Painting Icons: A History of the Portrait from Byzantium to Basquiat

Course tutor: Louisa McKenzie (Associate Fellow, Warburg Institute)

The Warburg Institute offers Painting Icons: A History of the Portrait from Byzantium to Basquiat as a virtual class via Zoom meeting weekly over five weeks. The course is designed for total beginners.

The Virgin Mary gazes enigmatically from the surface of the 6th-century Salus Populi Romani as she holds the Christ Child in her arms. Since then, she has watched over the people of Rome through disaster, invasion, and plague, invoked as recently as the COVID-19 pandemic. Fourteen hundred years later, Marilyn Monroe smouldered beneath hooded eyes from Andy Warhol’s canvas in a series of images, one of which, the 1964 Shot Sage Blue Marilyn holds the current record for most expensive 20th-century artwork sold at auction. What links these two seemingly disparate images? 

In five sessions, this course introduces students to the development of portraiture as both an expression and a tool of power, be that religious, social, political or celebrity. It explores the background to a visual language still very much in use today – from selfies to adverts - and considers portraiture in materials other than paint, such as stone, metal and wax. 

Taking in some of the biggest names in the history of art, as well as some less well-known figures, the course will also explore how, by specialising in portraiture, certain artists throughout the centuries became icons in their own right.

There will be a short set reading for each session. Students will receive links to all readings ahead of the session and will be expected to have read the relevant reading before each session. 

Session 1 - The Byzantine Background
Learn how religious icons developed with Byzantine Christianity, as well as their antecedents in ancient Greece, Rome and Egypt. 

Session 2 - Medieval Manoeuvres
Discover how Byzantine portrait types involved through medieval art to the early Renaissance through works such as the mosaics of Monreale Cathedra, Duccio’s Maestà and Giovanni Bellini’s Doge Leonardo Loredan. 

Session 3 - From Religious to Secular 
Trace the move from portraits of religious figures to portraits of everyday people during the Renaissance and early modern period. Learn about the significance of donor portraiture in religious works as well as court portraiture from the 16th to the 21st century, taking in key examples from the Old and New Worlds.  

Session 4 - Portraits in Stone (and Other Media) 
Find out how portraits have been made in materials other than paint from the Middle Ages to the present day. Explore tombs, ex-votos, manuscript illuminations, coins and more with particular emphasis on the political power of sculpted portraits . 

Session 5 - Modern Masters 
Twentieth and 21st-century art will be at the core of the final session. Warhol will have more than his 15 minutes of fame, while other artists discussed include Jean-Michel Basquiat, Frida Kahlo, Francis Bacon, Grayson Perry, Cindy Sherman, Kehinde Wiley and more. 

Louisa McKenzie is an art historian and writer. Specialising in late medieval and early Renaissance art and material culture, she researches conjunctions between material, meaning and function, as well as issues pertaining to workshop practice. Her book on wax sculpture in 14th and 15th-century Florence is forthcoming, and she contributes regularly to The Times on arts and history topics, as well as other outlets. She is one of the convenors of the A Material World lecture series at the Warburg Institute.

Registration and payment (for 5 online classes taught across 5 consecutive weeks): 

£135 Standard
£115 Warburg staff & fellows/external students/unwaged
£80 SAS & LAHP-funded students 
£65 Warburg students

Schedule:
2.00-4.00pm, every Wednesday, 4 June to 2 July 2025 inclusive.


Please note, the running of this course is dependent on student uptake.

Image: Unknown, Self Portrait, ca. 1800–1805, watercolour on ivory, 8.3 × 8.3 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York: Dale T. Johnson Fund, 2014, accession number: 2014.512. Public domain.