Portret van schilder Jacopo Bassano 1827 - 1854

This is a portrait of the painter Jacopo Bassano, made by Nicolas Maurin in the 19th century. Maurin's lithograph belongs to a long tradition of artist portraiture that gained popularity in 19th-century Europe. This portrait revives the image of a 16th-century Venetian painter. Note the fur-lined coat and the soft cap, visual cues that construct the persona of the artist as a figure of intellectual and economic authority. The artist portrait served as an important tool for solidifying the Romantic idea of artistic genius and promoting national artistic canons. In France, where Maurin was working, such images were commodified and widely disseminated. To understand the full significance of this image, one might consult archives of popular magazines, exhibition reviews, and other visual ephemera. The meaning of a work like this is fully realized only when we consider the social and institutional conditions of its making.