Premodern Portraits: New Approaches to Identity and Patronage

Research on premodern portraits has traditionally focused on identifying the sitters and examining typological and stylistic developments. This includes the analysis of gestures, posture, clothing, attributes, and original frames. Yet, after centuries of research, the identities of countless portrayed individuals continue to be unknown, and even when we do know who is depicted, many questions remain about the sitters’ social class and status, the commission context and the function(s) these portraits fulfilled.

As portraits appeal to us precisely because of what they have to say about the identities of their sitters and commissioners, unidentified and otherwise less well-documented likenesses risk to be marginalized in both scholarship and display. Norms and biases from the past—for instance, that previous generations were more invested in discovering the identities of male rather than female sitters—thus continue to shape the present-day distinction between the haves and the have-nots in the field of portrait research.

This session invites 20-minute papers on the identity of sitters and the patronage of individual portraits, group portraits or other artworks featuring portraits from before 1800. These may be case studies that draw on (a combination of) biographical and iconographic approaches as well as newer research methods, such as material-technical-analysis (including study of canvas and priming layer, pentimenti, etc.) and AI-driven methods like computer vision. Critical reflections on past and present research practices are especially encouraged, as are papers that offer strategies for reintegrating undocumented or anonymous portraits into scholarly and curatorial discourse.

Submit your Paper via this form. Please download, complete and send it directly to the Session Convenor(s) below by Sunday 2 November 2025:

Judith Noorman, University of Amsterdam, j.f.j.noorman@uva.nl