The Renaissance Portrait from Donatello to Bellini - Metropolitan Museum of Art 12/21/11 through 03/18/12 (City Guide Magazine)

Description: It has been said that the Renaissance witnessed the rediscovery of the individual. In keeping with this notion, early Renaissance Italy also hosted the first great age of portraiture in Europe. Portraiture assumed a new importance, whether it was to record the features of a family member for future generations, celebrate a prince or warrior, extol the beauty of a woman, or make possible the exchange of a likeness among friends. This exhibition will bring together approximately 160 works—by artists including Donatello, Filippo Lippi, Botticelli, Verrocchio, Ghirlandaio, Pisanello, Mantegna, Giovanni Bellini, and Antonello da Messina, and in media ranging from painting and manuscript illumination to marble sculpture and bronze medals, testifying to the new vogue for and uses of portraiture in fifteenth-century Italy.

During the early Renaissance, artists working in Florence, Venice, and the courts of Italy created magnificent portrayals of the people around them—from heads of state and church to patrons, scholars, poets, and artists—concentrating for the first time on producing recognizable likenesses and expressions of personality. The rapid development of portraiture was linked closely to Renaissance society and politics, ideals of the individual, and concepts of beauty. The object may have been to commemorate a significant event—a marriage, death, the accession to a position of power—or it may have been to record the features of an esteemed member of the family for future generations.

Featuring many rare international loans, this exhibition will present an unprecedented survey of the period and provide new research and insight into the early history of portraiture. It will be divided into three sections and will span a period of eight decades. Beginning in Florence, where independent portraits first appeared in abundance, it moves to the courts of Ferrara, Mantua, Bologna, Milan, Urbino, Naples and papal Rome, and ends in Venice, where a tradition of portraiture asserted itself surprisingly late in the century.

Venue Description: Accommodates some of the greatest cultural treasures in the world, representing every category of art from just about every country from every time period from the Stone Age to the present. It houses the finest American art in the world, as well as an impressive collection of European, Greco-Roman, and Ancient Egyptian art. The Egyptian Art gallery includes a whole temple that was shipped to America as a gift. Going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art is (at least) a full-day affair, and an essential part of any trip to New York. The Cloisters

A branch of the The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Cloisters are devoted to the art and architecture of medieval Europe. The building itself is built with actual chapels, cloisters and other pieces of Gothic and Romanesque architecture. Inside, one can see sculpture, tapestries, magnificent stained-glass windows, and more. The most-renowned treasures include the Book of Hours by Jeanne d'Evreux, the Bury St. Edmonds cross, the Chalice of Antioch, and the Unicorn Tapestries. The Cloisters are situated on the beautiful rolling grounds of Fort Tryon Park, which has magnificent views of the Palisades.

Fridays and Saturdays 9:30 a.m.-9:00 p.m. Sundays, Tuesdays-Thursdays 9:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Met Holiday Mondays in the Main Building: May 26, and September 1, 2008, sponsored by Bloomberg 9:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. All other Mondays closed; Jan. 1, Thanksgiving, and Dec. 25 closed Recommended Admission (Includes Main Building and The Cloisters on the Same Day)

Adults $20.00, seniors (65 and over) $15.00, students $10.00 Members and children under 12 accompanied by adult free Advance tickets available at www.TicketWeb.com or 1-800-965-4827. For More Information (212) 535-7710; www.metmuseum.org No extra charge for any exhibition.