What Is a Portrait? A Functionalist Account

Abstract The iconic portrait has been the subject of recent attempts at definition by aestheticians. Despite their respective merits, however, I believe that the proposed definitions are not only unnecessarily sophisticated, but also have the defect of not sufficiently connecting the theory of portraiture to the theory of depiction. I will propose a functionalist definition according to which portraits are singular iconic representations that are distinguished by the principal function that their makers have assigned them: to enable their viewers to think something about the represented subjects by considering the way in which they are depicted. This definition has the virtue that recent proposals lack: by making the condition of being a singular representation a necessary condition for being a portrait, it makes explicit how the theory of portraiture is connected to the theory of depiction at its very core. In so doing, it places itself firmly within a framework initiated in the theory of depiction by Antonia Phillips and Dominic Lopes.