Simferovska A. The early 20th century Lviv Portrait: artistic representations.

Among various artistic genres, the portrait focuses on an individual human being as no other genre does, since the main function of the portrait is to create and preserve the artistic image of an individual in concrete historical circumstances and in specific socio-cultural environment. Thus the portrait is predominantly an anthropocentric genre. It emerges as an aesthetic reaction to the processes of social and individual secularization and to the changes in the philosophical conceptualization of an individual and the individual’s distinct role in the society. The artistic form of the portrait emerged as the result of different influences such as the contemporary artistic trends, historical and cultural aspects of a certain milieu, artistic and stylistic approaches of an author, the individuality of a person serving as an object for the portrait (also the status of that person in the society), as well as the role of the portrait in different private and public realms. Thus, the portrait comes to being as a specific symbiotic product of art, the functions of which go far beyond the purely artistic ones.