Photo By Gail

French artist Pierre Roy’s 1949 painting, the full title of which is Boris Anrep in his Studio, 65 Boulevard Arago, is portraiture once removed; a painting of an imagined carved likeness.

In what is essentially a still life, Roy turns his friend and fellow artist, the Russian mosaicist Boris Anrep, to stone. Through a characteristic manipulation of perspective, the artist manages to convey a sense of monumentality to the bust, which appears to tower over the studio in the background.

Though the painted sculpture is solemn and restrained, Roy’s perspective creates an odd effect like a cinematic zoom, in which an object is suddenly brought into dramatic focus.

Photographed in the Tate Modern Museum in London.