Exhibition | Tapestries of Guillaume Werniers and Catherine Ghuys
I’m sorry for not earlier noting this exhibition, which closed on Sunday (there was also a conference in April 2025). –CH
Wool and Silk Treasures: The Tapestries of
Guillaume Werniers and Catherine Ghuys in 18th-Century Lille
Musée de l’Hospice Comtesse, Lille, 29 April — 11 October 2026
Curated by François Bertrand and Hélène Lobir
L’exposition Trésors de laine et de soie. Les tapisseries de Guillaume Werniers et Catherine Ghuys à Lille au 18e siècle, fera découvrir pour la première fois un fonds de tapisseries exceptionnelles du musée de l’Hospice Comtesse et du Palais des Beaux-arts de Lille.
Le musée de l’Hospice Comtesse et le Palais des Beaux-arts ont la chance d’abriter des fonds uniques de tapisseries du 18e siècle. Ces tapisseries évoquent le grand passé textile de Lille, qui connaît à l’époque un fort essor économique. La Manufacture Werniers était l’une des plus importantes du Nord de l’Europe.
Monumentales, ces tapisseries nécessitaient des mois de fabrication. Arborant différents thèmes et motifs, dont de fameuses scènes champêtres, elles constituaient des objets de luxe et d’apparat, prisés par les aristocrates, la nouvelle bourgeoisie, ou encore, les communautés religieuses. Leur présentation promet donc d’être spectaculaire. Grandes, fragiles, complexes à exposer en raison de leur poids et de leur sensibilité à la lumière, ces tapisseries ont fait l’objet d’une importante restauration, subventionnée par la DRAC des Hauts-de-France, de 2023 à 2026. Cette exposition permettra de les dévoiler dans tout leur éclat originel, mais aussi de partager l’actualité de la recherche sur ces textiles rares.
Guillaume Werniers (avant 1688–1738), d’origine bruxelloise, reprend en 1701 la manufacture de tapisseries que son beau-père Jean De Melter (actif à Bruxelles depuis 1675-1701) avait fondée à Lille une douzaine d’années plus tôt. Employant jusqu’à cinquante ouvriers textiles, Werniers répond à des commandes locales (États de Flandre, églises et couvents) et se spécialise dans la production de tapisseries représentant des scènes de la vie quotidienne dans le goût du peintre flamand David Teniers II (1610–1690), appelées des « Ténières » et destinées à une riche clientèle internationale.
À sa mort en 1738, sa veuve Catherine Ghuys (1701–1778) prend la direction de l’entreprise jusqu’en 1778. Associée durant une courte période à Pierre Pannemaker ou Pennemaker (vers 1703-après 1738) qui avait été formé par Werniers pour lui succéder, Catherine Ghuys a assuré seule la prospérité de la manufacture pendant une quarantaine d’années. Dans l’histoire de la tapisserie, elle compte parmi les rares femmes à avoir dirigé une fabrique pendant une aussi longue période. Aussi la notion de matrimoine lillois sera-t-elle pleinement explorée à cette occasion, au regard de son parcours.
Imaginé autour de six grandes sections, le parcours de l’exposition présente un ensemble inédit regroupant une trentaine d’oeuvres, en faisant dialoguer les tapisseries avec des oeuvres et documents de mise en contexte : livre de compte, métier à tisser, peintures et céramiques, pour remettre en contexte la Manufacture Werniers, et donner à comprendre le processus de production de ces tapisseries. Le travail exceptionnel de restauration de ces tapisseries sera mis en lumière tout au long du parcours d’exposition.
Cette exposition a été portée par un partenariat entre le musée de l’Hospice Comtesse et l’École nationale Supérieure d’Architecture et de Paysage de Lille (ENSAPL). Les étudiants encadrés par Hélène Marcoz, artiste-maîtresse de conférences, ont ainsi assuré la conception du parcours muséographique, en lien avec les équipes du musée.
Trésors de laine & de soie: Les tapisseries de Guillaume Werniers et Catherine Ghuys à Lille au XVIIIe siècle (Lille: Éditions Invenit, 2026), 160 pages, ISBN: 978-2376801603, €25.
New Book | Prints from the Società Napoletana di Storia Patria in Naples
Enfilade readers may find this volume from Bibliopolis particularly interesting for its analysis of the creation of the print collection of Carlo Firmian in the 1770s, its discussion of the publishing history of Le Antichità di Ercolano Esposte and antiquarian practices in eighteenth-century Naples, early Neapolitan experiments with aquatint in the 1760s, and of publication projects such as the so-called Vestiture del Regno (begun in 1784) and William Hamilton’s Campi Phlegraei, of 1776.
Paola D’Alconzo and Domenico Pino, eds., Le Stampe nel Castello: Studi sul Fondo Grafico della Società Napoletana di Storia Patria (Naples: Bibliopolis, 2026), 302 pages, ISBN: 978-8870887570, €40. Also available in digital format, with the option of purchasing either the entire volume or individual chapters.
This volume brings to the attention of the public the first results of a several-year-long work of reorganization, conditioning, and cataloguing of the works pertaining to the Fondo Grafico (Prints and Drawings Cabinet) of the Società Napoletana di Storia Patria, Naples. Created shortly after the foundation of the Società in 1876, and enriched throughout the years, the Cabinet contains today around 3.600 drawings and 7.000 prints, with works varying in quality, subject, and material conditions. Although it has always been accessible to scholars, the print collection is undoubtedly the lesser known part.
The recent reorganization work has allowed for a better understanding of this nucleus, unveiling its specificities and layered history: as a whole the collection appears valuable in that it presents the potential to complicate, and in certain instances also to rewrite, some passages of the historiography on the graphic arts and their fortune in Naples and beyond.
Even as the essays take important steps in that direction, they also look beyond the prints held by the Società, considering works from the collection in reference to other categories of objects (such as porcelain and terraglie, i.e. Neapolitan earthenware) as well as other collections of works on paper in the city. This approach has proven particularly successful in that it unveils articulate relationships between the material heritage held by the Società Napoletana di Storia Patria and wider discourses, according to a methodological model that has proven very useful for historical studies, but that had never before been applied to the Fondo Grafico.
Paola D’Alconzo is Associate Professor of Museology, Art Criticism, and Conservation Theory at the University of Naples Federico II, where she also coordinates the Master’s degree programme in ‘Cultural Heritage, Art History and Museum Studies’. Her research mainly concerns the history of art-historical heritage conservation and the history of collecting in the 18th and 19th centuries. She has focused in particular on the restoration and musealization of wall paintings found in excavations at Herculaneum and Pompeii; the reception of Vesuvian antiquities and their influence on artistic production; the collecting and antiquarian interests of Ferdinando Galiani; the regulations promulgated in the Kingdom of Naples and Spain to safeguard the archaeological and art-historical heritage; and the conservation and exhibition of paintings of the Farnese and later Bourbon collections. She sits on the directing board of the Società Napoletana di Storia Patria, being the referent for the Fondo Grafico.
Domenico Pino takes care of the Fondo Grafico of the Società Napoletana di Storia Patria since 2024, being in charge of cataloguing, reorganisation projects, and access to the collection. He obtained a PhD in History of Art from University College London in 2025 with a thesis on printmaking in Naples between 1734 and 1799. He has held fellowships from the British Museum (2020), the Centre for the History of Art and Architecture of Port Cities at the Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte (2022–23), and the Pio Monte della Misericordia at the Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Storici (2023–25).
c o n t e n t s
Preface – Renata De Lorenzo
• Le Stampe nel Castello: Un patrimonio da riscoprire — Paola D’Alconzo and Domenico Pino
• MetaFAD e il Polo Digitale degli Istituti Culturali di Napoli: Un modello di catalogazione e fruizione integrata — Donatella Zampano
• La Storia del Fondo Grafico della Società Napoletana di Storia Patria — Costanza Marsico
• Diplomacy in Print: Carlo Firmian’s Collection at Capodimonte — Emma De Jong
• Un’inedita veduta della città: Iscrizioni manoscritte sulle incisioni napoletane — Domenico Pino
• Alla ricerca di un metodo per pubblicare le prime scoperte vesuviane: Le Antichità di Ercolano Esposte tra tentativi falliti e ipotesi in corso d’opera — Paola D’Alconzo
• Esperimenti e innovazioni dell’industria editoriale napoletana del ‘700: Il San Gennaro di Giuseppe Aloja — Domenico Pino
• Creato sotto pressione: Il Vesuvio e gli scambi interculturali dell’Illuminismo europeo — Domenico Pino
• 1770–1800: Gli anni d’oro dell’Illuminismo ferdinandeo e la fortuna delle Vestiture del Regno — Angela Caròla Perrotti
• Declinazioni dall’antico: Dalle stampe alle terraglie — Alessandra Zaccagnini
Index of names
Index of places
Exhibition | Inspired by Flaxman
Wedgwood, The Apotheosis of Homer, 1777–80
(National Museums Liverpool, Lady Lever Art Gallery)
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Now on view at the York Art Gallery:
Turner, Wedgwood, and Beyond: Inspired by Flaxman
York Art Gallery, 18 September 2026 — 17 January 2027
Curated by Beatrice Bertram and Richard Johns
Marking 200 years since the death of York-born artist John Flaxman, this exhibition celebrates his life, work, and lasting influence on art and design.
Showcasing Flaxman’s remarkable skill as a draughtsman, sculptor, and designer, the exhibition explores his influence on fellow artists including J.M.W Turner, William Blake, and potter Josiah Wedgwood. Objects from York Art Gallery’s collection are displayed alongside key loans from UK institutions including the National Gallery, Royal Academy, V&A, and the Barber Institute of Fine Art, amongst others.
Flaxman is one of the York-born artists engraved into the façade of York Art Gallery, celebrating the incredible talent that emerged from the city. Following classic Grecian and Roman styles, Flaxman’s designs were used on the iconic Wedgwood pottery as well as inspiring drawings, paintings, stonework, buildings, sculpture, metalwork, chess pieces, funerary monuments, and more. Though not as well-known as Turner or Wedgwood have come to be, Flaxman had a significant influence on art that extends through to modern day from humble beginnings in the city.
Turner, Wedgwood, and Beyond: Inspired by Flaxman is curated by Beatrice Bertram, Senior Curator at York Art Gallery, and Richard Johns, Senior Lecturer in the History of Art at the University of York. The exhibition has been supported by and produced in partnership with the University of York’s History of Art Department and accompanied by an academic publication, this is the first major exhibition dedicated to Flaxman in York.
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From Paul Holberton Publishing with distribution by Yale UP:
Beatrice Bertram and Richard Johns, eds., Turner, Wedgwood, and Beyond: Inspired by Flaxman (London: Paul Holberton Publishing, 2026), 128 pages, ISBN: 978-1917976220, £25 / €30 / $35.
This collection of thought-provoking new writing explores the far-reaching creative legacy of the sculptor, designer, and illustrator John Flaxman (1755–1826). Timed to coincide with the bicentenary of Flaxman’s death in 1826, it accompanies a major exhibition at York Art Gallery, developed in collaboration with the University of York.
Flaxman found his subjects in the epic myths of ancient Greece and on the streets of modern Rome, in the drama of a game of chess, and in the global events that unfolded in his lifetime. His work has, in turn, inspired generations of artists and makers. For the first time in more than 40 years, Turner, Wedgwood, and Beyond: Inspired by Flaxman explores the full range and impact of the artist’s work across different media. A collection of insightful essays and shorter ‘objects in focus’ by leading curators, artists, art historians, and literary critics introduce Flaxman for a new audience, as an artist whose work in ceramic, marble, silver and gold, and on paper continues to resonate.
Each author takes an object or concept from the exhibition as a starting point to bring new light to Flaxman’s legacy, including the creative dialogue between his art and the work of William Blake, William Etty, Henry Fuseli, Angelica Kauffman, J.M.W. Turner, and Josiah Wedgwood. The result is an ambitious reframing of the artist’s creative connections, with new perspectives on the collaborative nature of Flaxman’s enterprise, his identity as a disabled artist, the colonial reach of his monumental sculpture, the poetical legacies of Homer, Dante and Shakespeare, and more.
Turner, Wedgwood and Beyond: Inspired by Flaxman is edited by the exhibition co-curators, Beatrice Bertram and Richard Johns, with additional contributions by Pat Barker (Booker Prize winner and author of The Silence of the Girls), Kenneth Clark (University of York), Jason Edwards (University of York), Tony Heaton (sculptor and disability activist) and Martin Myrone (art historian), Catrin Jones (V&A Wedgwood Collection), Brigid von Preussen (Oxford University), Erica Sheen (University of York), and Michael Smith (University of York).
Exhibition | Place and Identity in Early American ‘Schoolgirl’ Art
Attributed to Faith Trumbull (1743–1775), Needlework Picture, Boston and Lebanon, Connecticut, 1754, silk, mica, and gouache on silk, 23 × 54 inches (Hartford: Connecticut Museum of Culture and History, 1974.99.0).
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Opening soon at the American Folk Art Museum:
Locating Girlhood: Place and Identity in Early American ‘Schoolgirl’ Art
American Folk Art Museum, New York, 9 October 2026 — 28 February 2027
Curated by Emelie Gevalt and Caroline Culp
Featuring spectacular examples of needlework and other ornamental arts made by American girls in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Locating Girlhood: Place and Identity in Early American ‘Schoolgirl’ Art sheds new light on a rich but understudied genre, offering one of the most significant presentations on the subject in recent memory. This major loan exhibition brings together approximately 100 exceptional objects from over 35 museums and private collections nationwide, uniting celebrated masterpieces with remarkable lesser-known gems rarely seen by the public.
Unlike many earlier exhibitions, Locating Girlhood explores girlhood artworks from an explicitly art historical perspective, reframing these objects through the lens of place. Though the story of landscape art in the United States has traditionally centered on male academic painters, American girls and young women were laboring over a variety of landscape scenes long before the Hudson River School. From the eighteenth century onwards, representations of landscape were a common visual thread in samplers, needlework pictures, watercolors, and other artworks commonly united under the umbrella term ‘schoolgirl art’, extending from country scenes and cityscapes to maps and other cartographic compositions. By considering these works as deeply resonant expressions of place, the exhibition expands the story of the American landscape and situates women at its heart.
Timed to coincide with the US’s semiquincentennial, Locating Girlhood both celebrates the creativity of early American girls and women and critically examines the colonial and early federal ideologies that structured their worldview. The exhibition is curated by Emelie Gevalt (Deborah Davenport and Stewart Stender Deputy Director & Chief Curatorial and Program Officer) and Caroline Culp (Warren Family Assistant Curator).
Emelie Gevalt and Caroline Culp, eds., Locating Girlhood: Place and Identity in Early American ‘Schoolgirl’ Art (Milan: Skira, 2026), 256 pages, ISBN: 978-8857255170, $60. Foreword by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, with additional texts by Elizabeth Bacon Eager and William Huntting Howell, along with an afterword by Andrea Pappas.
Exhibition | John Constable: The Landscape Reimagined
Now on view at the YCBA:
John Constable: The Landscape Reimagined
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 3 September 2026 — 25 July 2027
John Constable, East Bergholt Church, 1809, oil on paper mounted to panel, 20 × 16 cm (New Haven: Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, B2001.2.237).
John Constable: The Landscape Reimagined explores Constable’s bold, innovative open-air paintings, which radically transformed the trajectory of European landscape painting. Working against the ‘picturesque’ tradition, in which long-established conventions governed what landscape painting should look like, Constable made the skies, light, seasons, and atmosphere the central subjects of his art. Created outdoors and rooted in the direct observation of nature, his iconic pictures of the English landscape have shaped the image of Britain in the popular imagination.
As the only major US exhibition to focus on the seminal British painter on the 250th anniversary of his birth, John Constable: The Landscape Reimagined offers a unique opportunity for American audiences to experience the breadth of the artist’s masterpieces. Bringing together a rich selection of Constable’s great works, the exhibition includes his remarkable cloud studies and plein air sketches alongside two of his ‘six-footers’, including Hadleigh Castle, one of the most iconic works of English landscape painting. The exhibition also presents works that have never before been publicly displayed in the US, among them a study of Hampstead Heath that was recently acquired by the YCBA.
These works are shown alongside engravings and drawings that illuminate the remarkable breadth of Constable’s achievement as a painter, printmaker, and draftsman. Seen together, they reveal how his creative process developed across different media and offer a fuller understanding of an artist who profoundly influenced subsequent generations of painters. The exhibition also includes key pieces by Constable’s contemporaries, such as John Linnell and Richard Parkes Bonington, that reveal the broader artistic context in which he worked. Through his direct engagement with the natural world, Constable established landscape painting as a serious and significant pursuit for artists.
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The landscape paintings of John Constable (1776–1837) are among the most iconic images in British art, transforming the genre of landscape painting. Born in Suffolk, England, the son of a corn and coal merchant and a farmer, Constable took up painting as a youth and entered the Royal Academy Schools in London in 1799 to study as a painter. As an adult, he moved from London to Hampstead, which would provide the inspiration for his most acclaimed works. Constable’s astonishing capacity to reproduce not only the appearance but also the feeling of nature in paint brought the landscape radically to life, and his commitment to painting ‘on the spot’ was part of a broader artistic approach that would profoundly influence subsequent generations of landscape painters—and shape how the English landscape is imagined and represented to this day.
Tim Barringer, with contributions by Nicholas Robbins, Constable (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2026), 128 pages, ISBN: 978-0300284669, $40.
Print Quarterly, September 2026
Charles F. Greville, Title-Plate to the Set of Prints of the Portland Vase, 1786, etching and aquatint, 251 × 354 mm
(London: The British Museum)
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The long eighteenth century in the latest issue of Print Quarterly:
Print Quarterly 43.3 (September 2026)
a r t i c l e s
• Georgii Titov, “Lost and Found: An Unpublished Woodcut by Pamvo Berynda,” pp. 235–45. In identifying the lower half of a 1629 woodcut, The Prison of The Holy Convicts, the author unfolds, “a revealing case study of how early modern prints circulated and were valued within imperial Russian collections” in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
• Domenico Pino, “Filippo Morghen as Print Publisher in Naples: New Documents,” pp. 246–52. This article arises from the discovery of a small, dated letterpress catalogue of Filippo Morghen’s (1730–1807) production, preserved inside a bound copy of his print series Le Antichità di Pozzuoli, Baja e Cuma that surfaced at auction in Rome. Analysed in conjunction with an unpublished privilege application by Morghen, the new document sheds light on his printmaking, and, especially, on his highly prolific activity as a print-publisher in Naples. It significantly expands the limited archival material relating to the artist, including his known commissions, level of involvement and prices of his prints.
• Ann V. Gunn, “Charles F. Greville (1749–1809) and the Print Industry,” pp. 253–63. Gunn looks at the many ways an eighteenth-century gentleman, Charles F. Greville (1749–1809), interacted with the print industry. Through detailed examination of the sales catalogues of his various collections and correspondence, she demonstrates how his practical involvement in printmaking impacted other areas of his life and career, from disseminating visual knowledge of art, antiquarianism, minerology and horticulture to successfully introducing into Parliament an amendment and extension to the copyright law relating to prints and printmakers in 1777. A portion of the article recounts Greville’s campaign to have the Portland Vase and a painting previously attributed to Correggio engraved by Francesco Bartolozzi (1727–1815).
n o t e s a n d r e v i e w s
• Guido Scholten, Review of the exhibition catalogued ed. by Andreas Stolzenburg and Iris Wenderholm, Akte, Antike, Anatomie: Zeichnend die Welt erschliessen (Michael Imhof, 2024), pp. 281–83.
• Anthony Griffiths, Review of Martin Rose, Henry Winstanley, 1644–1703: The Last Renaissance Engineer. With a Catalogue Raisonné of His Prints (The Cygnet Press, 2024), p. 287.
• An Van Camp, Review of Vincent Wackenheim, La mort dans tous ses états: Modernité et esthétique des Danses macabres, 1785–1966 (L’Atelier contemporain, 2025), pp. 289–92.
• Timon Screech, Review of the exhibition catalogue by Alfred Haft, Hiroshige: Artist of the Open Road (British Museum Press, 2025), pp. 312–15.
Exhibition | A Light in the Dark: Joseph Wright of Derby
Opening this fall at The Getty:
A Light in the Dark: Joseph Wright of Derby
Getty Center, Los Angeles, 24 November 2026 — 14 March 2027
The British painter Joseph Wright of Derby is celebrated for his astonishing ability to capture the magic of light piercing the dark. In 1760s London he exhibited a series of remarkable pictures that catapulted the provincial artist to national fame. This exhibition reunites several of these works—including the Getty’s recently rediscovered Two Boys with a Bladder—and explores the technical innovations and artistic ambitions behind some of the most enthralling paintings of the 18th century.
From the Getty Shop:
Julia Siemon, ed., A Light in the Dark: Joseph Wright of Derby (Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2026), 144 pages, ISBN: 979-8887120416, $30.
The dramatic ‘candlelight’ paintings of Joseph Wright of Derby (1734–1797) cast a spell, enthralling viewers with striking scenes that portray human curiosity, the quiet intensity of domestic life, and the excitement of scientific discovery. With a variety of brushstrokes—dabbed here, whiskered there, and dragged elsewhere—Wright pushed boundaries with the transformative power of light. In 2020, the Getty Museum acquired the newly rediscovered Two Boys with a Bladder (1767), a luminous study of innovation, intimacy, and artistic brilliance that challenged established assumptions about Wright and sparked renewed interest in his experiments with light.
A Light in the Dark presents new research to uncover the origins of Two Boys and expand our understanding of Wright’s early candlelights, tracing the invention and initial development of his distinctive style. Whereas recent scholarship has maintained an outward approach that ties the artist’s oeuvre to places that he visited, this volume returns the focus to Wright himself—his biography, technique, and hometown of Derby—in a much-needed reexamination. Complete with fresh historical and technical evidence, this is a fascinating look into the inspirations, aspirations, and experiments behind some of the most remarkable paintings in the history of British art.
Julia Siemon is deputy director and chief curator at Bard Graduate Center. Her publications include, as editor and primary author, The Silver Caesars (2017), and, as contributing author, The Medici (2021), A Royal Renaissance Treasure and Its Afterlives (2021), and others.
Exhibition | Wood and Water: Furniture on Long Island, 1660–1860
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Now on view, with additional information available at The Magazine Antiques:
Wood and Water: Furniture on Long Island, 1660–1860
Preservation Long Island, Cold Spring Harbor, New York, 2 July — 22 November 2026
Over centuries, furniture has connected Long Islanders to each other and the world beyond their shores. Discover the work of the region’s many unsung craftspeople: Quaker joiners, Black makers, women upholsterers, Dutch turners, and Indigenous weavers. From the workshop to the home, these objects reveal networks of exchange, identity, and innovation during a time of profound change.
Wood and Water is presented in celebration of two significant milestones: the 50th anniversary of PLI’s landmark publication, Long Island Is My Nation: The Decorative Arts and Craftmen, 1640–1830, and the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
Lauren Brincat and Steven Baltsas with Laini Farrare, Peter Fedoryk, and Katherine C. Hughes, Wood and Water: Furniture on Long Island, 1660–1860 (Cold Spring Harbor: Preservation Long Island, 2026), $35.
Exhibition | Portraits, from Botticelli to Lempicka
From the press release for the exhibition opening this fall at the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin:
Portraits! Surprising Encounters from Botticelli to Lempicka
Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, 16 October 2026 — 14 March 2027
Curated by Sven Jakstat and Stephan Kemperdick, with Marie-Luise Hugler
How do we see ourselves—and how have people in different historical periods wished to be seen? The special exhibition Portraits! Surprising Encounters from Botticelli to Lempicka at the Gemäldegalerie (Old Master Paintings) of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, invites viewers on a fascinating journey through the history of portraiture. Unusual juxtapositions of works spanning five centuries reveal striking similarities, bringing the pieces to life and providing opportunities to reflect on the presentation of the self and others, as well as on staging, roles, and character. Masterpieces by artists such as Botticelli and Lempicka, Mino da Fiesole and Rogier van der Weyden, Dürer and Giorgione, or Rubens and Gainsborough are brought into conversation with one another, revealing striking and often surprising affinities. Works that have never ‘met’ before come together for the first time, offering a fresh perspective on themes such as identity, beauty, status and power.
Portraits reveal more than just people’s outward appearance. They also reveal details about self-awareness, character, emotion and staged representation. Clothing, posture, and accessories act as codes for social, political and gender affiliation. By comparing portraits from different regions and eras, visitors can recognise, trace, and understand artistic decisions and visual strategies: What was considered beautiful, dignified or worthy of authority? How did these ideals evolve over the centuries? The exhibition reveals the variety of these responses, while also highlighting the surprising connections between them.
The exhibition’s starting point is the outstanding international collection of portraits at the Gemäldegalerie, which is complemented by a selection of loans from other museums of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, including the Alte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery) and the Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery), the Ägyptisches Museum (Egyptian Museum) and the Skulpturensammlung (Sculpture Collection). It presents a multifaceted panorama of portraiture from the 15th to the 20th centuries. Around 90 masterpieces by artists such as Petrus Christus, Mino da Fiesole, Botticelli, Giorgione, Dürer, Cranach the Elder, Holbein the Younger, Titian, Sofonisba Anguissola, Rembrandt, Zurbarán, Anna Dorothea Therbusch, and Tamara de Lempicka encompass a wide variety of portraiture’s diverse aspects, ranging from glorious portraits of rulers to intimate scenes of friendship and proud self-proclamations. Each encounter tells its own story and invites wonder, comparison and discovery.
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Anton Raphael Mengs, Self-Portrait, 1779 (Berlin: Staatliche Museen).
Various forms and functions of portraits are examined in the four sections of the exhibition. The prologue highlights the astonishing constancy of mimetic portrait art, which has spanned many centuries, and also sheds light on the genre’s roots in Europe.
Portrait Types North and South of the Alps
The first section of the exhibition explorse the development of portraiture in Italy and the North during the Renaissance. Various prototypes emerged, such as the northern three-quarter profile used by Rogier van der Weyden and the strict profile preferred by Filippo Lippi. Differing tendencies towards naturalism and idealisation soon mingled and influenced the development of portrait painting in the following centuries.
Self-Representation of the Elite
Portraits were a powerful means of social representation and distinction. The clothing, poses, and size of a work all revealed the aspirations and status of the person depicted. Anthonis Mor’s prestigious, knee-length portrait of the Duchess Margaret of Parma, with her regal gaze, is on a par with Giambattista Moroni’s portrait of the nobleman Don Gabriel de la Cueva.
Family, Friendship, and Intimacy
On the one hand, the section on family, friendship and intimacy is dedicated to the private aspects of portraiture. Relatives, close friends, and loved ones are captured in images that serve as personal mementos. Sofonisba Anguissola’s mother, Bianca, engages with her daughter while she paints, in a manner that is similar to how the wife of the painter Eugen Spiro looked at her husband 380 years later. Portraits of the deceased offer a final glimpse of them.
Portraits of Art Collectors and Artists
The final section of the exhibition focuses on portraits of art collectors and artists. For centuries, self-portraits have not only served as a means of self-exploration, but also as a way of positioning oneself and one’s work within traditional contexts. Therbusch portrays herself as an intellectual, while Poussin and Anton Raphael Mengs use their self-portraits to reflect on their lives and artistic fame.
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Portraits is not just an art historical exhibition; it also reflects our current image-obsessed world. In the age of selfies and social media:how do we construct our identity? How do we read faces? And what does our view reveal about ourselves? The reflection of masterworks from the past provides the perfect opportunity to study and understand these current questions.
The exhibition is curated by Sven Jakstat and Stephan Kemperdick, with assistance from Marie-Luise Hugler. A richly illustrated catalogue provides an in-depth exploration of the works and their relationships with each other.
Porträts! Überraschende Begegnungen von Botticelli bis Lempicka (Petersberg: Michael Imhof-Verlag, 2026), 256 pages, ISBN: 978-3731915980, €49.
Print Quarterly, June 2026
With apologies for not posting this much sooner! –CH
The long eighteenth century in the latest issue of Print Quarterly:
Print Quarterly 43.2 (June 2026)
a r t i c l e s
Attributed to Martin Tyroff, Crown Prince Frederick of Denmark and Norway, ca. 1740, pen and grey ink and grey wash, 152 × 101 mm (Augsburg, State and City Library of Augsburg).
• Victoria Fernandez, “On Conserving and Remounting the Edmond de Rothschild Collection at the Louvre,” pp. 158–68. This article examines the Louvre’s conservation campaign since 2016 to conserve and remount the roughly 35,000 prints and 865 drawings bequeathed by Baron Edmond de Rothschild (1845–1934), with respect to the stipulations mentioned in the deed of gift. The author also illustrates many unique findings and observations, including reattributions. Readers of Enfilade may be interested to know that part of the collection includes those that belonged to the donor’s father, Baron James de Rothschild (1792–1868), who owned the complete printed oeuvre of Daniel Nikolaus Chodowiecki (1726–1801).
• Karl-Georg Pfändtner, “Denmark’s Sea Trade: A Preparatory Drawing and Martin Tyroff’s Related Print,” pp. 169–72. This short article connects a drawing in the Staats- und Stadtbibliothek Augsburg with the engraved portrait of Crown Prince Frederick of Denmark and Norway (1723–66) by Martin Tyroff (1704–59). Crown Prince Frederick ascended the throne of Denmark and Norway in 1746. The print served as the frontispiece to a book of Martin Luther’s writings, Das Nutzbareste aus denen gesamten Erbaulichen Schriften Des seligen Herrn D. Martini Lutheri, published in 1740. Originally from Nuremberg, but active for years in Augsburg, Tyroff married the daughter of the Nuremberg engraver and publisher Christoph Weigel, and moved back to Nuremberg himself. The iconography highlights trade via Danish settlements in India and forts on the Danish Gold Coast, in present-day Ghana, as well as missionary activity there.
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• Daan van Heesch, Review of Élisabeth Antoine-König and Pierre-Yves Le Pogam, eds., Figures du Fou. Du Moyen Âge aux Romantiques (Musée du Louvre and Éditions Gallimard, 2024), pp. 173–75.
• Richard Stephens, Review of François Marandet, Louis Chéron: L’ambition du dessin parfait (Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen, 2021), pp. 183–85.
• Esther Chadwick, Review of Elizabeth Wyckoff and Sarah Weston, Blake (Yale Center for British Art, 2025), pp. 185–87.
• Thierry Depaulis, Review of Sara Benvenuti and Francesca Volpini, L’arte del gioco. Giochi antichi dalla Collezione Crippa della Raccolta Bertarelli di Milano (Silvana Editoriale, 2024), pp. 187–89.
• Ellis Tinios, Review of Hokusai’s Method (Thames and Hudson, 2024), pp. 189–90.
• Louis Marchesano, Review of Maxime Préaud, Louis le Grand, la terreur et l’admiration de l’univers. Les almanachs muraux publiés à Paris sous le règne personnel de Louis XIV (1661/1662–1715/1716) (Bibliothèque Nationale de France and Le Passage, 2023), pp. 203–07.
• Tim Clayton, Review of Esther Chadwick, The Radical Print: Art and Politics in Late Eighteenth-Century Britain (Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2024), pp. 208–12.
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