Portrait of a woman in Renaissance dress facing left, with blond hair and a yellow dress

Painted Love: Renaissance Marriage Portraits

Exhibition passed: 26 May 2023 – 1 October 2023

Included in general admission tickets
Suitable for all ages
Wheelchair accessible

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Painted Love: Renaissance Marriage Portraits

This lavish exhibition explores the role of portraiture in the process of marriage in Renaissance Europe. Marriage portraits not only documented the legal union of spouses, capturing that key moment in the sitters’ lives, intimate and personal as well as public and formal, but also celebrated the union of families, their wealth, power and land, and the forging of political alliances.

Painted Love: Renaissance Marriage Portraits will explore the way marriage portraiture reflected the complex politics of fifteenth and sixteenth century Europe. Wedlock was often the culmination of years of negotiations, with portraits of eligible women and men being in demand and circulated from an early age. The show will also consider the combination between idealism and realism in one likeness. In addition to paintings, the exhibition includes objects associated with the rituals of marriage: love tokens, rings, gifts, and commemorative tableware.

The exhibition includes prestigious loans from the National Gallery, the British Museum, the Royal Collection Trust, the Ashmolean and the V&A, alongside numerous works from important private collections.