For my virtual exhibition, I have chosen a thematic exhibition of portraits. I will be focusing on three different artist who dominated during the high renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo Buonarroti and Raphael Sanzio da Urbino. I have chosen the thematic exhibition of portraits because during the high renaissance portraits was really important, it provided a way to record a person’s individuality, image, also portraits gave us the opportunity to see through the persons soul, it reported one’s sanctity, righteousness, successes, knowledge etc. As Leon Battista Alberti’s once said, “Painting contains a divine force which not only makes absent men present, as friendship is said to do, moreover makes the dead seem almost alive.” Portraits were once rare, there was a lot of time and work put into the portraits, it took hours and days for a person to capture an image of themselves and the person would most likely have to sit for long hours a day. Today, it only takes us a matter of seconds to capture an image and because of that we live in an image saturated environment which results on many of us not taking the time to actually think about the image were looking at. Portraits gave us the opportunity to actually take an interest on human being’s achievement and individuality all those values became more important.

For each artist I chose two portraits of women and a self-portrait of the artist, for Leonardo I chose the portraits Mona Lisa, Lady with an Ermine and Portrait of a Man in Red Chalk, Michelangelo I chose Cleopatra, Leda and the Swan and The Last Judgement and finally Raphael I chose La Fornarina, Young woman with a Unicorn and Portrait of a young man. For the first time in a long time during the high renaissance there was an increase in portraits of women. Women were the common subjects of most of the art in the high renaissance, with that being said we can see that women both influenced and were influenced by the ideals that were set in place within high renaissance art. Unfortunately, most of the portraits of women were created by men, which means the images of women were created by an ideal in terms of behaviors and the physical attributes that women should have in order to be considered beautiful enough to be glorified. All three artists were the best of their time, my interest in this subject is to be able to show and discover what made each artist unique in the choices made of how and why they painted the women like so, also the interpretation of themselves within their self-portraits, which would show the viewers how they would’ve liked to be represented and remembered.

To better understand why they painted the portraits like they did, it helps to understand each artist characteristics. Leonardo was as much as a scientist as an artist, also he studied human anatomy and used the knowledge to glorify the “perfect” men, he painted beautiful women, most of whom seem to hold secrets. Michelangelo was a mysterious person he didn’t paint many self-portraits of himself or portraits of others, he was the type to go big or go home, this is why I chose the Last Judgement as Michelangelo’s “self-portrait” only confirmed self-portraits painted by Michelangelo has been the ones he’s included in his works which is very few. Michelangelo showed extreme energy and force through his art, he was a troublemaker deeply and devoted to god, and he painted women who looked quite masculine. Raphael idealized and studied Leonardo and Michelangelo work and incorporated essentials of their styles into his own, he painted beautiful, gentle women, unfortunately Raphael passed quite young so we weren’t able to see a full development of his work.

I want to begin with the showing of Leonardo da Vinci’s work since he was the oldest, I will be presenting of course the most famous portrait of all time “The Mona Lisa followed by Lady with an Ermine and portrait of a man in red chalk” next I will follow up with Michelangelo practically the middle child, I guess that’s why he was viewed as such a troublemaker you know what we all think about the middle child, I will present “Cleopatra, Leda and the swan and the Last Jugement”. Finally, I will end it with Raphael, presenting “La Fornarina, Young woman with a unicorn and Portrait of a young man.”
Today, through social media or through a text message were able to share important moments, our beliefs/ideas, express ourselves and show others what’s going on in our lives through photography, humans are social beings and its difficult for humans to survive alone. People want others to view them a certain way in order to feel good about themselves, a lot of the time the goal is to project their preferred identities to others. As the artist painted the portraits I am sure the thoughts we have today before posting a photo or sending it out for others to see are similar to what the artist felt as they painted a portrait of either themselves or of others. there is a sense of intimacy and vulnerability that came from portraits. During the high renaissance everyday women were able to be acknowledged more through paintings they partook in that in order to share a moment of their lives, whether it was marriage, birth of a child, new home etc. Self-portraits must’ve been difficult to draw especially as an artist, it’s interesting to see how each artist uniquely painted themselves we can truly see their personality seep through their self-portraits.