Renaissance Faces

Bode-Museum, Berlin

Italian portraiture evolved under the powerful influence of precursors in antiquity. Its essential features were an incipient naturalism and a search to characterize psychologically the people depicted. Physical appearance was often preserved in order to illustrate dynastic and familial relationships. The exhibition illustrates this thematic richness in all its diversity. It includes paintings, sculptures, medals, and drawings.

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Berlin and New York are organizing, under the auspices of the German and Italian Foreign Ministry, a spectacular exhibition on the art of portraiture in Renaissance Italy. Beautiful women and wealthy merchants carry us away to Florence and Venice. Schemers, courtiers, and military commanders tell their stories. Great museums will be sending masterworks by Lippi, Botticelli, Ghirlandaio, and Leonardo da Vinci to the Bode-Museum.

Under the title Renaissance Faces, the Gemäldegalerie der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York) will present a large exhibition in 2011-12 on the evolution of the Italian portrait during the fifteenth century. Berlin's Bode-Museum, which reopened in 2006, is the ideal site for this project, since Wilhelm von Bode conceived it as a museum of the Renaissance.

Italian portraiture evolved under the powerful influence of precursors in antiquity. Its essential features were an incipient naturalism and a search to characterize psychologically the people depicted. Physical appearance was often preserved in order to illustrate dynastic and familial relationships. The portrait thus reflected social norms and hierarchies. Hence many portraits show established codes of behavior expressed in the depiction of motifs poses, features of clothing, and status symbols. The genre ultimately reflects the influence of humanistic thought, especially with an eye to the new role of the individual. Many portraits thus represent poetic and allegorical ideal images. Portraits of feminine bellezza in particular explore the tension between idealization and naturalism.

The exhibition illustrates this thematic richness in all its diversity. It includes paintings, sculptures, medals, and drawings. The criterion for organization is based on regional and functional focuses: Florentine portraits by artists from Donatello and Masaccio to Verrocchio and Botticelli are presented. The art of Italian courts is represented by artists from Pisanello to Mantegna and Francesco Laurana, and there are works from Venice and northern Italy by Antonello da Messina and the Bellini.

PR contact exhibition: Dr. Katharina von Chlebowski
Theresa Lucius Fon +49 (0)30 26394880 Fax +49 (0)30 263948811
presse@museum-service.de

Opening 25 August 2011

Bode-Museum
Am Kupfergraben 1 - 10178 Berlin
Opening Hours
Mon - Sun 10:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m.
Thu 10:00 a.m. - 10:00 p.m.
Admission ticket
8,- EUR discounted admission 4,- EUR

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