The art world has produced many iconic portraits over the centuries, cementing legacies of artists for years to come. But what about the people painted on the canvases? Who are they? How did they inspire our artists? We uncover the muses behind some of the world’s most legendary works of art.
Dora
by Pablo Picasso,
(1937)
Picasso had a nine-year affair with the Surrealist artist Dora Maar. In 1937 she photographed Picasso creating ‘Guernica’. Alongside this mural-sized painting, he made a related series of ‘Weeping Woman’ portraits focused on mourning; Dora Maar modelled for these. While they reflect his outrage at the suffering caused by the bombing of Guernica, they also indicate the couple’s tumultuous affair. “Dora, for me, was always a weeping woman”, Picasso explained.
Mona
by Leonardo da Vinci,
(1503)
Who exactly is the art world’s most famous woman, Mona Lisa? Surprisingly, she was a rather ordinary, middleclass woman called Madam Lisa Giocondo. The wife of a Florentine cloth merchant, Francesco del Giocondo, she had five children and led a comfortable, and by no means unusual, life. What is unusual is that the dark veil that covers her hair is sometimes considered a mourning veil. It leaves the viewer wondering why she is smiling.
A visitor takes a photograph of an artwork entitled ‘Portrait of an Artist (Pool with two figures), 1972’ by British artist David Hockney, during a photocall to promote a retrospective of Hockney’s work, at the Tate Britain in London on February 6,2017. (DANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS/AFP/Getty Images)
Peter
by David Hockney,
(1972)
Selling for $90.3 million, Portrait of an Artist: Pool with Two Figures made British artist Hockney the world’s most expensive living artist. It’s also a break-up painting: looking down at the sun-dappled pool, and dressed in a hot-pink jacket, is Hockney’s former boyfriend and painter, Peter Schlesinger. Underneath the water a young man swims towards Peter; he is thought to be Peter’s new lover and photographer, Eric Boman.
Dante
by Auguste Rodin,
(1904)
Rodin’s towering sculpture, The Thinker stands nearly 20 feet tall. The pensive, nude male is Dante Alighieri, author of ‘The Divine Comedy’. For months Rodin couldn’t decide whether or not to clothe him. However, eventually Rodin chose to leave ‘The Thinker’ naked, following in the style of the heroic nudes of Michelangelo and other Renaissance sculptors. Yet, in contrast to their daring, he-man heroes, here, thinking is depicted as a powerful exercise.
Marie
by Constantin Brâncusi,
(1915-16)
In 1920 Brâncuși exhibited this sculpture, rather coyly titled ‘Princess X’, at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris. It was removed after Picasso said it looked like a phallus. Brâncuși was infuriated by the comparison; he insisted the sculpture was a portrayal of a feminine ideal and not a sign of his desire for its model. Maybe this was because she was the French princess, Marie Bonaparte, greatgrand niece of Napoléon.
Dr. Paul
by Vincent van Gogh,
(1890)
For the final few months of his life, Van Gogh was looked after by Dr. Paul Gachet, a homeopathic doctor, and the subject of his famous Portrait of Dr Gachet. He was friends with, and treated, many artists including Pissarro, Renoir, Manet and Cézanne. Some people have blamed the poor care by Gachet for Van Gogh’s suicide. However, Van Gogh declared, “My body is mine and I am free to do what I want with it. Do not accuse anybody, it is I that wished to commit suicide.”
Ophelia
by Sir John Everett Millais,
(1851-1852)
In his painting Ophelia, Millais portrays Shakespeare’s tragic heroine, yes, you guessed it, Ophelia. The model was Elizabeth Siddall, a 23-year-old Pre-Raphaelite muse, artist and poet. To represent the drowning Ophelia, she posed, during winter, in a bathtub full of water for five hours. She almost died, and afterwards became very ill with pneumonia, from which she never fully recovered. She committed suicide, aged just 32, echoing Ophelia’s tragic story.
Doreen
by Chris Ofili,
(1998)
Ofili painted this artwork, No Woman, No Cry while living in London. Taking the title from Bob Marley’s reggae song, it shows a crying woman. An inscription indicates that she is Doreen Lawrence, Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon OBE, the mother of Stephen Lawrence, who was murdered as a teenage boy in an unprovoked racist attack in London in 1993. If you look closely, you can see very small photographs inside her tears – they are all pictures of Stephen.
Unknown
by Johannes Vermeer,
(c.1665)
Who is the enigmatic girl in the famed Girl with the Pearl Earring? One theory is that she is Vermeer’s eldest daughter, Maria, who would have been aged 12 at the time. Magdalena, his patron’s teenage daughter, is another candidate. In Tracy Chevalier’s fictionalized novel she becomes Vermeer’s servant girl, Griet. In the movie adaptation, Scarlett Johansson plays her; the girl with a pearl earring certainly has star quality, despite, and perhaps because of, her anonymity.
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