FRI, SEP 12: The Portland Art Museum will celebrate the beginning of free school tours with a ribbon-cutting ceremony on September 15, 2008.

The dead Christ held up by mourners preparing the body for burial- and for the contemplation of the pious- was a frequent subject of 16th-century Catholic devotional art. Possibly based on a larger sculpture from the Spanish school, this carefully modeled colored wax relief has a physical reality that painting on a flat surface cannot rival. This portable altarpiece is made of hardened leather. The doors are incised on the inside with mourning angels derived from woodcuts by the German master Albrecht Dürer and on the outside with arms of the House of Austria (Habsburgs) with the collar of the Order of the Golden Fleece, a military order initiated by the dukes of Burgundy and carried on with great pride by their Habsburg descendants.

Always the prankster, Krishna spies the gopi (cowgirls) of Vraja bathing naked in the Yamuna River. He positions himself with all of their clothes high in a tree. They beg him to return their garments, but he insists that they each come out of the water to receive their clothing.

Portraiture, which flourished in the 16th century in France, continued for the most part in the Franco-Flemish tradition of the realistic, straight-forward likeness established at the end of the Middle Ages. Painted enamel on copper was a good medium for small portrits because the image is so clear and has something of the glossy character admired in objects intended for decoration of the home.