Abstract

This chapter examines the nature and artistic quality of double portraits. Double portraiture poses unexpected and interesting challenges to existing philosophical accounts of portraiture. We give an account of double portraiture as involving the representation of a significant relationship between two subjects, and an expression of its character. The account argues that a picture with two single portraits does not necessarily make a double portrait, and that a double portrait does not have to contain two single portraits. We then show how this yields a rich understanding of the artistic values of the genre, and explore the surprising implications for what may be considered a double portrait.