SESSION: 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 being 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.

Session Convenor:

Judith Noorman, University of Amsterdam

Session Speakers:

Joris Oddens, Huygens Institute for the History and Culture of the Netherlands

The Visible Hand: Active Gestures in European Art (c. 1300-1800)

In this paper, I explore how active hand gestures could serve as indicators of active involvement in the creation of paintings that include portraits. In altarpieces featuring portraits of various family members, family groups, or pendant pairs, patronage is traditionally assumed to be male unless evidence suggests otherwise. In institutional group portraits such as civic guard paintings, the standard assumption is often that the commission was initiated by the sitter with the greatest seniority or highest rank.

I aim to demonstrate how, in (series of) paintings containing multiple portraits, gestures – made either by the sitters themselves or by saintly intermediaries – were employed to distinguish the actual patron or initiator from the other portrayed figures. When we take these gestures seriously, we often arrive at new hypotheses regarding the genesis of paintings. We may, for instance, begin to suspect cases of female patronage where the written sources fall silent. We also gain a sharper understanding of a practice in which sitters who occupy a lower position within the hierarchical order of a group portrait (and who are often literally placed at its margins) took the initiative for the commission to pay homage to their superiors and to let their superiors’ renown reflect back upon themselves. The examples discussed in this paper are drawn primarily from Italy and the Netherlands, but I will argue that we are dealing with a European phenomenon.

Zoe Robakiewicz, MA in Art History University of Copenhagen

Embodied Encounters: Artistic Form and Colonial Power in Seventeenth-Century Ethnographic Portraits

This paper examines a unique work of ethnographic portraiture from the collection of the National Museum of Denmark: the Inuit Portrait (1654), the earliest known European depiction of Inuit individuals from Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland). Created decades before formal colonisation of Kalaallit Nunaat began, it offers a rare visual record of the Dano-Norwegian crown’s early, pre-colonial interest in the region. The portrait depicts four Inuit individuals—three women (Gunneling/Kuneling, Kabelou, and Siogo) and one man (Ihiob), as named by Europeans—who were abducted during a reconnaissance voyage led by Danish Captain David Danel between March and September 1654. Painted by an unknown artist in Bergen and reportedly acquired on the return to Denmark, the work blends Dutch Renaissance conventions of group portraiture with the descriptive visual strategies of early modern colonial science.

Adopting an interdisciplinary approach that includes formal art historical analysis, historical materialist methodology, and museological critique, this paper investigates how the Inuit Portrait has historically operated, and continues to operate, within the tension between representing individual subjectivities and reinforcing colonial typologies. It highlights the portrait’s shifting role within the Royal Kunstkammer collection, where it functioned both as an object of royal curiosity and as a tool of emerging colonial knowledge production—embedded within broader power structures that privileged direct observation and life-based visual documentation (ad vivum). Finally, the paper explores the legacy of such representational practices in contemporary ethnographic museums, where attempts to critically engage with colonial pasts remain deeply entangled in their institutional foundations. By situating the Inuit Portrait (1654) within early modern intersections of art, science, and colonialism, this analysis contributes to broader discussions on how visual art functioned not only as a product of empire but also as an active participant in its formation.

Gilbert Braun, Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London

Clothing and the Politics of Representation in Early Modern Polish Portraiture

The early modern period in Poland was marked by profound social, cultural, and political transformation, as Renaissance ideals of openness and pluralism gradually gave way to the Baroque era’s emphasis on religious orthodoxy and cultural rigidity. In an era shaped by the consolidation of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, portraiture flourished among the elites and became a powerful tool for asserting social status and expressing national, religious, and class identities. Clothing played a central role in these representations, often defining the portrait’s iconography and, at times, shaping its entire symbolic and expressive structure. The garments depicted were not merely decorative but carried layered cultural meanings—communicating unspoken messages and revealing underlying tensions. By analysing a variety of full-length, bust-length, and coffin portraits of unidentified sitters and their garments, the research seeks to uncover how clothing contributed to shaping the identities of anonymous figures in early modern Polish portraiture. Particular emphasis shall be placed on the marginal presence of female portraits, highlighting how their visual representation was limited within the predominantly male-centred societal and artistic frameworks of the period.

Beth Richards, Independent Researcher

Pole Position: C18 British EIC Women in the Portrait Archive

This paper advocates for prioritising British women and girls associated with the East India Company during the eighteenth century in methods of archival research and portrait commissioning. It deliberately avoids using ‘wife’ as a pejorative term because it seeks to

challenge who the patron in this context is: women, husbands, immediate family, EIC kinship networks, British society in India, European society in India, or society in Britain. Due to India’s climate, women of the EIC were often widowed young, taking on significant roles in probate matters in England. Family survival was paramount, and it depended on the connectivity and support of EIC kinship networks upon their return to Britain.

To achieve this, it presents case studies of portraits with either unnamed or uncertain attribution and examines how abandoning traditional research methods enhances discussions about women’s agency. It investigates how an object in a work can assist with identification. Applying material culture practices, especially regarding dress and accessories, offers new, meaningful narratives for these works and extends Marcia Pointon’s methodology in this area.

Incorporating the history of emotions, global women, and post-colonial discourse, the paper examines how portraits made within a corporate environment connect with families and their domestic spaces. It offers reflections on past, present, and future research methods, such as employing AI to identify women’s names and portraits through global searches, a task that remains challenging. The aim is to expose the nuanced experiences of EIC British women through their art and culture, challenging historical stereotypes.