The marriage portraits at an exhibition in Bath not only capture a likeness, but contain much symbolism, says Katherine Cole.

Walk through the door of this sumptuous exhibition at the Holburne Museum in Bath and you will be greeted by Jakob Fugger and his young bride. Fugger was an extremely wealthy German merchant of Augsburg, banker to both the Habsburgs and the Roman Curia, but it was only through his marriage to Sybille Artzt that he became a Grand Burgher of Augsburg and gained his much-desired seat on the city council. In his marriage portrait by Hans Burgkmair the Elder (1498) he looks every inch the hard-nosed financier – yet lower the gaze slightly and you’ll notice his hand tucked around his wife’s elbow. A gesture of tenderness, or one of pride grasping at a new-found social status?