Portraiture is one of the most highly considered genres within the history of art. Over the course of the centuries, many cultures, both Eastern and Western, looked at artistic depictions of the individual as a means of achieving immortality and leaving behind proof of their passing through the world. The human figure, particularly the face, became the symbol of personal identity. With the advent of the Renaissance, the humanist spirit meant that other aspects began to take on more importance, and many artists used portraiture to explore the world of sentiments, reflecting the intimate personal life of the subject. Later, other motivations began to take hold, such as the exaltation of the sitter, underscoring their moral standing, authority or power. Then, in the contemporary period, the questioning of power structures and personal identity, coupled with a greater interest in visual experimentation, often led to a total simplification, deconstruction or dissolution of facial features.

This exhibition, divided into seven thematic sections, offers an overview of the evolution of the genre from the sixteenth to the twentieth century, evincing the wide range and the quality of portraits in the BBVA Collection.

The show opens with a number of official portraits by a selection of painters who, from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, helped to shape the iconography of the Spanish monarchy, with such significant examples as Philip III of Spain by Juan Pantoja de la Cruz or Charles III in Hunting Costume by Francisco de Goya. The walkthrough continues with a room dedicated to solemn portraits, paying special attention to the Flemish school, and bourgeois portraits. Worth highlighting in this section is the portrait of Don Pantaleón Pérez de Nenín, one of the masterpieces in BBVA’s holdings. Painted by Goya in 1808, it portrays the character against a dark ground that highlights the superb colouring and expressive brushwork with which the artist resolves the officer’s uniform, in an excellent demonstration of his prowess. The serene countenance of the face and the direct, penetrating gaze command our attention and draw us into the composition.

The final rooms of the exhibition show how the genre transformed from 1850 to 1985. The so-called fin de siècle period is represented by paintings by Raimundo de Madrazo and Anselmo Miguel Nieto, who, with a refined style and exquisite taste for detail, recreate the elegant atmosphere of the transition from the nineteenth to the twentieth century, both in Spain and in France. During the opening decades of the last century, Spanish artists’ increased contact with international movements favoured the arrival of certain airs of renewal in the arts that adumbrated a path towards modernity, as one can clearly see in the works by Joaquín Sorolla, Ignacio Zuloaga and Francisco Iturrino. The works by this last-named artist stand out for their gesturality and foreshadow the complete decomposition that would be the signature of contemporary portraits, the closing section of the exhibition which includes works by four key artists from recent times which explored the limits of the human being through a process of chromatic and formal reduction.