used to construct such works—bronze, marble, granite—suggest that its subject’s influence will extend well into the future, impervious to the changes of time.
With the spread of Christianity, especially after the fall of the Roman Empire, sculpture went into decline because of the belief that statuary verged on idolatry.26 One replacement was portraiture, which served to bring together the king’s “two bodies”—the mortal body that aged and died, and the symbolic body of the monarch. A tradition of deifying portraiture in order to establish and enhance a ruler’s fame and prestige dates back at least to medieval and early Renaissance artists who made similar connections by painting rulers in Christ-like poses.27
Kings and queens especially grasped the value of the portrait in affirming their importance, and thus a new profession arose, the “court painter” retained by royal or noble families. They often managed a group of assistants or apprentices, all of whom produced various forms of imagery—portrait miniatures, illuminated manuscripts, heraldic seals—to circulate and affirm the royals’ authority and fame. There was especial emphasis on the royals’ face. By the late 1500s and early 1600s, in England, for example, portraits of rulers from William the Conqueror to Henry VIII would be displayed, often in chronological sequence, in the grand homes of the aristocracy but also in civic buildings and educational establishments. These paintings could be inexpensively reproduced based on previous portraits and copied by artists.28 And they cemented and circulated the royals’ historic significance long after their deaths.
Until the Renaissance period and the emergence of early capitalism in the 1500s, fame had been restricted primarily to royal and religious leaders. But with the growth in trade and the rise of a moneyed merchant class, portrait painting emerged as a more portable, more accessible means of recording and displaying one’s individual likeness and his or her success. “Portraiture,” as Shearer West writes about the history of the genre, was “very important to celebrity, as the cultivation of celebrity depends to an extent upon the familiarity and dissemination of likeness.”29 As the number of public professions increased, those aspiring to importance realized how portraits could make them seem more symbolically valuable, more powerful.30 As Braudy notes, “Everyone who made a career in public—and the number of public professions was speedily increasing—was being made to realize how both art and printing could make him more symbolic, more essential, and more powerful.”31 In turn, as the demand for portraits grew, artists who benefitted from the patronage of the rich also became famous. Those who became famous—and remain so today—because of their work for rich patrons include Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519), Michelangelo (1475–1564), Raphael (1483–1520) and Botticelli (1445–1510). The result, notes Braudy, “was an unprecedented propaganda of images for both patron and artist to trumpet their importance.”32 The prevalence of the painted portrait, and later printed, photographic, and digitally reproduced versions, helped to establish visual self-representation as a critical mode for communicating one’s public value and identity.
Portraits served as status symbols, affirming the power of those represented, even depicting them as having historical importance; in Italian Renaissance painting, lords and ladies might be painted within notable scenes, or alongside famous figures. The characteristics of the portrait—the posed subject, carefully selected background setting, and efforts to represent the subject’s internal character in addition to his or her physical appearance and possessions—are tropes that have shaped the nature of self-representation through to the present day. Specific (and often idealized) postures, expressions, and gestures were depicted alongside props and other items signifying particular elements of the subject’s identity, class, or station. Some of these portraits, like photographs of celebrities today, provided models for how to dress, how to hold one’s body, and what were the most elegant gestures and poses.
With the invention of the printing press in the late 1400s, and the more widespread use of engraving in the next century, portraits could proliferate and circulate in even greater detail. We think of competition over publicity as being relatively recent, but, as Braudy notes, the “competition of images we blindly associate with the present had already by the sixteenth century begun in earnest. It was a new world of fame in which visible and theatrical fame would become the standard, and public prominence a continual theme.”33 Certain rulers, notably England’s Elizabeth I and France’s Louis XIV, appreciated the power of printing and engraving to spread their fame and authority over great distances. Both of them directed their scribes and artists to create written and visual materials in the service of self-promotion. Elizabeth I’s persona was carefully crafted to embody a unified, imperial England, a “combined cult of herself and her country.” Louis XIV, who launched a premeditated program to have himself celebrated as the Sun King, was described by one aristocrat this way: “If he was not the greatest king, he was the best actor of majesty at least that ever filled a throne.” The king told his official historians that “the most precious things in the world to me” was “my glory.”34 By the late eighteenth century, with the conversion of the Louvre palace into a museum, and then the establishment of national portrait collections, such as the English National Portrait Gallery in 1856, there were now even more monumental yet accessible public spaces for the archive and display of influential individuals.
Over time, the practice of sitting for one’s portrait became commonplace even outside of elite circles. Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth century, to have one’s portrait made was a sign of bourgeois success; it became possible for the middle class to emulate the stoic, reverent postures of high society. The portrait also worked to highlight the unique qualities of esteemed and respected individuals who had made discoveries or contributed to culture. Portraits of scholars, authors, inventors, composers, and political thinkers celebrated the unique quality of the individual, elevating these often middle-class persons, who also gained celebrity thanks to their efforts and talents. Meanwhile, some royals and institutional leaders began to present themselves more casually and portraits evolved from the formal and staged to the personal and domestic, complete with pets and familiar possessions. Some eighteenth-century portraits of Marie Antoinette, for instance, emphasized her role as mother, picturing her in a relaxed, domestic setting, accompanied by her children.35 While the common folk used portraits to emulate the elite, some royals presented themselves as important, yet approachable, a critical suggestion for rulers like Antoinette, who was largely viewed as extravagant and unsympathetic. Her efforts at image management especially backfired when she dressed up as a shepherdess or milkmaid at her simulated farm on the opulent Palace Versailles, an extravagantly wealthy royal playing at and seeming to mock the poor.
By the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the growth of a nonaristocratic and increasingly influential bourgeoisie whose economic and political fortunes were affected by royal policies began to be less deferential to and more critical of that power. And just as the new technologies of printing could be used to bolster royal authority, these new media could also be used to criticize and even undermine that power.
Indeed, this can be seen as the beginning of celebrity gossip. In France, by the mid-1700s, “a vast underground literature attacking the prerogatives and pretensions of monarchs, aristocrats, and the church had emerged” that was circulated by an increasingly assertive bourgeoisie and written in a style that “anticipated the gossip columnists of the yellow press.” One such exposé was The Private Life of Louis XV, a chroniques scandaleuse, a diatribe against the corruption and decadent behavior of the nobility.36 By the late 1700s, such printed gossip challenging the authority and the personas of elites had spread to England, other European counties, and the American colonies.
Jürgen Habermas famously theorized this period as a critical moment in cultural history, in which society shifts from a top-down representational culture, where influence based on edicts and imagery was hierarchically disseminated from the elite few to the masses, to a critical, participatory culture in which ordinary citizens could be informed about, and participate in, discussions regarding matters of public concern.37 Here, we see that it is not the official histories, the gilded Bibles, or even the elite newspapers of the day that were most influential, but rather the cheap broadside posters, pamphlets, and street literature—what
