What/When Is a Portrait?
Royal Images of the Ancient Near East1
IRENE J. WINTER
William Dorr Boardman Professor of Fine Arts Emerita
Harvard University
WE USE the word "portrait" in modern language(s),
there is a strong tendency to assume naturalism in the resulting
representation - affected by the photograph, by realism
in painting, and by a long history of the genre in the West. Royal
images of the ancient Near East - for example, Gudea of Lagash of ca.
2110 BCE (fig. 1), and Assurnasirpal II of Assyria of ca. 875 BCE (fig. 2)
- would not necessarily fall into this category, however clear it may be
that they represent identifiable rulers of the ancient Near East.
Our conventions for realism hearken back to Roman "portraiture,"
in which what is presumed to be a reasonable likeness of the deceased
was represented on sarcophagus lids (fig. 3), and family busts were carried
in procession, where the recognition of persons belonging to known
lineages, hence "likeness," was culturally valued.2 And to the Renaissance,
where in a literary invention of 1519, the portrait of Baldassare
Castiglione, author of the famous treatise The Courtier, was said to
provide his wife with solace when the subject himself was absent.3
In an article entitled "L'effet de resemblance" [The Resemblance
Effect], however, Henri Zerner has argued that various tricks may be
employed to suggest verisimilitude in portrait painting.4 He cites as an
1 Read 24 April 2008.
2 Susan Walker and Morris Bierbrier, Ancient Faces: Mummy Portraits from Roman Egypt
(London, 1997); Maxwell L. Anderson and Leila Nista, Roman Portraits in Context: Imperial
and Private Likenesses from the Museo Nazionale Romano (Rome, 1988).
3Text cited in R. Brilliant, Portraiture (Cambridge, Mass., 1991), 20. For the same period,
see now F. Ilchman, Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese: Rivals in Renaissance Venice (Boston, 2009),
esp. 197-200, which makes clear a link between the classical Roman and Renaissance periods,
when lineage and family were sufficiently important that the individual represented should
be identifiable by resemblance and manifest a lifelike quality.
4H. Zerner, "L'effet de resemblance," in // ritratto e la memoria. Materiali 3, ed. Gentili et
al., 111-21 (Rome, 1993).
PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY VOL. 153, NO. 3, SEPTEMBER 2009
This content downloaded from
147.251.238.112 on Thu, 21 Oct 2021 09:06:49 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
what/when is a portrait? 255
Figure 1. Standing sculpture of
Gudea, ruler of Lagash, likely from the
site of Tello, ancient Girsu. Louvre:
AO 20164, purchase 1953; ht. 1.05 m.
Courtesy, Département des antiquités
orientales, Musée du Louvre, Paris.
Figure 2. Relief of Ass
king of Assyria, North
Nimrud. The British M
WA 124569; ht. appro
Courtesy, The Trustees,
Museum, London.
example the expressiveness of the
Thomas More (Frick Collection, New
maneuver, the "likeness effect" rather
than direct comparison betwee
a case, when compared with another
Sir Henry Guildford (Windsor Castle
device deployed, and therefore what
semblance between the two men.
I have paid attention to such arguments, because it has been my
mission to be able to bring the sculptural images of Mesopotamia into
This content downloaded from
147.251.238.112 on Thu, 21 Oct 2021 09:06:49 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
256 IRENE J. WINTER
Figure 3. Rom
portrait, Fayum
ca. 130-140 C.E. Harvard
Art Museum, Arthur M.
Sackler Museum, Gift of
Dr. Denman W. Ross,
1923.60.
art historical discourse. At issue is whether the identification of the images
with the names of known, historical personages, and their endowment
with purposeful, culturally-valued properties, is sufficient to warrant
referring to these images as royal "portraits."
What is interesting about the Gudea statues, some twenty of which
are known, is that there is a consistency in the appearance of his broad
face and chin, such that even uninscribed images can be immediately
classified as "Gudea" (e.g., fig. 4). Because that chin is recognizable,
it has sometimes led to the presumption that it maps a reality in the facial
physiognomy of the historical Gudea.5 I myself have argued in the
past that, by normative Western definition, this is only sufficient to
5 Betty Schlossman, "Portraiture in Mesopotamia in the Late 3rd and Early 2nd Millennia
B.C., Part I," Archiv für Orientforschung 26 (1978-79): 56-77, and "Portraiture . . . , Part
II," AfO 28 (1981-82): 143-170; Agnès Spycket, La statuaire du Proche-Orient ancien
(Leiden, 1981).
This content downloaded from
147.251.238.112 on Thu, 21 Oct 2021 09:06:49 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
what/when is a portrait? 257
Figure 4. Head of Gudea.
Louvre: AO 13; ht. 0.23 m.
Courtesy, Département des
antiquités orientales,
Musée du Louvre, Paris.
claim a "signature trait" as signifier of the person, rather than true
portraiture.6
But let us step back from Mesopotamia for a moment, to establish
the frame within which we might pursue this problem further. Art historian
Richard Brilliant has taken the position (in a 1990 exhibition on
African art, as well as in his own book, Portraiture, of 1991) that portraits
"concretize the individual portrayed," allowing for the possibility
that "the . . . 'idea' of a particular human being . . . can be both represented
and preserved."7 In just that way, Gertrude Stein defended the distortions
of Picasso's early Cubism by insisting that the "idea" of things
portrayed could be even more true than the mere representation of
what the eye saw. Of her own portrait, painted by Picasso around 1907
and photographed with her by Man Ray in 1922 (fig. 5), it was said that
she had grown over time to look like it, not the other way around!8
For Brilliant, although descriptive content in portraiture can be
minimal, it cannot be absent altogether. The necessary condition is that
"a portrait requires identification as the justification of its purpose";
6 1. J. Winter, review of A. Spycket, La statuaire, in Journal of Cuneiform Studies 36
(1984): 107-08.
7 Brilliant, Portraiture, esp. 13-18.
8 Ibid., 149-50 and fig. 72.
This content downloaded from
147.251.238.112 on Thu, 21 Oct 2021 09:06:49 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
258 IRENE J. WINTER
Figure 5. Man Ray, Photogr
and in order to achieve this
construed, seems essential."
the subject and the artist in
of the subject in both the
sense.
In such a framework, Gudea's chin does indeed beco
ture element" - which, in concert with the often inscr
name and titles on the body of the statue, allows for b
and the perpetuation of his chosen "PR image." The sig
is something quite familiar from ancient Egypt as well
elements in the face and/or physiognomy of Old King
heads," funerary statuary or relief images (as here, fr
Dynasty tomb of Nofer, fig. 6) were reproduced as char
individual.9 And indeed, the same questions regarding t
9 For discussion, and images of both the reserve head and relief of Nofe
venson Smith, Ancient Egypt as represented in the Museum of Fine A
Museum of Fine Arts, 1960), figs. 14 and 15, and p. 36. In general, see A.
Ideology of the Old Kingdom Portrait," Göttingen Miszellen 117/118
This content downloaded from
147.251.238.112 on Thu, 21 Oct 2021 09:06:49 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
what/when is a portrait? 259
Figure 6. Relief of Nofer,
Giza; Fourth Dynasty Egypt,
Old Kingdom. Museum of
Fine Arts, Boston: 07.1006.
or inappropriate use of the term
respect to Egyptian art in general
least up to the abstraction of the
greater naturalism/realism were
moment of super-realistic repres
then especially celebrated, as whe
bust of a Fourth Dynasty officia
high art, but was cast and dresse
was so real one could imagine bum
and 8)!12
In more recent work, I have taken another tack, and sought in the
lexicon of Sumerian and Akkadian, the languages of ancient Mesopotamia,
terms related to representation and likeness, in order to consider
10 Lawrence M. Berman, "The Image of the King in Ancient Egypt," in Pharaohs: Treasures
of Egyptian Art from the Louvre, ed. L. Berman and B. Letellier, 23-24 (Cleveland, 1996).
11 Apparent, for example, in E. H. Gombrich, The Story of Art, 13th edition (Oxford,
1978), and in many survey texts of the history of art. A critical response may be seen in
Zainab Bahrani, The Graven Image: Representation in Babylonia and Assyria (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), esp. 12.
12Dows Dunham, "An Experiment with an Egyptian Portrait," Bulletin of the Museum of
Fine Arts 41 (1943): 10. Similarly, heads of the Twelfth Dynasty king Sesostris III, with tired
eyes and lined faces, were thought to represent naturalistic renderings, until it was understood
that the details referred to a specific trope of kingship in the Middle Kingdom: that of
the deeply concerned ruler at work for his people (see Berman, "The Image of the King in
Ancient Egypt," 1996).
This content downloaded from
147.251.238.112 on Thu, 21 Oct 2021 09:06:49 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
260 IRENE J. WINTER
Figure 7. Bust of Ankh-af, Giza
Fourth Dynasty Egypt, Old Kingdo
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston: 27.44
Figure 8. Cast of
dressed by curato
Dows Dunham,
how the phenomenon of the r
stood in its own time. It turn
developed arm was not simpl
sculptural modeling was an artif
arm signaled the underlying S
essary attribute of the ruler. I
tributes, "arm put by the god"
just as his large ears signified t
wise and could be attentive, w
was broadly endowed with life
were to be read as part of the ic
Just so the Yoruba image of
her jubilee portrait was circula
the wooden sculpture manifest
copyist, but the re-inscribing
forehead raised as appropriate
13 See, on this, I. J. Winter, "The Bod
the Statues of Gudea," in Dumu-E2-D
H. Behrens et al., 573-83 (Philadelphia,
Inquiry into Analytical Process and the I
Science/Producing Art, ed. C. A. Jone
55-77.
This content downloaded from
147.251.238.112 on Thu, 21 Oct 2021 09:06:49 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
what/when is a portrait? 261
Figure 9. Seated Gudea, from Tello. Lo
tesy, Département des antiquités orienta
the seat of wisdom; the hand emph
breasts made prominent to indicat
The whole Gudea, then, not unli
las ads for body-building common
1950s, was to add up to more than
able ruler - readable as such by an
surprising that similar recognizab
strong arm, broad chest, ample pro
areas of Iraq in the early 1960s of
graphs taken by archaeologist Don
was excavating at the site of Nippu
For rhetorical purposes, one coul
imagery of the Assyrian ruler Ass
porary Saudi sheikhs. Twelve hund
of a polity no longer a "city state,"
14J. M. Borgatti, "African Portraits," in Lik
the World, ed. J. M. Borgatti and R. Brillian
This content downloaded from
147.251.238.112 on Thu, 21 Oct 2021 09:06:49 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
262 IRENE J. WINTER
Figure 10. Loc
chief, Sheikh Ad
Photograph by
Hansen, 1961.
on the verge of empire, Ass
his images. He is depicted on
2), in three-dimensional stat
(fig. 12), and on rock reliefs
cal points across the realm.15
All of these representations
Sumerian and Akkadian, ma
[Sum. alam; Akk. salmu]. Wh
in the text inscribed directly
is clear he is labeling himself
texts, the royal voice describ
15 See on this, I. J. Winter, "Art in E
Assyrian Ideology," in Assyria 1995
1997); also Ann Shafer, "Assyrian Ro
ing of Imperial Space," in Ancient N
H. Feldman, 133-60 (Leiden and Bosto
"Dur-Sharrukin: Le portrait de Sargon
ais découvert à Khorsabad," Revue
This content downloaded from
147.251.238.112 on Thu, 21 Oct 2021 09:06:49 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
what/when is a portrait? 263
Figure 11. Statue of
Assurnasirpal II, Ishtar
Sharrat-niphi Temple, Nimrud.
The British Museum,
WA 118871; ht. 0.78 m.
Courtesy, The Trustees,
The British Museum, London.
tures," or a royal image "in my likeness," or "resembling my (own)
features," it is clear that some sort of visual relationship between the
king's physical person and the image that bears his name is being
suggested.16
This vocabulary engages our own category of "portraiture," in
which the finished image is judged in terms of whether or not it is a
good likeness of the subject. It is certainly true that the image of Assurnasirpal
on his stelae and in his free-standing statues is recognizable as
stylistically similar to his images on the relief carvings. But did the king
actually look like that?
In Western art, when we speak of a "portrait," we look mainly to
the face, and rather expect that Rembrandt at a certain stage of his life
actually looked like his own self-portait, or that Gilbert Stuart really
16 Once again, very similar issues are raised with respect to vocabulary and imagery in
Egyptian art, as discussed by Berman, "The Image of the King in Ancient Egypt," 25.
This content downloaded from
147.251.238.112 on Thu, 21 Oct 2021 09:06:49 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
264 IRENE J. WINTER
Figure 12. Detail of the Stela of A
lith," Ninurta Temple, Nimrud. T
Courtesy, The Trustees, The British
captured the likeness of Georg
the Assyrian rulers' vocabulary
ally expect that the array of n
tures, including Assurnasirpal
maneser III, represents accurate
names the images bear. How, t
claim to likeness, resemblance
own judgment of the images as
uniform?
17 Although when a version of that s
sculpture of Washington at the Smithso
generally willing to acknowledge that th
is to be assigned to the heroic tradition o
read his qualities of classical leadership.
This content downloaded from
147.251.238.112 on Thu, 21 Oct 2021 09:06:49 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
what/when is a portrait? 265
Figure 13. Gilbert Stuart, Portrait of G
American Philosophical Society, Philadelp
As with Gudea, we are told in in
the gods, to quote two examples, "g
my strength great" and "interven
appearance and perfected my featur
rule."18 Unless one accepts actual d
body, we must understand that som
pendent upon visual verification i
referent than in the attributes.
Once again, I believe that the key li
our translations must pay careful a
often refer to what has been trans
18 A. K. Grayson, Royal Inscriptions of Meso
Millennium [=RIMA 2) (Toronto, 1991), 147,
This content downloaded from
147.251.238.112 on Thu, 21 Oct 2021 09:06:49 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
266 IRENE J. WINTER
this were the proper literal t
Akkadian word for image, sal
dian word for "king," sarru: tha
instead, what we find append
sarrütu, as in the compound: s
perhaps translated better as "im
are told quite literally that this
The ruler's appearance, then
gods in order to make him rec
his "ideal" qualities were par
modern notions of portraitur
those signature elements mar
have been signs external to th
ments. These markers would,
from identity that recognition
immediate. And at that point,
that particularizes the holder
Seen from this perspective, i
trait" as it is used, and as it si
mie. Our argument for includ
category is based upon the pr
attributes can be seen alongsid
emperor Augustus - for exam
century CE - often show the r
in order to ascribe to him all
man rulership.20 Similarly, H
XIV or XV of France (e.g., fig
the qualities of the rulers. In
XIV, Le portrait du roi (Portra
me in work on the royal sculp
argued that the king in his port
specific historical personage name;
second, the exemplar o
third, the sacral embodiment,
Marin's account, given the war
the king is ideal only in his ima
We come back, then, to Hen
likeness is not a necessary con
19Winter, "Art in Empire," 365.
20 P. Zanker, The Power of Images in t
Mich., 1988), p. 190, fig. 148a.
21 Louis Marin, Portrait of the King, t
This content downloaded from
147.251.238.112 on Thu, 21 Oct 2021 09:06:49 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
what/when is a portrait? 267
Figure 14. Detail, Hyacinthe Rigau
retinal comparison between the
nition constitutes a sufficient
than literal resemblance require
from traditional Western usage, i
tention to reference a particul
accepted criteria for identifica
important move in the face of th
which was to shift the question
"When is a portrait?" then Zern
sufficient.
I find that I am willing to em
gloss. For // the royal appeara
"N. Goodman, Ways of World-Making
This content downloaded from
147.251.238.112 on Thu, 21 Oct 2021 09:06:49 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
268 IRENE J. WINTER
Figure 15. Human-headed
Gateway Colossus,
Northwest Palace, Nimrud.
The British Museum,
WA 118801. Courtesy,
The Trustees, The British
Museum, London.
Mesopotamia was constituted by elements and qualities tied to his office,
and coded for ideal values rather than absolute physiognomical
likeness, then what we have here may not be an individualized portrait
of the king; but it is certainly the "portrait of a king." And let there be
no confusion: by the coded references to beard, headgear, attributes,
garment, and stature, it is the "portrait of an Assyrian king"
This comes quite close to late antique theology regarding "Godbefitting"
imagery, where the Sumerian or Assyrian images would then
be understood as "ruler- or king-befitting."23
One more interpretive move may be made before closing. An addi-
23 See on this, M. Barasch, Icon: Studies in the History of an Idea (New York and London,
1992), esp. chap. 4, "Resemblance," 69-71. More recently, with respect to the portrait
itself, Paul Barlow, in "The Imagined Hero as Incarnate Sign: Thomas Carlyle and the Mythology
of the 'National Portrait' in Victorian Britain," Art History 17 (1994): 517-45, has
raised the paradox of portraiture as a key to identity and character when, obviously, the sitter
him/herself, no less than the artist, can exercise agency in the way the subject is represented
(dealt with as well in Winter, "Art in Empire," 367f.).
This content downloaded from
147.251.238.112 on Thu, 21 Oct 2021 09:06:49 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
what/when is a portrait? 269
tional hint of the rhetorical value
and attributes may be gleaned fr
compare the appearance of the kin
ter to a ruler, for example, a prie
"the chosen one of the great god
king is the perfect likeness of the g
thing more than courtly hyperbol
actually have been important for t
and his image to be perceived as m
sonal idiosyncrasy and therefore n
Here, I believe, we are provided
representation. What we are present
his office of kingship" is a semiot
tion. The king, in accord with his cr
sition to determine that his imag
equally marking his palace and tem
ages are subject to the same criter
is evident in a comparison of the
those of semi-divine genii and hu
from the same royal palace (comp
figs. 15-16). Specifically, the self t
sentation, or representation, is th
sessed of the authority he would w
the (semi-)divine figures that grac
This is, in the end, Heidegger's "
royal image, hence, the king, as "
sessing signs for all of the attribu
to the exercise of rule.25
I certainly do not advocate cutt
meet the formatting and size sta
portraits (as was the case in the n
the seven-foot slabs from Nimrud
the Harvard University Art Muse
24 S. Parpóla, Letters from Assyrian and Ba
(Helsinki, 1993), p. 166: 207, reverse 11. 12Peter
Machinist, "Kingship and Divinity in
Revealing Ancient Israelite Religion, Brown
dore J. Lewis, 152-88 (Providence, 2006).
25 Martin Heidegger, "The Origin of the W
trans. A. Hofstadter (New York, 1971), 36 (
argued by Jeremy Tanner with respect to la
role of the portrait statue within broader s
power. J. Tanner, "Portraits, Power and Pat
This content downloaded from
147.251.238.112 on Thu, 21 Oct 2021 09:06:49 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
270 IRENE J. WINTER
Figure 16. Reliefs of Winged Ge
Gallery, Kimball Art Museum, Fort
Fort Worth, Texas, fig. 16). N
retaining the term, and the gen
- not because of any obvious
cause "portrait" in our world
relationship between image, id
sidering when an image was in
are pressed further to grapple w
tion and representation of k
Mesopotamian sculptures not jus
courses of art history.
This content downloaded from
147.251.238.112 on Thu, 21 Oct 2021 09:06:49 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
What/When Is a Portrait? Royal Images of the Ancient near East
Author(s): Irene J. Winter
Source: Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society , Sep., 2009, Vol. 153, No. 3
(Sep., 2009), pp. 254-270
Published by: American Philosophical Society
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40541670
REFERENCES
Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/40541670?seq=1&cid=pdf-
reference#references_tab_contents
You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms
American Philosophical Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend
access to Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society
This content downloaded from
147.251.238.112 on Thu, 21 Oct 2021 09:06:49 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms