What Fabulous Faces! ; the Spirit Soars at the Sight of so Many Masterpieces in the National Gallery's New Show of Renaissance Portraits

Evening Standard - London › October 17, 2008

Linked as:

Summary

EVERY year for the past quarter century or so, I have in some sense discussed the origins and purposes of portraiture, the trigger for the annual prize for it at the National Portrait Gallery. As I have nothing new to say of it and am weary of rejigging my arguments so that they seem fresh, it has been with misgiving rather than the customary thrill of anticipation that I have prepared for this winter's exhibition at the National Gallery Renaissance Faces: Van Eyck to Titian.

At least, with such a title, it must contain many masterpieces (and it does), in contrast to the largely bathetic offerings by the young and impudent inflicted on us at the NPG to prove that portraiture as a genre of art is still alive. No matter how familiar stale and tired, even the inevitable essays in the catalogue, no matter how many times we have all paused to examine Holbein's Ambassadors and Jan Van Eyck's Mr and Mrs Arnolfini with Fido at their Feet, we shall still find something in them as works of art to lift the spirit, but, to be truthful, my spirits sank at the prospect of a didactic trudge through European portraiture of the two centuries that, more or less, embraced the Renaissance.

See the full content of this document

Extract

What Fabulous Faces! ; the Spirit Soars at the Sight of so Many Masterpieces in the National Gallery's New Show of Renaissance Portraits

Essays stale and tired? It is a rare thing for the catalogue of an important exhibition to be published long enough in advance for a critic to read it before he sees the exhibits and is affected by their hanging, their companionship and contrasts the factors that, with lighting, make or break it as a thing to see but in this case it arrived early on my doormat. Individual entries are encyclopaedic in terms of the who, how and what of them, remarkable in their scrupulously uncluttered English; more remarkable still, they are preceded by four essays that, in drawing together all this information, greatl...

See the full content of this document