title: Torn Curtain

text: By the time "Torn Curtain", his fiftieth film, was conceived, Hitchcock was the most famous film director in Hollywood, having already reached the pinnacle of commercial success six years before with "Psycho" (1960). Audiences eagerly anticipated his next film. To find a gripping plot, Hitchcock turned towards the spy thriller genre, which was greatly in fashion since the early 1960s with the success of the James Bond series starting in 1962 with "Dr. No". Hitchcock had already found success in that genre many times, most recently in 1959 with "North by Northwest".


title: Torn Curtain

text: The idea behind "Torn Curtain" came from the defection of British diplomats Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean to the Soviet Union in 1951. Hitchcock was particularly intrigued about Maclean's life in the Soviet Union and about Melinda Marling, Maclean's wife, who followed her husband behind the Iron Curtain a year later with the couple's three children. With these facts as a starting point Hitchcock created a plot line involving an American nuclear physicist, Professor Michael Armstrong, defecting to East Germany. Against his will, the physicist is followed to East Berlin by his fiancée and assistant, who decides to remain loyal to him regardless of his intentions. The twist of the story is that Professor Armstrong is in fact a member of a secret spy ring and he has defected only with the idea of stealing a formula from an East German scientist.


title: Torn Curtain

text: In autumn 1964, Hitchcock offered to let Vladimir Nabokov, the author of "Lolita", who had successfully helped adapt his own novel to a well-regarded film directed by Stanley Kubrick in 1962, write the script. Although intrigued, Nabokov declined the project, feeling that he knew very little about a political thriller.


title: Torn Curtain

text: As the original focus of the plot was on the female lead, the spy's girlfriend, the script was commissioned early in 1965 to Irish-Canadian writer Brian Moore, who was known for successfully tackling female characters. His well-regarded first novel, "Judith Hearne", centers on an alcoholic Belfast spinster. In addition to this, Moore had adapted his own novel "The Luck of Ginger Coffey" into a film the previous year. Moore moved to Hollywood to work on the script. His five-page synopsis, completed on 26 March 1965, already contained two key scenes of the film: "Torn Curtain"'s opening aboard a cruise steamer in the Norwegian fjords, and the brutal killing of undercover agent Gromek by the American scientist and a farm woman. Moore's final draft, completed by June 21, pleased neither Hitchcock nor Universal. It lacked the humor and sparkle characteristic of a Hitchcock film. On his part, Moore complained that Hitchcock had "no concept of character" and that he had "a profound ignorance of human motivation". Brian Moore's own dissatisfaction with the project was reflected in his novel "Fergus" (1970), which features Bernard Boweri, an unsympathetic character based on Hitchcock.


title: Torn Curtain

text: To polish the dialogue and improve the script, Hitchcock hired British authors Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall, known for their screenplays for "Whistle Down the Wind" (1961), "A Kind of Loving" (1962), and "Billy Liar" (1963), the latter based on the novel by Waterhouse. They worked rewriting some dialogue, on a day-by-day basis, as the film was shot. However, their contribution was restricted by the director's resistance to change and concern for detail. His notes to them were like these: "Scene 88. We should eliminate the floor concierge. My information is that they do not have these in East Berlin;


title: Torn Curtain

text: Scene 127 C. I would like to discuss the place where the sausage is carved; On Scene 139, where we had someone describing the Julie Andrews character as beautiful... do you think beautiful is perhaps too much, and cannot we say lovely instead?"


title: Torn Curtain

text: Hitchcock had to compromise in his casting choices. Initially, he wanted Eva Marie Saint, the blonde star of "North by Northwest", for the female lead. Hitchcock also spoke in 1965 to Cary Grant about appearing in the film, only to learn that Grant intended to make just one more film and then retire.


title: Torn Curtain

text: Universal Pictures executives insisted on famous stars being cast for the leads. Paul Newman and Julie Andrews were imposed on Hitchcock by Lew Wasserman, the studio executive, rather than being his real choices. The director felt that the stars were ill-suited to their roles, while their salaries of $750,000 took a big part of the film's $5 million budget.


title: Torn Curtain

text: At the time Julie Andrews was Hollywood's biggest star after the back-to-back successes of her films "Mary Poppins" (1964) and "The Sound of Music" (1965). As she was much in demand, Andrews was only available for a short period of time, and that meant that the production of the film was rushed, although Hitchcock was not yet satisfied with the script.


title: Torn Curtain

text: Hitchcock surrounded Newman and Andrews with colorful supporting actors: Lila Kedrova, fresh from winning an Academy Award for "Zorba the Greek", as the eccentric and flamboyantly dressed Countess Kuczynska who helps Armstrong and Sherman in their escape in return for their sponsoring her to go to America; Tamara Toumanova as the haughty prima ballerina whose limelight Armstrong steals when he arrives in East Berlin; Ludwig Donath as the crotchety professor Lindt, eager to cut the chat and get down to business; and Wolfgang Kieling as the sinister Hermann Gromek, the gum-chewing personal guide the East German authorities provide to shadow Armstrong's every move.


title: Torn Curtain

text: Hitchcock initially wanted to shoot the film entirely on location in the Eastern Bloc but could not because he refused to give East German officials a copy of his screen play. Moore later said that Hitchcock probably could have secured filming permits in East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Poland if he had tried harder. Principal photography of the film began on 18 October 1965, on Stage 18 at the Universal back lot in Los Angeles. The shooting schedule lasted three months, including a two-week hiatus while Paul Newman recuperated from a chin infection. Filming was completed in mid-February 1966.


title: Torn Curtain

text: Although unexcited about his leading actress, Hitchcock was always very polite with Julie Andrews. About her experience making the film Andrews commented: "I did not have to act in "Torn Curtain". I merely went along for the ride. I don't feel that the part demanded much of me, other than to look glamorous, which Mr Hitchcock can always arrange better than anyone. I did have reservations about this film, but I wasn't agonized by it. The kick of it was working for Hitchcock. That's what I did it for, and that's what I got out of it."


title: Torn Curtain

text: The working relationship between Hitchcock and Newman was problematic. Newman came from a different generation of actors from the likes of Cary Grant and James Stewart. He questioned Hitchcock about the script and the characterization throughout filming. Hitchcock later said he found Newman's manner and approach unacceptable and disrespectful. Newman insisted that he meant no disrespect toward Hitchcock, and once said, "I think Hitch and I could have really hit it off, but the script kept getting in the way." When Newman, a Method actor, consulted Hitchcock about his character's motivations, the director replied: "motivation is your salary." Furthermore, as Hitchcock discovered, the expected onscreen chemistry between Newman and Andrews failed to materialize.


title: Torn Curtain

text: Unsatisfied with the actors cast in the leads, Hitchcock shifted the point of view of the plot from the defecting scientist's wife to the American amateur spy and he centered his attention in the colorful international actors who played supporting roles in the film. Lila Kedrova was Hitchcock's favorite among the cast; he ate lunch with her several times during filming and invited her home for dinners with his wife. Although the length of the film was shortened in post-production, Hitchcock left intact Countess Kuczynska's scenes in the final film.


title: Torn Curtain

text: The film's climax in a theater was filmed on Sound Stage 28 at Universal Studios. Stage 28 was also used in the 1925 and 1943 versions of "The Phantom of the Opera" with Lon Chaney, Sr., 41 years earlier. The set was demolished in 2014.


title: Torn Curtain

text: Perhaps the best-known scene is the fight to the death between Armstrong and Gromek, a gruesome, prolonged struggle. In conversation with François Truffaut, Hitchcock said that he included the scene to show the audience how difficult it can be to kill a man, because a number of spy thrillers at the time made killing look effortless.


title: Torn Curtain

text: Alfred Hitchcock's cameo is a signature occurrence in most of his films. In "Torn Curtain" he can be seen (eight minutes into the film) sitting in a hotel lobby holding a baby.


title: Torn Curtain

text: Steven Spielberg told James Lipton on "Inside the Actors Studio" that as a young man he sneaked onto the soundstage to observe the filming, and remained for 45 minutes before an assistant producer asked him to leave.


title: Torn Curtain

text: The production occurred during the 1965 Watts race riots, leaving Kieling disgusted with American society. As a result, after the film was released he defected to East Germany in real life, calling the United States "the most dangerous enemy of humanity in the world today" and guilty of "crimes against the Negro and the people of Vietnam."


title: Torn Curtain

text: The film had two scores. The first was written by Bernard Herrmann, a recurrent contributor to Hitchcock's work. Hitchcock and Universal asked Herrmann for a pop-and-jazz-influenced soundtrack, and even hoped Herrmann might write a song for lead actress Julie Andrews to perform. However, the score Herrmann provided was not what Hitchcock and the studio wanted, and his revisions failed to satisfy them. Hitchcock and Herrmann ended their long-time collaboration and John Addison was approached to write the score.


title: Torn Curtain

text: Although the Addison score was issued commercially in 1966 (and has been re-released), the Herrmann score has been re-recorded and reissued several times, eclipsing that by Addison in terms of available versions. Recordings of Herrmann's original studio sessions exist, and have circulated online. Elmer Bernstein made the first commercial recording of the score with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra on Warner Brothers Records in 1978. Esa-Pekka Salonen recorded a suite from the film as part of a Herrmann album with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra in 1996. Joel McNeely subsequently recorded an expanded version with the National Philharmonic Orchestra for Varese Sarabande Records in 2010.


title: Torn Curtain

text: In the climactic scene involving the ballet at the East Berlin theatre, the music was excerpted from Tchaikovsky's "Francesca da Rimini".


title: Torn Curtain

text: "Torn Curtain" was released without any rating on 14 July 1966 (see original 1966 movie poster above). However, the film was given an "R" (for "Restricted") under the MPAA film rating system that took effect November 1, 1968. It was ultimately re-rated PG in 1984.


title: Torn Curtain

text: After its premiere in 1966, the film was criticized, especially in terms of its production technology, as being old-fashioned. The film was nevertheless a minor hit for Hitchcock, making $7 million in the United States alone. The film ranked 8th on Cahiers du Cinéma's Top 10 Films of the Year List in 1966.


title: Torn Curtain

text: The film earned poor reviews from critics. Bosley Crowther of "The New York Times" called the film "a pathetically undistinguished spy picture, and the obvious reason is that the script is a collection of what Mr. Hitchcock most eschews—clichés." Penelope Houston, writing for "Sight & Sound", commented: "What went wrong here, one suspects, was something basic in the story line." The reviewer in "Variety" said: "Some good plot ideas are marred by routine dialogue, and a too relaxed pace contributed to a dull overlength," adding "Hitchcock freshens up his bag of tricks in a good potpourri which becomes a bit stale though a noticeable lack of zip and pacing." "Awful," "preposterous," and "irritating slack," concluded Renata Adler in "The New Yorker". "The Monthly Film Bulletin" wrote, "Up until about the point at which the plot makes itself clear, "Torn Curtain" is as good as anything Hitchcock has ever done in his other forty-nine (or is it fifty-one?) films ... The let-down comes with the verdant studio hillock that was surely never meant to fool anyone, and after this the film drops like a stone, without impetus, without imagination, without interest."


title: Torn Curtain

text: Richard Schickel, writing in "Life", concluded: "Hitchcock is tired to the point where what once seemed highly personal style is now repetitions of past triumphs."


title: Torn Curtain

text: Writing in "Punch", Richard Mallet asserted: "The film as a whole may be a bit diffuse... but it has some brilliant scenes, it's pleasing to the eye, and it is continuously entertaining." Richard L. Coe of "The Washington Post" also liked the film, writing that "Hitchcock has given us several sequences that will prove memorable." He singled out Countess Kuzynska's search for a sponsor for her escape to the United States as a sequence that stood as "a short story in itself. It could be shown independently of the rest of the film, a gripping vignette with a beginning, a middle and an end."


title: Torn Curtain

text: "Torn Curtain" holds a 65% rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes based on 31 reviews with an average rating of 6.4/10.


title: Black on Both Sides

text: Black on Both Sides is the debut studio album by American rapper Mos Def, released on October 12, 1999, by Rawkus and Priority Records. Prior to its recording, Mos Def had collaborated with Talib Kweli for the album "Mos Def & Talib Kweli Are Black Star" in 1998, which raised high expectations for a solo effort by the former. "Black on Both Sides" features an emphasis on live instrumentation and socially conscious lyrics.


title: Black on Both Sides

text: On February 2, 2000, the album was certified Gold in sales by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), following sales in excess of 500,000 copies.


title: Black on Both Sides

text: Talib Kweli (one-half of Black Star with Mos Def), Q-Tip and Busta Rhymes are the only main rappers to be featured on the album. Kweli raps the second and final verse of "Know That", while Busta goes back and forth with Mos on "Do It Now". Q-Tip helps sing the chorus on "Mr. Nigga" but doesn't deliver a verse. The lyrics Q-Tip recites are similar to his previously released lyrics on A Tribe Called Quest's "Sucka Nigga". Vinia Mojica (who is known for singing on Native Tongues songs) also sings a duet with Mos Def on the song "Climb".


title: Black on Both Sides

text: The album features a mix between established and rising producers. DJ Premier provides the instrumental track for "Mathematics". Diamond D is credited for "Hip Hop". Ali Shaheed Muhammad, known mostly as a member of A Tribe Called Quest, produced the seventh song "Got". Psycho Les of The Beatnuts produced "New World Water" and "Rock N Roll". Jazz legend Weldon Irvine provided additional production to "Climb".


title: Black on Both Sides

text: Ayatollah produced "Ms. Fat Booty" and "Know That". 88-Keys produced "Love" and "Speed Law" and co-produced the instrumental outro "May–December" with Mos Def himself. David Kennedy (the second swing of "Brooklyn" and "Umi Says" produced with Mos Def), Mr. Khaliyl ("Do It Now"), DJ Etch-A-Sketch ("Climb" and "Habitat"), Ge-ology (The first swing of "Brooklyn") and D. Prosper ("Mr. Nigga") round out the other contributors.


title: Black on Both Sides

text: Mos received production assistance on most of the album's tracks. His sole production credit comes at "Fear Not of Man", but he provided additional production to four tracks ("Hip Hop", "Rock N Roll", "Climb" and "Mr. Nigga") and co-produced three ("Umi Says", "Brooklyn" and "May–December").


title: Black on Both Sides

text: On the song "Brooklyn", a three-movement piece dedicated to Mos's neighborhood in Bedford-Stuyvesant, New York, Mos rhymes three verses over three different beats. The first beat is an original composition produced by Ge-ology, while the second verse is a re-creation Smif-N-Wessun's "Home Sweet Home" and the last verse is set to the instrumental track of The Notorious B.I.G.'s 1995 single "Who Shot Ya?". Originally, Mos rhymed three complete verses over Ge-ology's musical composition, now referred to as the first movement of the song. On a later version, the first and third verses are set to the instrumentals of two other 1995 New York rap hits, "Incarcerated Scarfaces" by Raekwon as well as "Give Up the Goods (Just Step)" by Mobb Deep, respectively. The "Who Shot Ya?" verse, with the same vocal take on the released version, is placed in the middle. Mos Def sings his own interpretation of the Red Hot Chili Peppers song "Under the Bridge".


title: Black on Both Sides

text: Mos Def was involved with two videos for "Umi Says". One was more traditional, while the second one came when Nike and Jordan Brand chose "Umi Says" as its theme song for its "Much Respect" series of commercials for the Air Jordan XVI. As a result, the second video features appearances from Michael Finley, Eddie Jones, Derek Jeter, Roy Jones Jr., Ray Allen and even Michael Jordan himself.


title: Black on Both Sides

text: "Black on Both Sides" received universal acclaim from critics. Matt Diehl of "Entertainment Weekly" praised the album's diversity and noted, "Merging old-school bravado with new-school poetics, the Brooklyn legend spouts incisive Afrocentric reality that takes all sides into account." Dan Leroy of Yahoo! Music opined that "Not since Rakim's heyday has a mic-rocker so clearly articulated such complex and entertaining thoughts, with the ability to wax eloquently on matters metaphysical ('Love') and just plain physical ('Ms. Fat Booty')" and hailed the album as "a sure pick as one of the year's best."


title: Black on Both Sides

text: "The Independent" lauded the record's "sharp reflections on a range of subjects from parochialism to pollution, fear to fat booties, rap to rock 'n' roll" and wrote that "Black on Both Sides" "stands as a proud example of the heights hip-hop can achieve when its exponents put their minds to it." "The Village Voice"s Robert Christgau wrote that while he felt the album ran too long, "the wealth of good-hearted reflection and well-calibrated production overwhelms one's petty objections". In a retrospective review, Charles Aaron of "Spin" described Mos Def as a "restless B-Boy citizen of the world" and called the album "playful, witty, and heart-pounding."


title: Deadpool (soundtrack)

text: The soundtrack for the 2016 American superhero film "Deadpool", based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name and distributed by 20th Century Fox, consists of an original score composed by Tom Holkenborg and a series of songs featured in the film. An album featuring these, named Deadpool: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, was released on February 12, 2016. It reached number 30 on the US "Billboard" 200, and topped the soundtrack list from "Billboard".


title: Deadpool (soundtrack)

text: In January 2016, Holkenborg confirmed that he would compose the score for "Deadpool". The composition mainly utilized 80's synthesizers that added to the immersion.


title: Deadpool (soundtrack)

text: Holkenborg used an ARP 2600 and a Synclavier, for Deadpool's 'riffs' and battles, while an Oberheim is mainly for more emotional scenes. A complete orchestra was mainly used for Colussus and Negasonic Teenage Warhead, to give feeling and honor from previous films.


title: Deadpool (soundtrack)

text: The soundtrack also includes "Deadpool Rap" by YouTube personalities TeamHeadKick, featuring updated lyrics that reference the film rather than the video game, "Shoop" by Salt-N-Pepa, "X Gon' Give It to Ya" by DMX, and more.


title: Deadpool (soundtrack)

text: The soundtrack album was released digitally on February 12, 2016, featuring both Holkenborg's score and the additional songs. Physical copies of the soundtrack became available through Milan Records and Fox Music on March 4, 2016.


title: InfiniBand

text: InfiniBand (IB) is a computer networking communications standard used in high-performance computing that features very high throughput and very low latency. It is used for data interconnect both among and within computers. InfiniBand is also used as either a direct or switched interconnect between servers and storage systems, as well as an interconnect between storage systems. It is designed to be scalable and uses a switched fabric network topology.


title: InfiniBand

text: By 2014, it was the most commonly used interconnect in the TOP500 list of supercomputers, until about 2016.


title: InfiniBand

text: Mellanox (acquired by Nvidia) manufactures InfiniBand host bus adapters and network switches, which are used by large computer system and database vendors in their product lines.


title: InfiniBand

text: As a computer cluster interconnect, IB competes with Ethernet, Fibre Channel, and Intel Omni-Path. The technology is promoted by the InfiniBand Trade Association.


title: InfiniBand

text: InfiniBand originated in 1999 from the merger of two competing designs: Future I/O and Next Generation I/O (NGIO). NGIO was led by Intel, with a specification released on 1998, and joined by Sun Microsystems and Dell.


title: InfiniBand

text: This led to the formation of the InfiniBand Trade Association (IBTA), which included both sets of hardware vendors as well as software vendors such as Microsoft.


title: InfiniBand

text: At the time it was thought some of the more powerful computers were approaching the interconnect bottleneck of the PCI bus, in spite of upgrades like PCI-X. Version 1.0 of the InfiniBand Architecture Specification was released in 2000. Initially the IBTA vision for IB was simultaneously a replacement for PCI in I/O, Ethernet in the machine room, cluster interconnect and Fibre Channel. IBTA also envisaged decomposing server hardware on an IB fabric.


title: InfiniBand

text: Mellanox had been founded in 1999 to develop NGIO technology, but by 2001 shipped an InfiniBand product line called InfiniBridge at 10 Gbit/second speeds.


title: InfiniBand

text: Following the burst of the dot-com bubble there was hesitation in the industry to invest in such a far-reaching technology jump.


title: InfiniBand

text: By 2002, Intel announced that instead of shipping IB integrated circuits ("chips"), it would focus on developing PCI Express, and Microsoft discontinued IB development in favor of extending Ethernet. Sun and Hitachi continued to support IB.


title: InfiniBand

text: In 2003, the System X supercomputer built at Virginia Tech used InfiniBand in what was estimated to be the third largest computer in the world at the time.


title: InfiniBand

text: The OpenIB Alliance (later renamed OpenFabrics Alliance) was founded in 2004 to develop an open set of software for the Linux kernel. By February, 2005, the support was accepted into the 2.6.11 Linux kernel.


title: InfiniBand

text: In November 2005 storage devices finally were released using InfiniBand from vendors such as Engenio.


title: InfiniBand

text: Of the top 500 supercomputers in 2009, Gigabit Ethernet was the internal interconnect technology in 259 installations, compared with 181 using InfiniBand.


title: InfiniBand

text: In 2010, market leaders Mellanox and Voltaire merged, leaving just one other IB vendor, QLogic, primarily a Fibre Channel vendor.


title: InfiniBand

text: At the 2011 International Supercomputing Conference, links running at about 56 gigabits per second (known as FDR, see below), were announced and demonstrated by connecting booths in the trade show.


title: InfiniBand

text: By 2014, InfiniBand was the most popular internal connection technology for supercomputers, although within two years, 10 Gigabit Ethernet started displacing it.


title: InfiniBand

text: In 2016, it was reported that Oracle Corporation (an investor in Mellanox) might engineer its own InfiniBand hardware.


title: InfiniBand

text: Original names for speeds were single-data rate (SDR), double-data rate (DDR) and quad-data rate (QDR) as given below. Subsequently, other three-letter acronyms were added for even higher data rates.


title: InfiniBand

text: Links can be aggregated: most systems use a 4 link/lane connector (QSFP). HDR often makes use of 2x links (aka HDR100, 100Gb link using 2 lanes of HDR, while still using a QSFP connector). 8x is called for with NDR switch ports using OSFP (Octal Small Form Factor Pluggable) connectors


title: InfiniBand

text: InfiniBand uses a switched fabric topology, as opposed to early shared medium Ethernet. All transmissions begin or end at a channel adapter. Each processor contains a host channel adapter (HCA) and each peripheral has a target channel adapter (TCA). These adapters can also exchange information for security or quality of service (QoS).


title: InfiniBand

text: InfiniBand transmits data in packets of up to 4 KB that are taken together to form a message. A message can be:


title: InfiniBand

text: In addition to a board form factor connection, it can use both active and passive copper (up to 10 meters) and optical fiber cable (up to 10 km).


title: InfiniBand

text: The InfiniBand Association also specified the CXP connector system for speeds up to 120 Gbit/s over copper, active optical cables, and optical transceivers using parallel multi-mode fiber cables with 24-fiber MPO connectors.


title: InfiniBand

text: Mellanox operating system support is available for Solaris, FreeBSD, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES), Windows, HP-UX, VMware ESX, and AIX.


title: InfiniBand

text: InfiniBand has no specific standard application programming interface (API). The standard only lists a set of verbs such as codice_1 or codice_2, which are abstract representations of functions or methods that must exist. The syntax of these functions is left to the vendors. Sometimes for reference this is called the "verbs" API. The de facto standard software is developed by OpenFabrics Alliance and called the Open Fabrics Enterprise Distribution (OFED). It is released under two licenses GPL2 or BSD license for Linux and FreeBSD, and as Mellanox OFED for Windows (product names: WinOF / WinOF-2; attributed as host controller driver for matching specific ConnectX 3 to 5 devices) under a choice of BSD license for Windows.


title: InfiniBand

text: It has been adopted by most of the InfiniBand vendors, for Linux, FreeBSD, and Microsoft Windows. IBM refers to a software library called codice_3, for its AIX operating system, as well as "AIX InfiniBand verbs".


title: InfiniBand

text: Ethernet over InfiniBand, abbreviated to EoIB, is an Ethernet implementation over the InfiniBand protocol and connector technology.


title: InfiniBand

text: Ethernet's implementation of the Internet Protocol Suite, usually referred to as TCP/IP, is different in some details compared to the direct InfiniBand protocol in IP over IB (IPoIB).


title: Judith and the Head of Holofernes

text: Judith and the Head of Holofernes (also known as Judith I, German: "Judith und Holofernes") is an oil painting by Gustav Klimt, painted in 1901. It depicts the biblical figure Judith holding the head of Holofernes after beheading him. The beheading and its aftermath have been commonly portrayed in art since the Renaissance, and Klimt himself would paint a second work depicting the subject in 1909.


title: Judith and the Head of Holofernes

text: When Klimt addressed the biblical theme of Judith, the historical course of art had already codified its main interpretation and preferred representation. Many paintings exist describing the episode in a heroic manner, especially expressing Judith's courage and virtuous nature. Judith appears as God's instrument of salvation, but the violence of her action cannot be denied and is dramatically shown in Caravaggio's rendering, as well as those of Gentileschi and Bigot. Other representations have depicted the subsequent moment, when a dazed Judith holds Holofernes' severed head, as Moreau and Allori anticipate in their suggestive mythological paintings.


title: Judith and the Head of Holofernes

text: Klimt deliberately ignores any narrative reference whatsoever and concentrates his pictorial rendering solely on to Judith, so much so that he cuts off Holofernes' head at the right margin. And there is no trace of a bloodied sword as if the heroine would have used a different weapon: an omission that legitimates association with Salome. The moment preceding the killing – the seduction of Nebuchadnezzar's general – seems to coalesce with the conclusive part of the story.


title: Judith and the Head of Holofernes

text: "Judith I" shares elements of its composition and symbolism with "The Sin" by Franz Stuck: the "temptation" illustrated by the German painter becomes the model for Klimt's "femme fatale" by suggesting the posture of the disrobed and evanescent body as a focal piece of the canvas, as well as the facial set. Judith's force originates from the close-up and the solidity of posture, rendered by the orthogonal projection of lines: to the body's verticality (and that of Holofernes') corresponds the horizontal parallels in the lower margin: those of the arm, the shoulders joined by the collier, and finally the hair base.


title: Judith and the Head of Holofernes

text: Judith was the biblical heroine who seduced and then decapitated General Holofernes in order to save her home city of Bethulia from destruction by the Assyrian army.


title: Judith and the Head of Holofernes

text: Judith's face exudes a mixed charge of voluptuousness and perversion. Its traits are transfigured so as to obtain the greatest degree of intensity and seduction, which Klimt achieves by placing the woman on an unattainable plane. Notwithstanding the alteration of features, one can recognise Klimt's friend (and, possibly, lover), Viennese socialite, Adele Bloch-Bauer, the subject of another two portraits respectively done in 1907 and 1912, and also painted in the "". The slightly lifted head has a sense of pride, whereas her visage is languid and sensual, with parted lips in between defiance and seduction. Franz A. J. Szabo describes it best as a "[symbol of] triumph of the erotic feminine principle over the aggressive masculine one". Her half-closed gaze, which also ties into an expression of pleasure, directly confronts the viewer of all this. In 1903, author and critic Felix Salten describes Judith's expression as one "with a sultry fire in her dark glances, cruelty in the lines of her mouth, and nostrils trembling with passion. Mysterious forces seem to be slumbering within this enticing female". Although Judith had typically been interpreted as the pious widow simply fulfilling a higher duty, in Judith I she is a paradigm of the femme fatale Klimt repeatedly portrayed in his work. The contrast between the black hair and the golden luminosity of the background enhance elegance and exaltation. The fashionable hairdo is emphasized by the stylised motifs of the trees fanning on the sides. Her disheveled dark green, semi-sheer garment, giving the viewer a view of her nearly bare torso, alludes to the fact that Judith beguiled the general Holofernes before decapitating him.


title: Judith and the Head of Holofernes

text: In the 1901 version, Judith maintains a magnetic fascination and sensuality, subsequently abandoned by Klimt in his "", where she acquires sharper traits and a fierce expression. In its formal qualities, the first version illustrates a heroine with the archetypal features of the bewitching and charming ladies described by symbolist artists and writers such as Wilde, Vasnetsov, Moreau, and others. She revels in her power and sexuality—so much so that critics mislabeled Klimt's Judith as Salome, the title character from Oscar Wilde's 1891 tragedy. To stress and re-emphasize that the woman was actually Judith and not Salome he had his brother, Georg, make the metal frame for him with "Judith and Holofernes" engraved on it.


title: VVVVVV

text: VVVVVV is a 2010 puzzle-platform game created by Terry Cavanagh. In the game, the player controls Captain Viridian, who must rescue their spacecrew after a teleporter malfunction caused them to be separated in Dimension VVVVVV. The gameplay is characterized by the inability of the player to jump, instead opting on controlling the direction of gravity, causing the player to fall upwards or downwards. The game consists of more than 400 individual rooms, and also supports the creation of user-created levels.


title: VVVVVV

text: The game was built in Adobe Flash and released on January 11, 2010, for Microsoft Windows and OS X. The game was ported to C++ by Simon Roth in 2011, and released as part of the Humble Indie Bundle #3. The port to C++ allowed the porting of the game to other platforms such as Linux, Pandora, Nintendo 3DS, and Nintendo Switch.


title: VVVVVV

text: Unlike most platforming games, in "VVVVVV" the player is not able to jump, but instead can reverse the direction of gravity when standing on a surface, causing Captain Viridian to fall either upwards or downwards. This feature was first seen in the 1986 8-bit game "Terminus". The player uses this mechanic to traverse the game's environment and avoid various hazards, including stationary spikes and moving enemies.


title: VVVVVV

text: Later areas introduce new mechanics such as moving floors or rooms which, upon touching one edge of the screen, cause the player character to appear on the other side.


title: VVVVVV

text: "VVVVVV" contains eight main levels, including an intro level, four levels which can be accessed in a non-linear sequence, two intermission levels, and one final level, only seen outside Dimension VVVVVV (in a "polar dimension"). These are situated inside a large open world for the player to explore, spanning more than 400 individual rooms. Due to its high level of difficulty, the game world contains many checkpoints, to which the player's character is reset upon death.


title: VVVVVV

text: The player controls Captain Viridian, who at the outset of "VVVVVV" must evacuate the spaceship along with the captain's crew, when the ship becomes affected by "dimensional interference". The crew escapes through a teleporter on the ship; however, Captain Viridian becomes separated from the rest of the crew on the other end of the teleporter. Upon returning to the ship, the Captain learns that the ship is trapped in an alternative dimension (referred to as "Dimension VVVVVV"), and that the ship's crew has been scattered throughout this dimension. The player's goal, as Captain Viridian, is to rescue the missing crew members and find the cause of the dimensional interference.


title: VVVVVV

text: The gravity-flipping mechanic of "VVVVVV" is based on an earlier game designed by Cavanagh titled "Sine Wave Ninja". In an interview with IndieGames.com, Cavanagh said that he was interested in using this idea as a core concept of a game, something he felt other games which include a gravity-flipping mechanism had never done before.


title: VVVVVV

text: Cavanagh first unveiled "VVVVVV" on his blog in June 2009. The game had been in development for two weeks, and Cavanagh estimated that the game would be finished in another two, "but hopefully not much longer." A follow-up post published in July 2009 included screenshots of the game and an explanation of the game's gravity-flipping mechanic. Cavanagh wrote that "VVVVVV", unlike some of his previous work such as "Judith" and "Pathways", would not be a "storytelling experiment", but rather "focused on the level design". The game was first shown publicly at the 2009 Eurogamer Expo, which gave Cavanagh the opportunity to collect feedback from players. In December 2009, a beta version of "VVVVVV" which had been given to donors was leaked on 4chan.


title: VVVVVV

text: The visual style of "VVVVVV" is heavily inspired by 8-bit computer games from the 1980s, especially "Jet Set Willy" and "Monty on the Run", which is referenced by the element of collecting difficult-to-reach shiny objects and most notably the naming of each room; Cavanagh aimed to create a game "that looked and felt like the C64 games I grew up with." He eventually entrusted naming the rooms to "QWOP" developer Bennett Foddy, who created every room name in the final version. The graphical style of "VVVVVV" is heavily influenced by games such as "Monty on the Run"; similarly, the game's music is heavily dependent on chiptune elements. Swedish composer Magnus Pålsson scored the game, and released the original soundtrack in 2010, titled "PPPPPP".


title: VVVVVV

text: Cavanagh also considered this game an opportunity to indulge in his "retro fetish". He has said because he lacks the technical prowess to make more modern-looking games, he instead focuses on making them visually interesting; additionally, he finds this to be made easier by "work[ing] within narrow limits". "VVVVVV" was the first game which Cavanagh sold commercially. While his previous games were all released as freeware, due to the size of "VVVVVV" compared to his previous work, Cavanagh felt that he "couldn't see [himself] going down that route."


title: VVVVVV

text: "VVVVVV" contains many strange visual elements, most notable of which being the sad elephant, sometimes also called the elephant in the room, which is a large elephant with a tear dropping from its eye. It spans four rooms near the Space Station area of Dimension VVVVVV, flickering constantly from color to color. If the player stands near the elephant for a short period of time, it will cause Captain Viridian to become sad. The elephant serves no function to the game, but has served to provoke much discussion about its meaning or symbolism amongst fans of the game. Similarly to many of the enemies in the game, the sad elephant originated in dream journals kept by creator Terry Cavanagh and not from "Jet Set Willy" as once believed.


title: VVVVVV

text: "VVVVVV" was released on January 11, 2010, for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. A trial version of the game is playable on the website Kongregate. A Linux version was in development, but a number of technical difficulties arose in the porting process, which led Cavanagh to cancel it for the time being.


title: VVVVVV

text: The game was rewritten in C++ by games developer Simon Roth in 2011, allowing Linux support to be successfully implemented. This formed version 2.0 of "VVVVVV", launched on July 24, 2011, as part of the third Humble Indie Bundle. Version 2.0 also features support for custom levels, and a level editor. The C++ port also allowed for the implementation of new graphics modes and various speed improvements. Version 2.0, however, does not support saved games from the original Flash version of "VVVVVV"; many players received this update via Steam without warning, and hence were unable to continue their existing saved games. A save-file exporter is in development.


title: VVVVVV

text: Based on this source code it was also ported in 2011 for the Open Pandora, which requires the data files from the Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X or Linux version of the game to work.


title: VVVVVV

text: On October 7, 2011, it was announced that a version of the game was being made for Nintendo 3DS by Nicalis. It was released on December 29, 2011, in North America and May 10, 2012, in Europe. The Nintendo 3DS version was eventually released in Japan on October 12, 2016, courtesy of Japanese publisher Pikii. In 2010, a demo of the game's early levels was ported to the Commodore 64 by programmer Paul Koller, with Cavanagh's assistance. In April 2017 a complete port to the Commodore 64 was released by developer Laxity. On the 10th anniversary of the game's release in January 2020, Cavanagh made its source code publicly available on GitHub.


title: VVVVVV

text: The soundtrack of "VVVVVV" was composed by chiptune musician Magnus Pålsson (also known as SoulEye). Cavanagh approached Pålsson to compose "VVVVVV" after playing "Space Phallus", an indie game by Charlie's Games, which featured a song by him. Pålsson wrote on the Distractionware blog that, upon playing Cavanagh's previous games, he was "amazed at the depth that came with the games, even though they were small and short." In writing the music for "VVVVVV", Pålsson aimed to make "uptempo happy songs that would ingrain themselves into your minds whether you want to or not, hopefully so much so that you’d go humming on them when not playing, and making you want to come back to the game even more." The complete soundtrack, titled "PPPPPP", was released on January 10, 2010, alongside "VVVVVV" and is sold as a music download or CD on Pålsson's personal website. On June 12, 2014, Pålsson released a power metal version of the soundtrack titled "MMMMMM" which was arranged and performed by guitarist Jules Conroy. The album contains a mod file to replace the in-game music with the metal tracks. Video game record label Materia Collective released a 180g picture disc vinyl LP edition on January 11, 2020.


title: VVVVVV

text: "VVVVVV" has been generally well received by critics, earning a score of 81/100 for the Windows version and 83/100 for the 3DS version on review aggregator website Metacritic. The game was noted for being the first important independent release of 2010; Kieron Gillen of "Rock, Paper, Shotgun" called it "the first great Indie game of the year", while Michael Rose, writing for IndieGames.com, noted that the release of "VVVVVV" followed a year which "some may argue...didn't really deliver an outstanding indie title which showed the mainstream that independent developers mean business." The level design of "VVVVVV" was lauded by critics: Rose considered the game to have no filler content, which he found to be "one of the game's strongest points". Michael McWhertor of gaming news blog Kotaku wrote that the game's areas contained "a surprising amount of variation throughout...ensuring that "VVVVVV" never feels like its designer failed to explore the gameplay possibilities."


title: VVVVVV

text: Most reviewers wrote of "VVVVVV" high level of difficulty. McWhertor found that "the game's trial and error moments can seriously test one's patience." However, several critics noted that the game's challenge is made less frustrating due to its numerous checkpoints, as well as the player's ability to retry after dying as many times as needed. These additions made "VVVVVV" "not unforgiving", according to IGN staff writer Samuel Claiborn, while still being "old-school in its demands of player dedication". Independent reviewer Declan Tyson said that he feels "victimised by the game's criminally unforgiving collision detection and over-enthusiastically sensitive controls" but that "it's all worth it for when you reach the next checkpoint and feel that split second of relief". IGN’s Matthew Adler named "VVVVVV" the 12th hardest modern game, saying it requires quick reflexes in order to survive and that players will likely die many times.


title: VVVVVV

text: The price of "VVVVVV" when it was originally released was $15. This was seen by McWhertor as being the game's "one unfortunate barrier" to entry: "While there's plenty to see and do after blazing through the game's core campaign, the steeper than expected asking price will probably turn some off." Likewise, Gillen wrote in his review that the cost "does strike you as a lot for an Indie lo-fi platformer", while insisting that "it is worth the money". Since its original release, the price of "VVVVVV" has been reduced to $5. On his blog, Cavanagh said that the decision was difficult to make, but added, "I know that the original price of $15 was off putting for a lot of people".


title: VVVVVV

text: "VVVVVV" was awarded the IndieCade 2010 award for "Most Fun and Compelling" game in October 2010. Game development blog Gamasutra honored "VVVVVV" in its year-end independent games awards, which earned second place in 2009 and an honorable mention in 2010. The game's protagonist, Captain Viridian, is a playable character in the Windows version of the platform game "Super Meat Boy".


title: Computershare

text: Computershare Limited is an Australian stock transfer company that provides corporate trust, stock transfer and employee share plan services in a number of different countries.


title: Computershare

text: The company currently has offices in 20 countries, including Australia, the United Kingdom, Ireland, the United States, Canada, the Channel Islands, South Africa, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Germany, and Denmark.


title: Computershare

text: Computershare Limited was founded in 1978 in Melbourne, Australia, and has grown largely through overseas acquisitions.


title: Computershare

text: In 1997, the Australian-based Computershare expanded its registry business to include financial markets in New Zealand and the United Kingdom and acquired the Royal Bank of Scotland's registrar department. In subsequent years, it expanded its business into Ireland, South Africa, and Hong Kong. In 2004, Computershare acquired the stock transfer sectors of Harris Bank and Montreal Trust and purchased the German-based Pepper Technologies AG. Since 2004, Computershare has acquired registry companies in Russia and India.


title: Computershare

text: In July 2007, Computershare acquired Datacare Software Group and its products GCM and Boardworks. Currently known as Computershare Governance Services and its main product GEMS.


title: Computershare

text: In February 2008, Computershare announced a cash takeover offer for Australian mailhouse group QM Technologies Limited.


title: Computershare

text: In September 2008, Computershare bought Lichfield based Childcare Voucher Services business called Busy Bees. The name has been re-branded to Computershare Voucher Services or CVS.


title: Computershare

text: In February 2010, Computershare acquired HBOS Employee Equity Solutions from Lloyds Banking Group for a sum of around £40m.


title: Computershare

text: In January 2012, Computershare acquired Shareowner Services (Stock Transfer Sector) from Bank of New York Mellon (BNYM) for a sum of around $550 Million.


title: Computershare

text: In June 2013, Computershare Limited completed the acquisition of the EMEA–based portion of Morgan Stanley's Global Stock Plan Services business.


title: Computershare

text: In December 2015, the Central Bank of Ireland reprimanded and fined Computershare €322,500 for a number of breaches of the law related to the certainty of ownership of client assets.


title: Computershare

text: On 12 November 2018, it completed acquisition of Equatex Group Holding AG, formerly European shares plan business of UBS. The deal was announced on 16 May 2018. All 220+ employees are expected transfer to Computershare as part of the acquisition.


title: Computershare

text: Computershare primarily provides stock registration and transfer services to companies listed on stock markets, but also offers technology services for stock exchanges, investor services for shareholders and employee share plan management.


title: Computershare

text: Computershare also runs The Deposit Protection Service, a custodial tenancy deposit protection scheme accredited by the UK Government.


title: Portrait painting

text: Portrait Painting is a genre in painting, where the intent is to represent a specific human subject. The term 'portrait painting' can also describe the actual painted portrait. Portraitists may create their work by commission, for public and private persons, or they may be inspired by admiration or affection for the subject. Portraits often serve as important state and family records, as well as remembrances.


title: Portrait painting

text: Historically, portrait paintings have primarily memorialized the rich and powerful. Over time, however, it became more common for middle-class patrons to commission portraits of their families and colleagues. Today, portrait paintings are still commissioned by governments, corporations, groups, clubs, and individuals. In addition to painting, portraits can also be made in other media such as prints (including etching and lithography), photography, video and digital media.


title: Portrait painting

text: It might seem obvious that a painted portrait is intended to achieve a likeness of the sitter that is recognisable to those who have seen them, and ideally is a very good record of their appearance. In fact this concept has been slow to grow, and it took centuries for artists in different traditions to acquire the distinct skills for painting a good likeness.


title: Portrait painting

text: A well-executed portrait is expected to show the inner essence of the subject (from the artist's point of view) or a flattering representation, not just a literal likeness. As Aristotle stated, "The aim of Art is to present not the outward appearance of things, but their inner significance; for this, not the external manner and detail, constitutes true reality." Artists may strive for photographic realism or an impressionistic similarity in depicting their subject, but this differs from a caricature which attempts to reveal character through exaggeration of physical features. The artist generally attempts a representative portrayal, as Edward Burne-Jones stated, "The only expression allowable in great portraiture is the expression of character and moral quality, not anything temporary, fleeting, or accidental."


title: Portrait painting

text: In most cases, this results in a serious, closed lip stare, with anything beyond a slight smile being rather rare historically. Or as Charles Dickens put it, "there are only two styles of portrait painting: the serious and the smirk." Even given these limitations, a full range of subtle emotions is possible from quiet menace to gentle contentment. However, with the mouth relatively neutral, much of the facial expression needs to be created through the eyes and eyebrows. As author and artist Gordon C. Aymar states, "the eyes are the place one looks for the most complete, reliable, and pertinent information" about the subject. And the eyebrows can register, "almost single-handedly, wonder, pity, fright, pain, cynicism, concentration, wistfulness, displeasure, and expectation, in infinite variations and combinations."


title: Portrait painting

text: Portrait painting can depict the subject "" (the whole body), "" (from head to waist or hips), "" (bust), or just the head. The subject's head may turn from "" (front view) to (side view); a "" ("two-thirds view") is somewhere in between, ranging from almost frontal to almost profile (the fraction is the sum of the profile [one-half of the face] plus the other side's "quarter-face"; alternatively, it is quantified , also meaning this partial view is more than half a face). Occasionally, artists have created composites with views from multiple directions, as with Anthony van Dyck's triple portrait of "Charles I in Three Positions". There are even a few portraits where the front of the subject is not visible at all. Andrew Wyeth's "Christina's World" (1948) is a famous example, where the pose of the disabled woman – with her back turned to the viewer – integrates with the setting in which she is placed to convey the artist's interpretation.


title: Portrait painting

text: Among the other possible variables, the subject can be clothed or nude; indoors or out; standing, seated, reclining; even horse-mounted. Portrait paintings can be of individuals, couples, parents and children, families, or collegial groups. They can be created in various media including oils, watercolor, pen and ink, pencil, charcoal, pastel, and mixed media. Artists may employ a wide-ranging palette of colors, as with Pierre-Auguste Renoir's "Mme. Charpentier and her children", 1878 or restrict themselves to mostly white or black, as with Gilbert Stuart's "Portrait of George Washington" (1796).


title: Portrait painting

text: Sometimes, the overall size of the portrait is an important consideration. Chuck Close's enormous portraits created for museum display differ greatly from most portraits designed to fit in the home or to travel easily with the client. Frequently, an artist takes into account where the final portrait will hang and the colors and style of the surrounding décor.


title: Portrait painting

text: Creating a portrait can take considerable time, usually requiring several sittings. Cézanne, on one extreme, insisted on over 100 sittings from his subject. Goya on the other hand, preferred one long day's sitting. The average is about four. Portraitists sometimes present their sitters with a portfolio of drawings or photos from which a sitter would select a preferred pose, as did Sir Joshua Reynolds. Some, such as Hans Holbein the Younger make a drawing of the face, then complete the rest of the painting without the sitter. In the 18th century, it would typically take about one year to deliver a completed portrait to a client.


title: Portrait painting

text: Managing the sitter's expectations and mood is a serious concern for the portrait artist. As to the faithfulness of the portrait to the sitter's appearance, portraitists are generally consistent in their approach. Clients who sought out Sir Joshua Reynolds knew that they would receive a flattering result, while sitters of Thomas Eakins knew to expect a realistic, unsparing portrait. Some subjects voice strong preferences, others let the artist decide entirely. Oliver Cromwell famously demanded that his portrait show "all these roughnesses, pimples, warts, and everything as you see me, otherwise I will never pay a farthing for it."


title: Portrait painting

text: After putting the sitter at ease and encouraging a natural pose, the artist studies his subject, looking for the one facial expression, out of many possibilities, that satisfies his concept of the sitter's essence. The posture of the subject is also carefully considered to reveal the emotional and physical state of the sitter, as is the costume. To keep the sitter engaged and motivated, the skillful artist will often maintain a pleasant demeanor and conversation. Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun advised fellow artists to flatter women and compliment their appearance to gain their cooperation at the sitting.


title: Portrait painting

text: Central to the successful execution of the portrait is a mastery of human anatomy. Human faces are asymmetrical and skillful portrait artists reproduce this with subtle left-right differences. Artists need to be knowledgeable about the underlying bone and tissue structure to make a convincing portrait.


title: Portrait painting

text: For complex compositions, the artist may first do a complete pencil, ink, charcoal, or oil sketch which is particularly useful if the sitter's available time is limited. Otherwise, the general form then a rough likeness is sketched out on the canvas in pencil, charcoal, or thin oil. In many cases, the face is completed first, and the rest afterwards. In the studios of many of the great portrait artists, the master would do only the head and hands, while the clothing and background would be completed by the principal apprentices. There were even outside specialists who handled specific items such as drapery and clothing, such as Joseph van Aken Some artists in past times used lay-figures or dolls to help establish and execute the pose and the clothing. The use of symbolic elements placed around the sitter (including signs, household objects, animals, and plants) was often used to encode the painting with the moral or religious character of the subject, or with symbols representing the sitter's occupation, interests, or social status. The background can be totally black and without content or a full scene which places the sitter in their social or recreational milieu.


title: Portrait painting

text: Self-portraits are usually produced with the help of a mirror, and the finished result is a mirror-image portrait, a reversal of what occurs in a normal portrait when sitter and artist are opposite each other. In a self-portrait, a righted handed artist would appear to be holding a brush in the left hand, unless the artist deliberately corrects the image or uses a second reversing mirror while painting.


title: Portrait painting

text: Occasionally, the client or the client's family is unhappy with the resulting portrait and the artist is obliged to re-touch it or do it over or withdraw from the commission without being paid, suffering the humiliation of failure. Jacques-Louis David celebrated "Portrait of Madame Récamier", wildly popular in exhibitions, was rejected by the sitter, as was John Singer Sargent's notorious "Portrait of Madame X". John Trumbull's full-length portrait, "General George Washington at Trenton", was rejected by the committee that commissioned it. The famously prickly Gilbert Stuart once replied to a client's dissatisfaction with his wife's portrait by retorting, "You brought me a potato, and you expect a peach!"


title: Portrait painting

text: A successful portrait, however, can gain the lifelong gratitude of a client. Count Balthazar was so pleased with the portrait Raphael had created of his wife that he told the artist, "Your image…alone can lighten my cares. That image is my delight; I direct my smiles to it, it is my joy."


title: Portrait painting

text: Portraiture's roots are likely found in prehistoric times, although few of these works survive today. In the art of the ancient civilizations of the Fertile Crescent, especially in Egypt, depictions of rulers and rulers as gods abound. However, most of these were done in a highly stylized fashion, and most in profile, usually on stone, metal, clay, plaster, or crystal. Egyptian portraiture placed relatively little emphasis on likeness, at least until the period of Akhenaten in the 14th century BC. Portrait painting of notables in China probably goes back to over 1000 BC, though none survive from that age. Existing Chinese portraits go back to about 1000 AD, but did not place much emphasis on likeness until some time after that.


title: Portrait painting

text: From literary evidence we know that ancient Greek painting included portraiture, often highly accurate if the praises of writers are to be believed, but no painted examples remain. Sculpted heads of rulers and famous personalities like Socrates survive in some quantity, and like the individualized busts of Hellenistic rulers on coins, show that Greek portraiture could achieve a good likeness, and subjects, at least of literary figures, were depicted with relatively little flattery – Socrates' portraits show why he had a reputation for being ugly. The successors of Alexander the Great began the practice of adding his head (as a deified figure) to their coins, and were soon using their own.


title: Portrait painting

text: Roman portraiture adopted traditions of portraiture from both the Etruscans and Greeks, and developed a very strong tradition, linked to their religious use of ancestor portraits, as well as Roman politics. Again, the few painted survivals, in the Fayum portraits, Tomb of Aline and the Severan Tondo, all from Egypt under Roman rule, are clearly provincial productions that reflect Greek rather than Roman styles, but we have a wealth of sculpted heads, including many individualized portraits from middle-class tombs, and thousands of types of coin portraits.


title: Portrait painting

text: Much the largest group of painted portraits are the funeral paintings that survived in the dry climate of Egypt's Fayum district (see illustration, below), dating from the 2nd to 4th century AD. These are almost the only paintings of the Roman period that have survived, aside from frescos, though it is known from the writings of Pliny the Elder that portrait painting was well established in Greek times, and practiced by both men and women artists. In his times, Pliny complained of the declining state of Roman portrait art, "The painting of portraits which used to transmit through the ages the accurate likenesses of people, has entirely gone out…Indolence has destroyed the arts." These full-face portraits from Roman Egypt are fortunate exceptions. They present a somewhat realistic sense of proportion and individual detail (though the eyes are generally oversized and the artistic skill varies considerably from artist to artist). The Fayum portraits were painted on wood or ivory in wax and resin colors (encaustic) or with tempera, and inserted into the mummy wrapping, to remain with the body through eternity.


title: Portrait painting

text: While free-standing portrait painting diminished in Rome, the art of the portrait flourished in Roman sculptures, where sitters demanded realism, even if unflattering. During the 4th century, the sculpted portrait dominated, with a retreat in favor of an idealized symbol of what that person looked like. (Compare the portraits of Roman Emperors Constantine I and Theodosius I) In the Late Antique period the interest in an individual likeness declined considerably, and most portraits in late Roman coins and consular diptychs are hardly individualized at all, although at the same time Early Christian art was evolving fairly standardized images for the depiction of Jesus and the other major figures in Christian art, such as John the Baptist, and Saint Peter.


title: Portrait painting

text: Most early medieval portraits were donor portraits, initially mostly of popes in Roman mosaics, and illuminated manuscripts, an example being a self-portrait by the writer, mystic, scientist, illuminator, and musician Hildegard of Bingen (1152). As with contemporary coins, there was little attempt at a likeness. Stone tomb monuments spread in the Romanesque period. Between 1350 and 1400, secular figures began to reappear in frescos and panel paintings, such as in Master Theodoric's "Charles IV receiving fealty", and portraits once again became clear likenesses.


title: Portrait painting

text: Around the end of the century, the first oil portraits of contemporary individuals, painted on small wood panels, emerged in Burgundy and France, first as profiles, then in other views. The Wilton Diptych of ca. 1400 is one of two surviving panel portraits of Richard II of England, the earliest English king for whom we have contemporary examples.


title: Portrait painting

text: At the end of the Middle Ages in the 15th century, Early Netherlandish painting was key to the development of the individualized portrait. Masters included Jan van Eyck, Robert Campin and Rogier van der Weyden, among others. Rather small panel painting portraits, less than half life-size, were commissioned, not only of figures from the court, but what appear from their relatively plain dress to be wealthy townspeople. Miniatures in illuminated manuscripts also included individualized portraits, usually of the commissioner. In religious paintings, portraits of donors began to be shown as present, or participate in the main sacred scenes shown, and in more private court images subjects even appeared as significant figures such as the Virgin Mary.


title: Portrait painting

text: Partly out of interest in the natural world and partly out of interest in the classical cultures of ancient Greece and Rome, portraits—both painted and sculpted—were given an important role in Renaissance society and valued as objects, and as depictions of earthly success and status. Painting in general reached a new level of balance, harmony, and insight, and the greatest artists (Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael) were considered "geniuses", rising far above the tradesman status to valued servants of the court and the church.


title: Portrait painting

text: Many innovations in the various forms of portraiture evolved during this fertile period. The tradition of the portrait miniature began, which remained popular until the age of photography, developing out of the skills of painters of the miniatures in illuminated manuscripts. Profile portraits, inspired by ancient medallions, were particularly popular in Italy between 1450 and 1500. Medals, with their two–sided images, also inspired a short-lived vogue for two-sided paintings early in the Renaissance. Classical sculpture, such as the "Apollo Belvedere", also influenced the choice of poses utilized by Renaissance portraitists, poses that have continued in usage through the centuries. Leonardo's "Ginevra de' Benci" () is one of the first known three-quarter-view portraits in Italian art.


title: Portrait painting

text: Northern European artists led the way in realistic portraits of secular subjects. The greater realism and detail of the Northern artists during the 15th century was due in part to the finer brush strokes and effects possible with oil colors, while the Italian and Spanish painters were still using tempera. Among the earliest painters to develop oil technique was Jan van Eyck. Oil colors can produce more texture and grades of thickness, and can be layered more effectively, with the addition of increasingly thick layers one over another (known by painters as ‘fat over lean’). Also, oil colors dry more slowly, allowing the artist to make changes readily, such as altering facial details. Antonello da Messina was one of the first Italians to take advantage of oil. Trained in Belgium, he settled in Venice around 1475, and was a major influence on Giovanni Bellini and the Northern Italian school. During the 16th century, oil as a medium spread in popularity throughout Europe, allowing for more sumptuous renderings of clothing and jewelry. Also affecting the quality of the images, was the switch from wood to canvas, starting in Italy in the early part of the 16th century and spreading to Northern Europe over the next century. Canvas resists cracking better than wood, holds pigments better, and needs less preparation―but it was initially much scarcer than wood.


title: Portrait painting

text: Early on, the Northern Europeans abandoned the profile, and started producing portraits of realistic volume and perspective. In the Netherlands, Jan van Eyck was a leading portraitist. "The Arnolfini Marriage" (1434, National Gallery, London) is a landmark of Western art, an early example of a full-length couple portrait, superbly painted in rich colors and exquisite detail. But equally important, it showcases the newly developed technique of oil painting pioneered by van Eyck, which revolutionized art, and spread throughout Europe.


title: Portrait painting

text: Leading German portrait artists including Lucas Cranach, Albrecht Dürer, and Hans Holbein the Younger who all mastered oil painting technique. Cranach was one of the first artists to paint life-sized full-length commissions, a tradition popular from then on. At that time, England had no portrait painters of the first rank, and artists like Holbein were in demand by English patrons. His painting of Sir Thomas More (1527), his first important patron in England, has nearly the realism of a photograph. Holbein made his great success painting the royal family, including Henry VIII. Dürer was an outstanding draftsman and one of the first major artists to make a sequence of self-portraits, including a full-face painting. He also placed his self-portrait figure (as an onlooker) in several of his religious paintings. Dürer began making self-portraits at the age of thirteen. Later, Rembrandt would amplify that tradition.


title: Portrait painting

text: In Italy, Masaccio led the way in modernizing the fresco by adopting more realistic perspective. Filippo Lippi paved the way in developing sharper contours and sinuous lines and his pupil Raphael extended realism in Italy to a much higher level in the following decades with his monumental wall paintings. During this time, the betrothal portrait became popular, a particular specialty of Lorenzo Lotto. During the early Renaissance, portrait paintings were generally small and sometimes covered with protective lids, hinged or sliding.


title: Portrait painting

text: During the Renaissance, the Florentine and Milanese nobility, in particular, wanted more realistic representations of themselves. The challenge of creating convincing full and three-quarter views stimulated experimentation and innovation. Sandro Botticelli, Piero della Francesca, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Lorenzo di Credi, and Leonardo da Vinci and other artists expanded their technique accordingly, adding portraiture to traditional religious and classical subjects. Leonardo and Pisanello were among the first Italian artists to add allegorical symbols to their secular portraits.


title: Portrait painting

text: One of best-known portraits in the Western world is Leonardo da Vinci's painting titled "Mona Lisa", named for Lisa del Giocondo, a member of the Gherardini family of Florence and Tuscany and the wife of wealthy Florentine silk merchant Francesco del Giocondo. The famous "Mona Lisa smile" is an excellent example of applying subtle asymmetry to a face. In his notebooks, Leonardo advises on the qualities of light in portrait painting:


title: Portrait painting

text: A very high degree of grace in the light and shadow is added to the faces of those who sit in the doorways of rooms that are dark, where the eyes of the observer see the shadowed part of the face obscured by the shadows of the room, and see the lighted part of the face with the greater brilliance which the air gives it. Through this increase in the shadows and the lights, the face is given greater relief.


title: Portrait painting

text: Leonardo was a student of Verrocchio. After becoming a member of the Guild of Painters, he began to accept independent commissions. Owing to his wide-ranging interests and in accordance with his scientific mind, his output of drawings and preliminary studies is immense though his finished artistic output is relatively small. His other memorable portraits included those of noblewomen "Ginevra de’ Benci" and "Cecilia Gallerani".


title: Portrait painting

text: Raphael's surviving commission portraits are far more numerous than those of Leonardo, and they display a greater variety of poses, lighting, and technique. Rather than producing revolutionary innovations, Raphael's great accomplishment was strengthening and refining the evolving currents of Renaissance art. He was particularly expert in the group portrait. His masterpiece "the School of Athens" is one of the foremost group frescoes, containing likenesses of Leonardo, Michelangelo, Bramante, and Raphael himself, in the guise of ancient philosophers. It was not the first group portrait of artists. Decades earlier, Paolo Uccello had painted a group portrait including Giotto, Donatello, Antonio Manetti, and Brunelleschi. As he rose in prominence, Raphael became a favorite portraitist of the popes. While many Renaissance artists eagerly accepted portrait commissions, a few artists refused them, most notably Raphael's rival Michelangelo, who instead undertook the huge commissions of the Sistine Chapel.


title: Portrait painting

text: In Venice around 1500, Gentile Bellini and Giovanni Bellini dominated portrait painting. They received the highest commissions from the leading officials of the state. Bellini's portrait of Doge Loredan is considered to be one of the finest portraits of the Renaissance and ably demonstrates the artist's mastery of the newly arrived techniques of oil painting. Bellini is also one of the first artists in Europe to sign their work, though he rarely dated them. Later in the 16th century, Titian assumed much the same role, particularly by expanding the variety of poses and sittings of his royal subjects. Titian was perhaps the first great child portraitist. After Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese became leading Venetian artists, helping the transition to Italian Mannerism. The Mannerists contributed many exceptional portraits that emphasized material richness and elegantly complex poses, as in the works of Agnolo Bronzino and Jacopo da Pontormo. Bronzino made his fame portraying the Medici family. His daring portrait of Cosimo I de' Medici, shows the austere ruler in armor with a wary eye gazed to his extreme right, in sharp contrast to most royal paintings which show their sitters as benign sovereigns. El Greco, who trained in Venice for twelve years, went in a more extreme direction after his arrival in Spain, emphasizing his "inner vision" of the sitter to the point of diminishing the reality of physical appearance. One of the best portraitists of 16th-century Italy was Sofonisba Anguissola from Cremona, who infused her individual and group portraits with new levels of complexity.


title: Portrait painting

text: Court portraiture in France began when Flemish artist Jean Clouet painted his opulent likeness of Francis I of France around 1525. King Francis was a great patron of artists and an avaricious art collector who invited Leonardo da Vinci to live in France during his later years. The "Mona Lisa" stayed in France after Leonardo died there.


title: Portrait painting

text: During the Baroque and Rococo periods (17th and 18th centuries, respectively), portraits became even more important records of status and position. In a society dominated increasingly by secular leaders in powerful courts, images of opulently attired figures were a means to affirm the authority of important individuals. Flemish painters Sir Anthony van Dyck and Peter Paul Rubens excelled at this type of portraiture, while Jan Vermeer produced portraits mostly of the middle class, at work and play indoors. Rubens’ portrait of himself and his first wife (1609) in their wedding attire is a virtuoso example of the couple portrait. Rubens fame extended beyond his art—he was a courtier, diplomat, art collector, and successful businessman. His studio was one of the most extensive of that time, employing specialists in still-life, landscape, animal and genre scenes, in addition to portraiture. Van Dyck trained there for two years. Charles I of England first employed Rubens, then imported van Dyck as his court painter, knighting him and bestowing on him courtly status. Van Dyck not only adapted Rubens’ production methods and business skills, but also his elegant manners and appearance. As was recorded, "He always went magnificently dress’d, had a numerous and gallant equipage, and kept so noble a table in his apartment, that few princes were not more visited, or better serv’d." In France, Hyacinthe Rigaud dominated in much the same way, as a remarkable chronicler of royalty, painting the portraits of five French kings.


title: Portrait painting

text: One of the innovations of Renaissance art was the improved rendering of facial expressions to accompany different emotions. In particular, Dutch painter Rembrandt explored the many expressions of the human face, especially as one of the premier self-portraitists (of which he painted over 60 in his lifetime). This interest in the human face also fostered the creation of the first caricatures, credited to the Accademia degli Incamminati, run by painters of the Carracci family in the late 16th century in Bologna, Italy.


title: Portrait painting

text: Group portraits were produced in great numbers during the Baroque period, particularly in the Netherlands. Unlike in the rest of Europe, Dutch artists received no commissions from the Calvinist Church which had forbidden such images or from the aristocracy which was virtually non-existent. Instead, commissions came from civic and businesses associations. Dutch painter Frans Hals used fluid brush strokes of vivid color to enliven his group portraits, including those of the civil guards to which he belonged. Rembrandt benefitted greatly from such commissions and from the general appreciation of art by bourgeois clients, who supported portraiture as well as still-life and landscapes painting. In addition, the first significant art and dealer markets flourished in Holland at that time.


title: Portrait painting

text: With plenty of demand, Rembrandt was able to experiment with unconventional composition and technique, such as chiaroscuro. He demonstrated these innovations, pioneered by Italian masters such as Caravaggio, most notably in his famous "Night Watch" (1642). "The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp" (1632) is another fine example of Rembrandt's mastery of the group painting, in which he bathes the corpse in bright light to draw attention to the center of the painting while the clothing and background merge into black, making the faces of the surgeon and the students standout. It is also the first painting that Rembrandt signed with his full name.


title: Portrait painting

text: In Spain, Diego Velázquez painted "Las Meninas" (1656), one of the most famous and enigmatic group portraits of all time. It memorializes the artist and the children of the Spanish royal family, and apparently the sitters are the royal couple who are seen only as reflections in a mirror. Starting out as primarily a genre painter, Velázquez quickly rose to prominence as the court painter of Philip IV, excelling in the art of portraiture, particularly in extending the complexity of group portraits.


title: Portrait painting

text: Rococo artists, who were particularly interested in rich and intricate ornamentation, were masters of the refined portrait. Their attention to the details of dress and texture increased the efficacy of portraits as testaments to worldly wealth, as evidenced by François Boucher's famous portraits of Madame de Pompadour attired in billowing silk gowns.


title: Portrait painting

text: The first major native portrait painters of the British school were English painters Thomas Gainsborough and Sir Joshua Reynolds, who also specialized in clothing their subjects in an eye-catching manner. Gainsborough's "Blue Boy" is one of the most famous and recognized portraits of all time, painted with very long brushes and thin oil color to achieve the shimmering effect of the blue costume. Gainsborough was also noted for his elaborate background settings for his subjects.


title: Portrait painting

text: The two British artists had opposite opinions on using assistants. Reynolds employing them regularly (sometimes doing only 20 percent of the painting himself) while Gainsborough rarely did. Sometimes a client would extract a pledge from the artist, as did Sir Richard Newdegate from portraitist Peter Lely (van Dyck's successor in England), who promised that the portrait would be "from the Beginning to ye end drawne with my owne hands." Unlike the exactitude employed by the Flemish masters, Reynolds summed up his approach to portraiture by stating that, "the grace, and, we may add, the likeness, consists more in taking the general air, than in observing the exact similitude of every feature." Also prominent in England was William Hogarth, who dared to buck conventional methods by introducing touches of humor in his portraits. His "Self-portrait with Pug" is clearly more a humorous take on his pet than a self-indulgent painting.


title: Portrait painting

text: In the 18th century, female painters gained new importance, particularly in the field of portraiture. Notable female artists include French painter Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, Italian pastel artist Rosalba Carriera, and Swiss artist Angelica Kauffman. Also during that century, before the invention of photography, miniature portraits―painted with incredible precision and often encased in gold or enameled lockets―were highly valued.


title: Portrait painting

text: In the United States, John Singleton Copley, schooled in the refined British manner, became the leading painter of full-size and miniature portraits, with his hyper-realistic pictures of Samuel Adams and Paul Revere especially well-regarded. Copley is also notable for his efforts to merge portraiture with the academically more revered art of history painting, which he attempted with his group portraits of famous military men. Equally famous was Gilbert Stuart who painted over 1,000 portraits and was especially known for his presidential portraiture. Stuart painted over 100 replicas of George Washington alone. Stuart worked quickly and employed softer, less detailed brush strokes than Copley to capture the essence of his subjects. Sometimes he would make several versions for a client, allowing the sitter to pick their favorite. Noted for his rosy cheek tones, Stuart wrote, "flesh is like no other substance under heaven. It has all the gaiety of the silk-mercer's shop without its gaudiness of gloss, and all the softness of old mahogany, without its sadness." Other prominent American portraitists of the colonial era were John Smibert, Thomas Sully, Ralph Earl, John Trumbull, Benjamin West, Robert Feke, James Peale, Charles Willson Peale, and Rembrandt Peale.


title: Portrait painting

text: In the late 18th century and early 19th century, neoclassical artists continued the tradition of depicting subjects in the latest fashions, which for women by then, meant diaphanous gowns derived from ancient Greek and Roman clothing styles. The artists used directed light to define texture and the simple roundness of faces and limbs. French painters Jacques-Louis David and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres demonstrated virtuosity in this draftsman-like technique as well as a keen eye for character. Ingres, a student of David, is notable for his portraits in which a mirror is painted behind the subject to simulate a rear view of the subject. His portrait of Napoleon on his imperial throne is a tour de force of regal portraiture. (see Gallery below)


title: Portrait painting

text: Romantic artists who worked during the first half of the 19th century painted portraits of inspiring leaders, beautiful women, and agitated subjects, using lively brush strokes and dramatic, sometimes moody, lighting. French artists Eugène Delacroix and Théodore Géricault painted particularly fine portraits of this type, especially dashing horsemen. A notable example of artist of romantic period in Poland, who practised a horserider portrait was Piotr Michałowski (1800–1855). Also noteworthy is Géricault's series of portraits of mental patients (1822–1824). Spanish painter Francisco de Goya painted some of the most searching and provocative images of the period, including "La maja desnuda "(c. 1797–1800), as well as famous court portraits of Charles IV.


title: Portrait painting

text: The realist artists of the 19th century, such as Gustave Courbet, created objective portraits depicting lower and middle-class people. Demonstrating his romanticism, Courbet painted several self-portraits showing himself in varying moods and expressions. Other French realists include Honoré Daumier who produced many caricatures of his contemporaries. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec chronicled some of the famous performers of the theater, including Jane Avril, capturing them in motion. French painter Édouard Manet, was an important transitional artist whose work hovers between realism and impressionism. He was a portraitist of outstanding insight and technique, with his painting of Stéphane Mallarmé being a good example of his transitional style. His contemporary Edgar Degas was primarily a realist and his painting "Portrait of the Bellelli Family" is an insightful rendering of an unhappy family and one of his finest portraits.


title: Portrait painting

text: In America, Thomas Eakins reigned as the premier portrait painter, taking realism to a new level of frankness, especially with his two portraits of surgeons at work, as well as those of athletes and musicians in action. In many portraits, such as "Portrait of Mrs. Edith Mahon", Eakins boldly conveys the unflattering emotions of sorrow and melancholy.


title: Portrait painting

text: The Realists mostly gave way to the Impressionists by the 1870s. Partly due to their meager incomes, many of the Impressionists relied on family and friends to model for them, and they painted intimate groups and single figures in either outdoors or in light-filled interiors. Noted for their shimmering surfaces and rich dabs of paint, Impressionist portraits are often disarmingly intimate and appealing. French painters Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir created some of the most popular images of individual sitters and groups. American artist Mary Cassatt, who trained and worked in France, is popular even today for her engaging paintings of mothers and children, as is Renoir. Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh, both Post-Impressionists, painted revealing portraits of people they knew, swirling in color but not necessarily flattering. They are equally, if not more so, celebrated for their powerful self-portraits.


title: Portrait painting

text: John Singer Sargent also spanned the change of century, but he rejected overt Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. He was the most successful portrait painter of his era, using a mostly realistic technique often effused with the brilliant use of color. He was equally apt at individual and group portraits, particularly of upper-class families. Sargent was born in Florence, Italy to American parents. He studied in Italy and Germany, and in Paris. Sargent is considered to be the last major exponent of the British portrait tradition beginning with van Dyck. Another prominent American portraitist who trained abroad was William Merritt Chase. American society painter Cecilia Beaux, called the "female Sargent", was born of a French father, studied abroad and gained success back home, sticking with traditional methods. Another portraitist compared to Sargent for his lush technique was Italian-born Parisian artist Giovanni Boldini, a friend of Degas and Whistler.


title: Portrait painting

text: American-born Internationalist James Abbott McNeill Whistler was well-connected with European artists and also painted some exceptional portraits, most famously his "Arrangement in Grey and Black, The Artist's Mother" (1871), also known as "Whistler's Mother". Even with his portraits, as with his tonal landscapes, Whistler wanted his viewers to focus on the harmonic arrangement of form and color in his paintings. Whistler used a subdued palette to create his intended effects, stressing color balance and soft tones. As he stated, "as music is the poetry of sound, so is painting the poetry of sight, and the subject-matter has nothing to do with the harmony of sound or of color." Form and color were also central to Cézanne's portraits, while even more extreme color and brush stroke technique dominate the portraits by André Derain, and Henri Matisse.


title: Portrait painting

text: The development of photography in the 19th century had a significant effect on portraiture, supplanting the earlier camera obscura which had also been previously used as an aid in painting. Many modernists flocked to the photography studios to have their portraits made, including Baudelaire who, though he proclaimed photography an "enemy of art", found himself attracted to photography's frankness and power. By providing a cheap alternative, photography supplanted much of the lowest level of portrait painting. Some realist artists, such as Thomas Eakins and Edgar Degas, were enthusiastic about camera photography and found it to be a useful aid to composition. From the Impressionists forward, portrait painters found a myriad number of ways to reinterpret the portrait to compete effectively with photography. Sargent and Whistler were among those stimulated to expand their technique to create effects that the camera could not capture.


title: Portrait painting

text: Other early 20th-century artists also expanded the repertoire of portraiture in new directions. Fauvist artist Henri Matisse produced powerful portraits using non-naturalistic, even garish, colors for skin tones. Cézanne's relied on highly simplified forms in his portraits, avoiding detail while emphasizing color juxtapositions. Austrian Gustav Klimt's unique style applied Byzantine motifs and gold paint to his memorable portraits. His pupil Oskar Kokoschka was an important portraitist of the Viennese upper class. Prolific Spanish artist Pablo Picasso painted many portraits, including several cubist renderings of his mistresses, in which the likeness of the subject is grossly distorted to achieve an emotional statement well beyond the bounds of normal caricature.


title: Portrait painting

text: An outstanding female portrait painter of the turn of the 20th century, associated with the French impressionism, was Olga Boznańska (1865–1940).


title: Portrait painting

text: Expressionist painters provided some of the most haunting and compelling psychological studies ever produced. German artists such as Otto Dix and Max Beckmann produced notable examples of expressionist portraiture. Beckmann was a prolific self-portraitist, producing at least twenty-seven. Amedeo Modigliani painted many portraits in his elongated style which depreciated the "inner person" in favor of strict studies of form and color. To help achieve this, he de-emphasized the normally expressive eyes and eyebrows to the point of blackened slits and simple arches.


title: Portrait painting

text: British art was represented by the Vorticists, who painted some notable portraits in the early part of the 20th century. The Dada painter Francis Picabia executed numerous portraits in his unique fashion. Additionally, Tamara de Lempicka's portraits successfully captured the Art Deco era with her streamlined curves, rich colors and sharp angles. In America, Robert Henri and George Bellows were fine portraitists of the 1920s and 1930s of the American realist school. Max Ernst produced an example of a modern collegial portrait with his 1922 painting "All Friends Together".


title: Portrait painting

text: A significant contribution to the development of portrait painting of 1930–2000 was made by Russian artists, mainly working in the traditions of realist and figurative painting. Among them should be called Isaak Brodsky, Nikolai Fechin, Abram Arkhipov and others.


title: Portrait painting

text: Portrait production in Europe (excluding Russia) and the Americas generally declined in the 1940s and 1950s, a result of the increasing interest in abstraction and nonfigurative art. One exception, however, was Andrew Wyeth who developed into the leading American realist portrait painter. With Wyeth, realism, though overt, is secondary to the tonal qualities and mood of his paintings. This is aptly demonstrated with his landmark series of paintings known as the "Helga" pictures, the largest group of portraits of a single person by any major artist (247 studies of his neighbor Helga Testorf, clothed and nude, in varying surroundings, painted during the period 1971–1985).


title: Portrait painting

text: By the 1960s and 1970s, there was a revival of portraiture. English artists such as Lucian Freud (grandson of Sigmund Freud) and Francis Bacon have produced powerful paintings. Bacon's portraits are notable for their nightmarish quality. In May 2008, Freud's 1995 portrait "Benefits Supervisor Sleeping" was sold by auction by Christie's in New York City for $33.6 million, setting a world record for sale value of a painting by a living artist.


title: Portrait painting

text: Many contemporary American artists, such as Andy Warhol, Alex Katz and Chuck Close, have made the human face a focal point of their work.


title: Portrait painting

text: Warhol was one of the most prolific portrait painters in the 20th century. Warhol's painting "Orange Shot Marilyn" of Marilyn Monroe is an iconic early example off his work from the 1960s, and Orange Prince (1984) of the pop singer Prince is later example, both exhibiting Warhol's unique graphic style of portraiture.


title: Portrait painting

text: Close's specialty was huge, hyper-realistic wall-sized "head" portraits based on photographic images. Jamie Wyeth continues in the realist tradition of his father Andrew, producing famous portraits whose subjects range from presidents to pigs.


title: Portrait painting

text: The Persian miniature tradition avoided giving figures individualized facial features for a long time, partly for religious reasons, to avoid any hint of idolatry. Rulers in the Islamic world never put their images on their coins, and their appearance did not form part of their public relations effort in the way that it did in the West. Even where it is clear that a scene shows the court of the prince commissioning the work, the features of the chief figure have the same rather Chinese-looking features as all the rest. This long-lasting convention seems to derive from the start of the miniature tradition under the Mongol Ilkhanids, but long outlived them.


title: Portrait painting

text: When the Persian tradition developed as the Mughal miniature in India, things rapidly changed. Unlike their Persian predecessors, Mughal patrons placed great emphasis on detailed naturalistic likenesses of all the unfamiliar natural forms of their new empire, such as animals, birds and plants. They had the same attitude to human portraiture, and individual portraits, normally in profile, became an important feature of the tradition. This received a particular emphasis under Emperor Akbar the Great, who seems to have been dyslexic, and could barely read or write himself. He had a large album (muraqqa) made with portraits of all the leading members of his huge court, and used this when considering appointments around the empire with his advisors.


title: Portrait painting

text: Later emperors, especially Jahangir and Shah Jahan, made great use of idealized miniature portraits of themselves as a form of propaganda, distributing them to significant allies. These often featured halos larger than those given to any religious figures. Such images spread the idea of the portrait of the ruler to smaller courts, so that by the 18th century many small rajahs maintained court artists to portray them enjoying princely activities in rather stylized images that combine senses of informality and majesty.


title: Portrait painting

text: Ottoman miniatures generally had figures with faces even less individualized than its Persian equivalents, but a genre of small portraits of males from the Imperial family developed. These had highly individual, and rather exaggerated, features, some verging on caricatures; they were probably seen only by a very restricted circle.


title: Portrait painting

text: The Persian Qajar dynasty, from 1781, took to large royal portraits in oils, as well as miniatures and textile hangings. These tend to be dominated by the magnificent costumes and long beards of the shahs.


title: Portrait painting

text: Chinese portrait painting was slow to desire or achieve an actual likeness. Many "portraits" were of famous figures from the past, and showed an idea of what that person should look like. Buddhist clergy, especially in sculpture, were something of an exception to this. Portraits of the emperor were long never seen in public, partly for fear that mistreatment of them might dishonour the emperor or even cause bad luck. The most senior ministers were allowed once a year to pay homage to the images in the imperial gallery of ancestor portraits, as a special honour.


title: Portrait painting

text: During the Han dynasty, the rise of Confucianism, which regarded human as the center of the universe and society, led to a focus on psychological study. In the meantime, Taoist scholars started the study of physiognomy. The combined interests in human psychological and physical features caused a growth in biography and portraiture. Portrait paintings created during the Han dynasty were considered prototypes of the earliest Chinese portrait paintings, most of which were found on the walls of palace halls, tomb chambers, and offering shrines. For instance, the engraved figure of a man found in a tomb tile from western Henan dating back to the third century B.C. indicates the painter's observation and desire to create lively figures. However, the subjects of most wall portraits are anonymous figures engaging in conversation. Despite the vivid depiction of physical features and facial expression, due to the lack of identity and the close bound to narrative context, many scholars categorize these Han dynasty wall paintings as "character figures in action" instead of actual likenesses of specific individuals.


title: Portrait painting

text: The Jin dynasty was one of the most turbulent periods in ancient Chinese history. After the decades of wars between the three states of Wei, Shu, and Wu from 184 to 280 AD, Sima Yan eventually founded the Western Jin dynasty in 266 AD. The unstable socio-political environment and the declining imperial authority resulted in a transition from Confucianism to Neo-Daoism. As the attitude of breaking social hierarchy and decorum flourished, self-expression and individualism started to grow among the intelligentsia.


title: Portrait painting

text: The "Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove and Rong Qiqi" is a thread-relief painting on tile found in a Jin dynasty brick-chambered tomb in Nanjing. The relief is 96 inches in length and 35 inches in width, with more than 300 bricks. It is one of the most well-preserved thread-relief paintings from the Jin dynasty which reflect high-quality craftsmanship. There are two parts of the relief and each contains four figure portraits. According to the names inscribed next to the figures, from the top to the bottom, and from the left to the right, the eight figures are Rong Qiqi, Ruan Xian, Liu Ling, Xiang Xiu, Ji Kang, Ruan Ji, Shan Tao, and Wang Rong. Other than Rong Qiqi, the other seven people were famous Neo-Daoist scholars of the Jin dynasty and were known as the "Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove". They were eminent intelligentsias accomplished at literature, music, or philosophy. The relief depicts a narrative scene of the eight cultivated gentlemen sitting on the ground in the grove performing various activities. The figures were portrayed in a relaxed and self-absorbed posture wearing loose garments with bare feet.