This latest volume in The Metropolitan Museum of Art's How to Read series explores the significance of portraiture across time and cultures—from funerary masks to realism and abstraction. Portraiture transcends the mere recording of a face. Portraits address fundamental human issues such as status, relationships, and identity. With more than fifty works from various eras and cultures and in different media, this book broadens the notion of what constitutes a portrait beyond mere appearance. Kathryn Calley Galitz, author of the best seller The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Masterpiece Paintings, illuminates how artists and sitters of various eras have engaged with the genre to reveal character and convey power and social status. It examines how artists like Rembrandt and Cindy Sherman use the staged role to interrogate identity and how portraiture encompasses a broader array of works than is commonly believed. This reevaluation of a deceptively familiar genre offers compelling insights into what these images can tell us about the artist, the sitter, and ourselves.