna and Child, which were more likely to have been intended for the donor's home, the main figures may look at or bless the donor, as in the Memling shown. 666Synodal 387, fol. They too take a concrete act anchored in the physical world, such as the building of a church or the writing of a manuscript, and re-represent it as a direct donation to a deity. Although donor portraiture is a mode of expression that dates to antiquity, in the medieval period an increasingly prosperous upper middle class used this genre more frequently. These paintings, like Rembrandts Syndics of the Drapers Guild, often depicted members of businesses surrounded by objects that hinted at their wealth and morals. This change reflected a new growth of interest in everyday life and individual identity as well as a revival of Greco-Roman custom. This revisionist classification system, distinguishing between contact portraits and its component subgroups on the one hand, and ktetor portraits on the other, has several benefits. Background. Annunciation Triptych (Merode Altarpiece), Portrait of a Woman with a Man at a Casement, Tommaso di Folco Portinari (14281501); Maria Portinari (Maria Maddalena Baroncelli, born 1456), Filippo Archinto (born about 1500, died 1558), Archbishop of Milan, Guidobaldo II della Rovere, Duke of Urbino (15141574), With his Armor by Filippo Negroli, Portrait of a Young Man, Probably Robert Devereux (15661601), Second Earl of Essex, Princess Elizabeth (15961662), Later Queen of Bohemia, Portrait of a Woman, Probably Susanna Lunden (Susanna Fourment, 15991628), The Artist's Mother: Head and Bust, Three-Quarters Right, James Stuart (16121655), Duke of Richmond and Lennox, Don Gaspar de Guzmn (15871645), Count-Duke of Olivares, Rubens, Helena Fourment (16141673), and Their Son Frans (16331678), Everhard Jabach (16181695) and His Family, The Nude in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, The Nude in Western Art and Its Beginnings in Antiquity, Painting the Life of Christ in Medieval and Renaissance Italy, The Birth and Infancy of Christ in Italian Painting, The Crucifixion and Passion of Christ in Italian Painting, Peter Paul Rubens (15771640) and Anthony van Dyck (15991641): Paintings, Burgundian Netherlands: Court Life and Patronage, Mannerism: Bronzino (15031572) and his Contemporaries, Painting in Oil in the Low Countries and Its Spread to Southern Europe, Paintings of Love and Marriage in the Italian Renaissance, Patronage at the Later Valois Courts (14611589), Prague during the Rule of Rudolf II (15831612), Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle, Sixteenth-Century Painting in Emilia-Romagna, Sixteenth-Century Painting in Venice and the Veneto.