Portraits grew in scale, ambition and complexity during the first half of the 16th century. The portraits in this room show how a common visual language emerged across Europe, through the movement of paintings and painters.
There were many reasons to commission a portrait: for instance, to celebrate a betrothal, commemorate a friendship or as a diplomatic gift. Sitters belonged primarily to the aristocracy and the urban elite, but access to art was widening. In Bergamo, Giovanni Battista Moroni portrayed a tailor proudly holding the tools of his trade.
Contradiction lies at the heart of Renaissance portraiture. These works present themselves as faithful records of their sitters’ appearance. In fact, they have been carefully constructed. Artists used pose, costume, accessories and inscriptions to reflect the status, character and intellectual pursuits of their sitters. The extraordinary still life in Holbein’s Ambassadors points to the men’s learning, but also to the political and religious turmoil of the time in which they lived. Occasionally, as in Lorenzo Lotto’s bold Portrait of a Woman inspired by Lucretia, the precise meaning of such staging is no longer clear to us.