The Painting wasn’t the Extension of a Story at all, it was Something in its Own Right

 Orhan Pamuk, 'My Name is Red', 1998:

"...“Every picture serves to tell a story,” I said. “The miniaturist, in order to beautify the manuscript we read, depicts the most vital scenes: the first time lovers lay eyes on each other; the hero Rüstem cutting off the head of a devilish monster; Rüstem’s grief when he realizes that the stranger he’s killed is his son; the love-crazed Mejnun as he roams a desolate and wild Nature among lions, tigers, stags and jackals; the anguish of Alexander, who, having come to the forest before a battle to divine its outcome from the birds, witnesses a great falcon tear apart his woodcock. Our eyes, fatigued from reading these tales, rest upon the pictures. If there’s something within the text that our intellect and imagination are at pains to conjure, the illustration comes at once to our aid. The images are the story’s blossoming in color. But painting without its accompanying story is an impossibility.

“Or so I used to think,” I added, as if regretfully. “But this is indeed quite possible. Two years ago I traveled once again to Venice as the Sultan’s ambassador. I observed at length the portraits that the Venetian masters had made. I did so without knowing to which scene and story the pictures belonged, and I struggled to extract the story from the image. One day, I came across a painting hanging on a palazzo wall and was dumbfounded.

“More than anything, the image was of an individual, somebody like myself. It was an infidel, of course, not one of us. As I stared at him, though, I felt as if I resembled him. Yet he didn’t resemble me at all. He had a full round face that seemed to lack cheekbones, and moreover, he had no trace of my marvelous chin. Though he didn’t look anything like me, as I gazed upon the picture, for some reason, my heart fluttered as if it were my own portrait.

“I learned from the Venetian gentleman who was giving me a tour through his palazzo that the portrait was of a friend, a nobleman like himself. He had included whatever was significant in his life in his portrait: In the background landscape visible from the open window there was a farm, a village and a blending of color which made a realistic-looking forest. Resting on the table before the nobleman were a clock, books, Time, Evil, Life, a calligraphy pen, a map, a compass, boxes containing gold coins, bric-a-brac, odds and ends, inscrutable yet distinguishable things that were probably included in many pictures, shadows of jinns and the Devil and also, the picture of the man’s stunningly beautiful daughter as she stood beside her father.

“What was the narrative that this representation was meant to embellish and complete? As I regarded the work, I slowly sensed that the underlying tale was the picture itself. The painting wasn’t the extension of a story at all, it was something in its own right..."

 Portrait of Giovanni della Volta with his Wife and Children, 1547 by Lorenzo Lotto (1480-1556/57)