His Holiness, Pope John Paul II 2012

Nelson Shanks made this portrait of His Holiness, Pope John Paul II, in oil paint, though we don't know exactly when. Shanks really leans into this super-traditional painting style here. You can see his real interest in how light interacts with the heavy, ornate fabrics. There is a kind of knowing quality to it. Look at the way he has used thin layers of paint to almost glaze the surface, giving it a luminous quality. Then, in contrast, there are the areas where he lets the brushwork stay visible, like in the background architecture, reminding us that this is, above all, a made thing. The Pope's expression is wonderfully ambiguous, caught somewhere between a blessing and a slightly bemused acknowledgement of the artist's gaze. It reminds me a little of those slightly awkward society portraits by John Singer Sargent. But here, Shanks uses the language of traditional portraiture to really get at something more elusive and ambiguous.