Faces of the Renaissance

[selenak]

Every now and then, there are art exhibitions that make you - well, me - squee like a fan who has just been given tickets to a concert of their favourite musician, a new book from their favourite author, a new episode of their favourite show, you get the picture. Or pictures. The exhibition in question is called Dürer - Cranach - Holbein: The Discovery of Man: German Portraiture around 1500, was earlier in Vienna and will stay with us in Munich until January. While the three painters named in the title are undoubtedly the stars of the exhbition, there are a great many others represented, painters I vaguely knew the names of and some I had never heard of before, creating a rich context and showing that while those three were certainly extraordinary, portraiture as a whole florished wonderfully in the era. The faces are so extraordinarily alive for the most part, and if, as Dürer once wrote, one of the goals of art is to preserve life beyond death, well, they certainly succeeded. Rich burghers from Augsburg or Nuremberg, two servants (husband and wife, names unknown) from Henry VIII.s court who somehow must have endeared themselves to Holbein so he painted them small double portraits to put in a box, Dürer painting his old master's face after the later's death, a Venetian girl, a young man whose name has long gone - it's fantastic to behold.

Mind you: I find Holbein in general is better with the men than with the women. His Jane Seymour portrait, for example, compared with his portrait of the French ambassador, is so very bland. Cranach and his sharp angles and the heads that make you feel they're just a bit out of proportion with the body strikes me as the most medieval of the three, though in a compelling way. And Dürer is, hands down, the one painter to rule them all. Which isn't news, obviously, but it really is true. I was fascinated that the exhbition didn't choose to use one of his most famous self portraits which we do have in Munich (the one with the fur) and instead went for various family portraits (including one of his younger brother I hadn't seen before), not just his famous portrait of Jacob Fugger but various other studies of the man, and some portraits of women that showcase that female faces could be rendered as compelling (well, he didn't have Henry VIII. in his neck, but still, looking at you, Hans H.):







In conclusion: should you be in Munich before January next year, visit this exhibition by any means possible.

Comments

[bimo]

Thank you so much for posting a link to the exhibition's webpage! While I'm afraid my travel plans for the near future don't include Munich at the moment, I find these portraits absolutely fascinating. Oh, and I'm very much inclined to agree with you regarding Holbein and his portraits of women. To me it always seems as if something substantial was lacking, almost as if Holbein had never been able to truly find the key to unlocking their (female) charisma...

[selenak]

It's weird, because his male portraits are fascinating. But the women all look like plastic by comparison. Now I'll grant you one or two may actually have been that bland, but all?

The catalogue for the exbhition is on sale, and contains all the 170 or so pictures: highly recommended if you can't come to Munich!