"The Art of Portraiture" Exhibition at the Hermitage

"Archaeology usually doesn't participate in such exhibitions. But it has a direct connection to portraiture," said the exhibition curator, Head of the Department of the Ancient World, Anna Trofimova. "A large archaeology section shows the origins of portraiture from ancient cults, from rituals, from humanity's desire for immortality. This function of the portrait has always persisted. The person departs, but their image lives on forever. Portraiture has always been close to the ruling elite. Images on coins, medals, and ceremonial portraits conveyed power. Few notice that in different eras, people's faces express different emotions. For example, in Ancient Greece—passion and pathos. In Japanese culture, Soviet art, the Baroque era, the Renaissance—these are all different states that portraits reveal," noted curator Anna Trofimova.

The exhibition features over 750 works of painting, graphics, sculpture, and photography spanning 4,000 years—from deep antiquity to the present. Through portraits, you explore all world art and nearly the entire history of humanity. The exposition is organized chronologically—from ancient civilizations to modernity. The exhibition showcases much unique archaeological material, such as the burial masks from the Oglakhtinsky burial ground discovered in excavations in southern Siberia, or collections of coins and jewelry depicting various rulers.

A Fayum portrait catches the eye—a unique phenomenon of Roman Egypt from the 1st–3rd centuries CE. These portraits, created in the encaustic tempera technique, are considered prototypes of Byzantine icons. Despite their striking realism, they served as replacements for burial masks and were directed toward the spiritual rather than the physical.

Masterpieces by classical artists, from Titian and Perugino to Rembrandt and Goya, represent New Age portraiture. And here, one wants to linger on one of the stars of the Hermitage's portrait exhibition. It particularly delights the eye after the 2020 restoration. Italian artist Bronzino, court painter to the entire Medici family, created a portrait of 17-year-old Cosimo de' Medici in 1537. He is assuming the title of Duke of Florence after the murder of his father Alessandro and is just beginning his rule. The Hermitage portrait still holds its mystery: with his right hand, the young duke holds Fortune on a medal; with his left, he points to the landscape outside the window, the glow of fire on the horizon, and tiny figures of fleeing people. The 1530s were a dangerous and unpleasant time: after the siege of Florence, the republic fell along with centuries of Florentine liberty; wars for Italy between Spaniards and French had been raging for over two decades, with active involvement from the Holy Roman Emperor and Roman Popes, including Medici family members. The youth in the portrait has an expressive appearance, but the luck he firmly grasps in his hand clearly won't hurt—Cosimo de' Medici has a long life ahead, and he doesn't yet know he'll be known in history as "Cosimo I." (insert photo)

The portrait is one of the most intriguing and mysterious genres of fine art. At its core lies the eternal conflict between reality and fiction, the mask embodying social representation of true nature.

The final section of the exhibition marks the transition from realism to modernism, when the advent of photography made naturalism give way to subjective authorial vision, as shown in portraits by Van Gogh, Cézanne, Picasso, and Soutine. A peculiar apogee of modernist disintegration and depersonalization is Francis Bacon's "Sketch for a Portrait" from the V–A–C foundation collection.

Art historian and art journalist Elizaveta Klimova, who visited the exhibition, shared: "One of the oldest functions of the portrait is the representation of power. In depictions of rulers, portrait likeness played far from the primary role—the symbolism related to the deification of monarchs and showing whether they were formidable or merciful was more important. But the key function of the portrait, as Elizaveta Klimova emphasized, is tied to reflecting emotional human types in the face and Aristotle's theory of physiognomy—here, there are essentially no images of specific people, but rather illustrations of classifications. All these purposes of the portrait are vividly demonstrated with the richest material, which is a pleasure to explore," she added.

An octagonal mirror in a black carved frame from the 17th century, roughly dating the object, concludes the exhibition but could just as well open it or even replace many exhibits. The mirror is more than an interior element—it's a favorite artistic attribute and symbol, a challenge and task for any master from Jan van Eyck to M.C. Escher.