Renaissance Faces

REMEMBERING

The German artist Albrecht Durer ( 1471-1528 )
Explained that portraiture ' preserves the likenesses of men after their deaths ' Remembering
people was the main purpose of portraiture in the Renaissance.

IDENTITY, ATTRIBUTES, ALLEGORY

Renaissance portraits are notable for their intriguing inclusion of objects not only as a commentary on the status or interests of their subjects, or as a means of their identification like coats of arms. Clothing too plays its part: a particular uniform or any other object can denote an occupation or profession like in the case of the tailor or the Art antiquarian merchant. Gloves, swords, even exotic pets, as well as newly fashionable possessions, such as antique sculptures or astronomical instruments, were all indicative of elevated status. Among the highly educated courtier classes, such objects might also carry hidden meanings, sometimes sophisticated references to classical texts.

Both painted and sculpted portraits, particularly in Italy, were increasingly shaped by the discovery of artefacts - coins and marble sculptures - surviving from ancient Greece and Rome, objects that had ensured that both the lives and times and the physical features of their subjects were remembered, centuries after their deaths.