Lee Hadden writes: “Apropos of the question of portraits of authors, there is a quite
interesting essay in Science for Feb. 7, 2003, Volume 299, page 831-832, by
Patricia Fara, “Face Values: How Portraits Win Friends and Influence People.”
Using Sir Isaac Newton as an example, the author shows how portraits
were used as advertising and career promotions, and often varied quite
widely from the actual physical appearance of the subject. “Various are the
effigies of Sir Isaac Newton, both in frontispieces, medallions, busts,
seals, and other engravings, but most of them are dissimilar from his
monument and each other.” These idealized portraits of authors helped set
the standard in the 18th and 19th centuries for how literary and academic
genius should appear.
Godfrey Kneller painted a portrait using religious conventions for
anchorites to produce a portrait of Newton as “a melancholy recluse
enclosed in a windowless cell-like study and driven to the edge of illness
through obsessive reading.”
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