Putin’s gift of a Trump portrait plays to the vanity of a president

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin is using a flattering work of art to curry favour with the White House.  

A portrait of US President Donald Trump in heroic pose, painted by Russian artist Nikas Safronov and given to the American president in March, was unveiled by CNN and the Russian news agency RIA Novosti on Tuesday.

The Kremlin’s gift portrait was inspired by the iconic image of then candidate Trump with fist raised and face bloodied, moments after the assassination attempt on him last year at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. 

Putin's portraitist 

The details of the portrait – which Putin presented last month to Washington's special envoy for the Middle East, Steve Witkoff – had been something of a mystery.

Even White House aides preferred to say as little as possible. All that was known was that Trump was “clearly touched by it”, Witkoff said in an interview.  

It was not clear whether the portrait has been checked for bugs.

But a CNN visit with Safronov this week shed more light on the painting, about which Trump, not normally shy about self-promotion, had been unusually silent. 

Trump would likely not have been disappointed by Safronov’s choice of how to depict him on canvas.  

"Supposedly one of the most famous Russian artists,” Safronov’s commissions include portraits of dozens of global leaders “including Putin himself", says Natasha Lindstaedt, a specialist in authoritarian regimes at the University of Essex in the UK. 

Other celebrity portraits Safronov has painted include Robert de Niro, Alain Delon, Sophia Loren and Madonna. 

So with Safronov – one of the official artists of the Kremlin – wielding the paintbrush, Trump could expect five-star treatment. All the better to flatter the US president's ego.  

A portrait of the ‘survivor’ 

The portrait contains all the elements to fulfil Trump's “narcissistic bent”, says Jérôme Viala-Gaudefroy, faculty lecturer at Sciences Po university in Paris and author of the book, “Les mots de Trump. Une rhétorique de rupture,” (Trump's words. A rhetoric of rupture).    

The picture is almost a stereotypical depiction of “a ‘super-American’ protecting the country”, says Lindstaedt. “There is the backdrop of Manhattan, the Statue of Liberty, the American flag."  

It's also no coincidence that Safronov took as his model a Trump who had just escaped an attempt on his life.

"It was an important moment for him, because he then appeared to his supporters as all-powerful, capable of defying death. He became, for his base, a man whom nothing could stop in his mission to become president to protect the United States," Viala-Gaudefroy says.  

"There's a sort of certain masculine hero look to the portrait,” says Joanna Szostek, a specialist in Russian propaganda at the University of Glasgow in Scotland.  

“The masculinity is very much depicted with the blood and the enormous flag. It's the patriot ready for violence" to defend his country that is suggested, she says. 

For Szostek, this very manly representation of  Trump also serves to create a link between him and Putin. The Russian president never misses an opportunity to glorify “masculine strength” – for example, when he was depicted bare-chested on horseback in the plains of Siberia.  

Lindstaedt says the portrait is meant to underscore “the close relationship between Putin and Trump and maintaining that bromance".

Portraits, portraits everywhere 

Putin knows he is likely to score points with such a portrait. Trump has taken to hanging his likeness all over the White House lately. He replaced a portrait of former president Barack Obama with another painting of him after the assassination attempt in Butler in the White House lobby in early April. He hung another, in which an American flag is superimposed on a huge close-up of his face, right next to a more traditional portrait of Hillary Clinton, his unsuccessful rival in 2016. 

"He's obsessed with Obama and Clinton and their popularity, particularly Obama, who many Americans see almost as like a rock star,” Lindstaedt says. “I mean, there isn't anyone more charismatic than Obama, and Trump is incredibly jealous of him."   

Trump also has a preference for painted portraits, which are easier to improve than photos.

"In the portrait offered by Russia, Donald Trump has clearly lost 15 kilos compared to reality. It's like being at the court of King Louis XIV, when portraits were customised to please the nobles," says Viala-Gaudefroy. 

The club of (aspiring) autocrats

Offering Trump a portrait may also be a way for Putin to signal that he recognises Trump as part of the club of (aspiring) autocrats, who share an obsession with image. 

In China, for example, President XI Jinping “has personalised the Communist Party and personalised the Chinese communist regime”, Lindstaedt says. “It used to be more of a single-party dictatorship, but it's become a more personal regime. And one symptom is his portrait being everywhere." 

Trump has taken pains to carefully inspect the quality of the paintings hung in his honour, pressuring the Colorado state Capitol to remove one in March that he claimed was "purposefully distorted". 

"He was tweeting about this Colorado painting at a time when he had been driving the global economy into disarray, and that was what he was obsessed with,” notes Lindstaedt. 

This fixation with image is common to dictators, she notes. “While they're kind of burning down their own countries, they're obsessed with these banal, petty things having to do with their own vanity.”  

At a time when Trump is putting pressure on Ukraine and Russia to end their war, Putin’s gift portrait is also self-serving. 

"It shows that Putin hopes that Trump can be manipulated by flattery,” says Szostek. It is “part of a broader approach to the Trump administration" with the aim of rapprochement, she says.  

For Szostek, it’s especially striking that the Kremlin would commission a painting featuring an enormous Star-Spangled Banner and the leader of a triumphant America. 

“After more than a decade of the Putin regime attacking the United States at every opportunity, and still criticising the American administration on state television, this is quite something." 

"It really underlines how much they see Trump as a great opportunity for them and are ready to do anything to get what they want from him." 

This article was translated from the original in French by David Howley.