2009 AAANZ Conference Abstracts - The Art Association of Australia ...

14. PORTRAITURE: A COMPLEX WEB
In recent decades there has been a resurgence of academic research on portraiture. Richard Brilliant’s editing of a special edition on portraiture for
the Art Journal of 1989 marked the beginning of a new wave of scholarship. More recently, the opening of the National Portrait Gallery’s new building
testifies to the enduring appeal of the portrait. With this revival of interest, scholars are increasingly examining the complexity of capturing a ‘likeness’
and why portraits are commissioned. There has been a growing recognition that the portrait is caught in a complex web of the aspirations of the
artist, patron, sitter and audience.
This session examines a wide range of periods and forms of portraiture. It will focus on the purpose and function of the portrait, addressing
questions of why portraits are created. The aim of the session is to come to a better understanding of the dynamics involved in posing and making a
portrait.
Convenors: Dr Elisabeth Findlay Dr Lisa Mansfield
1. She Doth Look Better on Parchment: Face-to-Face with
the ‘Flanders Mare’
Dr Lisa Mansfield
(The Australian National University)
(University of Adelaide)
The famous portrait of Anne of Cleves by Hans Holbein the Younger is
an enduring testament of the convoluted and intensely personal, yet
political interface that existed between the early modern courtly artist,
patron and sitter. Henry VIII’s infatuation with the painted likeness of
his fourth Tudor bride and humiliating instantaneous disenchantment
with the original version of his so-called ‘Flanders Mare’ has tantalised
generations and produced an abundance of scholarship of this
infamous episode of pictorial ‘eyeliking’ gone wrong.
This paper will present a re-examination of the contrasting
perspectives of the major protagonists caught within the complex
web of Henry VIII’s marital affairs that followed the death of his
third wife, Jane Seymour, mother of his one and only ‘legitimate’
son and heir to the English throne, Edward VI. It will also question
the assumption of the fundamental failure of Holbein’s portrait to
adequately represent the verisimilitude of this particular foreign female
sitter with reference to the multifaceted artistic, political, religious,
physical and psychological contexts that framed this picture of a
German princess and Queen of England in order to explore the idea
of the ‘malfunction’ of portraiture within the problematic protocols of
early modern royal courtship, gender and sexuality.
Lisa Mansfield is a Lecturer in Art History in the School of
History and Politics at the University of Adelaide. In addition to
her area of specialisation in portrait traditions and images of rule
in early modern Europe, her teaching and research interests are
expanding in new and exciting directions focused on the history of
censorship and iconoclasm in art. She is also currently preparing
her PhD dissertation on the portraits of King Francis I of France for
publication as a monograph.
2. The Fragility of Power – Reflections on Velázquez’s
Portrait of Prince Baltasar Carlos with a Dwarf
Katherine Mair
The arrival of Prince Baltasar Carlos at the Spanish Hapsburg court
in 1629 gave rise to both celebration and ceremony. As the first
portrait of the heir to Philip IV’s vast kingdoms, the significance
of Velázquez’s depiction of Prince Baltasar Carlos with a Dwarf,
(1631/2, Boston Museum of Fine Art) is difficult to overstate. The
heir apparent assured the transference of absolute power and his
portrait played a critical role in the reassertion of dynastic strength
and monarchic stability.
As the pre-eminent maker of the Hapsburg royal image, Velázquez’s
portraits are ubiquitously recognised as masterful and complex.
His painting of the infant prince is no exception. This paper seeks
to explore the sophisticated series of symbols imbued within this
portrait and re-examine the Boston painting in light of two separate
traditions in Spanish portraiture – the body of infant portraits in
which royal children are depicted with protective amulets, and, the
development of portraits of royal sitters with an attending dwarf.
Discernable within Velázquez’s image of the prince is a merging of
these two traditions and a reinvigoration of old symbols represented
in entirely innovative ways.
Examination of these innovations reveal new insights about the
underlying and complex web of circumstances and beliefs that
inform the nature of princely representation, the courtly society for
which it was created, and the meaning of the image. Noted often
for his “realism”, ironically, the masterful brush of Velázquez here
reveals more about the strategic manipulation of perception through
image making than it does about the reality of Hapsburg power - the
very fragility of which is both concealed and revealed in the portrait
of Prince Baltasar Carlos with a Dwarf.
Katherine Mair is currently completing her PhD dissertation,
Peculiar Portraits: the Power of the Diminutive in Spanish Habsburg
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