Guided tour · For students

1,800 years of faces

Ten portraits, from Roman Egypt to Van Gogh. Look for the clues: who, when, and why?

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Works

10

Time

about 14 min

Collections

6

About this tour

Ten faces, painted, printed and photographed over almost 1,800 years. At every work, look first: what can you find out before you read anything? Then compare. What changes over time, and what stays the same?

We begin in Egypt, around the year 100, when Egypt was part of the Roman Empire.

The 10 works

1. 

   Work 1 of 10

   Mummy Portrait of a Woman

   Isidora Master · about AD 100 · J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

   What can you tell about this woman just by looking? Find three clues.

   Gold leaves in her hair, gold earrings and a necklace: she was a wealthy woman.

   This portrait lay over the face of her mummy. Her name, Isidora, is written in Greek on the wrappings. Painted in coloured wax, it still glows after almost 2,000 years.

2. 

   Work 2 of 10

   Portrait of Margareta van Eyck

   Jan van Eyck · 1439 · Musea Brugge, Bruges

   This portrait talks to you. Can you find where?

   On the frame it says, in Latin: “My husband Johannes completed me in 1439. My age was thirty-three.” It ends with Jan van Eyck's motto: “As I can.”

   It is one of the earliest known portraits of a painter's wife. Margareta looks straight at us.

3. 

   Work 3 of 10

   Ginevra de' Benci

   Leonardo da Vinci · about 1474–78 · National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

   What is growing behind her? Why might the painter have chosen it?

   A juniper bush. In Italian, juniper is “ginepro”, which sounds like her name: Ginevra.

   Leonardo da Vinci painted Ginevra de' Benci when he was in his twenties. It is the only painting by Leonardo in the Americas.

4. 

   Work 4 of 10

   Portrait of the artist's great-granduncle Yizhai at the age of eighty-five

   Ruan Zude · 1561 or 1621 · The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

   What in his face shows that he is old?

   The white beard, the thin face and the tired eyes: he is 85.

   In China, portraits like this celebrated elders while they lived, and could later be used to honour them as ancestors.

5. 

   Work 5 of 10

   Self-Portrait

   Judith Leyster · about 1630 · National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

   What is she doing? What does she want you to know about her?

   She is at work, with about twenty brushes and her palette in her hand. On the easel: a cheerful violinist, the kind of picture she was known for.

   She was about twenty. A few years later she was one of the first women in Haarlem's painters' guild, with her own workshop and pupils.

6. 

   Work 6 of 10

   Self-portrait as the Apostle Paul

   Rembrandt van Rijn · 1661 · Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

   Rembrandt has dressed up as someone else. Can you find two clues?

   The letters in his hands, and the handle of a sword sticking out of his cloak: he plays the Apostle Paul, who wrote letters in the Bible.

   Rembrandt was 55. He painted himself many times in his life and never hid his age: look at the wrinkles and the thick paint.

7. 

   Work 7 of 10

   Self-Portrait with Two Pupils

   Adélaïde Labille-Guiard · 1785 · The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

   Who are the two women behind her? What might the painter want to tell us with them?

   They are her pupils, Marie Gabrielle Capet and Marie Marguerite Carreaux de Rosemond.

   At that time the French Royal Academy let in only four women. Adélaïde Labille-Guiard was one of them, and here she shows herself as a successful painter and a teacher of women artists.

8. 

   Work 8 of 10

   Bust portrait of Otani Oniji

   Tōshūsai Sharaku · 1794 · Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

   Is this a portrait of a real person, or of a role? Look at the face and the hands.

   Both: the actor Ōtani Oniji, playing the servant of one of the villains in a play staged in 1794. His fierce eyes and tense hands show the role.

   Sharaku made all his actor prints in about ten months, then disappeared. Nobody knows for sure who he was. The dark background glitters with mica.

9. 

   Work 9 of 10

   John Herschel

   Julia Margaret Cameron · 1867, printed later · Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton

   This is a photograph. How is it different from the painted portraits before it?

   Look at the light: the face comes out of the dark, a little soft, with wild white hair catching the light.

   Julia Margaret Cameron photographed her friend Sir John Herschel, a famous astronomer. Herschel was also a pioneer of photography, and gave us the words “negative” and “positive”.

10. 

    Work 10 of 10

    Self-Portrait

    Vincent van Gogh · 1889 · National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

    Look at the background. What is it doing?

    It moves! The brushstrokes curl around his head like waves, in the same blues as his painter's smock.

    Vincent van Gogh painted this in the south of France in 1889, with his palette in his hand. He often painted himself, partly because he could not pay models.

The end of the tour

Ten faces, almost 1,800 years.

From a mummy portrait to Van Gogh: faces made to be remembered, to show wealth or skill, to play a role, and to look honestly at oneself.

Questions at the end

Start this tour in Auriaan

Works from these collections

• J. Paul Getty Museum
• Musea Brugge
• National Gallery of Art
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art
• Rijksmuseum
• Princeton University Art Museum

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