A Fresh Look at Italian Renaissance Portraiture

The Renaissance marked a turning point for Italian portraits - a breakthrough in art history that is now on display at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.   

Keith Christiansen, chairman of European Paintings at the museum, says the exhibit shines a new light on 15th century art work.  

[Keith Christiansen, European Paintings Chairman, Metropolitan Museum]:              

"Up until the 15th Century, portraiture was really reserved for rulers, the aristocracy and was confined to predominantly to tombs, memorial sculpture.  It's in the 15th Century that the independent portrait first comes into use among the merchant class, basically anybody who could afford it, and it's a transformation than of society, and a transformation of art." 

The exhibit- titled "The Renaissance Portrait from Donatello to Bellini" is made up of 160 works and includes paintings, sculptures, drawings and coins. 

[Keith Christiansen, European Paintings Chairman, Metropolitan Museum]:              

"One of the things that one is taught in school is that Renaissance portraiture was portraiture that had a single point of view. Anybody that comes into this exhibition will be seduced into walking around these sculptures. And as they walk around they discover that they have multiple points of view. The figure has as much animation as a natural figure.  I think that this will be one of the great, great discoveries, that the history of the Renaissance art is not just the history of painting, it's the history of the interaction of the arts."

Christiansen says the sculptures illustrate major advances in art - that the artists were some of the first to delve into the complex depictions of personality that makes the art come alive. 

[Keith Christiansen, European Paintings Chairman, Metropolitan Museum]:              

"Interestingly, Donatello made no portrait bust. What he does make is a reliquary invested with the presence of the portrait. He obviously took a person and used this person to make the saint a living presence."   

Many of the works represent some of the richest and most influential members of society at that time.  

The exhibit will be on display at the Met until March 18, 2012.