Never before have I been interested in portraits. And yet, for some reason, at the National Gallery, I found myself staring into faces. For example, there were three portraits of Margarathe de Geer - here's one by Rembrandt and one probably by Rembrandt. Her husband was wealthy enough to commission paintings, sure, but she's not a goddess or a princess, not a member of the aristocracy or a mythical figure, not a saint nor an allegory. She is just a woman. And an old one. All she is is an individual.
Portraits used to be idealised and somewhat removed from the particuliarity of the person. They stressed position and status, prestige and power. Or they were stories - the figure represented lust or greed or saintliness. They told a universal, generalised story. But then came Holbein and Rembrandt and Van Dyck and so on - and these people were people, warts and all. Themselves. Valued for being individuals, unique, possessors of human dignity. Move forward and we can see the same techniques applied - oh, like Velasquez's dwarves - to tradesmen and farmers.
It seems likely that this focus on individualism - which has been part of the Western tradition since Aristotle (thought his was a 'soft' individualism, emphasising that ethics is all about social relations and that we are social animals) and through Christianity (particularly with the concept of the individual soul - consider Augustine, whose Confessions stresses his individual journey) - was increased with the Reformation and the idea that it's the individual's relationship with God that is paramount in salvation. (Which is why Mill was so disgusted by dead dogma.) That these portrait painters were from the Protestant heartlands thus makes sense.
I don't want to go into the cons of individualism here, but instead to consider a real pro. Look at Margarathe. She is depicted with compassion and respect. She may not be an archetype of beauty, nor is she a figure of power or divinity. She is just a woman. Her very individuality is what is precious about her. She is her unique self and valued for that, intrinsically, in and of itself.
As I looked into her eyes, wondering what she was thinking, as her wrinkles and her obvious toothlessness were transformed from mortal impermanence to artistic permanence, wondering what her life was like, whether she spoke to the artist, whether she had children or grandchildren rushing in and grabbing at her silk dress with grubby hands, whether she could hear the traders outside the window, a dog barking, maybe geese or the wheels of a passing carriage, or the sounds of a port, as I wondered all this, I thought about how art leads us out of ourselves and asks us to see differently. Not age, but grace. Not vanity, but peace.
And then I thought, but why am I looking at portraits? And I realised that there is, after lockdown, a desire in me for the intimacy of the unmasked face. The face close to and immediate. The face not made of pixels, but, if not of skin, at least of oil. This was the closest I have come to another person, as intimate as I have been with another person, for months.
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