Snapshot of old Europe: Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum showcases Renaissance portraits

Detail of a painting by Jan Mostaert, titled 'Portrait of an African Man', painted around 1525-1530. It is part of the 'Remember Me' exhibit at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Photo: AP

As Covid-19 lockdowns ease and borders reopen, there is a gathering at Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum of people from around Europe, depicted in more than 100 Renaissance portraits.

The Dutch national museum's new exhibition Remember Me, covers the century 1470-1570 and features portraits from across the continent by masters including Albrecht Duerer, Hans Holbein and Titian that underscore humanity's enduring desire to be remembered.

It also shows the lengths artists went to to portray people, their wealth, jobs, power and love for one another.

While the exhibition has been in the works since before the global pandemic swept the world last year, the wish to be remembered is something that felt more pressing than ever amid lockdowns, said the museum's general director Taco Dibbits.

"We now felt with the corona crisis that people were so far away they couldn’t come to you. You couldn’t travel,” said Dibbits recently.

”That was always the case in the Renaissance, when it was far harder to travel and... there was this great longing to have the person with you. I think something that we felt over the last one-and-a-half years.

A visitor looks at Dirck Jacobsz' portrait of 'Pompeius Occo', left, while a 'Reverse: Vanitas Still Life' by Barthel Bruyn the Elder is seen at right, during a preview of the 'Remember Me' exhibit at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Photo: AP

”The show offers a snapshot of European society in the Renaissance period and includes for the first time in a single exhibition the two earliest individual portraits of Black men known in Europe – a painting by Jan Jansz Mostaert of a man in military attire who was possibly Christophle le More, a personal bodyguard to Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, and a 1508 drawing, Portrait Of An African Man, in black chalk by Albrecht Duerer that is on loan from Vienna's Albertina Collection.

For Dibbits and Matthias Ubl, the museum's curator of Early Netherlandish, Italian and German painting, one of the standout highlights of the show is the enigmatic Portrait Of A Young Girl, painted around 1470 by Petrus Christus.

The portrait of an unknown girl is on loan from the Gemaeldegalerie in Berlin, the first time the painting has left the museum since 1994.

A woman takes a picture of a self-portrait by female painter Sofonisba Anguissola, titled 'Self-Portrait At The Easel', painted around 1556-1557, at the 'Remember Me' exhibit. Photo: AP

Ubl said he first became fascinated by the work when he saw it on a poster as a student in London around 20 years ago.

"When I first saw it, I thought, ‘wow, this is just so amazing. This is one of the most beautiful portraits there is.’ And now it’s here and it’s almost unreal,” said Ubl.

Getting all the loaned portraits to Amsterdam from museums around Europe, Britain and United States, was a feat in itself at a time of travel restrictions. The show runs to Jan 16.

“We’re incredibly grateful that we got them all together,” said Dibbits.

“And it’s really like a (re)union, you could say. It was like real people now get back together again and also these people from the Renaissance are now here gathered again together.” – AP