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Some of Art's Mysteries

Why do Peyton's portraits look alike?

Elizabeth Peyton seems to have recognized as a student that there is a tendency among great masters to paint the interior of their own minds.
That must be why she does not paint her subjects accurately but, like many masters before her, fuses the features of her sitters with her own.
The painted sitters become aspects of her self, like a writer's alter ego. Indeed critics have already noticed how similar her sitters look. It must
also be why her selection of subjects so closely matches that of the great masters, from royalty and military heroes as figures of power to artists, poets
and stage performers as expressions of creativity. Throw in some relatives and a few close friends with whom she identifies and that is largely all she paints.

Napoleon by Gros Napoleon by Peyton Peyton by herself

Peyton was clearly aware, even when young, that celebrated portraits of Napoleon resemble the artist (see Who’s Who #2). She thus
began by painting herself not as Napoleon but as Napoleon as an artist. She copied Baron Gros’ portrait of a young, androgynous Napoleon
who looks like the young Gros and added her own features. This makes Gros' Napoleon look even more like a girl. Note how the nose,
chin and eyebrows change and even the size of his lips. By painting a portrait of Napoleon-as-an-artist early in his own career, and early in
Gros' career too, she identifies with their promise and ambition.

Elizabeth by Peyton Peyton by herself

Attracted by their common name, Peyton then turned Britain’s future Queen into a royal alter ego. I have already shown how so many
other artists have portrayed British monarchs in the same way including Lucian Freud (see article). In each case these painted “monarchs”
symbolize the majesty and power of the artist because, from scripture onwards, monarchy has long been a powerful symbol of the human
mind. Peyton even named an exhibition and book "Live Forever", a clear reference to "Long live the Queen" and she used an old photograph
of the Queen as the first illustration in the book. Interestingly there is an old caption under the photograph saying "Queen Elizabeth II" with an arrow pointing
right. However a second caption saying "Queen Elizabeth I" has an arrow pointing left, towards the cover perhaps, though there is no associated image. The
implication is that the missing Queen (Elizabeth the First, no less) must be "Elizabeth Peyton" herself.

Hockney by Peyton Peyton by herself

The self-reflective physiognomy of Peyton’s portraits should have been noted before because so few of her portraits are good likenesses.
Even her copy of Leonardo’s Lady with an Ermine has been altered to more closely resemble herself. Besides all her “faces” have similar
eyebrows as Blazwick has noted. Of course, Peyton's decision to publish widely only one self-portrait in twenty years has hindered helpful
comparisons as she must know. Yet there are other clues. By the time Peyton painted David Hockney, for example, he was pudgy, middle-aged
man and had never had the svelte, sinewy figure that she portrayed. Even Frida Kahlo, the feminist icon, is made more feminine.

Peyton is reluctant to explain her work. She once turned up for a lecture to British art students by presenting
a slideshow of her own paintings accompanied by music. When it ended she walked off stage having said nothing. That reticence, a
characteristic of great masters across the ages, reveals what it hides.

Why do Mantegna's shepherds face the "wrong" direction?

Mantegna's Adoration of the Shepherds

Two works by Durer

Have you ever wondered why Joseph sleeps so much, and through the most important moments of his wife's life?
In Mantegna's Adoration in New York's Metropolitan Museum, he is fast asleep just as the shepherds come. Why?

The probable answer is that Joseph is an alter ego of the dreaming artist whose imagination brings forth the "painting"
behind him: "Mantegna's Virgin and Child". Thus the Virgin and Child are "a painting" in a different reality to Joseph and
the shepherds. However, even Mary and Jesus, the two figures in the "imagined" painting, are in turn visual metaphors
for the artist and his painting. Here's how. The Virgin gives birth to divine perfection just as the artist does. Indeed the
Italian word for conception also meant idea, as it does in English too. Thus Mantegna, like the Virgin, has had an
Immaculate Conception. The visual proof for this interpretation is that the shepherds bow not to Christ, as spectators
and even art scholars imagine, but to Joseph, the dreaming artist. Look carefully. It’s a visual trick. If you think the
shepherds face Christ, you cannot see that they do not. Once you imagine the truth, their direction, facing the
"artist"/Joseph, becomes obvious and you can never see them facing Christ again. (Click image to see for yourself.)

Contemporary viewers, like ordinary museum visitors today, would not have understood this. Only artists would have.
For instance, in two early works by Durer illustrated above, the sleeping Joseph/Durer also imagines his image of the
Virgin and Child next to him.

Why do these iconic portraits of Napoleon each resemble the artist?

Why has no-one noted that great portraits so often resemble the artist, thus making more sense of the saying Every Painter
Paints Himself. There are dozens of examples in the Galleries while Who’s Who, a series of short papers (below), explains why.
Visual interpretations of Edouard Manet's art and Michelangelo's too also help demonstrate the theme. Artists, we need to recognize,
have always been "educated" by looking at past art and are far more influenced by the visual thinking of artists than the written thought
of writers. Indeed part of the mystery of art is that few outsiders ever "see" it as these comparisons prove. By changing viewpoint, though,
from spectator to artist, so many new revelations abound, all visually striking, that any art lover with an independent mind must at least
question conventional understanding. Why were they not seen before? They were never imagined.

Who's Who: Problems in Great Portraits are short papers on how artists paint themselves:

#1  Early Netherlandish Portraits
#2  Napoleon and the French Kings
#3 British Monarchs
#4 Renaissance Faces
#5  The Artist's Wife

The Galleries contain many more examples of portraits that resemble the artist.

Britain's Observer newspaper recently ran a half-page article on this website and Britain's monarchs.

A commentary on academic art scholarship by Simon Abrahams in The Art Newspaper

Useful Links: The Art Newspaper
                   Web Gallery of Art (the best site for images of art)
                   Old Masters New Perspectives
                   Napoleonica
                   Virtual Library: Museums Pages

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A website of revisionist art history for museum curators, museum visitors and art lovers of all kinds. From Renaissance criticism of painting and sculpture to the modern theories of Panofsky, Goffen, Rosand, Barolsky and 
Leo Steinberg, great art has been misinterpreted by all but the great masters themselves. Among other astonishing discoveries, artscholar.org reveals how Michelangelo used his knowledge of inner anatomy, gained through
dissections, to depict brains,a kidney, phallus and even a clitoris on the walls and ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Using an unfamiliar form of visual perception, we also demonstrate how Michelangelo used portraits and 
caricatures of Lorenzo Medici and Savonarola in his masterpieces as aspects of his own artistic identity, as king, prophet and androgynous God.