Portrait

Portrait of an Achaemenid Satrap of Asia Minor (the Herakleia head, from Heraclea, in Bithynia), end of 6th century BCE.[1] This is an Eastern portrait in purely East Greek Archaic style, one of the two known forerunners of extant Greek portraits, along with the Sabouroff head.[1]
A Roman bust of the Athenian General Themistocles, based on a Greek original. The lost original of this bust, dated c. 470 BCE, has been described as "the first true portrait of an individual European".[2]
The Mona Lisa, a painting by Leonardo da Vinci of Lisa Gherardini, is probably the world's most famous portrait.

A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and its expressions are predominant. The intent is to display the likeness, personality, and even the mood of the person. For this reason, in photography a portrait is generally not a snapshot, but a composed image of a person in a still position. A portrait often shows a person looking directly at the painter or photographer, to most successfully engage the subject with the viewer.

  1. ^ a b Cahn, Herbert A.; Gerin, Dominique (1988). "Themistocles at Magnesia". The Numismatic Chronicle. 148: 20 & plate 3. JSTOR 42668124.
  2. ^ Tanner, Jeremy (2006). The Invention of Art History in Ancient Greece: Religion, Society and Artistic Rationalisation. Cambridge University Press. p. 97. ISBN 9780521846141.