The Power of Appearances: Renaissance and Reformation Portrait Prints will explore the nature of the portrait, exhibiting various renderings of cultural personalities like reformer Martin Luther and Elizabeth I, Queen of England.
The exhibition of 62 prints is organized by the National Lending Service of the National Gallery of Art in Washington. It will comprise prints ranging in date from 1500 to 1601. Together, they suggest that the portrait is inextricable from its societal context, a result of complex negotiations between the sitter and the artist.
Artists to be showcased include Albrecht Dürer, Lucas Cranach the Elder, and Hans Holbein the Younger from Germany; Dutch printmakers Lucas van Leyden and Hendrik Goltzius; and Giorgio Ghisi and Agostino Carracci from Italy. Woodcut, engraving, and etching are the mediums they use to portray personalities like the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I,
Frederick the Wise of Saxony, Emperor Charles V, and Catherine de Medici.
Organized by H. Diane Russell, retired curator of old master prints at the National Gallery of Art, the exhibition is being coordinated at the Loeb Art Center by Patricia Phagan, the Philip and Lynn Straus Curator of Prints and Drawings. It is sponsored by The Smart Family Foundation, Inc.
Russell will lecture on the exhibition on Thursday, February 8, at 6 p.m. in Room 203, Taylor Hall. Her talk will be followed by a reception at the Art Center sponsored by Friends of the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center.
Art Center admission is free. The Loeb is open to the public Tuesdays through Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sundays, from 1 to 5 p.m. The Center is wheelchair accessible. For more information, call (845) 437-5632.
Vassar College is a highly selective, coeducational, independent, residential liberal arts college founded in 1861.
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