Enfilade

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.

Covered Tureen on Stand (Pot-à-oille), 1735–38, designed by Juste-Aurèle Meissonnier and made by Pierre-François Bonnestrenne and Henry Adnet, silver (The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1977.182).

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Opening in October at The Cleveland Museum of Art:

Juste-Aurèle Meissonnier: Rococo Goldsmith in Focus

The Cleveland Museum of Art, 25 October 2026 — 14 March 2027

Curated by Ada de Wit

Juste-Aurèle Meissonnier (1695–1750) was the most revolutionary forerunner of the Rococo style in the decorative arts. Multitalented with entrepreneurial skills, he worked for the French court and European nobility. Considered a genius goldsmith by his contemporaries, he was also a prolific designer and aspiring architect, seamlessly maneuvering between media and disciplines.

Born and trained in Turin, Italy, Meissonnier moved to Paris around 1715 to advance his career, although the conservative guild of Parisian goldsmiths made it practically impossible for newcomers to register as masters and open their own workshops. Meissonnier’s ambition, creativity, and determination in pursuing his desired career path are apparent from his work and limited biographical information and continue to resonate today.

Few of Meissonnier’s works survived political upheavals; the most celebrated is a silver tureen in the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art, made for the Duke of Kingston. A striking sculpture rather than a functional object, the tureen epitomizes the Rococo style with its movement, asymmetrical design, fluid unity of form and ornament, and elements inspired by nature. The tureen has recently undergone scientific analysis, which has provided new insights into its sophisticated creation process.

The catalogue is distributed by Yale UP:

Ada de Wit, ed., with additional contributions by Michèle Bimbenet-Privat, Beth Edelstein, Peter Fuhring, Alexandre Gady, and Colleen Snyder, Juste-Aurèle Meissonnier: Goldsmith, Designer, and Architect (Cleveland: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 2026), 160 pages, ISBN: 978-0300282306, $50.

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From the press release for the recent acquisition of a snuffbox (7 May 2026) . . .

Juste-Aurèle Meissonnier, Gold Box, 1728–29, gold and lapis lazuli, 3 × 8.3 × 5.2 cm (The Cleveland Museum of Art, 2026.12).

The Cleveland Museum of Art has acquired an extraordinarily rare gold snuffbox made in Paris in 1728–29 by Juste-Aurèle Meissonnier. Of exceptional art historical importance, the box is one of only five known objects in precious metals firmly associated with Meissonnier to have survived the political upheavals of subsequent centuries, during which works in gold and silver were frequently melted down. For many years, it was the only known work bearing the maker’s mark of Meissonnier, until the 2019 discovery of his mark on a gold mount for a rock crystal ewer belonging to Marie Antoinette, now in the Louvre. The snuffbox is distinguished as a work executed by Meissonnier himself, without the involvement of other master goldsmiths.

This acquisition significantly strengthens the museum’s Meissonnier collection and will play a central role in Juste-Aurèle Meissonnier: Rococo Goldsmith in Focus, an exhibition of the artist’s work, which opens at the CMA in October 2026. Notably, the object has never before been displayed in a museum.

“This important acquisition reinforces the museum’s standing as one of the world’s leading collections of 18th-century French decorative arts,” said the CMA’s Sarah S. and Alexander M. Cutler Director William M. Griswold. “It also strengthens our position as a preeminent center for the study and appreciation of Meissonnier’s work.”

“Meissonnier’s box is one of the most sophisticated works of art in our collection, whose extraordinary qualities can be fully appreciated only through close, in-person looking,” said Ada de Wit, the Ellen S. and Bruce V. Mavec Curator of Decorative Arts at the Cleveland Museum of Art. “This remarkable acquisition further enhances the CMA as a destination for both scholars and the broader public.”

The snuffbox was acquired through a private sale facilitated by the auction house Christie’s. The deputy chairman of Christie’s Department of European Furniture and Works of Art, Will Strafford, said: “We have a long and proud history of private sales to storied institutions such as the Cleveland Museum of Art and we are thrilled that this sublime masterpiece of the decorative arts has gone to such a worthy home; I have no doubt that this work amazes and delights visitors to the museum for generations to come.”

This Meissonnier box has long been regarded as among the finest of its kind and described as “an object in a class of its own.” It stands out from others due to its superior design and execution, the strong sense of movement achieved by its dynamic contour, its extraordinary level of detail, and the dramatic contrast of its gold and lapis lazuli materials. Together, these qualities position the box at the pinnacle of Meissonnier’s artistic achievement.

Small, ornate boxes such as this were used to hold snuff tobacco and functioned as highly personal luxury objects that conveyed the owner’s wealth, refinement, and social standing. Often exchanged as prestigious gifts, they were among the most sophisticated expressions of craftsmanship and design in 18th-century Europe.

The snuffbox also carries an important royal and modern history. It was made for the dowager Queen of Spain, Maria Anna of Neuburg, and bears her coat of arms alongside that of her late husband, Charles II. During World War II, it was looted by the Nazis from the collection of Parisian collector David David-Weill. The object was restituted to him in 1946 after passing through the Munich Central Collecting Point, administered by the Allied Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program.

Now on view:

These Truths: The Declarations of Independence

American Philosophical Society Museum, Philadelphia, 10 April 2026 — 3 January 2027

These Truths: The Declarations of Independence explores how Americans used and reproduced the document during the first fifty years of its history.

At first it served as a pronouncement of news, later a political tool, and then transformed into a national symbol. The creation of the Declaration was a process, not an event, and its story is more complex than assumed. The many copies of the Declaration in the exhibition offer a reminder that the Declaration’s ‘truths’ were never static and each era reevaluated their meaning.

These Truths draws on the APS’s extensive Library and Museum holdings. Highlights of the exhibition include a first printing of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, the chair Thomas Jefferson sat in while writing the Declaration of Independence, John Binns’ 1819 printing of the Declaration, and William James Stone’s 1823 printing of the Declaration.

Distributed by Penn Press:

David Gary, Emily Sneff, and Patrick Spero, These Truths: The Declarations of Independence (Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society Press, 2026), 100 pages, ISBN: 9781606181744, $30.