Ten greatest portraits of all time
 

In my meanderings I stumbled upon this from the web site of John Howard Sanden.

As he is quick to point out, selecting the ten greatest portraits of all time is a brazen undertaking. But, Mr. Sanden seemed to take the task seriously, and is a great painter of portraits himself, so one would have to have a look. Also, he speaks as if he has personally seen each of the paintings.

I think he has even arranged them in order of their greatness, all the way up to the one single greatest portrait ever painted. A bold and brazen statement indeed, and one that I am not qualified to dispute. I was shocked to find that one of mine had only made it to number seven.


http://www.johnhowardsanden.com/comm...engreatest.htm

Hi Mike,
you got me there, congratulations ;)

But I must say I miss Rembrandt's portrait of Jan Six up front.

Allan

What?

He's now replaced mine with one from that Whistler fella.

Maybe he's thinking about moving mine up!

Yeah, that's it. I'll check back.

That's not a bad assortment Sanden has arranged. I bet we all have our personal rearrangements of the ordering toward the greatest, resonating out of our own preferences.

Drats! I'm still at eleven!

Garth

Mr. Sanden's article was featured in The Artists' Magazine, April issue. The editor, Tom Zeit first found it on his web site.

Perhaps some of the specific pieces are arguable. But - you're right - it does boil down to personal aesthetics. However, I'm not going to argue with Velazquez at #1 and Sargent at #2! They've inhabited the top 2 slots of my personal top 10 for years, now.

It is interesting to me that this painting:

9. Raphael Santi or Sanzio, 1483-1520
Baldassar Castiglione

has a particular characteristic that we often criticize when it comes up for critique. That is the slicing off of part of the hands. It brings a person to wonder...

I wanna know why Phillip de Laszlo wasn 't in there.... or Zorn...

Plus I am not sure Madame X would have been my pick for his best portrait...

I can't agree that John's selections met his own criteria let alone the absence of many works by the above artist that would inspire the contemporary portrait community more than this small handful. In total it looks very tired.

The practice of cutting off parts of the painting in order to fit available space on the wall was rather common in those times (and later).
I've seen the original painting and don't claim that that was the case with this Raphael's portrait, but...many Velazquez's pieces were cut off. Some Rembrandt's (and many other old masters) also.

Great choices, but wouldn't it be fun to list our
 

choices for "best," or better yet, "favorite" 10 portraits of all time? Or, in the interest of forum disk space how about we just post our number 1 pick for our opinion of "best portrait of all time," or "personal favorite of all time?"

Ok... here are my favorites... I don't propose to be qualified to judge the "best," but I sure like these paintings. Sorry, I had to pick two! I linked to them as opposed to uploading them, so they wouldn't take up space.

Velasquez - Juan de Pareja

John Singer Sargent - Lady Agnew

Brilliant works the top ten, but I think the best is yet to come.