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The Princess de Broglie and Portrait of Gertrude Stein
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is located in New York and belongs to one of the best sightseeing places in this city with millions of people visiting it annually. The organization exists due to the financial help of sponsors and donors with little government support. The Metropolitan Museum, or the Met as it is called by locals, features a large and rich collection of pieces of fine arts. Many of them are portraits which is interesting and gives viewers an opportunity to watch how the genre changes in the course of time. The purpose of this paper is to compare and contrast two pictures from the Metropolitan Museum of Art which were created by different artists and do not belong to the same period.
Genre of Portrait
Portrait is a special genre the task of which is to transfer with the help of artistic means, the inner world of a personality, and their abilities. At the same time, in portraits, artists convey their vision of the world and demonstrate the audience their moral experiences, aspirations, and hopes. Another important peculiarity of the genre described is the fact that portraits depict the essence of the era in which they were created. In fact, images of people have always played an essential role in fine arts. They allow to capture styles and moods of a particular period as well as to look at people who lived long ago. Thus, portraits of each era have their own individual characteristics. During the Renaissance, images of personalities were a hymn to man; in the era of the reign of great monarchs, they carried the ideas of absolutism. Democratization expanded the scope of artistic thinking and gave life to new ideas and creative searches. Although a period and public moods have an influence on portraits, it is the artist and their plan that ultimately define what the image would be like.
The Princess de Brogli by Ingres
The Princess de Brogli was painted by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, a French Neoclassical Artist, on a canvas with the use oil paints. The image shows a respectable woman of rare beauty in her twenties who rests on an easy chair. The princess has tilted her head to the audience’s left; she is depicted in an evening dress and wears various accessories as if the woman were about to leave for a ball.
The portrait is a typical artistic embodiment of the image of the Second Empire aristocracy. The light illuminating the lady on the right follows the compositional scheme that the artist liked. Ingres gives de Brogli a pose that emphasizes the nobility of her posture, and at the same time, imparts restraint to a dreamy and languid look, accompanied by a slight hint of a smile. The painter’s skills in depicting details and accessories are amazing. The jewelry, the brocade of the chair, the lace, the shining dress, and the blue ribbons in the lady’s hair that is tightly pulled back look like they have been photographed rather than painted. The effect of realness a person might get while looking at the image is strong. It feels like one might hear the rustle of the shining dress made of blue silk which reflects the slightest changes in light, subtle modulations of shades, and mid-tones of all colors.
Hushed tones and yellow, blue, and white hues were used by Ingres to better convey the tender and mysterious beauty of the glorious woman. As for the background, it is comparatively flat and consists of a plain wall which helps viewers to stay concentrated on de Brogli and enjoy her beauty. On the basis of the above description, it might be stated that The Princess de Brogli reflects classical views on women as beautiful, tender, and mysterious creatures.
Portrait of Gertrude Stein by Picasso
Portrait of Gertrude Stein is a picture by Pablo Picasso who is regarded as one of the most influential people of art. The canvas demonstrates an image of a middle-aged woman with her hands resting on the knees. The person is dressed in a dark brown costume, an olive blouse, and a light neck-piece tightened with a small red brooch. Stein is depicted sitting in a dark red armchair with blurred blue, yellow, and orange oriental decorations. Her pose is relaxed; the effect is made stronger with the soft rolls of her costume and the hushed tones of the background.
However, the woman’s head stands in contrast with the other parts of the portrait. Stein’s pale reserved face with irregular sharp features and big dark eyes looks like a mask made of wax. On her right cheek, there is a dark shadow that contrasts with the light color that Picasso has used for the rest of the woman’s face. The impression is intensified with one more black spot next to the face. This is Stein’s black hair pulled back and tightened in a bunch which lets the audience see the woman’s high forehead.
It might be stated that the artist is rather merciless to his model: he depicts her nasolabial furrows, lips which are shut tight, and eyes of different sizes as they are. Picasso does not try to make her more beautiful by improving some of the model’s features in the portrait. Nevertheless, the picture creates an effect of power and strength; viewers understand that the woman was a purposeful woman. Hence, although from a classical standpoint, Stein cannot be called beautiful, due to her strong character skillfully shown by the artist with the help of artistic means, the model looks attractive.
Compare-and-Contrast Analysis
The two above pictures have several common features; they are both portraits of women who are depicted in three quarters view. Princess de Broglie’s and Gertrude Stein’s hair-dresses are also almost identical: in both cases, the hair is pulled back and tightened on the back of the head. The backgrounds of The Princess de Broglie and Portrait of Gertrude Stein are plain and featureless which lets viewers concentrate on the individuals. Both portraits demonstrate black-haired women with dark brown eyes and pale skin.
However, the effects created by the images are opposite; this might be connected with the influence of the periods in which the portraits were painted. If Princess de Broglie in her shimmering blue dress is the very picture of classical beauty, femininity, and mysteriousness, Gertrude Stein wearing plain clothes demonstrates the imperiousness and purposefulness of a 20th-century woman. The tender look of the lady in the first picture is completely different from the concentrated and serious eyes of Stein that seem to watch a distant object which is not shown in the portrait. In conclusion, it might be stated that in spite of the fact that The Princess de Broglie and Portrait of Gertrude Stein share some characteristics, the impressions they make on viewers are different. Comparing and contrasting the two pictures, one might see how the perception and roles of women have changed in the course of time.
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