Renaissance Portrait: An Overview
Prado Museum Exhibition Explores European Portraiture (1400-1600)
The Renaissance Portrait at Madrid's Museo Nacional del Prado (June 3-September 7, 2008) traces the development of the independent secular portrait in Europe during the 15th and 16th Centuries. Drawn from British, European and North American collections, some 70 paintings in this exhibition are accompanied by drawings, engravings, medals and sculptures. Under the title Renaissance Faces: Van Eyck to Titian, this not-to-be-missed show ends its brief tour at London's National Gallery (October 15, 2008-January 18, 2009).
The exhibition's primary theme is the democratization of portraiture during the Renaissance, its subjects no longer exclusively royal and aristocratic. Its secondary focus is the enlargement of such paintings for incorporation into domestic interiors. Their smaller predecessors, intended to be viewed and then placed into storage, were never displayed in homes before the 15th Century.
Themes and Artists of the Exhibition
The Renaissance Portrait at the Prado Museum explains:
- the origins and development of Netherlandish and Italian portraiture;
- issues of love, family, memory and friendship;
- a given sitter's interests, occupation, devotions and social status;
- the production, boundaries and diffusion of portraits;
- self-portraiture; and
- the court portrait.
Portraits dealing with childhood, friendship, courtship, marriage, old age and death are described. Concepts of likeness, identity, memory and ideal beauty are discussed. And the important roles of symbolism, marital alliances and politics in portrait production are addressed.
Italian masters represented in this landmark presentation include Sandro Botticelli, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Raphael and Titian. Works by Jan van Eyck, Hans Memling, Albrecht Dürer and Hans Holbein the Younger, among others, illustrate the northern European contribution to this art form.
The Evolution of Renaissance Portraiture
Painter, architect and biographer Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574) noted (perhaps erroneously) that Giotto di Bondone (1266/76-1337) was the first artist to execute autonomous portraits. According to the humanist poet Petrarch (1304-1374), such "modern" works were characterized by their lifelike quality, ability to evoke emotion and transportable nature.
In his Trattato della Pittura or Treatise on Painting, writings published posthumously in 1651, Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) stressed the superiority of painting over poetry when eliciting a viewer's reaction. Indeed, many Renaissance homes, in imitation of ancient Roman households, possessed endearing images of loved ones. In noble settings, portraits were often created as expressions of dynastic continuity and the patron's intellectual pursuits. They also allowed friends at a distance to visualize each other through more than written correspondence.
The Renaissance Portrait begins around 1400, stressing the cross-cultural exchange of pictorial ideas between northern and southern European artists. It concludes in 1600 with the dominance of sophisticated full-length court portraiture produced for monarchs and their political agenda. As a whole, the exhibition succeeds in providing the visitor with a nearly panoramic view of Renaissance society and culture.
Sources:
- Ajmar-Wollheim, Marta and Flora Dennis (eds)., et al. At Home in Renaissance Italy (exh. cat.). London: V&A Publications, 2006, 268-331.
- Campbell, Lorne. Renaissance Portraits: European Portrait-painting in the 14th, 15th and 16th Centuries. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1990.
- _____, et al. Renaissance Faces: Van Eyck to Titian (exh. cat.). London: National Gallery Company, 2008.
- Mandel, Nathalie. Portraits of the Renaissance. New York: Assouline Publishing, Inc., 2008.
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