Early portraits

Portraiture's roots are likely found in prehistoric times, although few of these works survive today. In the art of the ancient civilizations of the Fertile Crescent, especially in Egypt, depictions of rulers and gods abound. However, most of these were done in a highly stylized fashion, and most in profile, usually on stone, metal, clay, plaster, or crystal. Portrait painting of notables in China probably goes back to over 1000 B.C., though none survive from that age. Existing Chinese portraits go back to about 1000 A.D.
Some of the earliest portraits of people who were not kings or emperors are the funeral paintings that survived in the dry climate of Egypt's Fayum district dating from the second century A.D. These are the only paintings of the Roman period that have survived, aside from frescos, though it is known from the writings of Pliny the Elder that portrait painting was well established in Greek times, and practiced by both men and women artists. In his times, Pliny complained of the declining state of Roman portrait art, "The painting of portraits which used to transmit through the ages the accurate likenesses of people, has entirely gone out…Indolence has destroyed the arts." These full-face portraits from Roman Egypt are fortunate exceptions. They present a somewhat realistic sense of proportion and individual detail (though the eyes are generally over-sized and the artistic skill varies considerably from artist to artist). The Fayum portraits were painted on wood or ivory in wax and resin colors or with tempera, and inserted into the mummy wrapping, to remain with the body through eternity.
While free-standing portrait painting diminished in Rome, the art of the portrait flourished in Roman sculptures, where sitters demanded realism, even if unflattering. During the 4th century, the sculpted portrait dominated, with a retreat in favor of an idealized symbol of what that person looked like.
The earliest portraits of the Middle Ages appear in funerary stone and as part of illuminated manuscripts, an example being a self-portrait by the writer, mystic, scientist, illuminator, and musician Hildegard of Bingen . By 1300, portrait paintings of allegorical and biblical figures by masters such as Giotto came into prominence on alter panels and church walls, particularly in northern Italy. Between 1350-1400, secular figures began to reappear in frescoes, such as in Master Theodoric's Charles IV receiving fealty. However, the perspective remained rather flat until Masaccio's The Trinity which was among the first to create a three-dimensional view and include secular figures in the painting. Around the same time, the first oil portraits of contemporary individuals, painted on wood panels, emerged in Burgundy and France, first as profiles, then in other views. Among these were portraits by Robert Campin and Rogier van der Weyden, of mainly religious figures but later of the nobility, painted in the first half of the 15th century.