Painted Love: Renaissance Marriage Portraits

Your General Entry ticket includes entry to all exhibitions and the Collection Galleries.

The Times ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “it tugs the heartstrings and stirs the loins”
The Guardian ⭐⭐⭐⭐

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.

This exhibition is made possible with a grant from the Weston Loan Programme with Art Fund

Sponsored by The Weiss Gallery and Agnews Gallery

Generously supported by:
The Tavolozza Foundation
Dr and Mrs Martin Clarke
Eva and Van DuBose
The Holburne Director’s Circle, Patrons and Friends

Image Credit: 

Alesso Baldovinetti, about 1426 – 1499 
Portrait of a Lady, about 1465
Bought, 1866 
© The National Gallery, London