Donor portrait

As founders image or donating figure refers to the figurative representation of a founder or authority to a work of visual art that one or more founders shows documented their authorship and inviting the viewer to pray for his or her salvation.

Object of the Foundation is a code, a building, a glass window, a sculpture or an altarpiece be the preparation of the donor funded. The principal of a manuscript is often shown at the handover of the donated work to a church, by a personification of the saint, in this case assumes a dedicatory the function of the donor portrait. Founder of buildings are usually shown with a model architecture that bears the founder as an attribute.

For altarpieces is the founder, often depicted together with relatives, initially decreased significantly and at the edge of the scene ( cf. semantic perspective ). Later donor figures are also involved through individual patron saint in the scenery, they will increasingly portrayed realistically.

Apart from this, a donor image also has the function to document an act. Either put it right or reminded her of a legal instrument. A religious foundation served the goal to provide insurance for the afterlife. The piety is here, as it ' arithmetic ' become. They added up the good work - among others with this foundation - to be not found wanting at the Last Judgement.