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Romanesque Sculpted Portraits: Convention, Vision, and Real Presence

Although it has often been assumed that "true portraiture" was absent for most of the Middle Ages, medievalists have proposed that personal portraits were revived in conjunction with the "rediscovery of the individual" in the twelfth century, thus anticipating the celebrated renaissance of the individual in the fifteenth century. Focusing on the Cappenberg bronze head of Frederick I Barbarossa and related sculpted images in metalwork depicting both saints and lay individuals, this paper reassesses traditional definitions of portraiture that are bound to the notion of a unique physiognomic likeness. It is argued here that Romanesque portrait sculpture deliberately celebrated the "individual" as an ideal type rather than a unique personality. The portrait likeness was designed to convey a palpable and engaging presence of the individual through a series of carefully calibrated conventions that are paralleled in secular and religious biography. Material radiance and idealized, stereotyped physiognomies with prominent eyes were cultivated in art and literature as the means of revealing the virtue, character, and presence of the individual. The revival of portrait sculpture after a long hiatus may also be understood as reflecting a renewed confidence in the capacity of corporeal vision as the means of access to the spiritual, and an emphasis on corporeal presence in the display of relics and in Eucharistic performance.