Art History 397P - ST-Portrait in Medieval Europe

This course takes as its object of focus one of the most contested forms of medieval art: the portrait. Artists of the Middle Ages seldom strived for what we think of today as an accurate physical likeness of a subject, and instead often subordinated verism and physiognomic specificity to type and ideal. How did such representations of individuals function within overlapping and intersecting cultures of religious ritual and secular social transaction? What were their purposes and functions? And do they cause us to refine our very definition of "the portrait"?