Christ & His Cousin: Renaissance Rediscoveries opens today at the National Gallery of Ireland. The exhibition showcases eight little-known restored sixteenth-century Italian paintings. For over a decade, the Gallery’s head of conservation Simone Mancini has carefully treated these paintings to reveal quality that was previously unrecognised. Exploring natural portrayals of human behaviour, such as warm and playful moments between the infants and the Madonna, these paintings tell the story of an imaginary encounter between a young Christ and his cousin, a meeting not referenced in the bible. According to the Bible, the two cousins did not meet until later in life, however, their relationship as children was described in later texts which proved incredibly popular and inspired many Italian artists to represent the two infant cousins in their works during the Renaissance period. Tying in with the exhibition, the paintings will be accompanied by four rare volumes drawn from the Gallery’s Library & Archives, some of which were instrumental in defining the development of sixteenth-century art. The exhibition runs until May 8.
