JF Ptak Science Books    Quick Post  [Part of the series on Blank, Empty and Missing Things]

There was an anonymous painter,

in an anonymous room,

painting an anonymous woman,

in an anonymous gloom…--By Anonymous

I wondered about when it was that anonymous portraits appeared.  Not just depictions of people in large battle scenes, or some unidentified spectator of some miraculous something, or wardens of the unknown in some sort of religious icon,  but single subjects seated for a singular purpose of having their likeness rendered.  And at the end of that process, the sitter would be anonymous–not their names-lost-to-history-anonymous after having the title of the painting lost to time, but always-and-forever anonymous.  It seemed to me a luxury for a painter to paint for the sake of painting, that they would paint perhaps for pleasure or for practice, as the practice of purchasing anonymous portraits was not one of high popularity.

 Anonymous portrait of an anonymous woman, ca. 1475