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In June 2023 I visited the Worcester Art Museum to see an exhibition of Impressionist art just before it closed. I didn’t expect to find much beyond that: Worcester, Massachusetts (pop. 200,000) hasn’t come on my radar as a major destination for art-lovers.

Well, color me surprised! The Impressionist paintings in the exhibition didn’t thrill me, but I discovered that the Worcester Art Museum has a remarkably good collection of European and American paintings, thoughtfully chosen to illustrate most major periods of European and American art.

This post is available as a video at https://youtu.be/46yLUJNpmi4.

The WAM – like the Metropolitan Museum in New York – was founded by a group of prominent local men. It opened its doors in 1898, and – again like the Metropolitan Museum – it began in one small building, expanding as its collections grew. Over the course of the 20th century, the WAM’s earliest acquisitions of plaster casts of ancient and Renaissance sculptures were joined by a major collection of Japanese prints, a 12th-century chapter house from a French monastery, Roman mosaics from Antioch, the second-best collection of arms and armor in the United States (look at this helmet!), and a significant group of American and European paintings.

For my current research project, I’m interested in the progress of portraiture in Europe and the United States. In this series of posts, I’ll be looking at portraits in the WAM not room-by-room, but in chronological order. This post includes European portraits of the 1500s, with examples from Italy and France.

The photos in this series of posts that include frames are ones that I took: I prefer seeing paintings in their frames. Images without frames are from the Worcester Art Museum’s site or Wikipedia, as noted.

Mid-1500s, Italy: Ridolfo Ghirlandaio (?)

The identity of this benign-looking clergyman (I love his slight smile!) is no longer known. Portraits were almost unheard of during the Middle Ages – certainly not for clergymen, who were expected to avoid the sin of vanity. But during the Renaissance (i.e., beginning ca. 1420), portraits became enormously popular. This one is very much in the style of a late 15th-century portrait: bust-length, with the figure’s head at the center and shown in three-quarter view (halfway between profile and full-frontal). By the time this was painted, the type of portrait shown below was more common. But Ridolfo Ghirlandaio (1483-1561), the artist to whom this painting is attributed, was the son of Domenico Ghirlandaio, one of the most prominent painters of the late 15th century. From early training and from family pride, Ridolfo may have chosen to continue executing the earlier style of portrait.

Early 1560s, Italy: follower of Agnolo Bronzino

This portrait of Giovanna Chevara and her son Giovanni Montalvo was executed not long after the Ghirlandaio portrait, but the small heads and elongated limbs mark it as in the style of Agnolo Bronzino, a leading Mannerist. Giovanna, a Spaniard, was a member of the court of Eleonora of Toledo, wife of Cosimo I de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany. On the right is a portrait of Eleonora of Toledo executed by Bronzino himself some 15 years earlier (at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence). Is it the sitter or the artist that makes that one so much more memorable?

Ca. 1580, French: School of Fontainebleau

And now for something completely different … In France, at the court of Henry II, considerably more risqué paintings were being created. This “boudoir painting” of an unknown lady at the court is modeled after similar works by France’s leading court painter, François Clouet.

Next week: Dutch portraits of the 17th century.

More

• For the Resurrecting Romanticism conference in October 2023, I’m working on a talk on art at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, a.k.a. the Columbian Exposition. One of the questions I’ll be addressing is why the organizers of the Exposition, and the painters whose works appeared there, were so very keen to surpass the buildings and exhibitions of the 1889 Paris world’s fair. This series of posts will survey European portraits from the Renaissance to the 19th century, and then American portraits. Eventually I’ll post on other paintings at the Worcester Art Museum.
• If the history of Western painting interests you, check out my Innovators in Painting: a 140-page survey focusing on innovations that gave painters more power to make their viewers stop, look, and think about paintings.
• Want wonderful art delivered weekly to your inbox? Check out my Sunday Recommendations list and rewards for recurring support: details here. For examples of favorite recommendations from past years, click here.