CHICAGO.- The David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art opens the exhibit The Image as Homage: Portrait of the Artist through April 8, 2007. In the nineteenth century, the Romantic myth of creative genius endowed artists – painters, sculptors, writers, and musicians – with almost godlike status. Portraits of such artists often amounted to hymns of praise that stood, like the artist’s own work, as permanent sites of remembrance and veneration, even after the artist’s death. At times affectionate, servile, or even satirical, the spirit of such portraits varied greatly. So too did the form. Some examples in this exhibition evoke the portrayed artist’s own style, while others might focus on the artist’s hands and working tools, or even substitute the artist’s home in lieu of direct portraiture. Highlighting European and American works on paper and two sculptures from the Smart Museum’s collection, Image as Homage considers the challenges that arise when one artist tries to commemorate another, and the many forms such portraits take.