Open Invitation

This fall, the Timken Museum of ARt presents Poetic Portraits: Allegory and Identity in Sixteenth-Century Europe, an exhibition exploring the rich interplay of art, literature, and identity during the Renaissance. Poetic Portraits assembles about a dozen exceptional paintings and prints from the sixteenth century in a rare examination of the complex ways that literary and pictorial goals merged during the High Renaissance and subsequent decades to convey both personal likeness and intellectual ideals. The centerpiece of the exhibition is a striking portrait of the Italian poet, Giovanni Battista Caselli by Italian artist Sofonisba Anguissola, considered one of the significant artists of the Renaissance, on loan from the Museo Nacional del Prado.