Portrait as a means of expression from the Renaissance to modern art

Portrait is a type of art that includes a representative approach corresponding to the question of "who" of the individual from the point of view of historical tradition and also carries a kind of inventory quality attribute when considered in terms of witnessing history. Throughout the history of art, the portrait concept, which aims to depict real people in many movements, styles and approaches, has begun to transform with the effect of social, political, economic and cultural changes that started with the Renaissance. These transformations continued in many movements and styles until the modern period and shaped the art of portraiture both in terms of intellectual dimension and form and content. With the modern period, more radical differences have occurred in the understanding of portraiture. The art of portraiture has turned into a means of expression beyond depicting the identity, personality and status of a real person. The portrait art, which gave the answer to the question of "Who?" until the modern era, put aside the identity of the painting from this period and became the answer to questions such as "What?", "How?" and "why?". The influence of the revolutionary movements that took place in the modern period on art has developed primarily in the form of rejection of the mimetic perspective of classical art. In this context, portrait art has been the most affected and transformed art type. Until the modern art movements, portraits, which were the representations of the persons, has turned into a tool of expression with the handling of individual perspectives. After this stage, it has began to be discussed that the portrait is no longer represented by whom, but from what point of view it is depicted, to what extent the resulting work excites the viewer or to what extent it overlaps coincides with the realities of the era. Although the issue of representation has been relegated to the second plan, it is possible to find the data about the person discussed in the portraits of the modern period. These data are sometimes conveyed to the audience with the color values used, sometimes with the places discussed or with the objects associated with the figure. In this study, it is aimed to reveal the historical development process of portrait art, which is considered in the modern period within the scope of the subject, the effects of social and technological developments experienced in the periods during this development process on portrait art and the transformations triggered by these effects, by analyzing the object-figure relationship in the modern period through form and content analysis of works.