Never before have so many European Renaissance portraits been brought together in the Netherlands - portraits of powerful emperors, flamboyant aristocrats and well-to-do citizens. Throughout the 15th and 16th centuries, increasing numbers of people commissioned portraits of themselves. This autumn the Remember Me exhibition at the Rijksmuseum presents more than 100 masterpieces by artists such as Memling, Dürer, Holbein, Titian and Veronese. Remember Me is about ambition, desire and loss, and about people who wanted to be remembered.
Remember Me is the first major exhibition of international Renaissance portraits in the Netherlands. One of the highlights is Portrait of a Young Girl (c. 1470) by Petrus Christus, from the collection of the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin. Other portraits have been loaned by museums such as the Kunstmuseum in Basel, the National Gallery in London, Museo del Prado in Madrid and the National Gallery of Art in Washington.
Remember Me. Portraits from Dürer to Sofonisba runs from 1 October to 16 January 2022 in the Phillips Wing of the Rijksmuseum.
Remember Me
Since antiquity, the most important function of the portrait has been the preservation of the memory of their sitter. With the first great blossoming of portraiture in Europe during the renaissance, artists and their patrons, whether north or south of the Alps, drew on this notion. No matter how great the regional differences, the common denominator is plainly the human need to remember.
Like us, the sitters were keen to present themselves in the most favourable light possible. All aspects of the composition - the facial expression, symbolism, pose, background and clothing - are the result of meticulous planning. Where one might focus on physical beauty, another would prioritise a sense of authority. Charles V, for example, foregrounded his power in a bronze sculpture made around 1553 in which he is portrayed as a Roman Emperor, and in 1555 Maarten van Heemskerck confidently placed his own skills on display in a self-portrait. Remember Me sheds light on how the sitters of these paintings chose to present themselves, drawing on themes such as beauty, authority, ambition, love, family, knowledge and faith.