Unit 2 Lesson: Portraits as Faces

Portraits have been a part of human civilization for thousands of years. According to the famous Roman historian and naturalist, Pliny the Elder (AD 23/24–79), the first painting ever made, was a portrait. It was presumably invented by the daughter of a man called Butades, a potter from Sicyon in Greece. To preserve the memory of her beloved who was going away for a while, she decided to trace the profile of his head from the shadow cast on a wall.