Aureus of Septimius Severus, with a portrait of Julia Domna ca. 193-96 A.D.; Severan, Roman Gold; Diam. 0.78 in. (2 cm) Gift of Joseph H. Durkee, 1899 (99.35.218) The Metropolitan Museum of Art

1200 years before the Renaissance (around 100 A.D.), portraits of the rulers of ancient Rome were sculpted on metal coins and spread throughout the countryside. Coins were easy to carry and easy to distribute, reaching citizens far and wide to announce and identify images of the leaders of Rome. Once ancient Rome stopped producing these images, portraiture in Europe disappeared until Italians first began to represent images of real people in the 1300s. They modeled the portraits on the coins recovered from ancient Rome. In Florence artists like Giovanni del Biondo began to create likenesses of real people in their pictures, in profile, just as in the Roman coins.

Giovanni del Biondo Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine Alexandria, detail About 1379 Tempera on panel Enlarge

Beginning in the 1430s, artists in Flanders began painting portraits of sitters turned in three-quarter view. When these paintings reached Florence, they were very much admired. Unlike the profile, which did not add much to the individuality of the portrait's subject, the three-quarter pose broke down the barriers between the subject and the viewer by allowing the subject to look out of the portrait directly at the viewer.

This new communication between the subject and the viewers of the portrait opened the door to portraiture that explored the character of a person as well as the way he or she looked. A portrait of a person's face became a metaphor for the person's self, and to have your portrait painted, meant your image might live beyond you. The idea was so appealing that merchants and tradesmen, not just royalty and church leaders, began to commission portraits of themselves and their families.

The role of the artist changed as well; artists needed the ability to capture a pleasing likeness of a real person rather than imagine the likeness of a saint. Galeazzo Maria Sforza, the Duke of Milan from 1466 to 1476, sent his court painter to France to make a portrait of a princess of Savoy he was thinking of marrying. The woman in the portrait was so beautiful that the Duke married her by immediately authorizing a substitute to stand in his place in France. When the new bride arrived in Milan, the Duke's court reported that she was even more beautiful than her picture, and younger looking too! The artist who was sent to France to paint a portrait of the princess knew that to disappoint the Duke with a portrait more beautiful than the real princess would risk his position as court painter.

Follower of Bartolomeo Vivarini Portrait of a Boy About 1499 Tempera type on panel Enlarge This Portrait of a Boy, in three-quarter pose, is from Venice, Italy around 1499.

At the beginning of the Renaissance, most patrons, like the Duke of Milan, provided detailed instructions to artists about how the art they were paying for should look. As the Renaissance continued, artists began to assert their own views about art and their own independent ideas and styles. An artist of today, valued for their original creativity and individual artistic vision, has the Renaissance to thank for his or her independence.

During the Renaissance, artists began to paint portraits of themselves to advertise their skill and promote their images as talented and sensitive observers. The new Renaissance innovations in portraiture spread all over Europe and the portraiture that developed in the Renaissance remains much the same today. While we may use new materials and techniques like photography or video, capturing the essence of another person, both the way they look and the kind of person they are, is an idea that began in the Renaissance.