Room 4

A tailor looks up from the cloth he is cutting, while two diplomats stand beside shelves of instruments. Portraits in this room give people objects as well as faces, making work, status and learning part of the encounter. In The Ambassadors, Hans Holbein surrounds Jean de Dinteville and Georges de Selve with books, globes and a lute. The distorted skull adds another view to the confident presentation. Parmigianino’s Portrait of a Collector uses coins, sculpture and a prayer book to describe the interests of an unnamed sitter. Giovanni Battista Moroni’s The Tailor places the tools of a trade in a portrait format often associated with aristocratic wealth. Elsewhere, elaborate fabrics and jewellery announce the resources available to the person being painted. Choose one object beside a sitter and consider what it helps communicate. These paintings are carefully staged rather than neutral records of appearance. The same room lets you compare how different artists turned a pose, possession or gesture into a public presentation of a person.