Portraits! Surprising Encounters from Botticelli to Lempicka

Gemäldegalerie – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

16 October 2026 – 14 March 2027  

Around 90 masterpieces by artists such as Petrus Christus, Mino da Fiesole, Botticelli, Giorgione, Dürer, Cranach the Elder, Holbein the Younger, Titian, Sofonisba Anguissola, Rembrandt, Zurbarán, Anna Dorothea Therbusch, and Tamara de Lempicka encompass a wide variety of portraiture’s diverse aspects, ranging from glorious portraits of rulers to intimate scenes of friendship and proud self-proclamations. Each encounter tells its own story and invites wonder, comparison and discovery. 

The Exhibition Sections

Various forms and functions of portraits are examined in the four sections of the exhibition. The prologue highlights the astonishing constancy of mimetic portrait art, which has spanned many centuries, and also sheds light on the genre’s roots in Europe. 

Portrait Types North and South of the Alps 

The first section of the exhibition explore the development of portraiture in Italy and the North during the Renaissance. Various prototypes emerged, such as the northern three-quarter profile used by Rogier van der Weyden and the strict profile preferred by Filippo Lippi. Differing tendencies towards naturalism and idealisation soon mingled and influenced the development of portrait painting in the following centuries. 

Self-Representation of the Elite 

Portraits were a powerful means of social representation and distinction. The clothing, poses, and size of a work all revealed the aspirations and status of the person depicted. Anthonis Mor’s prestigious, knee-length portrait of the Duchess Margaret of Parma, with her regal gaze, is on a par with Giambattista Moroni’s portrait of the nobleman Don Gabriel de la Cueva. 

Family, Friendship and Intimacy 

On the one hand, the section on family, friendship and intimacy is dedicated to the private aspects of portraiture. Relatives, close friends, and loved ones are captured in images that serve as personal mementos. Sofonisba Anguissola’s mother, Bianca, engages with her daughter while she paints, in a manner that is similar to how the wife of the painter Eugen Spiro looked at her husband 380 years later. Portraits of the deceased offer a final glimpse of them. 

Portraits of Art Collectors and Artists 

The final section of the exhibition focuses on portraits of art collectors and artists. For centuries, self-portraits have not only served as a means of self-exploration, but also as a way of positioning oneself and one’s work within traditional contexts. Therbusch portrays herself as an intellectual, while Poussin and Anton Raphael Mengs use their self-portraits to reflect on their lives and artistic fame.

Self-Reflections in the Age of Selfies 

“Portraits” is not just an art historical exhibition; it also reflects our current image-obsessed world. In the age of selfies and social media:how do we construct our identity? How do we read faces? And what does our view reveal about ourselves? The reflection of masterworks from the past provides the perfect opportunity to study and understand these current questions. 

Exhibition Catalogue 

A richly illustrated catalogue provides an in-depth exploration of the works and their relationships with each other (Michael Imhof-Verlag, Petersberg). 

Curatorial Team 

The exhibition is curated by Sven Jakstat and Stephan Kemperdick, with assistance from Marie-Luise Hugler. 

EXHIBITION TEXTS

“Painting possesses a divine power […] that brings absent people into the present; and even more than that, it makes the deceased appear as if they were alive, even after many centuries, so that they are recognized by spectators with pleasure and deep admiration for the artist.”

This is how Leon Battista Alberti describes the function of the still-young genre of portraiture in his treatise on painting from 1435, not without addressing ist creators. For portraits reveal not only the person but also the individual style of the artist. 

Portraits also possess a timeless dimension: even in portraits separated by centuries, the expressions and gestures of the sitters can be strikingly similar. The exhibition pairs portraits across chronological and geographical boundaries. Works from the Gemäldegalerie enter into unexpected dialogues with one another and with portraits from other collections of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. The juxtapositions span a period from the fifteenth to the twentieth century. All the portraits gathered here share a common striving for likeness to the sitters. Posture, clothing, and accessories simultaneously convey social, political, or gender-specific meanings. The exhibition invites reflection on how people saw themselves in the past and how we see ourselves in the age of selfies and social media. 

Prologue 

From antiquity to the modern era, certain elements have remained constant in portraiture. This is true, for example, of the way the sitter addresses the viewer through direct eye contact. We find this in mummy portraits from Roman Egypt as well as in portraits of our own time. The direct gaze creates a particular presence, one that is also sought in depictions of the “Holy Face of Christ.” 

Portraits of donors played a significant role in the development of portraiture. They document the growing self-confidence of the patrons, as well as their status and role in society. While early donor figures were often depicted on a smaller scale, from the fifteenth century onward they attained the same scale as the figures of saints. At the same time, likeness became a central category and a key objective of portraiture. 

Painting accuracy and the precise rendering of the smallest details are just as much a possibility in portraiture as abstraction, extending all the way to geometric stylization. Both approaches can be studied across theages in the works featured in this exhibition.

Portrait Types North and South of the Alps 

The modern portrait, with its emphasis on likeness, emerged in the fifteenth century. Two regions were pivotal to its development: Italy and the Netherlands. In Italy, there was initially a preference for the strict profile view, which drew on ancient coins and medals. In the North, however, the three-quarter profile quickly became established. It appears more lifelike and allows for direct eye contact between sitter and viewer. This was accompanied by a greater naturalism in the rendering of surfaces, skin, and fabrics. In Italian painting, by contrast, there was a tendency toward greater stylization. Likewise, classical elements – particularly architectural features – were repeatedly integrated into portraits. Sculptural portrait busts made of marble, which were initially completely unknown in the North, demonstrate a direct connection to Roman antiquity. 

At the same time, there was a lively exchange of artworks and ideas across the Alps. The three-quarter profile or the portrait set against a landscape – another Flemish innovation – was adopted in Italy. Conversely, classical motifs and a new physicality of the figures, inspired by the Italian Renaissance, took root in the North. Such influences from the South intensified around 1500 and continued to have an impact well into the nineteenth century and beyond.

Self-Representation of the Elite 

The portrait has always been – and remains – a powerful means of social representation. Social and political identities are manifested in clothing, accessories, and poses – often more clearly than in faces and expressions. The cut and material of clothing carry significant meaning that is easily understood even by today’s viewers. Velvet and shimmering gold brocades suggest wealth, but black fabrics were also expensive and signaled membership in the upper class just as much as, for example, heavy gold jewelry. 

Objects can allude to a person’s profession or illustrate their taste, education, or privileges – in Velázquez’s work, for instance, a mere chair back reveals a lady’s high social standing. Grand formats, even life-size depictions, attest not least to the resources available to the sitters. They appear with similar intentions from around 1500 to the present day. 

Family, Friendship, and Intimacy 

In addition to its representational purposes, the portrait has always served private functions as well. Relatives, close friends, and loved ones are captured in images that serve as mementos and make familial, friendly, or social relationships visible. The exchange of glances between the artist and the sitter often reveals a particular closeness. 

Portraits of family members or close persons also make clear that notions of family, marriage, childhood, old age, and gender roles have historically been subject to change. The depiction of mothers, spouses, lovers, or children always navigates the tension between individual personality and social expectations. It is precisely in this that these images reflect the complex relationship between individuality and social norms. 

At the same time, the portrait has the power to make people appear present even after their death. Since the early modern period, this ability has been understood as a special achievement of painting. Albrecht Dürer wrote that art preserves “the images of men and women after their death.” 

Beauty and Transience 

Portraits reflect the ideals of beauty of their time – particularly clearly in portraits of young women. To meet the wishes of their patrons, painters often idealize the appearance of their sitters. In portraits of women, sensual aspects are frequently emphasized. However, in the early modern period, nudity or revealing clothing in a portrait was accepted only if legitimized by a specific role or narrative. Thus, Maria Mancini appears as Cleopatra – a disguise that justifies the exposure of her breast. In modernist art, particularly in private portraiture, such a pretext is no longer necessary, as demonstrated by the portrait of Lovis Corinth’s wife. 

Portraits of elderly people and portraits of the deceased, which preserve the last image of a person, form a counterpoint to this. They invite us to reflect on loss, transience, and the portrait as a medium of memory. In the early modern period, there was also a widespread belief that a person’s nature and character are revealed particularly clearly in an aged face. At the same time, depicting aged faces offered painters the opportunity to demonstrate their artistic skills. 

Portraits of Artists and Art Collectors 

Portraits of artists reflect aesthetic and ethical ideals, as well as the status that they claimed for themselves or that was attributed to them. When their portraits are juxtaposed, similarities and differences in the various ways they are presented become clearly apparent. Sometimes artists are shown at work; in other cases, however, there are no references to their profession. Self-portraits, in particular, served for centuries not only as a means of exploring one’s own personality but also of situating one’s own work within artistic traditions. 

Portraits of art collectors also occupy a special place within the portrait genre. In these works, collectors are depicted in relation to the art they have collected. Shown side by side, these portraits illustrate changing understanding of and approaches to works of art.

WORKS on Display

Prologue

Sandro Botticelli Giuliano de'Medici 1478 57,1 x 38,4 cm Gemäldegalerie, Kat.Nr. 106

Tamara de Lempicka Porträt um 1931 45 x 37 cm Sammlung Ulla und Heiner Pietzsch, Neue Nationalgalerie, Inv.-Nr. B UHP 87/13

Portrait Types North and South of the Alps 

Albrecht Dürer Bildnis des Hieronymus Holzschuher, mit originalem Deckel 1526 69,2 x 56 cm Gemäldegalerie, Kat.Nr. 557E

Albrecht Dürer Bildnis einer jungen Venezianerin um 1506 29,1 x 23,5 cm Gemäldegalerie, Kat.Nr. 557G 12.1 

Lucas Cranach d. Ä. Bildnis der Frau eines Rechtsgelehrten 1503 52,6 x 36,7 cm Gemäldegalerie, Kat.Nr. 1907

Self-Representation of the Elite 

Hans Holbein d. J. Der Kaufmann Georg Gisze 1532 97,5 x 86,2 cm Gemäldegalerie, Kat.Nr. 586

Albrecht Dürer Bildnis eines Mädchens mit rotem Barett 1507 32,5 x 22,3 cm Gemäldegalerie, Kat. Nr. 557I 

Family, Friendship, and Intimacy 

Tizian Bildnis der Clarissa Strozzi 1542 121,7 x 104,6 cm Gemäldegalerie, Kat.Nr. 160A 21.2 

Peter Paul Rubens Das Kind mit dem Vogel um 1614/25 50,9 x 41 cm Gemäldegalerie, Kat.Nr. 763 

Francisco de Zurbarán Bildnis des Don Alonso Verdugo de Albornoz 1635 186,6 x 104,5 cm Gemäldegalerie, Kat.Nr. 404C

Beauty and Transience 

Thomas Gainsborough Bildnis der Margaret Gainsborough um 1758 76 x 63,5 cm Gemäldegalerie, Kat.Nr. 2200 28.2 

Peter Paul Rubens Bildnis einer Frau um 1637 97,7 x 71,8 cm Gemäldegalerie, Kat.Nr. 762A 29.1 

Joshua Reynolds Bildnis der Lady Sunderlin 1786 238,5 x 147,9 cm Gemäldegalerie, Kat.Nr. 83.4 

Lovis Corinth Donna Gravida 1909 95 x 79 cm Alte Nationalgalerie, Inv.-Nr. A II 143  

 

Balthasar Denner Kopf eines alten Mannes 1726/36 40,1 x 32,4 cm Gemäldegalerie, Kat.Nr. 1014

Portraits of Artists and Art Collectors 

Rembrandt Selbstbildnis 1634 58,4 x 47,7 cm Gemäldegalerie, Kat.Nr. 810

Lorenzo Lotto Bildnis eines Mannes mit Zirkel und Papierrolle um 1535 108,5 x 86,6 cm Gemäldegalerie, Kat.Nr. 153 

More IMAGES

Giambattista Moroni, Don Gabriel de la Cueva, 1560, 114,8 x 90,8 cm, Gemäldegalerie, Kat.Nr. 79.1
Foto: Christoph Schmidt, Berlin

 Agostino Carracci, Anna Parolina Guicciardini, 1598, and Anders Zorn, Maja, 1900
Photo: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie / Katrin Hammer

Joshua Reynolds, Lady Sunderlin, 1786, and Wilhelm Dodel, Margaret Camilla Leiteritz, 1935
Photo: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie / Katrin Hammer

Sandro Botticelli, Giuliano de'Medici, 1478, 57,1 x 38,4 cm, Gemäldegalerie, Kat.Nr. 1068
Foto: Staatliche Museen zu Berli

Sofonisba Anguissola, Bianca Ponzoni Anguissola, 1557, 100 x 76,3 cm, Gemäldegalerie, Kat.Nr. 1705
Foto: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie / Jörg P. Anders

Sebastiano del Piombo, Junge Dame mit Fruchtkorb, 1512/13, 77,7 x 61,3 cm, Gemäldegalerie, Kat.Nr. 259B
Foto: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie / Jörg P. Anders

Giovanni Cariani, Bildnis eines Astronomen, um 1520, 91,9 x 82,1 cm, Gemäldegalerie, Kat.Nr. 2201
Foto: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie / Jörg P. Anders

Anthonis Mor, Herzogin Margarete von Parma, um 1562, 106,8 x 77,6 cm, Gemäldegalerie, Kat.Nr. 585B
Foto: Christoph Schmidt, Berlin

Sandro Botticelli, Giuliano de'Medici (detail), 1478, 57,1 x 38,4 cm, Gemäldegalerie, Kat.Nr. 1068
Photo: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie / Jörg P. Anders

Christie's Old Masters: Paintings - Drawings - Sculpture 4 November

 

Major Rediscoveries in the Old Masters: Paintings - Drawings - Sculpture

The Old Masters: Paintings - Drawings - Sculpture sale brings together paintings by major figures of French art, including Jean-Honoré Fragonard, François Boucher and Jean-Baptiste Pater, as well as European masters such as Ribera, Juan van der Hamen y León, Jan I Van Kessel and Cristoforo Munari. This selection includes several important rediscoveries, foremost among them Immaculée Conception by François Boucher (€300,000-500,000). A major work from the artist's mature period demonstrates the freedom Boucher achieved in relation to academic conventions. Recently rediscovered, the painting has been linked to a drawing by the artist in the Louvre and to the Assomption in the collection of the National Galleries of Scotland.

La fête du village by Sir David Wilkie (1785-1841) is another previously unpublished work featured in the sale. Rooted in the tradition of 17th-century Flemish genre painting, this composition is revealed as a preparatory sketch for the celebrated painting The Alehouse Door, now in the Tate Britain, London, which made Wilkie the first living artist to be represented in the British national collections at the National Gallery. While the Tate Britain painting was acquired by John Julius Angerstein (1735-1823), the present sketch appears to have been retained by the artist and presented to George Watson (1767-1837), President of the Royal Scottish Academy, as attested by a letter from Wilkie preserved on the reverse of the picture (€20,000-30,000).

Unseen on the market for a century, an enchanting Tête de jeune femme by Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806) has not been publicly exhibited since 1957 (€400,000-500,000). Fragonard's characteristic virtuosity and freedom of execution are fully expressed in this portrait, whose palette recalls Rembrandt's Portrait d'Hendrickje Stoffels.

Sculpture is represented by several works from the collection of Ambassador J. William Middendorf II, including a figure of an apostle created in Limoges at the end of the 12th century (€20,000-30,000), as well as a magnificent cast of Cheval au passage, attributed to Antonio Susini after Giambologna (€150,000-250,000).

The Old Master Drawings section is composed primarily of works from the French school, notably an early drawing by François Boucher depicting Travail aux champs, a red chalk drawing by Hubert Robert, and a watercolour by Eugène Isabey representing l'Embarquement de mille volontaires sous la direction de Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807-1882) à Gênes, le 5 mai 1860.

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE SALES

Designing the Gilded Age: Drawings from the Studios of Louis C. Tiffany

The Met Fifth Avenue

October 22, 2026–February 7, 2027

This fall, The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present Designing the Gilded Age: Drawings from the Studios of Louis C. Tiffany, a major exhibition exploring the creative process behind some of Tiffany Studios' most celebrated works. On view from October 22, 2026, through February 7, 2027, the exhibition brings together nearly 120 works from the Museum’s collection—along with a select group of key loans—to examine the artistic range of Louis Comfort Tiffany and the collaborative studio that produced significant works of American decorative art. A major loan from the Chrysler Museum of Art reunites its monumental stained-glass window, Woman in a Pergola with Wisteria (1911), with the original wisteria transoms designed for the work. Recently discovered in a private home in Arizona, the transoms make possible the ensemble's first presentation together in at least half a century.

“The Met’s unparalleled collection of design drawings from the studios of Louis C. Tiffany reveals how some of the most iconic works of American decorative art came to life,” said Max Hollein, The Met’s Marina Kellen French Director and Chief Executive Officer. “The exhibition illuminates the artistry, innovation, and collaboration at the heart of Tiffany studios, while offering new insights into the cultural and aesthetic ambitions of the Gilded Age.”

“This exhibition builds on decades of conservation and sustained study of The Met’s extraordinary holdings—the largest collection of Tiffany design drawings anywhere,” said Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen, The Met’s Anthony W. and Lulu C. Wang Curator of American Decorative Arts. “As these works have been conserved to their full beauty, they reveal the richness and complexity of the studio’s creative process. The reunion of two major windows side by side with their original design drawings offers a particularly powerful moment, allowing visitors to see the transformation of an idea into a luminous work of art.”

Spanning the early 1890s through the 1920s, Designing the Gilded Age: Drawings from the Studios of Louis C. Tiffany highlights the extraordinary breadth and ambition from the studios of Louis C. Tiffany, from stained-glass windows and lamps to mosaics, enamels, textiles, and interiors created for private homes, houses of worship, theaters, and public buildings during America’s Gilded Age. These rarely seen works on paper—from quick working sketches to luminous watercolor presentation drawings—offer an unprecedented behind-the-scenes view of the collaborative artistic process that shaped the studios of Louis C. Tiffany commissions across the United States as well as in Canada, Mexico, Cuba, and Switzerland.

Many of the drawings on view document works that have since been lost, altered, or never realized, offering invaluable information about Louis C. Tiffany’s artistic vision and the breadth of his studio’s output. Organized thematically across three galleries, the exhibition explores designs for domestic interiors, ecclesiastical settings, and public and commercial commissions alongside Tiffany’s pioneering work in lighting. Select loans—including stained-glass windows, lamps, and decorative objects—will be presented in dialogue with their corresponding drawings, allowing visitors to trace the transformation from concept to finished work.

A central focus of the exhibition is the collaborative nature of Tiffany studios, which brought together a diverse group of designers, many of whom were historically uncredited. The presentation will highlight the contributions of not just Tiffany but other key figures, among them émigré and women designers—British-trained Frederick Wilson and Swiss-born Jacob Holzer as well as Agnes Northrop, Clara Driscoll, and Julia Munson—while shedding light on the broader network of artists and artisans whose work shaped Tiffany’s distinctive aesthetic. In addition, Designing the Gilded Age will examine the conservation of these fragile works on paper, with interpretive materials and digital components revealing the discoveries made through decades of study and preservation.

The Gilded Age, a period of unprecedented economic growth in late 19th- and early 20th-century America, produced the major cultural institutions of New York and the nation, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, founded in 1870. Against the backdrop of that formative period, the work of Louis Comfort Tiffany flourished. Designing the Gilded Age: Drawings from the Studios of Louis C. Tiffany also situates Tiffany’s work within the broader cultural and economic context of this period that was marked by rapid industrial growth and an expanding market for luxury goods. The drawings reveal the role of design in shaping immersive environments—from domestic interiors to sacred and civic spaces across the United States and abroad.

Exhibition Credits
The exhibition is organized by Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen, The Met’s Anthony W. and Lulu C. Wang Curator of American Decorative Arts, with Barbara Veith, Research Associate, The American Wing. 

Exhibition Catalogue

A fully illustrated catalogue by Frelinghuysen and other authors, published by The Met, will accompany the exhibition.

This in-depth study goes behind the scenes of some of the era’s most iconic designs, presenting 150 rarely seen drawings by the artists who worked in Louis C. Tiffany's studios.

IMAGES

Tiffany Studios (American, 1902–32). Design for interior, First Presbyterian Church, Poughkeepsie, New York (detail), ca. 1906-08. Transparent and opaque watercolor, and graphite on transparent paper, mounted on paper, 17 ¾ × 25 ½ in. (45.1 × 64.8 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Purchase, Walter Hoving and Julia T. Weld Gifts and Dodge Fund, 1967 (67.654.7)

Louis C. Tiffany; Agnes F. Northrop, Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company, 1892–1902, “Four Seasons” Window, Walter B. Jennings House, Burrwood, Cold Spring Harbor, New York 1897. Leaded Favrile glass, 80 5/16 × 46 1/4 in. (204 × 117.5 cm) Private collection © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Across Epochs. Gursky, Lucas, Miró, Warhol and the Art of the Long 19th Century

Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

22 October 2026 – 28 February 2027 

To mark the 150th anniversary of the Alte Nationalgalerie, the special presentation “Across Epochs” brings together works from the “long 19th century” and the late 20th century. In ten rooms spread across all three floors of the building, works by artists such as Andreas Gursky, Sarah Lucas, Joan Miró, and Andy Warhol encounter art from the 19th century. Unconventional juxtapositions offer new perspectives on familiar works and explore the question of what art is and can be. 

When the Nationalgalerie opened on Museumsinsel Berlin in 1876, it was a venue for contemporary art. Today, the Alte Nationalgalerie serves as the main building of the Nationalgalerie and is dedicated to the art of the long 19th century. All six buildings of the Nationalgalerie are linked by a jointly managed collection that spans from the late 18th century to the present day. “Across Epochs” brings this continuum to light through selected works within the historical collection presentation and invites visitors to engage in comparative, associative viewing. 

Dialogues Across Epochs and Genres 

Still lifes, self-portraits, and portraits; abstraction and figuration; painting, photography, and sculpture come together in surprising constellations. Gotthard Graubner’s (1930–2013) intense, color-saturated forms encounter new forms of perception found in Impressionism and PostImpressionism. The juxtaposition of Andy Warhol’s (1928–1987) “Diamond Dust Shoes” with a still life by Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) demonstrates how, over the course of more than a century, the genre has become a testing ground for the interplay of form, color, and surface.

Concepts of self and societal role models are also reflected across different eras: The self-portrait by painter Sabine Lepsius (1864–1942), who had to hold her own in a male-dominated art world, is juxtaposed with a photographic self-portrait by British contemporary artist Sarah Lucas (*1962). In a casual, masculine-sounding pose, Lucas looks defiantly past the camera while smoking. 

Another dialogue connects Adolph Menzel’s epoch-making “Iron Rolling Mill (Modern Cyclops)” (1872–1875) with Andreas Gursky’s (*1955) “Singapore Bourse II” (1997). Here, realist painting meets a condensed artistic depiction of the reality of the stock market. In very different ways, both works examine the world of work, economic processes, and the possibilities for their artistic representation. 

The exhibition is spread across all three floors of the Alte Nationalgalerie in specific areas. An accompanying audio guide explores the connections that span different eras in greater depth: artists, directors, collectors, and conservators present selected dialogues between works.

Press Images

Sarah Lucas, Fighting Fire with Fire, 1996
© Sarah Lucas, Courtesy Contemporary Fine Arts

Anna Dorothea Therbusch, Self-Portrait, 1780 (Alte Nationalgalerie)
© Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie / Andres Kilger

Arthur Kampf, Artist, 1907 (Alte Nationalgalerie)
© Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie / Andres Kilger

Renée Sintenis, Self-Portrait, 1933 (Neue Nationalgalerie)
© Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie / Bernd Sinterhauf / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2025

Sabine Lepsius, Self-Portrait, 1885 (Alte Nationalgalerie)
© Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin / Jörg P. Anders

Pierre Bonnard, The Claude Familie on the Terrace in the Garden, 1899 (Alte Nationalgalerie)
© Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie / Andres Kilger

Bernhard Heisig, The Persistence of Forgetting, 1977 (Neue Nationalgalerie)
© Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie / Jens Ziehe / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2025

Gotthard Graubner, Tojama II (Color space solid), 1984 (Neue Nationalgalerie)
© Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie / Andres Kilger / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2025

Seeing Rembrandt through the eyes of a machine

 

Carnegie Mellon researchers are using explainable AI to uncover patterns hidden in centuries old paintings, to give experts a new tool for investigating who may have painted them

A few hundred years ago, authenticating whether a painting was created by a master like Rembrandt, or a talented copy-cat, was dependent only on the trained eye of an expert. Then, new tools like X-rays and infrared imaging allowed curators to see beneath the surface of a painting and analyze details invisible to the human eye.

Now, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University are exploring how artificial intelligence can work alongside human experts to add another layer of evidence towards the unsolved mysteries in art attribution.

Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and led by mechanical engineering professors Phil LeDuc and Jon Cagan, alongside alumni Andrés Arias-Rosales and renowned Rembrandt scholar Arthur Wheelock Jr., the researchers have developed an AI framework that can examine a painting for visual patterns associated with the work of Rembrandt to help experts make the final call on a painting’s authenticity.

Attributing a painting to an artist like Rembrandt is no easy task. Experts consider everything from historical documents to the artist’s subject matter, his varied styles of painting throughout the course of his career, including brushwork and the types of paints and supports he used. On top of that, they must keep in mind that Rembrandt’s pupils and assistants may have sometimes painted alongside him, and that later restorers may have changed and added elements to Rembrandt’s compositions. To help them in their analyses, experts also consider technical information gained from such examination techniques as X-radiography, infra-reflectography, and X-ray fluorescence analysis.

For an art collector, or insurer, the stakes are high. A true Rembrandt painting is a piece of history and cultural identity. To get it right, the engineering team learned from Wheelock, who spent more than forty years as a curator at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. and is an internationally recognized expert on Rembrandt and Dutch art.

“Working with him was a dream of mine,” Arias-Rosales said. “We wanted to understand Rembrandt through the eyes of a world-class expert, then understand it through the eyes of 'the machine', our AI approach, and bring those together.” Prior to diving into developing the new AI tools, it was crucial for the team to first go to the National Gallery of Art, DC, to study Rembrandt paintings and engage in in-depth discussions about the artist, his style, technique, and the questions and challenges surrounding his work.

The team then asked whether an AI approach could distinguish Rembrandt from paintings by artists whose work resembles that of the master. The team carefully curated a dataset of over thirteen hundred  high resolution digitized images of paintings including 311 Rembrandts that were used for the AI analysis.

The AI model learned to identify statistical patterns across characteristics such as edges, color, light distribution, and visible brushstrokes to produce a score estimating how strongly a painting aligns with the patterns shown in Rembrandt’s work. When the model was highly confident, it classified paintings with 95.8% accuracy.

“Experts need to understand how the AI model/algorithm came to its decision,” said Cagan. “That is critical in successful human-AI collaboration, so we needed to make sure the algorithm could expose which areas of the painting influenced the algorithm’s conclusion.”

To do so, the AI approach classifies a painting as either Rembrandt or not, provides carefully calibrated probabilities and confidence scores, and generates visualizations that emphasize the painting areas and details that had the strongest influence in the AI-based classification. This becomes a useful tool for curators as they can focus on specific details within the painting that they may have otherwise overlooked. For example, if the AI was repeatedly highlighting the hands with a low score, suggesting that they likely weren’t painted by Rembrandt, the researchers can digitally remove them from consideration and ask the model to classify it again. If the hands disappear, and there is high confidence in a Rembrandt attribution, a curator may consider whether the hands were painted by a Rembrandt student instead.

“The most exciting cases are the ambiguous ones,” said Arias-Rosales. “We wanted to do more than bring opaque or simplistic answers to Wheelock; we wanted to bring him more questions and point to potentially interesting details for him to consider and help solve mysteries of art history.”

The team has already tested their AI on a real mystery. In 2024 a painting titled Portrait of a Girl was discovered in an attic in Maine, and later sold for $1.41 million because of its possible connection to Rembrandt. When the CMU model analyzed the image, it determined an 84.7% confidence that the painting was a Rembrandt. “These results aren’t an authentication, they are a statistical observation meant to be considered alongside historical research, material analysis, X-rays, and other tools with the final decision made by human experts,” said LeDuc.

Eventually, the team hopes this tool could become an interactive application for museums, curators and other art professionals. With Rembrandt as the test case, they believe it could be adapted to investigate other artists as well.

For LeDuc this project underlines how Carnegie Mellon’s interdisciplinary culture shines.

“Not everywhere will they bring together engineering, design, and art history to solve intriguing problems,” he said. “It’s such a CMU thing. We like to try to help with exciting fields in many different directions”

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Journal

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences