At the end of The Metropolitan Museum of Art's The Renaissance Portrait from Donatello to Bellini show there is a marble head by Antonio Rizzo of the Doge Christoforo Moro that is one of the most striking works of art I have seen since I saw the Chardin pastel of an old man sleeping in their pastel show last summer. I wish I knew more about marble to explain why this marble is slightly yellow and yet to perfect effect for this creased, aged face. Rizzo, who was utterly unfamiliar to me before, uses the natural lines of the stone to produce the lifelines in the face of the Doge. I would return to the show just to spend more time looking at this one head, which was once attached to the rest of a statue of the Doge, kneeling at one of the three altars of S. Marco that Rizzo was commissioned by the Doge to produce.
The show is extensive and for the casual viewer so many portraits can seem a bit repetitive, but that is all the more reason to wander, moving towards any one that strikes your eye. The first room includes several women by Botticelli, which I had expected and was the reason that I intended to see the show. Botticelli's Zipporah is the reason that Swann, in Proust's Swann in Love, becomes enamored of Odette de Crecy. The way she holds her head bring Swann into immediate contact with the blond beauties of Botticelli's pre-Savonarola days. Though we are all familiar with Birth of Venus, I wanted to familiarize myself with more of his work to imprint the style of his women which could then inform my reading of Swann's desire. As Venus has no shoulders, neither do any of these other women, is one among a number of other trite facts that I discovered in looking at his ladies.
For women, beauty was a sign of virtue and the pressure was thus great to be exquisite. The ladies are largely painted in profile, boxed by walls and ceiling, or a window, within the frame. It gives an extraordinary sense of constraint that given the absolute stillness of all these portraits begins to feel a bit claustrophobic. The men had no need of such beauty though their vanity also had them request artists to minimize their flaws, according to a few of the placards about particular paintings. How they know this remains unclear to me, but we shall assume/hope that this is not sheer fabrication. Such concerns about physical representation for posterity seems likely after all.
A 1475 portrait of an unknown man believed to be by Antonio Crevalcore struck my eye precisely because of its ornate details, including a red internal frame with colored, marbled sections in each half section, an utterly phony background scene, a book and a gold ring with a red stone that looks just like one I have. The painting was so rich in ornament that it naturally stood out in contrast to the other more staid portraits of important men looking serious with monotone backgrounds. My companion mentioned that she rather missed among these the type of portrait that displays some secret feature or characteristic of the sitter. Indeed they were all diligent commission portraits by artists who well knew who was paying the bill. But, just then we rounded into another room where we discovered a painting of a very interesting looking man whom we discovered was the doctor Battista Fiero of the painter, Lorenza Costa. He has a knowing look in his eye, as well he might since he treated the painter for syphilis.
There are of course marvelous works by famous artists that are worthy of appreciation and study. There are paintings and drawings, medals and metalpoint (which I discovered I enjoy a great deal and more on that some day), but of course the whole thing is faces. So if you want a good look at the faces of the financiers, religious leaders, and aristocrats who made the Italian Renaissance the foundational period that influenced the modern world, this show is well worth a wander. And if you could care less about the history or the name-brand artists, then before the show closes on March 18, 2012 go stare at these men and women with Oscar Wilde in mind: "A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her fiction."
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