Renaissance Faces. Masterpieces of Italian Portraiture

The Gemäldegalerie Museums in Berlin (Germany) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (USA) have undertaken a landmark project tracing the development of the Italian portrait in the fifteenth century. As a result, the museums organize the exhibition Renaissance Faces. Masterpieces of Italian Portraiture.

In Berlin the event takes place in the restored Bode-Museum, which will run until November 20, 2011, before it subsequently go on show at the Metropolitan Museum on December 19, 2011.

More than 150 key works, including paintings, drawings, medals and busts, are about to go on display for the first time together. The more than 50 lenders include the Uffizi in Florence, the Louvre in Paris and the National Gallery in London. Among the exhibition’s many highlights is Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘Lady with an Ermine’.

The show is focused on the complex history of the portrait in Florence from Donatello and Masaccio down to Verrocchio and Botticelli; it studies portraiture at the courts of northern Italy, from Pisanello to Mantegna and Francesco Laurana as well as the development of portraiture in Venice from Giambono to Antonello da Messina, Bellini and the Lombardi.

Date: until November 20, 2011.
Place: Bode-Museum Am Kupfergraben 1. 10178 Berlin. (Germany).
Opening hours: from Sunday to Wednesday from 10am to 6pm. Thursday from 10am to 10pm.

Some of the works can be seen in the following slideshow: