Exhibition Details
This exhibition is the first to examine an intriguing but largely unknown side—in the literal sense—of Renaissance painting: multisided portraits in which the sitter’s likeness was concealed by a hinged or sliding cover, within a box, or by a dual-faced format.
Additional Details
The covers and reverses of these small, private portraits were adorned with puzzlelike emblems, epigrams, allegories, and mythologies that celebrated the sitter’s character, and they represent some of the most inventive and unique secular imagery of the Renaissance. The viewer had to decode the meaning of the symbolic portrait before lifting, sliding, or turning the image over to unmask the face below.
Location
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 5th Ave
New York, NY 10028
Images (L to R): Detail from Lorenzo Lotto. Portrait of a Woman (detail), ca. 1505. Oil on wood panel; Detail from Lorenzo Lotto. Portrait Cover with on Allegory (detail), ca. 1505. Oil on wood panel / courtesy of The Met Museum