Celebrity. Andrea McDonnell
remain so today—because of their work for rich patrons include Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519), Michelangelo (1475–1564), Raphael (1483–1520) and Botticelli (1445–1510). The result, notes Braudy, “was an unprecedented propaganda of images for both patron and artist to trumpet their importance.”32 The prevalence of the painted portrait, and later printed, photographic, and digitally reproduced versions, helped to establish visual self-representation as a critical mode for communicating one’s public value and identity.
Portraits served as status symbols, affirming the power of those represented, even depicting them as having historical importance; in Italian Renaissance painting, lords and ladies might be painted within notable scenes, or alongside famous figures. The characteristics of the portrait—the posed subject, carefully selected background setting, and efforts to represent the subject’s internal character in addition to his or her physical appearance and possessions—are tropes that have shaped the nature of self-representation through to the present day. Specific (and often idealized) postures, expressions, and gestures were depicted alongside props and other items signifying particular elements of the subject’s identity, class, or station. Some of these portraits, like photographs of celebrities today, provided models for how to dress, how to hold one’s body, and what were the most elegant gestures and poses.
With the invention of the printing press in the late 1400s, and the more widespread use of engraving in the next century, portraits could proliferate and circulate in even greater detail. We think of competition over publicity as being relatively recent, but, as Braudy notes, the “competition of images we blindly associate with the present had already by the sixteenth century begun in earnest. It was a new world of fame in which visible and theatrical fame would become the standard, and public prominence a continual theme.”33 Certain rulers, notably England’s Elizabeth I and France’s Louis XIV, appreciated the power of printing and engraving to spread their fame and authority over great distances. Both of them directed their scribes and artists to create written and visual materials in the service of self-promotion. Elizabeth I’s persona was carefully crafted to embody a unified, imperial England, a “combined cult of herself and her country.” Louis XIV, who launched a premeditated program to have himself celebrated as the Sun King, was described by one aristocrat this way: “If he was not the greatest king, he was the best actor of majesty at least that ever filled a throne.” The king told his official historians that “the most precious things in the world to me” was “my glory.”34 By the late eighteenth century, with the conversion of the Louvre palace into a museum, and then the establishment of national portrait collections, such as the English National Portrait Gallery in 1856, there were now even more monumental yet accessible public spaces for the archive and display of influential individuals.
Over time, the practice of sitting for one’s portrait became commonplace even outside of elite circles. Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth century, to have one’s portrait made was a sign of bourgeois success; it became possible for the middle class to emulate the stoic, reverent postures of high society. The portrait also worked to highlight the unique qualities of esteemed and respected individuals who had made discoveries or contributed to culture. Portraits of scholars, authors, inventors, composers, and political thinkers celebrated the unique quality of the individual, elevating these often middle-class persons, who also gained celebrity thanks to their efforts and talents. Meanwhile, some royals and institutional leaders began to present themselves more casually and portraits evolved from the formal and staged to the personal and domestic, complete with pets and familiar possessions. Some eighteenth-century portraits of Marie Antoinette, for instance, emphasized her role as mother, picturing her in a relaxed, domestic setting, accompanied by her children.35 While the common folk used portraits to emulate the elite, some royals presented themselves as important, yet approachable, a critical suggestion for rulers like Antoinette, who was largely viewed as extravagant and unsympathetic. Her efforts at image management especially backfired when she dressed up as a shepherdess or milkmaid at her simulated farm on the opulent Palace Versailles, an extravagantly wealthy royal playing at and seeming to mock the poor.
By the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the growth of a nonaristocratic and increasingly influential bourgeoisie whose economic and political fortunes were affected by royal policies began to be less deferential to and more critical of that power. And just as the new technologies of printing could be used to bolster royal authority, these new media could also be used to criticize and even undermine that power.
Indeed, this can be seen as the beginning of celebrity gossip. In France, by the mid-1700s, “a vast underground literature attacking the prerogatives and pretensions of monarchs, aristocrats, and the church had emerged” that was circulated by an increasingly assertive bourgeoisie and written in a style that “anticipated the gossip columnists of the yellow press.” One such exposé was The Private Life of Louis XV, a chroniques scandaleuse, a diatribe against the corruption and decadent behavior of the nobility.36 By the late 1700s, such printed gossip challenging the authority and the personas of elites had spread to England, other European counties, and the American colonies.
Jürgen Habermas famously theorized this period as a critical moment in cultural history, in which society shifts from a top-down representational culture, where influence based on edicts and imagery was hierarchically disseminated from the elite few to the masses, to a critical, participatory culture in which ordinary citizens could be informed about, and participate in, discussions regarding matters of public concern.37 Here, we see that it is not the official histories, the gilded Bibles, or even the elite newspapers of the day that were most influential, but rather the cheap broadside posters, pamphlets, and street literature—what Leslie Shepard calls “the ephemera of the masses”—that transformed social relations by widening the scope of public discourse.38 With the spread of print, and the rising literacy rates that followed, Habermas saw the emergence of the “bourgeois public sphere,” a realm apart from the state that thrived in coffeehouses, taverns, and salons, where individuals—at this time primarily propertied, educated men—could debate issues of public concern and challenge state authority. Thus certain individuals were transformed from a position of passive deference to the social order into active participants in public culture. As Habermas argues, the idea of the democratic society rests on the model of the political public sphere. The public sphere in turn is dependent on the fourth estate, the press that acts as a watchdog, fostering an informed and empowered public. It is the informed public that is thereby able to hold those in power accountable.
Of course there was never just one public sphere, but various counterpublics that especially grew in size and influence in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The rise of these public spheres, especially in cities, and sustained by the explosive growth of newspapers in the 1700s and 1800s, had a powerful effect on how traditional elites were regarded. And it was especially in the nineteenth century in the United States that we see how this historic shift, and the rise of an increasingly commercialized and consumer culture, that enabled nonelites to gain visibility, furthered the shift from fame to celebrity. Increasingly public figures “owed more to their visibility and ability to attract publicity than to their achievements or pedigree.”39
From tombs and coins to statues and portraits, all of these monuments and objects preserved one’s image, and in some cases their fame, long after they had died. One classic example of how fame can span millennia is the notoriety of King Tutankhamun, the boy pharaoh of the eighteenth dynasty of ancient Egypt, born around 1341 BC. King Tut, as he came to be known, became pharaoh at the age of eight after the disastrous rule of his predecessor Akhenaten. Akhenaten had violated various rituals and practices sacred to the Egyptians, and Tut, relying on excellent advisors, restored the previous practices and became a symbol of this restoration to “the proper order of things.”40 Beyond this, his reign was not particularly notable.41 When he died at the age of eighteen, he was buried in the Valley of the Kings, his tomb filled with murals depicting his journey to the afterworld and various artifacts, including precious jewelry, statues, and toys from his childhood.
In the nineteenth century, wealthy Europeans began to explore and excavate various ancient sites, hoping to find artifacts for their homes or to place in museums. One aristocrat, Lord Carnarvon, fascinated by Egyptology, funded the work of the archeologist Howard Carter who was looking for tombs of the royals and upper classes. Just as Carnarvon—who