Covered faces in hidden places: old masters at the Met

The unusual current show at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, Hidden Faces: Covered Portraits of the Renaissance, exhibits small, rarely seen and little-known works of art by Memling, Dürer, Cranach, Holbein and Titian, as well as many obscure and unnamed artists, from 1430 to 1650.   Some artists painted roundels with scoundrels and unhinged bishops in hinged boxes.

These paperback-sized, often double-sided portraits are hidden beneath embellished sliding covers.  The portraits suggest both the identity of the subjects and the intellectual, moral and spiritual qualities that distinguished them in life and survive after death.  Easily held and carried, they could be dramatically opened up by the owner who, like a magician, displayed a portrait that had been kept out of sight.  These works range from the solemn unveiling of sacred objects to the disclosure of erotic scenes.  The contrast between the portrait and cover, between concealment and revelation, enhances their significance and attraction.  They resemble, in miniature, one of the greatest paintings in the world, Jan van Eyck’s massive Ghent Altarpiece in Belgium, with double sets of folded wings and paintings on both the inner and outer panels.

The thirteen contributors to the exhibition’s small-print catalogue are more interested in the covers that hide the portraits and the identification of obscure subjects than in the portraits themselves.  One writes, “Clearly beveled side edges with abrasion marks show that the cover was inserted from below into the groove between the inner and outer frames of Holzschuhers’s portrait.”  Many experts speculate and squabble about the supposed dates, attribution of the artists, names of the subjects and meaning of the mysterious allegories behind these portraits.  They state, “the identifications of both the artist and sitter are still open to debate. . . . This double-sided portrait has been open to multiple interpretations and hypotheses.”  This scholarly and rather dull book appeals more to a specialist than to a general audience.

The book is enlivened, however, by the scary and monstrous Wild Man who surprisingly turns up in the back of three portraits.  A mythical medieval woodland figure, like a satyr or faun, he is nearly naked, muscular, dark-skinned, thick-bearded and hairy as a bear. A fugitive from the forest, he’s brought by art into civilised life and conscripted the bearer and protector of a coat of arms.  By contrast, in Dürer’s superb engraving Coat of Arms with Skull, the Wild Man, associated with virility and lust, embraces a youthful and comely bride who turns away with fear and disgust.  Connected to the huge jawless fang-toothed skull beneath her, she is the unwitting victim of Lust and Death.

Comparing Rogier van der Weyden’s Portrait of a Lady with his workshop’s version of this woman, one author writes, “the difference in quality is so striking that the London portrait can only be attributed to a workshop assistant.”  But she doesn’t explain why Rogier’s work is superior.  His older Lady has more character: a pensive and severe expression, darker skin, unusually shaped lips, transparent silk blouse, gold-buckled red belt and tightly clasped hands.

Portrait of a Lady (van der Weyden)

In his book Memling’s Portraits, Till-Holgar Borchert provides a more incisive description of Portrait of a Man than this volume does: “The portrait shows a young man with long, dark hair at prayer, who is depicted at half-length, turned to the right.  He wears a magnificent white shirt embroidered with gold bands and tied with gold ribbons, over which is placed a black fur cloak with slits for the arms.”  On the reverse, the curvilinear design of the grey and white majolica jug, whose flowers symbolise the Virgin’s joys and sorrows, vividly contrasts to the intricate soft colours of the oriental carpet beneath it.

In Memling’s enigmatic Allegory of Chastity, “a young, beautifully dressed maiden, her dark hair cascading down her back, emerges from an amethyst mountain before a tranquil landscape.”  At the foot of the mountain that symbolises peace, two lions with fierce expressions, swirling tails and golden shields awkwardly placed on their backs protect her purity.  Fine details of men on horseback, a walled and turreted town, calm sea and bluish jagged mountain, which echoes the maiden’s exalted elevation, appear in the background.

Allegory of Chastity (Hans Memling)

Lucas Cranach portrayed his friend Martin Luther, a former Augustinian monk, and the latter’s wife Katharina von Bora, who’d escaped with his help from a Cistercian convent.  The rough and realistic Luther, showing his peasant origins, has unruly brown hair tumbling onto his creased forehead, stern features, bold nose, twisted mouth, unshaven stubbly face and double chin.  He’s a tough hombre, with enough brute force to break his vows, defy the Catholic Church and incite the Protestant Reformation.

One expert strains unconvincingly to match Jacometto Veneziano’s unidentified Portrait of a Man with Titian’s portraits of the Venetian scholar and diplomat Pietro Bembo.  But Veneziano’s man, unlike Titian’s Bembo, has a helmet of hair, round clean-shaven face, wide nose, full lips, plain jacket and blank expression.

To add my own speculation: the Unknown Artist’s portrait of the German Friedrich Faut von Monsperg wears a black hat and jacket, has a rough countenance, big nose, down-turned mouth and prognathous jaw (p.80).  Fifteen years later Jacopo de’ Barbari’s Portrait of a Man (‘The German’), a merchant residing in Venice (p.121), looks remarkably like Friedrich.  Now older and gentler, his features are softened and blond hair is longer.  More prosperous and well dressed, he wears a fur-trimmed coat over an embroidered shirt.  As in the portrait of Friedrich, a window on the left reveals a landscape.  Could Friedrich, like many other Germans, have travelled from Frankfurt to work in Venice, or could Barberi have painted him in Frankfurt?  In any case, they have similar Teutonic features.

Jacopo de’ Barbari – Ritratto di un Tedesco

The most attractive allegory appears behind the Venetian German.  A handsome, ideally formed nude couple, reminiscent of Adam and Eve, are portrayed beneath an arch, and between a pillar and two tall narrow windows in an empty room.  Both equally tall and painted in grisaille, the man stands behind the woman with her long blond tresses.  He gazes directly at her; she looks down at the mirror in her right hand and reveals her full-frontal pubic hair.  Their knees touch, and she places her left leg between his long limbs.  In apparently pre-nuptial foreplay, his left hand cups her left breast as her left hand slides down his belly to his genitals.  The green laurel leaf sprouting from a pristine glass of water in the foreground seems to suggest the growth of their future children once their love has been consummated.

These hidden faces  justify the claim of the fifteenth-century architect Leon Battista Alberti, who wrote that portraits bestowed eternal life and fame by preserving the image, memory and virtues of the subjects: “Painting contains a divine force which not only makes absent men present, but makes the dead seem almost alive.  Even after many centuries they are recognised with great pleasure and with great admiration for the painter.”

Jeffrey Meyers has published five books on art: Painting and the Novel, The Enemy: A Biography of Wyndham Lewis, Impressionist Quartet, Modigliani: A Life and Alex Colville: The Mystery of the Real.

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