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A portrait is much more than a record of a sitter's likeness. It is also a record of professional and social interactions, of personal and professional aspirations or pretensions, of constructed or wished-for personas, and doubtless many other things besides. Portraits of Jan Ladislav Dussek are a case in point; they not only record his appearance, however reliably, but they are also the consequence of a series of interactions and relationships mediated through the visual conventions of the particular genre and medium to which they belong. So, considering the possibility that any given portrait of Dussek may actually be less than a good likeness, its value may lie more in its potential to disclose motives and relationships than in its physiognomical veracity. |
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