Speaking Likeness

It has become the common practice in art schools and ateliers to have the model hold as still as possible for a portrait study.

While it's easier to paint someone who is holding still, the resulting likeness often lacks animation and personality. Portraits painted from expressionless models on the verge of sleep can't help looking inert and lifeless, no matter how much fancy brushwork is applied to them.


While there is a place for portraits that suggest inward reflection, a face comes to life when a person starts talking. The eyes change and the muscles around the mouth come into action. Italian sculptor Gianlorenzo Bernini (1598-1680) was famous for carving his subjects in animated expressions. When he carved a bust of cardinal Scipione Borghese, he showed his lips slightly parted and activated.

According to Simon Schama, who produced an excellent video about Bernini, “What Bernini was after was a speaking likeness, because he thought that people gave themselves away most characteristically either just before or after they spoke.”


Many of the great portrait painters and sculptors have recognized this problem and have insisted on engaging their subjects in conversation. John Singer Sargent's portrait of the writer Henry James suggests his fierce intellect partly through the lively expression of the mouth and eyes. I've mentioned on an earlier post how Sargent's friend Vernon Lee recalled that the artist insisted that she not be quiet for a single moment.

Wikipedia on Bernini

Learn the story of that crack in the Bernini sculpture
Previously on GJ: Talking models