Portrait

A portrait is a depiction or literary description of a person or group of people. In the arts, the portrait is one of the principal genres of painting, sculpture, graphics, and photography and is based on the commemorative principle, that is, the perpetuation of a person by means of a visual representation. But a portrait is not always the objective rendering of reality because portraiture may be accompanied by the expression of the relationship between the artist and model, reflecting the artist's own world view, thus bringing a subjective element to the portrait. Additionally, the portraitist has often been a paid flatterer, whether pictorially or literarily, rendering for the public and for posterity an idealized or glamourized subject. Portraits may also be used as a weapon of ridicule by distortion (e.g. the caricature).