Portraiture is a quintessentially renaissance art form which evolved in response to new ideas about realism, likeness and posterity. This lecture looks at its development in Italy and the north, across a variety of media, from sculpted busts and medals to painted portraits. It also discusses how and why portraits were made, and the role they played in expressing status, personal qualities and commemoration, unravelling the meanings of still-life detail and costume to shed light on the social practices of the day. We encounter a host of examples, from the unfamiliar to the iconic, including Van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait, Dürer’s Self Portrait as Christ, Holbein’s Ambassadors, and the Mona Lisa.