Renaissance Faces: Van Eyck to Titian

Beautiful exhibition at the National Gallery which brought together portraits from the Northern and Italian Renaissance together.

Arranged in themes it showed the works together not in northern and southern rooms so you could see how the north influence the south and how the south then took the techniques it learnt and ran with them.

The exhibition was full of old friends and I spent a lot of time working out where I had seen pictures before. Most wonderful was bringing the Van Eyck self portrait together with his portrait of his wife. Surely these were designed as a pair and it was so lovely to see them together again.

My favourite has to me the Memling, probably of a Venetian, holding a coin. The detail in the face is so fine down to individual strands of hair against the landscape. Also worth mentioning is the stunning red chalk self portrait by Pontormo.

Even better was that this was a bonus afternoon brought about by a power cut at work which meant we were all let out early!

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