The special exhibition Portraits! Surprising Encounters from Botticelli to Lempicka at the Gemäldegalerie (Old Masters Gallery) ‒ 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 works alive and providing opportunities to reflect on presentations by self and others, 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 come into direct contact with one another.

80 Masterpieces

The exhibition’s starting point is the outstanding international collection of portraits at the Gemäldegalerie, enhanced 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 fifteenth to the twentieth centuries.

Some 80 masterworks by artists such as Petrus Christus, Mino da Fiesole, Botticelli, Giorgione, Dürer, Cranach the Elder, Holbein the Younger, Tizian, 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.

A richly illustrated catalogue offers a more in-depth look at the works and their mutual relationships.

The exhibition is curated by Sven Jakstat and Stephan Kemperdick, with the assistance of Marie-Luise Hugler.