Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever…Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)
author Carolyn McDowall
Queen Nefertiti
What is a portrait? Is it an actual likeness of someone? If we know the person portrayed is a General, King or Queen will it change our viewpoint?
What is a portrait’s function? Is it meant to show the sitter at their most characteristic ?
The debate that the bust of the ancient Egyptian Queen Nefertiti, found in 1912 at Tell el-Amarna the short lived capital of her husband the monotheist Pharaoh Akhenaten looked different to all the known representations of her gained new impetus in 2009.
German scientists discovered the sculpture actually had an inner face, with less prominent cheekbones, a bump on her nose and wrinkles around her mouth!. Poor Nefertiti. Had she been given a second face to adhere to ideals of beauty, or was her portrait only meant to satisfy the husband who loved her?
Like many in the past who posed for a portrait, Nefertiti more than likely believed she was being portrayed by the artist as she looked in real life. Judging purely from the representations we have of her, all similar, she does appear to have been one of the most harmoniously beautiful of women.
Egyptian portraiture was basically functional, its purpose mainly religious. Unimportant details generally followed a pattern, the posture, hands, feet and legs.
However is it reasonable to assume the face needed to record some of the features of the departed to assure recognition in the afterlife, which was the most important aspect of their religion.
Korai
Unlike the Egyptians, the Greeks did not have the need for the soul to recognize its former body. Greek sculptural grave reliefs, or stella were stamped with faces of great beauty that are often just a little too stereotyped and less individualized to be considered real likenesses.
The Korai, or marble statues of women appeared six centuries BCE (before the Christ event) and achieved an anatomical accuracy far beyond the grasp of Egyptian sculptures and their static appearance did not change until the first half of the fifth century BCE when they attained movement and put one foot forward, both metaphorically and physically into the future. This was the first step on the path towards a tradition we now regard as the classical statuary tradition, which began in the second half of the fifth century BCE.
Few original examples survive and the only way we know anything at all about Greek portraiture, which usually represented the whole figure, was because the Romans admired it and made great copies for us to find.
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