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Portrait of the artists

Andrew Lambirth

Wednesday, 29th October 2008

Renaissance Faces: Van Eyck to Titian
National Gallery until 18 January 2009

When people think of the Renaissance, it’s to Italy that their thoughts immediately turn. The names of Giotto, Masaccio, Leonardo and Michelangelo spring to mind, although the Renaissance in northern Europe was of equal importance, as a glance at Dürer, van Eyck or Holbein will at once confirm. Yet it remains the case that the Renaissance and the Mediterranean are somehow connected in the popular understanding, perhaps because Italy produced so many great masters in this period, and so comparatively few thereafter. So it’s rather good to have a new exhibition which offers a corrective to this partial truth, and re-emphasises the importance of northern Europe in a highly enjoyable selection of Renaissance portraits.

As readers of this column will know, I am not an admirer of the subterranean Sainsbury Wing, and would much prefer to see this kind of loan exhibition upstairs where the rooms have natural light. However, the show looked surprisingly good in the basement, with the walls for the most part painted a selection of rich dark colours which enhanced the paintings. Room 1 starts on a lighter note, with grey walls. The visitor is greeted by a carved limewood bust of a girl, a striking image recently identified as Saint Constance, but known as ‘The Beautiful Florentine’, and attributed to the circle of Desiderio da Settignano. Probably a reliquary bust containing a saintly relic, it was thus an object of devotion, a memorial but also an ideal image, not quite the warts-and-all depiction we think of as ‘true’ portraiture.

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