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The portrait within us

Summary/Abstract: The portrait appears in Renaissance plays as the embodiment of ideal beauty. The essay compares the situation of looking at a portrait in Lessing’s and Wedekind’s drama, as well as in a Neoexpressionist performance, and analyses the ekphrasis appearing in the 18th century text Emilia Galotti by Lessing, focusing on the description of both pictures and faces, as well as on mental images. The same situation is recycled in Wedekind’s play Pandora’s box, where the observation of the painting is surrounded by movements and strong affections, lacking conceptual language, and the ekphrasis describes the painting, creates the photo and the virtual body from the lacking fragments of the painting. In the performance Emillia Galotti directed by Thalheimer, Emilia’s face (as a portrait) is burnt into the Prince’s palm and body – thus the image will belong to the body of the “viewer”. Contemporary theatre uses the face of the characters as related to their bodies, or the faces are many times turned into masques. Both in contemporary everyday life and the world of arts the body is threatened by being erased, as it is from the stage as well.

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