As part of the series #ArbusMetSquad, Teen Studio participants Halina S., Kimberly S., and Nicole G. share the portraits they made inspired by the exhibition diane arbus: in the beginning.

Artists of the Moche cultures excelled at the creation of “portrait vessels,” so-called for their striking apparent resemblance to specific individuals.

Written by a team of international scholars, The Renaissance Portrait provides new insight into the early history of portraiture in Italy, examining in detail how its major art centers—Florence, the princely courts, and Venice—saw the rapid development of portraiture as closely linked to Renaissance society and politics, ideals of the individual, and concepts of beauty.

Often the very act of commissioning a portrait was an indication of the ruler’s power and dynastic legitimacy.

With less than a week left to visit Celebrating Tintoretto: Portrait Paintings and Studio Drawings, one of the exhibition's curators muses on the vibrant modernity and astonishing immediacy of Jacopo Tintoretto's small-scale portraits.

Patronage for miniatures extended beyond the court to include the political and merchant elite, eager to own and wear such stunning small portraits of loved ones.

Portraits and caricatures accounted for a significant percentage of the prints made for sale or as book illustrations. Ceramics, silhouettes, coins, medals, and waxes bore likenesses.

Teen Advisory Group member Aziza compares a Renaissance portrait with a helmet mask made by the Mende or Sherbro peoples from Sierra Leone.

Roman Egypt
Mummy Portraits
Dating and Styles
Early European Interest in Mummy Portraits

2015

"Always in front of a human face you have an emotional reaction."

The Artist Project is an online series in which we give artists an opportunity to respond to our encyclopedic collection.

A long-neglected area of Egyptian art – works associated with protection and healing – will be explored in the exhibition The Art of Medicine in Ancient Egypt, opening at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in fall 2005. By focusing on this fundamen-tal, yet little-known aspect of Egyptian art, the exhibition will provide a new perspective on some 65 of the most beautiful and intriguing works from the Museum's renowned collection. The centerpiece will be the Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus – the sole bor-rowed work in the exhibition – which is on loan from the New York Academy of Medicine. This manuscript, dating from the Second Intermediate Period (ca. 1650-1550 B.C.), is one of only two complete medical texts from ancient Egypt. Rarely seen even by Egyptologists, the manuscript's presentation at the Metropolitan represents its first public display in more than half a century.