Remarkable Art Sites of Europe, Plus

Museum Attendance Up In 2011

2012-01-07T12:28:00.008-05:00

Attendance at museums was up in 2011.

The Louvre drew more than 8.8 million visitors last year — a 5% increase from a year earlier. Far more Russians and Chinese visited than ever before, but Americans remained the most numerous.

The Museo del Prado, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, and the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, which together form the triangular Art Walk in Madrid, also broke attendance recvords in 2011. The Prado itself saw just shy of 3 million visitors, plus another 864,000 who attended the two Prado International exhibitions held in St. Petersburg and Tokyo.

And … lest you think attendance is up only at the world’s top museums, special exhibits at regional museums have been drawing record crowds. The Detroit Institute of Arts, for example, has broken recent attendance records with their Rembrandt and the Face of Jesus exhibit. An exhibition that explored the history of graffiti and street art brought record-setting crowds into the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, attracting 201,352 visits over 81 days.

At the same time, sadly, the AP reports that Bosnia's oldest and most prestigious cultural institutions have begun closing their doors as a result of long-standing disputes among politicians from its three ethnic groups, and dwindling state funding. In 2011, the seven institutions — among them the 125-year-old National Museum whose collection includes the famed 600-year-old Jewish manuscript known as the Sarajevo Haggadah — received virtually no funding from authorities in the Balkan nation and can no longer finance their work or even cover their utility bills.

Private Patronage Lives!

2011-06-23T11:28:00.005-04:00

Before there was government funding for the arts, the arts flourished under private patronage. Somewhat lost in the debate about de/funding the National Endowment for the Arts is the fact that the age-old private-patronage tradition lives on:

When copper heiress Huguette Clark died last month, just shy of her 105^th birthday, it was revealed that she had earmarked most of her $400 million fortune for the arts, setting up the Bellosguardo Foundation. The bequest includes a sprawling estate, antique musical instruments, rare books, and an art collection with works by Monet, Renoir, John Singer Sargent and William Merritt Chase.

Separately, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington DC will receive an original 1907 Monet “Water Lilies, valued at $25 million, which hasn't been seen by the public for eighty years.

Huguette inherited her fortune from her father, William Andrews Clark, who served briefly as a U.S. Senator. Clark built railroads across the United States, and Las Vegas’ Clark County was named after him.

Created "for the primary purpose of fostering and promoting the arts, the foundation was is named “Bellosguardo” after the 24-acre Santa Barbara, CA estate. The 21,000 square-foot mansion, which will house the art collection, is set on overlooking the city and the Pacific Ocean and is surrounded by formal gardens. It sits across the street from the Santa Barbara Zoo and the Andree Clark Bird Refuge, named after her sister, Andrée, who died of meningitis at the age of 16.

Ms. Clark had not set foot this home since 1963, but had kept the property immaculately maintained. Huguette had become increasingly reclusive over the years, fearful that people were only after her money. She was last photographed in 1930.

It’s early yet, so details of how the foundation will be administered are unknown. Will grants be made to artists, or will the Bellosguardo Foundation concentrate exclusively on programs at the mansion itself? I suspect it will be somewhat Barnesian: carrying out its mission through teaching, research, and other programs, along with allowing public access to the collection. The Barnes Collection, also made up largely of late 19th- and early 20th-century European paintings, is housed on a 12-acre estate in suburban Philadelphia, is open to the public on a limited reservation basis.

At the very least, we can look forward to another extraordinary museum in California, brought to us by America's 19th- and early 20th-century industrialists.

The Unsolved Mystery of the Mystic Lamb

2011-02-01T12:54:00.007-05:00

Visiting in Ghent will always remain a highlight among my art-viewing experiences: seeing Jan van Eyck’s monumental triptych (1432) in St. Bavo Cathedral, the location for which it was painted almost six centuries ago.

Generally known as "The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb" (the subject of its central panel) the altarpiece is considered to be the first major painting using oil-based pigments and the first major painting of the Renaissance; thus it is widely credited as the single most influential painting in the history of art.

From a visual perspective, one of the extraordinary aspects of it is that, despite its large size, every panel front and back, is painted with a level of detail that one expects only in very small paintings of the 15th century.

This explains, in part, why viewing the Ghent Altarpiece is fraught with crowds … even those casually interested in art are drawn in, lingering to study the details. But most visitors aren’t aware of another of the fascinating things about the triptych: that it has been the object of thirteen different crimes over the centuries, including seven separate thefts, most recently, in 1934.

“That year," Noah Charney tells us in his blog, "a single two-sided panel, depicting the so-called Righteous Judges (the panel on the bottom left corner when the altarpiece is open) was stolen from the cathedral of Saint Bavo. After months of frankly bizarre ransom negotiations, and the return of the back of the two-sided panel (the side depicting St. John the Baptist), the police closed the case. The case had been riddled with police incompetence and odd decisions that smacked to many of conspiracy — there were even whispers that members of the cathedral were involved in the theft and attempted ransom. …

In 1945, a Belgian conservator called Jef van der Veken, painted an identical replacement copy of the Righteous Judges and … the Belgian government installed the van der Veken copy in the original altarpiece in 1950. Therefore, what we see when we visit the Ghent Altarpiece is 11 out of 12 original panels, plus the replacement copy."

Charney’s blog goes on to describe an on-going element of mystery about the panel … linked to a suspicion that Van der Veken himself -- in addition to his role as the leading conservator of the Musee des Beaux-Arts in Brussels -- may have had a secret life as an art forger. One certainly has to wonder why he inscribed a poem on the back of the replacement panel which reads, translated from the Flemish: “"I did it for love/And for duty/And for vengeance/Sly strokes have not disappeared." Fascinating stuff! The stolen Righteous Judges panel is still missing. Although a creditable theory suggested that it was actually hidden right on the premises of Saint Bavo Cathedral, government-sponsored searches have come up empty.

Noah Charney’s new book tells the full saga. Stealing the Mystic Lamb: The True Story of the World's Most Coveted Masterpiece is high on my list of “must-reads”.

The EU Asks, “Is it art?”

2011-01-11T09:40:00.006-05:00

Hosting a Dan Flavin retrospective, the Hayward Gallery in London says that the American artist, who died in 1996, created pioneering sculpture for half a century. Nonetheless, taking on the recurring question, “Is it art?”, the European Commission in Brussels has ruled that the work has "the characteristics of lighting fittings ... and is therefore to be classified ... as wall lighting fittings".

This is no angels-dancing-on-the-head-of-a-pin debate. For tax purposes, classifying the pieces as light fixtures means that any Flavin work imported into the European Union is subject to full VAT, which rose to 20% on January 1; classified as sculpture, the pieces would be subject to only 5% VAT.

Art critic Laura Cumming has said about Flavin’s art, "You wonder how it is possible that so much pleasure could emit from such a dismal source: the cold fluorescent tubes of strip lighting." But in its ruling, the Commission said: "It is not the installation that constitutes a ‘work of art' but the result of the operations (the light effect) carried out by it."

Hmmm… if the only things installed in a room are lights, and the only reason people go into the room is to look at the effect of those lights … ??? I wonder, is it "the result of the operations" or the purpose of the operations that constitutes a work of art ?

This is not the first time this has come up as a tax issue. The Guardian cites one famous precedent for the Commission's decision; “In 1926 the American collector and photographer Edward Steichen bought a bronze version of [Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi’s] tall slender Bird In Space, and attempted to import it to the US. Since it had neither head, feet, nor feathers, US customs refused to accept it as a zero-rated work of art, and instead classified it as ‘a manufacture of metal ... held dutiable at 40%’.”

After paying the $600 tax, Steichen and Brancusi took the matter to court – their legal fees paid by the millionaire collector Peggy Guggenheim. The decision was overturned, the judge ruling that "while some difficulty might be encountered in associating it with a bird, it is nevertheless pleasing to look at and highly ornamental". Steichen got his money back.

Take note, EC.

Michelangelo Behind A Sofa in Tonawanda?

2010-10-18T10:59:00.004-04:00

Not long ago there was a flurry of excitement about a newly-discovered Caravaggio painting, a finding that was quickly debunked. All it took was a few days for that claim to die quietly.

Now – in Tonawanda, NY of all places – comes the news that a Pieta, thought by its owner to have been painted by Michelangelo, has been kept in a portfolio behind a family’s sofa for 25 years. The painting was stowed away for safe-keeping after being accidentally knocked off the wall while being dusted!

The painting seems to have a verifiable provenance, going back to Vittoria Colonna, Michelangelo’s dear friend and sometime muse. Michelangelo would have been 70 years old when he painted the wood panel. It eventually found its way through marriage, via Croatia, to a German baroness who subsequently willed it to the current owner’s great-great-grandfather's sister-in-law.

In 2007, Italian art historian and restorer Antonio Forcellino began researching the painting. In an article published by the London Sunday Times two weeks ago, Forcellino said he was "breathless" when he saw it for the first time. "Only a genius could have painted this — the darkness which underscores the suffering, the Virgin who looks as if she's screaming and the figure of Christ after he has been deposed from the cross. ... It's definitely by Michelangelo, and I was lucky to find documents that prove it," said Forcellino. "The X-rays that have been done are the key". He has published a book about the painting which will be available in English next year.

Attribution acceptance in academic circles will take some time. After examining the painting, Michelangelo authority William E. Wallace, an art history professor at Washington University in St. Louis, expressed doubts, saying, "You can do scientific analysis of the paint and the surface and the panel and all that tells you is we're dealing with something old from the 16th century." Nonetheless, he did not rule out the possibility that it is the work of Michelangelo. And one way or the other, Wallace agrees that the painting's age and well-documented history make it deserving of display and scholarly debate about its origins.

A Caravaggio Experience in Rome, April 27-29, 2011

2010-09-25T15:27:00.011-04:00

Last April I led what I called a Caravaggio Pilgrimage in Rome, specifically to see the blockbuster Caravaggio exhibition at the Scuderie. Although that magnificent show is now just a fond memory, Rome remains the city with the largest concentration of Caravaggio paintings anywhere in the world, by far.

The Eternal City continues to invite glorious total immersion for Caravaggio fans, and I'm planning a three-day Caravaggio Experience in Rome, April 27-29, 2011 for exactly that purpose!

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio arrived in Rome in the last decade of the 16th century, brimming with ambition. As it turned out, his youthful confidence was well founded, and his brilliant new painting style shook the art establishment to its roots.

Until his volatile temperament got the better of him, causing him to flee the city in 1606, there was constant demand for his work in Rome -- for easel paintings commissioned by private collectors as well as large canvases to decorate chapels in various churches.

As a result of that decade of patronage, Rome today is a Caravaggio-rich city. Twenty of his paintings are still on view, spotted around Rome -- many in the very chapels and palazzi for which they were originally painted more than 400 years ago. The city's collection spans his entire career, including two of his first known paintings and his last.

During the Caravaggio Experience in Rome our small group (not more than 6 participants) will explore Caravaggio’s Roman canvases, visiting nine sites -- four churches and five museum galleries -- in the historic center of the city. By the end of our three days together, we will have spent time with all 20 of the Caravaggio paintings that are to be seen in Rome.

To fully appreciate Caravaggio's work, an understanding of the world he lived in -- and the way he lived in it -- is essential. Therefore, on Day 1, before heading out on our site visits, we will discuss the social, political, religious and artistic realities of his day. I'm a great believer in context, and I've designed this SmArt Talk expressly to provide the background to enhance participants' appreciation of what we’ll see on our site visits.

1600 was a significant moment in time and Caravaggio was definitely a man of the moment. His importance in the history of art will be the unifying thread throughout our thee-day program.

Prints and pictures in books are better than nothing, but in truth, they are a feeble substitute for seeing the actual paintings. To one degree or another, the true colors and surface textures are lost in reproduction. And how surprising it can be to see the actual size of a painting, when we've become so familiar with the image in books or online.

I can talk about the tears in the Lute Player's eyes, the work-worn hands, the healthy glow of the infant's cheek, or the powdery bloom on the grapes in the still life, but one can only fully experience Caravaggio's astonishing naturalism and the stunning power of his compositions when standing before the actual paintings.

I'm already excited, just thinking about revisiting Caravaggio in his adopted city with a small group of like-minded people.

For more information about the Caravaggio Experience in Rome program, please contact me at MJM@JanesSmartArt.com

Virgin Eleousa

2010-09-08T09:31:00.003-04:00

The Cleveland Museum of Art has recently acquired its first Byzantine icon: the Icon of the Mother of God and Infant Christ. It was painted in Crete, c. 1425-50, in tempera and gold on cypress-wood panel; 96 x 70 cm.

This type of icon is known as a Virgin Eleousa or Virgin of Tenderness, characterized by the touching cheeks of Mother and Child, in a composition that combines spiritual majesty with human sympathy. The icon signifies the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation: Christ born of human flesh and destined to die for the sake of humankind. The gaze of Mary, who cradles the Christ child, is filled with a sense of pathos, born of the knowledge of Christ’s future sacrifice.

Of course, for anyone who doesn’t subscribe to the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation, the image can be appreciated as a representation of the human bond between mother and child, and the universal ideal of tender, protective motherly love.

This particular icon is rare in that it can be attributed to a specific icon painter, Angelos Akotantos (died c. 1450), who signed as many as 30 icons and to whom an additional 20 are reliably attributed. Active in the early-to-mid 15th century, Akotantos had a workshop in Candia, the capital of Crete. From here he supplied icons to Greek churches and monasteries on Crete, Patmos, Rhodes and elsewhere.

The large size of this icon may suggest its original placement on a templon in an Orthodox church. A templon (from Greek meaning "temple”) is a feature of Byzantine churches, similar to an alter rail or rood screen; a barrier separating the laity in the nave from the priests preparing the sacraments at the altar. The templon first appeared in Christian churches around the fifth century AD and eventually evolved into the modern iconostasis, (a wall of icons and religious paintings) still found in Orthodox churches today.

Icons of this importance rarely appear on the market, and this painting stands out as one of the most significant icons to enter an American museum collection in recent years.

Vanitas: Not Living in the Moment

2010-08-20T10:43:00.007-04:00

In thinking about the vanitas genre of art, it occurs to me that that it’s all about not living in the moment.

Most of us have never been exposed to truly horrible death … unlike people who lived (and died) during the 14th century, when the Great Plague (aka the Black Death, the Great Mortality) killed roughly half the world’s population.
It’s estimated that in Mediterranean Europe the plague wiped out 75-80% of the population in just four years. After that, devastating plague epidemics popped up somewhere in virtually every generation until it made its final appearance in Europe in the 19th century.

Lack of sanitation, marauding armies, high infant mortality, famine, primitive (often barbaric) medical treatments, no FDA inspections of food, no OSHA regulation at the job site … it’s almost impossible for most of us, today, to understand the constant presence of death that was the reality of life for everyone until very recent times.

Not surprisingly, given the uncertainty of daily survival, one of the most widely circulated books printed with movable type before 1500 was a self-help book called Ars moriendi (The Art of Dying). Written within the context of the horrors of the Black Death, it provided protocols and procedures for how to "die well" according to Christian precepts of the late Middle Ages.

Prior to the Great Plague, the rituals and consolations of the death bed were generally attended to by a clergyman. But the priesthood had been especially hard hit by the epidemic, and it would take generations to rebuild. Ars moriendi was an innovative response by the Church to provide the guidance of a "virtual priest" to those who sought to die with propriety.

Gradually, the idea of preparing for one's own death became common practice, as a daily meditation, during bad times -- and good. We know, for example, that the 17th century sculptor, Gian-Lorenzo Bernini, was a devout practitioner of the art of dying well.

(Click to listen to a podcast on The Art of Dying … then click on the audio symbol in left-hand column).

As always, art reflected the times, and a type of sacred art - the memento mori – came into being, to emphasize the fleeting nature of earthly pleasures and achievements, and to focus meditation on the prospect of the afterlife. "Memento mori" is a Latin phrase which translates as "Remember your mortality" or "Remember you will die."

A subset of Memento mori, a vanitas painting is a still-life containing symbols of death, meant as a reminder of the transience of life, the vanity of ambition, and the ephemeral nature of earthly pleasures. In reminding the viewer of inevitable death, a vanitas painting serves as a veiled exhortation to repent.

Common vanitas symbols include human skulls, over-ripe fruit and decaying flowers, smoke, time-pieces, bubbles, musical instruments, and jewelry, gold and other riches.

All this is not to say, however, that we can’t just “be in the moment” and enjoy a so-called vanitas picture for its inherent beauty. I suspect that many artists took secret pleasure in the fact that the viewing experience evoked by a sensuous vanitas still life is in direct conflict with the moralistic message!

Using Art As A Drawing Card

2010-07-29T16:55:00.006-04:00

The theft in March 2009 of a painting by Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553) shone the light of international media attention on a site that had previously not been widely known outside Norway.

The picture, titled Let the Children Come To Me, is valued at $2M to $3M -- or perhaps more now, given its newfound notoriety.

The thieves were caught and the painting retrieved. It has undergone restoration and is now back safely in a church in Larvik, 105km southwest of Oslo. Church security has been improved.

Church officials are eager to capitalize on what is known in Norway as the “Munch effect”— referring to the increased interest in works by Edvard Munch after The Scream was stolen, for the second time, in 2004.

Charged with developing a strategy to ensure that the region can profit from the publicity of the robbery, a tourism manager in Larvik said, “I imagine that an additional 10,000 people may come to see the work annually, if we market it right.”

What do the Pantheon & St. Ivo Have in Common?

2010-07-28T11:21:00.009-04:00

I've just discovered that Borromini reprised the Pantheon's ancient stepped-ring dome in his c.1650 charming Baroque design of St. Ivo.

It's not something one readily notices from street level.

But, when photographing the dome of the Pantheon from the roof of a building on the Piazza della Rotonda, I captured this image of Borromini's delightful, fanciful corkscrew cupola atop St. Ivo in the near distance.

Large-as-life ... stepped rings on the dome beneath the bell tower!

A Rapid Reversal of Fortune

2010-07-27T14:50:00.005-04:00

In my posting one week ago, questioning the possible attribution of a Martyrdom of St. Lawrence to Caravaggio, I said I thought it would be a while before the experts pronounced their final verdict. While I was right to question the attribution, I was wrong about how long it would take for the experts to weight in ...

Yesterday, Antonio Paolucci, the head of the Vatican Museums and a former Italian Culture Minister, took back the claim -- announced just 8 days earlier-- that the Jesuit-owned Martyrdom of St. Lawrence might be the work of Caravaggio.

In a front-page article in the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, Paolucci wrote, "The quality isn't there, whereas in a Caravaggio [the quality is] always high, even when ... he uses maximum carelessness and a minimum of his expressive resources."

In the article, entitled "A New Caravaggio? Not Really," Paolucci wrote that the work was not up to Caravaggio's standard, citing “inadequacy” of technique, and stylistic shortcomings. He called it a "modest" effort at best, and suggested that it was most likely (a student?) copy of an original painted by a Caravaggio-influenced artist.

Their hopes dashed, I imagine the Jesuits who own it are rather disappointed.

A Caravaggio? Or Caravaggio-esque?

2010-07-20T10:29:00.007-04:00

Speaking of Caravaggio … and exciting art discoveries … Reuters reported on the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano’s announcement that a Martyrdom of St Lawrence has been found among the possessions of the Society of Jesuits in Rome, and their suggestion that it was painted by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio.

At first blush it appears to have many of Caravaggio’s stylistic hallmarks, but it has not yet been authenticated as his work.

"Certainly it's a stylistically impeccable, beautiful painting," the newspaper said in its Sunday edition, hedging its bets as it cautioned that further analyses, in-depth documentation, and stylistic examination are required before it can be attributed for certain to the Italian master.

The Martyrdom of St. Lawrence displays features typical of Caravaggio's style, including dramatic chiaroscuro and the unique perspective from which the subject is seen. Other similarities are seen in the saint's hand, the active pose of the body, virtuoso foreshortening and the emotive facial expression.

Maurizio Marini, a Caravaggio scholar, points out that St. Lawrence - a martyr burned to death during Roman persecutions in 258AD - is not known to have been a Caravaggio subject. Marini said the stylistic similarities are inconclusive and he expressed skepticism, saying that claims of new Caravaggios often surface but seldom hold up.

However, the author of the article, an art historian named Salviucci Insolera, cites the fact that Caravaggio’s circle of patrons included the powerful ... Jesuit ... Crescenzi family. But, hedging her bets, she added, "That the painting is at the very least a Caravaggio-esque work of the highest order is quite obvious."

Although it’s hard to tell by simply looking at a web-sourced image of a newspaper picture of the real thing, I question attribution to Caravaggio … based primarily on two things:

Caravaggio is known to have used the same sitters repeatedly, and this model appears to be one we’ve never seen before.

The facial expression seems to lack the vigor I expect of Caravaggio. He produced a series of what amounted to studies of extreme emotion – and if being cooked alive doesn’t engender extreme emotion, I don’t know what would – and this Lawrence simply doesn’t convince me that he’s feeling the heat.

That having been said, (I say, hedging my bets) could it be an early work, painted soon after his arrival in Rome, when he was still developing his skills and used any model who would sit for him for no pay? But then, at that point he didn’t yet have a connection to the Jesuits through the Crescenzi family. And he hadn't yet arrived at this degree of foreshortening or compositional complexity.

Così complicato! It’ll be a while before the experts pronounce, but I’ll let you know when I hear more.

Velazquez: Lost & Found

2010-07-12T11:37:00.011-04:00

It happens surprisingly often, and, oh, the vicarious thrill I get when it does … when I hear that someone has discovered what might well be a lost painting by an Old Master!

Just imagine John Marciari’s excitement --- as a junior curator at the Yale University Art Gallery -- when it dawned on him that the unidentified painting languishing in storage looked suspiciously like it might be an early masterpiece by Diego Velazquez!

The Los Angeles Times reports on an article in the current issue of the Madrid quarterly Ars, in which Marciari makes the case that the canvas, which portrays The Education of the Virgin, is actually a 1617 altarpiece by the Spanish master. He believes the painting, which appears to have suffered water damage, was the altarpiece at the Carmelite Convent of St. Anne in Seville, which flooded in 1626.

A large canvas (> 5’ by 4’ ), The Education of the Virgin shows the young Mary learning to read at the knee of her mother, St. Anne, with her father, St. Joachim, looking on.

Marciari claims that the technical evidence of pigments, ground, and canvas are consistent with artistic practice in Seville in the early 17th century. He writes, “Further examination – of style and technique, of the painterly conceits, the manner of quotation, and other factors – leads to a unique origin: Diego Velázquez, born in Seville in 1599 and active there only until 1623, but even from the first moments of his career responsible for the revolutionary change in Spanish painting represented by the altarpiece.”

Marciari points to similarities between The Education of the Virgin and another early Velazquez work, The Luncheon (kept in Saint Petersburg Hermitage) “from the way that the figures emerge from the darkness, to the inconsistently cast shadows that set off brilliantly depicted still-life elements, to the long thick strokes of paint.” He cites comparable elements, such as St. Anne's ochre-colored draperies, in accepted Velázquez works.

The still-life at the left side of the canvas is similar to pottery bowls, plates and baskets present in other Velázquez’s paintings, as are the treatment of “deep, animated folds” in the garments of Saint Anne and the young virgin.

The quarterly journal says the Yale work "could be this master's most significant find for more than a century." Laurence Kanter, the Curator of early European art at the Yale Art Gallery calls the discovery all the more remarkable because museums today rarely have the chance to acquire a work by Velázquez. Kanter points out that Velázquez "has never been out of favor. From the beginning, he has been one of the great, canonical painters of the Western tradition, and because he worked for the kings of Spain, most of his work is still in that country."

Given to Yale in the 1920s by alumni brothers, it was previously listed as the work of an unknown 17th century Spanish painter. The painting is undergoing restoration and may be on display in the Yale Gallery as early as 2012.

Art World All-A-Twitter about Turner Landscape

2010-07-09T10:05:00.006-04:00

The art world is all-a-twitter, so to speak, about Wednesday's Sotheby's London auction of J. M. W. Turner’s magnificent 1839 landscape, Modern Rome - Campo Vaccino. It was expected to sell for £12 – 18 million ($18 - 27mm), but the auctioneers hammer fell at just shy of £30mm ($45mm). As a point of comparison, a Turner view of Venice fetched £20.5mm at auction in 2006. Modern Rome - Campo Vaccino was purchased by the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

But the excitement was about more than just the price.

According to Sotheby's David Moore-Gwyn, Senior Specialist in Early British Paintings, "This is Turner at his absolute best. One of the most evocative pictures of Rome ever painted, this picture has everything: a colourful, relaxed beauty, exquisite detail, flawless condition and superlative provenance and exhibition history. One of the last great Turner masterpieces to have remained in private hands, its sale at auction represents a once-in-a-generation opportunity for collectors and one of the landmark moments of my 35-year career at Sotheby's."

That’s something worth twittering about!

By “superlative provenance,” he means that the painting has only appeared on the open market once in the 171 years since it was painted. It was originally bought by Hugh Munro, a friend and patron of Turner. Almost 40 years later, while honeymooning in Italy in 1878, the 5th Earl of Rosebery and his new wife, Hannah Rothschild, acquired it. For the next 100 years, it hung in the family's country home or in their London residences, until, in 1978, it was loaned to the National Gallery of Scotland.

The painting is further distinguished by its immaculate condition.

Modern Rome - Campo Vaccino ("Cow Pasture") is a view of the un-excavated Roman Forum, bathed in hazy light. It is the last of Turner's 20-year series of views of the city. Turner painted it at the peak of his career, from studies and sketches he made on two visits to the city. The sun-washed panorama shows features of classical, renaissance and baroque Rome, but in the foreground we see livestock and herders, the activity of modern life. The painting shows the artist at the height of his technical powers and represents the culmination of Turner's fascination with Rome. Some consider Modern Rome - Campo Vaccino to be the finest among his many depictions of Italian cities.

The Getty now must apply for an export license, as the picture is considered part of Britain’s cultural heritage. It appears that this is a mere formality, although if someone in Britain were able to raise £30MM in the next three months, the decision might well go against export.

The headline of yesterday's Scotsman newspaper lamented, "£30m Scots Turner Painting Lost to Nation". The article points out that the "three-month 'export stop' would allow a potential UK buyer to match the price, but that 'no-one will have enough money to pay for it'". However a Sotheby's spokesman said the UK already has a large collection of Turners and that it is "important for the artist's international reputation that his works were able to be viewed around the world." He added that this case is "not in the same league as when a very great but very rare work of art is sold and by its loss we're impoverished."

I'm thrilled to think that Turner's Modern Rome - Campo Vaccino may be hanging at the Getty when I'm there in January!

Amateur Classicists & Art Historians: The National Trust Asks “What’s Going On Here?”

2010-06-14T14:55:00.004-04:00

One might wonder how an important and historically valuable painting can end up languishing in storage for 30 years, especially when it’s a huge (approx. 8’10’ x 7’ 9”) masterpiece by Jacopo Tintoretto! Very often, it’s the poor condition of a painting and the lack of funds for restoration that are the culprits.

That was the case for the magnificent octagonal canvas recently put on display at the 17th-century Kingston Lacy House, in Dorset, UK. When The National Trust acquired the house and its contents in 1981, it was impossible to identify the subject matter of this painting – much less to attribute it with any certainly to the hand of Tintoretto – due to layers of darkened varnish and discolored, flaking touch-up paint.

Put in storage during restoration work on the house, the piece was then discredited by some scholars who, perhaps deceived by its bad condition, expressed doubt that it was by Tintoretto himself. Those doubts made a conservation effort seem less imperative … so the piece remained hidden away.

Happily, a recent fundraising effort has allowed the canvas to be cleaned and restored. In the process, X-rays and infrared analysis helped to expose the unquestionable energy, fresh coloring, and loose, broad brushstrokes of the master himself, confirming the attribution to Tintoretto that was stated in a 1847-1852 Kingston Lacy inventory.

At that time, the painting was referred to as Apollo and the Muses, although in Greek mythology there were nine Muses, whereas the painting contains only seven figures, besides Apollo and two cupids. As a result of the cleaning, some of the figures have been otherwise identified, and the painting has been given a rather cumbersome new title: Apollo (or Hymen) Crowning a Poet and Giving Him a Spouse.

Tintoretto painted the canvas in the 1560s or 1570s. It was one of many works acquired in 1849 by William John Bankes*, the owner of Kingston Lacy, when he was living in Italy. Supposedly, it came from the Palazzo Grimani in Venice, but there is no record of it there, and it is possible the dealer who sold it to Bankes fabricated its prestigious provenance.

The National Trust’s Curator of Pictures and Sculpture, Alastair Laing, said: “This is undoubtedly a work of great significance. Titian, Veronese and Tintoretto are the three great masters of the mid- to late-16th century in Venice and to have a painting by Tintoretto in an English house, rather than still in its original location in Venice, or in an Italian museum, is extraordinary.”

“It is all the more fascinating that we do not yet know who or where it was painted for, or what the actual subject is,” he added.

Art experts believe that the painting depicts Apollo, or possibly Hymen, the god of marriage, placing a crown on an androgynous figure who holds a book, probably a poet. Mythical figures surround them, including the god Hercules and a woman believed to be the betrothed. Fortune sits with her back to us, extending a brimming cornucopia toward them.

Although the iconography would likely have been readily understood by viewers in the 16th century, today the identity of some of the other figures is still uncertain … as is the significance of various objects, including a die depicting five dots**, a gold box and a dish of gold coins. Here are some of the mysteries the National Trust is trying to resolve:

Why is Hercules (identified by his usual attribute: a lion’s head and pelt) in the picture, with spear (or staff) and bow?
Is the young man his son, Hyllus, whom Hercules, once he became immortal, encouraged to marry his former mistress, Iole?
Who is the woman whose left hand is linked to Apollo’s left hand?
What is the significance of the objects beneath Apollo/Hymen’s feet, which appear to include a gold cup, a gold dish containing coins, a gold box, and a golden steeple? Is he trampling them to signify his contempt for wealth?
What is the significance of the enormous die under the figure of Fortune, showing five dots?
Could all the symbols and the players be related in some way to the content of the book that the ambiguous “poet” figure holds?

The restoration of Apollo (or Hymen) crowning a Poet and giving him a Spouse has raised as many questions as it answered, and The National Trust is asking the public to help solve its mysteries. If you have any ideas about the subject matter of this wonderful canvas, contact The National Trust through their website. Oh, yes …and please tell me, too!

* His close friend, Lord Byron, called William John Bankes "the father of all mischief'". As a result of homosexual indiscretions, Bankes fled to live in exile in Italy, as sodomy was then considered a grave crime in England, deserving of the death penalty. Nonetheless -- despite the fact that he could never return to England -- he continued to acquire and send artworks back to his 8,500-acre estate. It is believed that before his death he secretly returned to have a last look at his collections in his beloved Kingston Lacy, which had been in the Bankes family since 1663.

** The 5-dot die is found in another painting by Tintoretto, Mercury and the Three Graces (Palazzo Ducale, Venice). In the 17th century Claudio Ridolfi, explained that: “One of [the Graces] leans on a die, because the Graces accompany offices [which, in Venice, were chosen by lot]. ”

Magnificent Pagan Altar Unearthed in Israel

2010-06-09T10:26:00.007-04:00

Workers on a hospital construction project in Ashkelon, Israel, have discovered an ancient pagan burial field dating to the Roman period of the 1st/2nd centuries CE (or AD, as I was taught in school).

Under the supervision of the Israel Antiquities Authority, numerous family and individual burial structures have been unearthed. One of the tombs contained a large limestone sarcophagus with a decorated lid, with an unusual interior pillow-effect where the stone at one end was left slightly raised in the spot where the head of the deceased was to rest.

Perhaps the most exciting find, though, is a magnificent pagan altar made of granite, decorated with bulls’ heads and laurel wreaths adorned with grape leaves and clusters of fruit. Although incense altars usually stood in Roman temples, this one stood in the center of the ancient burial field. It was used for burning incense, particularly myrrh and frankincense, while praying to the gods. The resulting burn marks remain visible, despite the altar having been buried for almost 2,000 years.

I wonder if building contractors in lands with long histories eventually become inured to archeological delays on their projects?

Seraphim Are Red, Cherubim Are Blue

2010-06-04T15:42:00.013-04:00

Further to yesterday's posting:

Whenever I look at Jean Fouquet’s Madonna and Child Surrounded by Angels, I wonder about the host of blue and red figures crowding in on the throne. I’ve finally taken the time to try to satisfy my curiosity, and this is what I've learned thus far:

1. Cherubim support the Throne of God and represent the Presence of His Glory.

2. Seraphim surround the Heavenly Throne as fiery guardians.

3. Cherubim and seraphim were not counted among the seven choirs of angels in the Jewish Bible, nor were they mentioned in the angelic hierarchy during the early centuries of Christianity; but they were generally believed to exist.

4. It was Pope Gregory the Great (540- 604) who established nine angelic orders divided into three choirs, with cherubim and seraphim populating the highest choir.

5. Angels were believed to be fire, breath, spirit, and radiance. Biblical descriptions of these “beings of fire and wind” were immaterial, unsubstantial.

6. Thus, a certain degree of imaginative license was given to artists who attempted to visualize these abstract creatures, and by the time of the Renaissance, artists were portraying cherubim and seraphim as pudgy, pink-cheeked, winged infants … which today are often referred to as “putti”.

7. Artists traditionally clothed cherubim in blue, while seraphim are clothed in red, and I surmise that these colors symbolize the wind and fire of their immateriality.

By the way: The word putto is the singular form of putti, the Italian word for "small boy" or "child". The Italian was derived from the Latin putus, meaning "boy" or "child”. In modern Italian, putto now only signifies a cherubic, winged little boy figure in art, as in this famous duo by Raphael.

The King's Favorite Mistress

2010-06-03T15:52:00.008-04:00

The first time I saw this panel -- the right-hand wing of the "Melun diptych” -- in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp, I was stunned to see that it was painted in the mid-1400s … it looks so much more modern that that!

Jean Fouquet (1420–1481) was the first French artist to travel to Italy to personally experience the early Italian Renaissance. Returning to Northern Europe sometime after 1437, he linked elements of the Tuscan style with the style of the Van Eycks, and thus became the founder of an important new school of painting. He was a master of both manuscript illumination and panel painting, and his excellence as an illuminator is evident in the precise rendering of fine detail and lucid characterization that we see in this Virgin and Child Surrounded by Angels.

The picture is actually a portrait of Agnès Sorel (1421–1450), a favorite mistress of King Charles VII of France, to whom she bore three daughters. She was apparently an extraordinarily beautiful young woman, of high intelligence, and it is said that her presence at his court brought the king out of a protracted depression. She was known as la Dame de Beauté.

For her private residence King Charles gave her the Château de Loches -- where he had been persuaded by Joan of Arc to accept the French crown -- and she came to have considerable influence over the King. This, combined with her extravagant tastes, gained her powerful enemies at court.

Agnès died at the age of 28, possibly the victim of murder. Recent forensic analysis of her remains has confirmed that she died from mercury poisoning, but in those days mercury was used to treat worms and was sometimes used in cosmetic preparations, so her poisoning might not have been politically motivated.

After her death, the King chose her cousin, Antoinette de Maignelais, to take her place as his mistress.

The "Melun diptych" (c. 1450) originally stood on an altar in the cathedral at Melun, 25 miles southeast of Paris. One of Fouquet’s most important paintings, the Virgin and Child panel faced the left-hand wing -- now in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin -- which depicts Etienne Chevalier with his patron saint, St. Stephen.

More Exhibits Worth A Trip

2010-05-24T14:18:00.007-04:00

Here's info on two more summer exhibitions, one in Madrid, one in Sydney; plus two shows to plan for: Washington DC in the Fall, and Boston in 2011.

SYDNEY - Art Gallery of New South Wales
Victorian Visions
20 May - 29 August, 2010

Victorian Visions presents an impressive collection of 45 paintings, watercolors, drawings and sculptures by some of the luminaries of Victorian art, including works by Rossetti, Holman Hunt, Burne-Jones, Leighton, Poynter, Watts and Waterhouse. This is the first time that many of these works have been seen in Australia.

The prosperity of the Victorian era (1837-1901) transformed the British art world, creating a community of artists who were free to create paintings that depicted powerful stories from ancient history and contemporary life with a new richness of color and wealth of detail. Many of the works in the exhibit are superb examples from these significant artists, including the impressive 2.6-metre tall painting Marianne by J W Waterhouse; Holman Hunt’s Il Dolce Far Niente; Richard Redgrave’s The Tempstress; and Leighton’s Athlete Struggling with a Python, long recognized as the seminal work in British new sculpture.

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MADRID - Residencia de Estudiantes

Una casa-un palacio

22 May - 25 July, 2010

Una casa-un palacio is an exhibition featuring the works referred to by Le Corbusier in a lecture he gave in Madrid in 1928. The exhibit shows how Le Corbusier’s priciples of design confronted the rational and optimal resolution of technical, functional and economic problems, without forgetting beauty. The exhibition includes a selection of photographs and original plans of Le Corbusier’s works, projects, paintings and pieces of furniture, dated around the year 1928, as well as a number of photographs, letters and documents.

Domestic architecture is represented by Villa Cook, Villa Stein and two houses at Weissenhof in Stuttgart, and the Palace of the League of Nations project in Geneva represents institutional architecture. Charles-Edouard Jeanneret (1887-1965), better known as Le Corbusier, was a heroic figure from the history of architecture. Considered by many “The Architect” of the 20th century, Le Corbusier has all the features that define Modern architecture.

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WASHINGTON, DC - The Phillips Collection
Side by Side: Oberlin’s Masterworks at the Phillips
September 11, 2010 - January 16, 2011

Illustrating its unconventional approach to displaying art, The Phillips will present loosely themed groupings of some of its own masterworks plus important works from Oberlin College’s Allen Memorial Art Museum. Half of the 24 paintings and one sculpture on loan from the Allen are old masters, dating from the 16th to the 18th centuries. They include rare works by painters of the British, Dutch, Flemish, French, German, Italian, and Spanish schools.

Included among the old masters will be one of the most important examples of northern baroque painting in the United States, Hendrick ter Bruggen’s Saint Sebastian Tended by Irene (1625); The Fountain of Life, a superb 16th-century painting probably painted in Spain after a work by Jan van Eyck; and Joseph Wright of Derby’s night scene Dovedale by Moonlight (c. 1784–85). Oberlin’s modern holdings include works by Alberto Giacometti, Barnett Newman, Pablo Picasso, and Mark Rothko.

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BOSTON - Boston Athenæum
Elegant Enigmas: The Art of Edward Gorey
February 9 - June 3, 2011

The imaginary world of artist and author Edward St. John Gorey (1925-2000 maintains a delicate balance between the hilarious and ominous uncertainty.

Gorey’s love of literature and the ballet, and his off-beat and ironic sense of humor, resulted in a sardonic and witty oeuvre; this exhibition explores the diversity of his art through original pen and ink illustrations, preparatory sketches, unpublished drawings, and ephemera.

The exhibit includes roughly 180 objects, including selections from numerous well-known Gorey publications. While his Edwardian-inspired images appear simple, the pen work is often complex.

Some Summer Exhibits in the US

2010-05-22T14:49:00.006-04:00

Some enticing exhibits in the US this summer. Here are but a few:

PITTSBURGH, PA
Frick Art & Historical Center
May 14 - September 5

Small but Sublime: Intimate 19th Century American Landscapes at the Frick Art & Historical Center. 22 small-scale paintings and drawings by 18 American artists, ranging from the realistic style of Hudson River School to the American Impressionists. Admission is free.

NEW YORK, NY
The Morgan Library & Museum
May 18 - September 12
Eight extraordinary drawings by Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) demonstrate the variety and dynamism of his draftsmanship. Dürer, master of the German Renaissance, transformed drawing in Northern Europe. Using his unrivaled talent as a draftsman and the force of his powerful artistic personality, Dürer tirelessly promoted drawing as a medium, creating works of exceptional beauty and remarkable technical skill.

Exhibitions focused on Dürer’s drawings are rare, and this marks the first time in more than twenty years that the Morgan’s outstanding Dürer holdings will be displayed together. Also included are prints and treatises by the artist.In his pursuit of beauty, Dürer devoted careful attention to every aspect of artistic production. On view in the exhibition are a woodcut, its associated woodblock, and a letter to the patron for whom it was made. In the letter Dürer wrote, “Please let it be as it is. No one could improve it because it was done artistically and with care. Those who see it and who understand such matters will tell you so.”

The Morgan Library & Museum
May 21 - August 29
Romantic Gardens: Nature, Art, and Landscape Design gives us scenic vistas, winding paths, bucolic meadows, rustic retreats suitable for solitary contemplation and other alluring naturalistic features of gardens created in the Romantic spirit.

The Romantics looked to nature as a liberating force, a source of sensual pleasure, moral instruction, religious insight, and artistic inspiration. Eloquent exponents of these ideals, they extolled the mystical powers of nature and argued for more sympathetic styles of garden design in books, manuscripts, and drawings, now regarded as core documents of the Romantic Movement. Their cult of inner beauty and their view of the outside world dominated European thought during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

The exhibition features approximately ninety influential texts and outstanding works of art, providing a compelling overview of ideas championed by the Romantics and also implemented by them in private estates and public parks in Europe and the United States, notably New York’s Central Park.

Metropolitan Museum of Art
12 May-15 August
An Italian Journey: Drawings from the Tobey Collection, Correggio to Tiepolo presents 72 extraordinary works of the 16th-18th centuries, from a preeminent private collections of Italian Old Master drawings. Masterpieces by historically important draftsmen—principally Italian masters but also artists whose careers brought them south of the Alps—among them Correggio, Parmigianino, Bernini, Poussin, Guercino, Canaletto, and Tiepolo.

CALIFORNIA
J. Paul Getty Museum, LA
May 18 - October 17
Printing the Grand Manner: Charles Le Brun and Monumental Prints in the Age of Louis XIV features eleven large prints intended to evoke the grandeur of Le Brun’s large-scale paintings and tapestry designs that illustrate events from the exemplary lives of ancient rulers such as Alexander the Great and Constantine the Great. Examines the prints' rich vocabulary and illuminates the context in which they were made between the mid-1660s and the mid-1680s.

The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
May 22 - September 6
The de Young Museum hosts the Birth of Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay, which includes approximately 100 paintings from the Musée d’Orsay’s permanent collection. Highlights the work of William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Gustave Courbet, Edgar Degas, Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, and James Abbott McNeill Whistler, among others.

The Musée d’Orsay is lending their most beloved paintings while it undergoes a partial closure for refurbishment and reinstallation in anticipation of the museum’s 25th anniversary in 2011.
Birth of Impressionism will be followed in the fall of 2010 by Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cezanne, and Beyond: Post–Impressionist Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay. The de Young will be the only museum in the world to host both exhibitions.

Smithsonian-Haiti Cultural Recovery Project

2010-05-18T10:17:00.004-04:00

The Smithsonian Institution is leading a team of cultural organizations to help the Haitian government recover Haiti’s cultural materials damaged by the Jan. 12 earthquake. A conservation site will be set up where objects retrieved from the rubble can be assessed, conserved and stored. It will also be the training center for Haitians who will eventually take over the conservation effort.

“The highest priority ... has rightly been to save lives and provide food, water, medical care and shelter,” said Richard Kurin, Under Secretary for History, Art and Culture at the Smithsonian. “However, Haiti’s rich culture, which goes back five centuries, is also in danger and we have the expertise to help preserve that heritage.” The rainy season in Haiti has already begun, and the hurricane season is on its way. Much of Haiti’s endangered cultural heritage is in destroyed buildings and is at risk of permanent destruction.

Among the artifacts at risk are architectural features such as stained glass and historic murals, as well as paper documents, photographs, artifacts and some of the 9,000 paintings from the Nader Museum which is now in ruins.

“With this unprecedented inter-agency effort ... we express our collective belief that in times of great tragedy it is essential to help a country preserve and protect its cultural legacy for future generations,” said Rachel Goslins, executive director of the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities.

Top: Little Crippled Haiti, Edouard Duval Carrie
Bottom: Damaged painting at Galerie Nader, by Rigaud Benoit

Time-Travel Destination: Padua

2010-05-10T16:19:00.037-04:00

I only dream of traveling back in time when wishing I could have seen a particular work of art before its destruction. Today my time-travel destination would be late-15^th century Padua.

In those days, Padua was an essential stop for travelers in the Republic of Venice. A center of humanist culture and higher learning, Padua was home to Giotto’s Scrovegni Chapel, as well as the Ovetari Chapel of the Eremitani.

Located in the transept of the late-13^th century church of the Augustinian Hermits, the cappella Ovetari was decorated with “must-see” frescoes painted by Andrea Mantegna (c.1431-1506), who was one of the most admired artists in Europe.

Mantegna’s fresco cycle was the opening salvo of Renaissance painting in northern Italy. It established the young artist’s reputation and had an immediate impact on his contemporaries. In fact, Mantegna’s Ovetari work continued to influence artists and to draw art-lovers to Padua until an errant Allied bomb demolished the chapel during World War II.
The frescoes had aged badly; nonetheless, it was a tremendous loss.

Fortunately, from the beginning, the frescoes had inspired copyists (Musee Jacquemart-Andre, Paris), and in the 19^th century a series of black and white photographs had been taken. Also -- by happy chance -- in the 1930s two of Mantegna’s scenes had been detached from the wall and removed from the chapel in order to conserve them. Little did anyone then imagine the historic extent of that conservation!

The chapel has since been reconstructed. Today the plain gothic architecture looks much as it first did to Mantegna and his co-workers -- with the exception of the two conserved Mantegna frescoes which are back in place, and the original terracotta altarpiece which was reassembled from fragments salvaged from the rubble.

Starting out on a team of seven artists, Mantegna was the only one left at the end of the nine-year project. It was Mantegna’s style that characterized the fresco cycle. Today nothing is to be seen on the left wall of his Episodes in the Life of St. James.

But on the right-hand wall, despite the ruinous condition of The Attempted Martyrdom of St. Christopher and The Beheading of St. Christopher, we see Mantegna’s magnificent classicizing marble architecture, teeming with ranks of precisely outlined figures, painted in the imposing Tuscan style that he had already absorbed by the time he was in his late teens. We see Mantegna’s novel treatment of perspective, and the way he lowered the viewpoint in order to enhance the monumentality of the composition.

And, it turns out that one day we may not have to depend on time-travel to see Mantegna's fresco cycle in situ. Since 2001, Italy's Istituto Centrale per il Restauro has been quetly working with tens of thousands of fragments (averaging 3 centimeters square), piecing the puzzle together. Over time, the wall paintings may gradually be recomposed ... a slowly-healing wound. All it will take is funding, patience and restorers' skill.

The Horse That Wasn't, Is

2010-05-09T14:44:00.005-04:00

Late in the 15th Century, while living at the court of the Duke of Milan, Leonardo da Vinci met his greatest artistic challenge. The Duke, Ludovico Sforza, known as Il Moro, decided to honor his father Francesco with an equestrian statue. In 1482, he commissioned Leonardo to design and build the largest equestrian statue in the world.

Leonardo spent years preparing the design of Il Cavallo (The Horse), and he managed to take it as far as the clay model. But, before it could be cast, the Duke -- facing imminent war with the French -- sent the bronze he had gathered for the horse to be cast into cannon. To top it off, when the French invaded Milan in 1499, the huge earthenware model was destroyed by Gascon archers, who used it for target practice.

Sforza was exiled and Leonardo returned to Florence. His patron gone, the project was abandoned and many of Leonardo's key drawings for the project were misplaced.

In fact, however, the drawings actually did survive the centuries, and in 1995, the "lost notebooks" of Leonardo were rediscovered in Madrid's Biblioteca Nacional. The story of what happened then is fascinating, culminating in 1999 -- exactly half a millennium later -- when Il Cavallo was cast in bronze, in one piece, in a foundry in New York State. The artist responsible was an American sculptor, Nina Akamu.

Two castings of the giant equestrian statue were made. The first was sent to Milan as a gift to Italy from the United States. The other went to the Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park, in Grand Rapids, MI. Standing 24’ high and weighing 15 tons, Il Cavallo is still the largest free-standing horse statue ever made.

Destructive Art

2010-05-03T06:53:00.004-04:00

There seems to be a trend brewing, called "Destructive Art".

For a recent gallery show in London, Michael Landy installed a huge glass
tank and invited people to toss in their "creative failures".

The South London Gallery website offered an explanation of the various
notions the installation represented, ending with "and [...it] makes reference to the
derision with which contemporary art is sometimes treated." ... hmmm ...

I personally prefer art that lifts the spirit. With all the bleakness and destruction that exists in the world ... why strive to create more?

Shaquille O’Neal as Art Curator

2010-04-30T14:02:00.010-04:00

Size Does Matter, an exhibit curated by Shaquille O’Neal, will continue to run through May 27, 2010, at the Flag Art Foundation, a contemporary art space on W.25th St in NYC.

In an article in New York Magazine (02/15/10), when asked how he made his choices, Shaq said, "Art is a process of delivering or arranging elements that appeal to the emotions (...). The thing about size -- if it's big or small you have to look at it. Because I'm so big you have to look at me. I think of myself as a monument. But sometimes I like to feel small."
(Maybe by going to a planetarium? MJM)

Shaq weighs 320 pounds and stands 7'1" in size 22 shoes, so he knows something about size relativity! He selected 66 works for the show, ranging from Andreas Gursky's billboard-size photograph, Madonna I, to a tiny portrait of Shaq himself, by Willard Wigan.

The exhibit, which includes works by international artists (including the likes of Chuck Close & Cindy Sherman), explores the ways that scale affects perception. Large and small objects require different viewing approaches, elicit unique responses, and reflect a variety of purpose. The exhibit demonstrates how scale can be treated as a key compositional component in a variety of media.

Curatorial Intervention Goes Too Far

2010-04-27T07:57:00.005-04:00

The Caravaggio exhibition at the Scuderie del Quirinale in Rome was fabulous … with the exception of the ill-conceived lighting. Perhaps the curators were trying to play off Caravaggio’s trademark “chiaroscuro” when they opted to create their own light & dark effect in presenting the two-dozen works on loan from museums around the world.

The dim ambient light in the rooms could have been effective if the canvases had been evenly lit. Instead, spotlights were trained on the paintings, presumably to highlight specific sections of each work.

Caravaggio’s own treatment of light and color in his work was carefully wrought for compositional balance and narrative clarity. I would have preferred a wash of light that allowed me to take in each composition as a whole, as the artist conceived it, without curatorial contrivance.

Why would the curators feel the need to tamper with … er, augment … Caravaggio’s work?

For some years now there has been a trend in museums to try to make old art more accessible to new audiences. This is not a bad thing: the ability to generate more profit from a special exhibit allows the production of expensive landmark exhibits like the Scuderie exhibition.

But I believe the effort to be misguided, if -- in trying to facilitate the experience for modern audiences – the work becomes even further removed from the context in and for which it was created.

Museum illumination is a fine art in itself … especially for work produced pre-electricity.

Polychrome Sculpture

2010-03-01T09:32:00.014-05:00

Immaculate Conception
c. 1628
Juan Martínez Montañés (attrib.)
polychromed wood
Church of the Anunciación, Seville University

The Sacred Made Real: Spanish Painting and Sculpture, 1600–1700
February 28–May 31, 2010
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

Dramatic Expression of Spanish Baroque

2010-03-01T09:03:00.003-05:00

This painted and gilded lifesize wood figure, Saint John of the Cross, was carved by Francisco Antonio Gijón and painted, it's thought, by Domingo Mejías, c. 1675. Gijón was a sculptor from Seville who was known for his ability to carve dramatic works with intense expression. He was only 21 when he was awarded the commission for this sculpture and he completed it in about six weeks!

My work preparing me for the Caravaggio Pilgrimage in Rome has me immersed in the transition from Mannerism to Baroque. So I was delighted to learn of the Spanish Baroque exhibit that just opened in Washington DC.

Spanish Baroque art expressed the religious fervor of the Counter-Reformation in spades -- and some arrestingly real polychrome sculptures and paintings were produced.

About 20 Spanish masterpieces of the 17th century are now on view in a fabulous exhibition at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. The Sacred Made Real: Spanish Painting and Sculpture, 1600–1700 will showcase major paintings by Diego Velázquez, Francisco de Zurbarán, and Francisco Pacheco, as well as painted and gilded polychrome sculptures carved by Gregorio Fernández, Juan Martínez Montañés, and Pedro de Mena, among others.

The exhibition makes it possible to see the dynamic and intricate relationship between two-dimensional pictures on canvas and painted sculptures. Many of the sculptures have never been exhibited away from the Spanish churches, convents, and monasteries where they continue to be venerated by the Catholic faithful.

The Glory Days of Byzantium

2010-02-26T09:34:00.002-05:00

This sounds like an exhibition worth detouring for, if you are anywhere near Bonn, Germany, between now and June 13th, 2010:

More than 600 magnificent artifacts that shed light on the history, archaeology and art of the “Byzantine Millenium” -- from the foundation of Constantinople by Constantine the Great in 324 A.D. to the conquest by the Ottomans in 1453. The exhibit (including the perfumer pictured) concentrates above all on the Empire’s prosperity from the time of Justinian I (527–565 A.D.) until the plundering of Constantinople by western crusaders in 1204.

The press release says that “Precious ivories, spectacular icons and manuscripts, architectural fragments, sculptures and everyday objects are presented in their original contexts … [addressing] the main questions of the Byzantine state, Byzantine art and culture, society, economy, the Byzantine military, as well as daily life.” I'm told that computer graphics and animated films introduce the various sections of the exhibition -- could be pretty cool, if they're well done.

Less Elephant Dung?

2010-02-09T08:19:00.004-05:00

This headline in a recent issue of Art Knowledge News makes me think I might yet learn to better appreciate contemporary art!

Less Elephant Dung in New Show by Chris Ofili at Tate Britain

Da Vinci in Drag?

2010-01-28T17:46:00.007-05:00

Coincidental to my last posting, in which one academic claims that the model who sat for Da Vinci's Mona Lisa (Louvre, Paris) had dangerously high cholesterol, now a team of Italian scientists and art historians have suggested that the famous portrait is actually a disguised self-portrait of da Vinci!

They claim to see similarities between the Mona Lisa's facial structure and that of the artist's own face as evidenced in a circa 1515 self-portrait. They also cite his homosexuality and interest in riddles as support for their theory.

The French government -- Da Vinci’s remains are at Amboise Castle in the Loire Valley – seems to be taking the research team seriously and are considering their request to open the Renaissance master's tomb and use his skull to "rebuild Leonardo's face and compare it with the Mona Lisa."

ArtInfo says, “The undertaking would have tickled Marcel Duchamp, the keen wit behind L.H.O.O.Q. (1919) -- a reproduction of the Mona Lisa embellished with a mustache. The late Modernist icon had a cross-dressing artistic alter ego himself, named Rrose Sélavy." ( “C’est la vie” … get it …?)

Mannerism or Marfans?

2010-01-17T18:09:00.005-05:00

Vito Franco calls his new field of research "icono-diagnostics." I have to wonder: Is he just another guy trying to get his 15 minutes of fame, or is icono-diagnostics legit?

A professor of pathological anatomy at the University of Palermo, Franco claims that the model who sat for Da Vinci's Mona Lisa (Louvre, Paris) had dangerously high cholesterol. He made that diagnosis after spotting signs of xanthelasma -- a build up of yellowish fatty acids under the skin - under her left eye, as well as subcutaneous lipomas, benign tumors composed of fatty tissue, on her hands.

His study of other masterpieces convinced Franco that the young nobleman in Sandro Botticelli's Portrait of a Young Man (National Gallery, Washington) was probably afflicted with Marfan syndrome. Franco believes that the young man’s unnaturally long, thin fingers are a tell-tale indicator of the rare condition that affects connective tissue and can result in a sudden, early death.

But I’m skeptical when he suggests that the long-fingered hands of the woman who posed in the 1530s for Parmigianino's Madonna With the Long Neck (Uffizi, Florence) indicate that she too suffered from Marfans. Parmigianino was a Mannnerist painter and Mannerists were all about exaggeration. In fact, Wikipedia says, “Mannerism makes itself known by elongated proportions” and that very same Madonna With the Long Neck is shown as an example of mannerist artificiality!

On the other hand, Franco seems more credible when he suggests that Dutch magical realist Dick Ket unwittingly traced the progression of his illness in his work. Ket, who died of a congenital heart defect at the age of 37 in 1940, left behind 40 self-portraits. One of these, painted in the year before his death, shows the artist with swollen fingertips, a common side effect of several heart and lung complaints. "In a painting seven years before, his fingers are less deformed," Franco said. "But it shows an abnormal swelling of the veins on his neck -- a sign of the same syndrome, in its initial phase."

El Greco Visits Brussels

2009-12-28T11:22:00.007-05:00

I'm excited about my Caravaggio Pilgrimage to Rome, but I realize that some of you reserve your ecstasy for other artists … El Greco being a favorite.

So for you -- a trip to Brussels may be in order! – A major El Greco exhibition will be showing at the Center For Fine Arts in Brussels between Feb 4 and May 9, 2010

Although El Greco is today regarded as one of the leaders of Spanish Renaissance painting, he did not always enjoy that exalted status. His dramatic style perplexed his contemporaries. At the time of his death in Toledo, in 1614, Caravaggesque Naturalism was all the rage among artists and patrons throughout Europe -- a style extremely different from El Greco’s highly-expressive Mannerism.

El Greco’s work was soon forgotten and remained relatively neglected for almost three centuries. But in 1908, the Spanish art historian Manuel Bartolomé Cossío produced a key monograph on him, sparking an immediate El Greco craze. In 1910 the Marqués de la Vega-Inclán established an El Greco museum in Toledo.

The painter’s popularity flourished anew, as rapidly as it had faded. By the early years of the 20th century, artistic sensibilities had been broadened: the late-19th century break with academic classical realism allowed El Greco to be appreciated in a completely new, modern, light.

The Brussels exhibition will present an overview of the painter’s artistic development. A selection of outstanding works will include the stunning The Disrobing of Christ and The Tears of Saint Peter.

And, of special interest will be El Greco’s final testimonial series of Apostles: “a complete, astonishingly modern series, remarkable for its totally free forms and its extraordinarily bright colours.” Exhibit organizers claim that this visit to Brussels is a one-time thing … once the series returns to the Museo de El Greco in Toledo “ it will never leave again.”!

The Art of the Frame

2009-12-26T08:59:00.004-05:00

Not long ago I had a debate with someone at a dinner party about picture frames.

He insisted that the frame should never be noticed. But I often make a point of noticing frames! So I wondered – if that were the case – why, for example, were Renaissance frames so detailed and carefully crafted? Why, then, have so many masterpieces in the history of art been mounted in frames which, themselves, could be considered masterpieces?

The frame should enhance the painting by expanding on the intent of the painting. Often, the frame was (and I suppose sometimes still is) conceived as an integral part of the work, not infrequently designed by the artist h/self.

To prove my point, I wish I could take him to the Alte Pinakothek in Munich sometime between Jan 28th and April 18, 2010, to see their Art of the Frame exhibition. The show will focus on the art and history of frames from four centuries, encompassing 16th-century case frames to Classicist and Empire style frames.

A selection of 92 frames dating from between 1600 and 1850 will highlight frames which are of special importance either stylistically or historically in the development of frame design -- from highly elaborate ones to miniature versions. Of particular note will be the Dutch cabinet and Lutma frames, as well as inlaid examples from the Rococo period.

Mourning the House of Burgundy

2009-12-24T16:55:00.005-05:00

It was at Antwerp Cathedral that I first encountered the concept of funerary “pleurants”, or “weepers”, where twenty-four little bronze figurers of mourners once graced the 1475 tomb of Isabella of Bourbon, 2nd wife of Charles the Bold. Unfortunately, every one was stolen during the iconoclasm that raged in Antwerp in the 16thC, and most of them ended up in the Protestant North; 10 of them have long been held by Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum.

I learned that “pleaurants” were a standard feature on tombs of the House of Burgundy, and now I … and you … will have a chance to see a magnificent set of “pleurants” from another House of Burgundy tomb, here in the U.S.

It was for the tomb of the assassinated John the Fearless (1371–1419), the second Duke of Burgundy, that these 16-inch-tall sculptures were crafted. Carved by Jean de La Huerta and Antoine Le Moiturier between 1443 and 1470, these unique devotional figures were sculpted in white alabaster with astonishing detail. The forty sorrowful figures express grief or devotion to their Duke, who was both a powerful political figure and patron of the arts.

The mourners are draped in cloaks, demonstrating their emotion in a variety of ways. Each individual figure has a different expression—some wring their hands or dry their tears, hide their faces in the folds of their robes, or appear lost in reverent contemplation.

"There's something quiet and very powerful about them," said Heather MacDonald, associate curator of European art at the Dallas Museum of Art, which is organizing the tour along with the Dijon Museum of Fine Arts. She describes the sculptures as "astonishingly beautiful."

While the tomb itself will stay in Dijon, this tour will be the first time the group of mourning figures will been seen together outside of France. They will be touring for the next couple of years, traveling while the Dijon museum, is renovated.

"The Mourners: Tomb Sculptures from the Court of Burgundy" exhibit will be seen in seven US cities:

Metropolitan Museum, NYC, March 2 - May 23, 2010
St. Louis Art Museum, June 20 - Sept. 6, 2010
Dallas Museum of Art, Oct. 3, 2010 - Jan. 2, 2011
Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Jan. 23 - April 17, 2011
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, May 8 - July 31, 2011
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Aug. 21 - Jan. 1, 2012; and
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, Jan. 20 - April 15, 2012.

The Return of St. Paul

2009-12-14T06:06:00.005-05:00

Btw: the Conversion of St. Paul will be back in place in the Cerasi Chapel at Sta. Maria del Popolo by the time the Caravaggio pilgrimage begins in February.

It’s on loan to the Borghese Gallery for the Caravaggio-Bacon Exhibit only until Jan 24th.

Once in a Lifetime

2009-12-13T21:08:00.009-05:00

Thomas Hoving died on Thursday. Hoving was the colorful and controversial director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York from 1967 to 1977, and was known as – if not the inventor of -- certainly the champion of the Blockbuster Exhibit. His idea was to bring to us -- through a temporary exhibition -- art that we would have a very hard time seeing on our own.

On Friday I heard part of the re-broadcast of a 1993 NPR interview with Hoving. In part of the interview he talked about how the day of the blockbuster exhibit is over.

He said, “They’re not really blockbusters anymore ... They SAY they are, but … there’d be a great show of Caravaggio in which there are three Caravaggios and the rest are followers. Art prices have risen to such ridiculously astronomical heights that nobody can afford the cost of insurance and other things to bring the works of you-name-it into one place any more … it’s virtually impossible to do … people are unwilling to lend anymore, and it’s too costly.”

Interesting that he used Caravaggio as his example back in 1993 … because today I learned about an upcoming Caravaggio exhibition that sure sounds like a blockbuster to me!

Between February 18 and June 13, 2010, Caravaggio 's entire career will be on view at Rome’s Scuderie del Quirinale. WOW!

In honor of the 400th anniversary of the death of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, the show will bring together masterpieces from museums around the world. These include the two versions of the Supper at Emmaus, on loan from the National Gallery in London and Milan’s Pinacoteca di Brera; The Musicians from Hoving’s own Metropolitan Museum, Bacchus from the Uffizi, Boy with Lute from the Hermitage in St Petersburg; Amor Omnia Vincit from Berlin’s Gemäldegalerie; the three versions of Saint John the Baptist, from the Capitoline Museums and the Galleria Corsini in Rome, and the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City.

Even some works which are rarely loaned out will be included: The Deposition from the Vatican Museums, The Annunciation from the Museum of Nancy (which was restored for the occasion); and The Crowning of Thorns from the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.

WOW!

Almost the entirety of Caravaggio’s artistic production will be on view in Rome: the paintings brought together for the exhibition, plus, of course, the numerous Caravaggios that are on view in Rome’s churches, still displayed in the chapels for which they were originally commissioned.

This will be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for art pilgrims to experience a near-complete Caravaggio anthology gathered in one place.

Did I already say “WOW”?

Part 3, Woe Is Me

2009-12-12T14:33:00.008-05:00

This may be the final installment of what seems to have turned into a series on the disappointments art-lovers encounter in their travels.

One of my favorite churches in Rome holds two exceptional Caravaggio panels, two Bernini sculptures in a chapel designed by Raphael, plus work by Bregno, Pinturicchio, Bramante, and unusual (for Rome) stained glass windows.

I try to get to Sta. Maria del Popolo every time I’m in Rome. Last month we popped in to capture a few images that we still needed to create a virtual tour.

With us were our Rome-virgin friends, Bob & Barbara, who had all the Jane’s Smart Art Guides Rome titles loaded onto their iPods and were systematically knocking them off, one per day.

Oh no! Caravaggio’s Conversion of St Paul was gone! (On loan to the Barberini Museum, so admittedly still viewable in Rome by diehard Caravaggio pilgrims).

At least now we can say we know what the behind-the-scenes support for Caravaggio's Cerasi Chapel panels looks like!

And this is how Raphael & Bernini's Chigi Chapel looked:

In Restauro

2009-12-11T11:36:00.008-05:00

And speaking of closed…

We’ve recently returned from a photo-shoot in Rome, in preparation for an upcoming Jane’s Smart Art Guides virtual tour title: The Fountains of Rome.

It’s definitely a good thing that Rome's monuments are being maintained, but what an irritation it is to find the very thing you’re there to see ensconced behind scaffolding!

We found the all-important Fountain of Moses “in restauro”.

Note that the image of the fountain has been reproduced on the scrim. This is something the Italians have been doing for some time now, so that the monument under restoration remains (sort of) visible. More recently, however, the siren-song of ad revenue has raised its ubiquitous head and the decorative scrims now inevitably sport some commercial message or another. The fact that this ad block is still blank suggests that the scaffolding has only recently gone up. Given the pace of things Italian, Moses could still be up to his neck in scaffolding this time next year.

The Fontana dei Tartarughe (Turtles Fountain), in the lovely little Piazza Mattei, was also fenced off for “lavoro”. Fortunately Michael has become quite adept at capturing images through barriers!

It looked pretty well finished– save for an empty red plastic bucket and scrub broom left in the basin -- so there’s a good chance that the fencing is down by now, with water flowing once again.

Lacoste is helping to pay for the restoration of a building on Piazza di Spagna.

Attention Art-Lovers: Paris Is Closed

2009-12-03T12:53:00.003-05:00

The frequency of work stoppages in western European countries is amusing until – as a traveller who’s taken time off and paid a lot of money for airfare and lodging – your trip is ruined by a strike.

This is a favorite time of year for travellers who like to spend their time inside museums … iffy weather isn’t an issue. The lack of tourist crowds more than compensates for the drizzly days.

But this week, innumerable art-lovers are travelling to Paris only to discover that the Louvre, the Pompidou Center , the Musee d’Orsay, the Rodin Museum, Ste.-Chapelle, the Arc de Triomphe, and Versailles are all closed -- "en greve".

The strike is a result of a dispute between the unionized museum workers and the Ministry of Culture over cost-cutting measures. It started at the Pompidou last week and has now spread to dozens of large and small cultural sites in and around Paris.

Today MSNBC reports that the strike appears “to be gathering steam”. Called by all seven unions representing culture ministry employees, the open-ended work stoppage is to protest the government’s plan to drastically reduce the size of the civil service by replacing only half of employees who retire.

Workers at each museum are voting each day to determine the duration of the strike. The website of each museum will be your best source of information about their status.

Beauty ... a path toward the transcendent

2009-11-28T12:33:00.006-05:00

Pope Benedict believes that art can be used to overcome the complacent secularity of today’s western culture. To understand this view, think of Fra Angelico’s 15th century Madonnas. Then think about our 20th century Madonna.

Last Saturday, the Pope spoke to more than 250 of today’s leading painters, sculptors, architects, poets and directors, gathered in the Sistine Chapel. According to artdaily.org, he told the artists that he wanted to "renew the Church's friendship with the world of art."

He told them that, in a world lacking in hope, with increasing signs of aggression and despair, there was an ever greater need for a return to spirituality in art. "Too often”, he said... “the beauty thrust upon us is illusory and deceitful ... it imprisons man within himself and further enslaves him, depriving him of hope and joy."

Enjoined by the Pope, seated beneath Michelangelo’s profound 15th century Genesis ceiling, facing his Last Judgment, I have to imagine that at least some of those present were stirred by spiritual inspiration!

Architectural clues tell the story

2009-11-15T14:53:00.013-05:00

Just back from Rome. Glad to be home, but ... ah, Rome.

I continue to be fascinated by the visual cues to its history ... if you just know what to look for.

One thing I'd never noticed before, something I think almost everyone misses, in the Piazza di Trevi:

When facing the fountain, one's back is to an enclosed medieval portico. But if you turn around and give it a careful look, the distinct lack of symmetry in the facade gives clues to its story.

The original open portico was built in the late 13th/early 14th century, functioning as a sheltered extension of the piazza. It was enclosed in the late 17th century because it was thought to constitute a public nuisance ... its shadowy recesses providing cover for unsavory types bent on committing unsavory acts.

The portico was built with materials pilfered/salvaged from ancient structures. Use of granite columns and Ionic capitals of different sizes meant that the short entablatures had to be set in at different heights. Because of the scale differences, the spacing between the columns is uneven.

As a result of a 17th C renovation, the windows of the apartments on the floors above are placed somewhat symmetrically in relation to each other -- but there was no way to line them up with the irregular colonnade below.

Nonetheless, despite this visual dissonance, flying in the face of all that is architecturally holy, the facade has a charming stability. It will be still standing long after I'm not!

Empire and Facial Hair

2009-08-20T11:22:00.017-04:00

Here's another digression that is being edited out of the Jane's Smart Art audio guide to the Pantheon in Rome: a little art-historical note … about Roman Emperors' facial hair.

Their sculpted portraits tell us that, up until Hadrian’s time [117 - 138], Roman Emperors were clean-shaven. (Beards were worn until Alexander the Great made shaving fashionable, circa 300 BC.)

But Hadrian chose to wear a beard, perhaps in emulation of the Greek philosophers. His portraits evidence that he broke with clean-shaven tradition and, in so doing, he apparently established a new trend. Subsequent emperors were always portrayed sporting beards.

Thus, the presence or absence of a beard will cue you as to whether the Roman bust you are looking at is of the earlier or later Empire.

Julius Ceasar [d. 44BC]

Domitian [81 - 96 AD]

Trajan [98 - 117]

Hadrian [117 - 138]

Commodus [180 - 192]

Caracalla [211 - 217]

"Give us back our Apoxyomenos!"

2009-08-19T14:59:00.008-04:00

I hate to have to edit this tidbit out of the script for my up-coming Jane's Smart Art audio guide to the Pantheon in Rome, but it's rather too much of a digression:

To celebrate their victory over Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC, Emperor Octavian Augustus' good friend and son-in-law, Agrippa, built the first public baths of Rome. To supply his magnificent new baths, Agrippa constructed a 14-mile long aqueduct to bring to Rome the pure water of the Aqua Virgo.

Pliny tells us that Agrippa’s baths were splendid in design and materials, and that they were decorated with fine statues, including the famous bronze Apoxyomenos by Lysippus (Ly-SIP-us) -- a beautiful figure of an Athlete in the Bath. Lysippus was Alexander the Great’s court sculptor in the 4th C BC.

Apoxyomenos means "The Scraper". It is a Classical Greek artistic convention for representing an athlete, caught in the familiar act of scraping his body with the small curved metal instrument that the Romans called a strigil. In the days before soap, perfumed oil was applied to the skin and then the strigil was used to scrape it off, drawing the dirt and sweat from the body along with the oil.

Tiberius, who followed Octavian Augustus as Emperor, moved the bronze statue to his palace for his personal enjoyment. But -- even though he replaced it with a marble copy -- the figure was so popular that the public outcry, "Give us back our Apoxyomenos", forced him to return the original to its place in front of the Baths complex.

An ancient copy in Pentelic marble — quite possibly the one Tiberius tried to substitute — is now in the Vatican. The supporting tree trunk behind the left leg seen in the Roman marble copy was not in the bronze original, which has been lost.

The Travels Of A Traveller's Triptych

2009-06-03T10:22:00.006-04:00

How's this for provenance ...

A tiny 14th century enamel-on-gold traveller's devotional triptych :

Mary Queen of Scots had it during her imprisonment in the Tower of London; she gave it to
Elizabeth Vaux, wife of 4th Lord Vaux of Harrowden (gr-gr granddaugher of St Thomas More).
Claudio Acquaviva, General of the Jesuits 1581-1616, who gave it as a coronation gift to:
Pope Leo XI dei Medici (1605); it was returned upon the Pope's death to:
Family of Fr Aquaviva, Dukes of Atri
Maximilian I , Duke of Bavaria Wittelsbach (c.1616); Wittelsbach family owned it for more than three centuries, until they
Sold it to a Munich art dealer (1933), who sold it to
Fritz Mannheimer (died during WWII, wife Jane remarried Charles Wm Engelhard)
During war, the triptych was stored in a London bank vault; Although the bank was bombed to smitthereens, the triptych remained intact;
Looted from rubble by an English sailor who traded it it for drinks at an Irish pub
Pubkeeper gave it to a convent, whence it passed to
An unnamed local collector who traded it to a dealer for some chairs.
The dealer showed it to Fr Martin D'Arcy, (Jesuit priest, Oxford) who knew it belonged to Mannheimer (he had bid against Mannheimer for it at auction when Mannheimer acquired it.)
Returned to Jane Engelhard (c 1948); She gave it to D'Arcy, who was a noted collector.
Put on public view to celebrate the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II (1953)
Evidently now on permanent loan to Victoria and Albert Museum, London

I'd love to see the tryptych, but I've been unable to find a picture of it, not even on the V&A website or the D'Arcy Museum website. Any leads?

Baroque: The First International Style

2009-04-04T11:16:00.005-04:00

If you’ll be in London between now and July 19th, try to get to the V&A to see their special exhibit, 1620-1800 Baroque – Style in the Age of Magnificence.

Baroque was the first artistic style to have a significant global impact. It spread from Italy and France to the rest of Europe, and then was carried to Africa, Asia, and Latin America by Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch and other European colonists, missionaries and traders. As European communities were established, craftsmen, artists and architects traveled and settled around the world. Trade in luxury goods and the distribution of art prints furthered the global dissemination of Baroque style.

Art Daily Newsletter reports today that “The magnificence and splendour of Baroque, one of the most opulent styles of the 17th and 18th centuries, is the subject of the V&A’s spring exhibition. The exhibition will reflect the complexity and grandeur of the Baroque style, from the Rome of Borromini and Bernini to the magnificence of Louis XIV's Versailles and the lavishness of Baroque theatre and performance."

Displays cover architecture, furniture, silver, ceramics, painting, sculpture, and textiles. Abnd will explore Baroque in performance and the theatre; the public city square; religious spaces including St Peter’s Basilica in Rome; and secular spaces including Louis XIV’s Palace of Versailles.

Among the roughly 200 objects on display will be religious paintings by Rubens and Tiepolo. Of particular interest to anyone who has been to Our Lady Cathedral in Antwerp is an oil sketch of the center panel of Descent from the Cross, the huge altarpiece Rubens painted for the Arquebusier Guild, which is still magnificently on view in that remarkable gothic edifice.

Mark Jones, Director of the V&A said: “Baroque is one of the most exuberant and dazzling design styles there has even been, an expression of European power and magnificence in the 17th and 18th centuries. Our exhibition will be the first to examine all the elements of Baroque including architecture, art and design and will look at how it established itself through Europe and then internationally as European power grew overseas.”

If It Has Function, Can It Be Art?

2009-03-28T13:51:00.005-04:00

Some art theorists insist that art is made to be seen, not used. Essayist Siri Hustvedt is one of these. In her Mysteries of the Rectangle, she says that art "has not practical function beyond visual communication between the product the artist created and the viewer.”

I don't know what Hustvedt thinks about Fountain, but even if she agrees with me that Duchamp's urinal is not art, I suspect our reasoning might not be the same ... I disagree that functional things can't qualify as art.

Take Clark Sorensen’s urinals, for example.

Titled Nature Calls, his series of one-of-a-kind, hand-made porcelain fixtures was inspired by Georgia O'Keeffe’s large-scale flower paintings.

Like Duchamp’s Dadaist Fountain, Sorensen’s Nature Calls urinals are also intended to be humorous and ironic. But unlike Duchamp, Soensen has created something original and unique, elevating the mundane into the realm of artistic expression.

Marcel Duchamp’s urinal ... er, "Fountain"

2009-03-25T10:55:00.005-04:00

I don’t always succeed in appreciating a (so-called) work of art.

For example, I’ve never been able to appreciate Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain … which isn’t a fountain at all. It’s a urinal. And I’m not ashamed to say that I don’t “get” it, despite the fact that a poll of 500 art experts named it as the most influential work of modern art … ahead of works by Picasso and Matisse!

Duchamp's idea was that it’s the creative process that is the most important thing - that the work itself can be made of anything and can take any form.

Conceptually, I agree with that … but I can’t see that Duchamp actually created anything. What he did was purchase a factory-made product and hang it on a wall. And, indeed, when Duchamp shocked the art establishment in 1917, offering it for the first exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists in New York, Fountain was rejected for being neither original nor art.

Duchamp’s urinal is an example of Dadaism. According to its proponents, Dada was not art, it was "anti art", bent on rejecting traditional culture, and embracing chaos and irrationality. For everything that art stood for, Dada was to represent the opposite. Where art was concerned with long-established aesthetics, Dada ignored aesthetics. If art was to appeal to sensibilities, Dada was intended to offend. If art is a gift of the Universe, then Dada rejected the spirit of reciprocal generosity.

To my mind, even if American Dadism was driven by a sense of irony and humor, its negative purpose moves it out of the realm of art. Dadists themselves called it “anti-art”. How can something anti-art be art?

700 Year-Old Gift Still Elicits Gratitude

2009-03-24T13:38:00.006-04:00

Following yesterday's posting, I remembered feeling that sense of gratitude to the Universe while looking at this sculpture in Our Lady Cathedral, in Antwerp, Belgium.

This sweet Madonna and Child was carved sometime before 1350, a gift from a long-dead, nameless artist – known to us today only as the Master of the Mosan Marble Madonnas. It's a gift that has kept on giving for almost 700 years!

The first time I saw it I knew very little about late medieval sculpture. But I was drawn instinctively to the expression of tenderness between this universal rendering of Mother and Child.

I was amazed that such grace and suppleness could be evoked in stone. The surface of the marble is so smooth and soft-looking, I wanted to reach out and stroke it.

It was only later that I learned that this sort of fluidity of pose and drapery, and the expressiveness in the baby’s playful gesture and the young Madonna’s affectionate gaze -- were extraordinary in a 14th century sculpture.

As a footnote: One might well wonder how this sculpture has remained almost completely undamaged for so long -- given that the cathedral stood central to Antwerp's tumultuous history (ie: religious iconoclasm, French revolution, world war). In fact, the statue is hollow, making it light-weight enough to be easily moved out of harm's way ... as oftern as might have been necessary!

Art as a Gift of the Universe

2009-03-23T09:58:00.003-04:00

I haven’t posted for a rather long time because I’ve been busy pondering the meaning of life.

Actually, among the things I’ve been juggling is a treatise on the Art of Looking. As I’ve considered the subject, I’ve realized something quite fundamental about my approach to art:

I believe that a work of art is a gift of the Universe.

Here’s the spiritual logic: anything created by someone is an offering of a part of that person’s Being … an expression of the uniqueness of who that person is. We talk about a person as “gifted”. We refer to a person’s particular talent as “a gift from God”. We talk about gifts “coming from the heart”.

When a child gives us an off-kilter clay something-or-other, we are delighted … we recognize the care and concentration and the effort that went into it, and we receive it as a gift of that child’s Being … even while wondering what it is!

The extent to which you at least try to appreciate the work is an expression of your gratitude for the gift. It’s a reciprocal relationship. Taht may sound a little flaky … but so often when looking at an amazing work I feel a profound gratitude to the Universe that human beings are able to create such things.

Dali's Dalliance With Mass Production

2008-12-13T14:35:00.001-05:00

Salvador Dali apparently labored less for art than for his purse.

In May 1973, a witness affirmed that, at the Hotel Meurice in Paris, Dali had signed 4000 sheets of paper, weighing in at about 750 pounds! The following year, French customs agents waylaid a small truck heading to Andorra loaded with 40,000 blank pieces of paper signed by Dali.

Apparently, “on a good day”, the Surrealist was capable of signing 1800 sheets in an hour, with the assistance of three helpers who whisked the papers under and out from under his pen. Now that’s a surreal image! He joked about what easy, profitable work it was.

Needless to say, questionable Dali lithographs have been surfacing in Europe, the US and Canada in recent years.

Is Culture Just Politics By A Different Name?

2008-12-08T09:35:00.000-05:00

The frieze, the metopes and the wondrous pediments that constitute the Parthenon Marbles represent the acme of classical Greek art, and Athens' fantasitc new Acropolis Museum now provides a proper display for the parts of the Marbles which remain in Greece.

The remainder famously, or infamously, are owned by London’s British Museum, having been "rescued" in the early 19th century by the Scottish aristocrat Thomas Bruce, seventh earl of Elgin, from the neglect of the Ottoman regime that then occupied Greece.

Peter Aspden's article, A manifesto for the Parthenon Marbles, (Financial Times Nov 29th) navigates through the controversy-laden history of the Marbles with clarity and thoughtfulness.

As he unfolds the history of the separation of the marbles, Aspden wonders if the positions of Athens and London ever be reconciled. A self-described "interested observer and of Anglo-Greek parentage", he has spent years following the arguments on both sides of the issue, and here proposes a five-point reconciliation plan to help break the deadlock.

Aspden points out, “We owe it to the remarkable humanistic legacy of ancient Greece to move forward on this vexed issue; for culture is politics by a different name, and if we cannot decide on the future of a few marble stones, what chance do we have to do the right thing for all the world’s dislocated peoples?”

Quelle Surprise! C'est un Tiepolo!

2008-12-05T09:24:00.002-05:00

I do love stories about extraordinary artworks that have been lost -- sometimes not even known to be lost -- turning up in attics or behind bedroom doors (see my Nov 14 , 2006 post, and Dec 17, 2007).

Imagine the shock: rummaging around in Grandmamma's attic and finding a Tiepolo! Of course the rummaging was taking place in the attic of a French château, so the discovery would perhaps have been less of a surprise than if the family home were a farmhouse in Kansas. Nonetheless ... how exciting!

The rediscovered masterpiece, Portrait of a lady as Flora, by the great Italian artist Giambattista Tiepolo (1696-1770), had been hidden two or three generations ago because of the semi-naked subject. It is thought to have originated as part of a series of pictures commissioned by Empress Elizabeth of Russia (1709-1762), probably intended for the Winter Palace.

This is one for Antiques Roadshow ... the painting was just sold at auction for $4,227,780!

125 Reasons to go to Amsterdam

2008-10-04T11:44:00.000-04:00

125 years ago, the Rembrandt Association was founded by a group of individuals who were bent on keeping and returning significant works of Dutch art to the country. In the late 19th Century there was little governmental support for retaining important works of art, and the museums didn't have the financial resources to compete for acquisitions with foreign collectors. The Rembrandt Association began bringing works by artists such as Rembrandt van Rijn, Jan Davidsz de Heem and Hendrick TerBrugghen back to the Netherlands. In its 125 year history, the Association has participated in the purchase of more than 2500 works for public ownership.

2008 marks the 125th anniversary of the Rembrandt Association. To celebrate the occasion a major exhibition is being mounted at Amsterdam's fabulous Van Gogh Museum. It will run 3 October 2008 - 18 January 2009.

More than thirty Dutch museums have collaborated to stage this one-time exhibition showcasing a selection of the best works of art the Rembrandt Society has helped them to acquire over the years.

It was due to the Association’s efforts that paintings by Rembrandt and Vermeer were purchased for public collections. In later years the Association also turned its attention to foreign and modern works of art, which enabled museums to become more than simply temples of the Dutch artistic heritage. In this exciting exhibition some 125 of the most important and striking acquisitions will be shown together for the first and only time.

The Van Gogn Museum website provides details of the five sections of the exhibit: 1) key purchases of the last 125 years; 2) works of Dutch art that returned to the Netherlands and works that were retained in the country; 3) old masters by non-Dutch artists; 4) modern and contemporary art; and 5) a selection of acquisitions of the last ten years.

The Van Gohn Museum is also home to the world's largest Van Gogh collection.

Rodin in New Mexico, Philadelphia and Paris

2008-09-16T11:12:00.000-04:00

LAS CRUCES, NM – If you plan to be anywhere near Las Cruces between now and November 22, check out the special exhibit at the Las Cruces Museum of Art: Rodin: In His Owns Words. The show features forty-two sculptures and related works by French artist Auguste Rodin (1840 – 1917). Free admission. The exhibit includes bronzes of various sizes, a selection of photographs and portraits of Rodin, as well as journal entries and letters by the artist. Accompanying the show is an educational exhibit on the lost-wax casting process, the traditional method for creating bronze sculptures.

Auguste Rodin was a pioneer in sculpture, creating bold impressionistic pieces that have been exhibited at museums worldwide. Sculptures on exhibit will include such well-known works as The Thinker, Head of Balzac, and The Burghers of Calais, First Maquette. “Rodin: In His Own Words” offers ae rare opportunity to view these masterpieces in person … unless of course you’re in Paris, and can get to the exquisite Musee Rodin at 79 Rue de Varenne. It’s a gem, and the garden is not to be missed. Or, to the Rodin Museum in Philadelphia, at Benjamin Frnklin Parkway at 22nd St.

Throughout the run of the Las Cruces exhibition, the Museum -- located at 491 N. Main -- will be hosting a series of special events. On the second Saturday of each month, the Las Cruces Friends of Chamber Music will present “Musical Reflections on the Life and Times of Rodin.” The Museum of Art will also host a guest lecture series including New Mexico sculptor Michael Naranjo and Matthew Palczynski, Staff Lecturer for the Philadelphia Museum of Art (which administers the Rodin Museum in Philly.)

Quest and Quandary in Art Restoration

2008-09-15T14:29:00.002-04:00

The mere suggestion that we might one day go to Prague started me poking around the web. (I'm always on the lookout for new Jane's Smart Art audio guide must-see sites!) I came across this ...

To help guide the restoration of the original Dürer altarpiece, The Feast of the Rose Garlands, the National Gallery in Prague is trying to track down an important lost copy.

The altarpiece was painted by Albrecht Dürer in 1506, during his stay in Venice, commissioned by German merchants for their chapel in the parish Church of San Bartolomeo. According to CultureKiosk, the patrons selected the theme: the painting depicts an ideal congregation of the Brotherhood of the Rosary. The Virgin with the Infant Christ, and Saint Dominic and angels dispense a symbolic blessing in the form of rose garlands. On the left are representatives of the clergy with the Pope at their head, while on the right representatives of secular power receive the blessing. Among these is a portrait the Holy Roman Emperor-in-waiting, Maximilian I. Undoubtedly the other figures portray prominent personages of the German colony in Venice. The man standing under a tree to the right is Dürer himself.

Dürer was proud of his achievement, writing to a friend in Nuremberg that "there is no better Madonna picture in the land than mine".

Considered a landmark work in the transition between the late Gothic and the Renaissance, contemporary writings tell us that the painting drew crowds of visitors from all over Europe. The Emperor Rudolf II was determined to acquire it at any cost.

The painting remained in the church in Venice for a century, until in 1606 when it was removed by Emperor Rudolph II for his art collection, and taken to Prague. The Durer was replaced by an Assumption of the Virgin painted by Johann Rottenhammer. But, before the Dürer altarpiece was removed, Rottenhammer painted a copy of it.

The original of The Feast of the Rose Garlands suffered a series of damages -- first while in Venice, then as it was carried over the Alps by four bearers, and yet again after its arrival in Prague. By the end of the 17th century, a considerable amount of the paint had been lost.

The Art Newspaper tells us that it was completely restored in 1841 by artist Johann Gruss. By modern standards his restoration was very crude -- for instance, he omitted a life-size trompe l'oeil fly which Dürer had painted on the Virgin's white drapery. A proper restoration must grapple with the difficult question as to whether there should be relatively minor conservation to remove the most glaring defects of the 1841 repainting, or a full restoration which would radically change the picture's appearance and return it closer to Dürer's original.

A very old black-and-white photograph of The Feast of the Rose Garlands exists, and there are several 17th-century copies, but the earliest and most accurate version is that by Rottenhammer. That copy originally went to the Palazzo Grimani in Venice, where it stayed until 1839. It then was sent to England where it was later purchased, in 1905, for £50, by the distinguished collector Herbert Cook. The picture was still in the Cook collection in 1945, which means that it was not looted on the continent during World War II, as some art historians had feared. It was later sold to a London-based gallery which has since closed. That's when the trail went cold.

Since it is known to have survived World War II, the chances of it being out there somewhere are very high. Check your attic!

The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters

2008-09-12T13:36:00.001-04:00

One of the grand things about life in central New Jersey is the proximity of the world-class museums in Manhattan and Philadelphia, as well as exceptional smaller museums like that at Princeton University and the Zimmerli at Rutgers.

This fall, the Zimmerli Art Museum in New Brunswick is showing Dark Dreams: The Prints of Francisco Goya, an exhibition of 100 prints demonstrating Goya’s technical and creative achievements as a printmaker. The exhibition will present two complete suites of prints by Goya (1746-1828), Los Caprichos and Los Disparates. In addition, a special display of 12 works by Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Enrique Chagoya (born 1953) and Yinka Shonibare MBE (born 1962) demonstrates the continuing impact of Goya’s imagery and imagination on successive generations of artists.

The exhibition features Goya’s first major series of etchings, Los Caprichos (1799), comprising eighty works treating subjects ranging from witches and goblins to critical commentary on the contemporary state of education, religion, and relations between different social classes of that time. Later, Goya revisited the monstrous themes of Los Caprichos in the late etchings he referred to as Los Disparates (“Follies”), which he created between 1816 and 1824. The exhibition also includes Bullfight in a Divided Ring (1825), from the series of The Bulls of Bordeaux, a late work demonstrating Goya’s success with the new medium of lithography. The rare first-edition Goya prints in the exhibition are generously lent by the Arthur Ross Foundation, New York.

The exhibition opened on September 2 and will continue through December 14, '08. Apparently everyone is invited to a public celebration at the museum next Tuesday, September 16, from 5 to 7pm.

Would That I Could Get to the Getty

2008-09-11T14:50:00.001-04:00

LOS ANGELES - To celebrate Italian Language Week, the J. Paul Getty Museum is offering a special one-hour overview -- in italiano -- of the current exhibition: Bernini and the Birth of Baroque Portrait Sculpture.

Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680) is considered the greatest Baroque sculptor, and his unparalleled talent as a portrait sculptor transformed the practice and earned him the patronage of the Catholic Church and nobility in 17th- century Rome. Co-organized by the J. Paul Getty Museum and the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa , Bernini and the Birth of Baroque Portrait Sculpture is the first major exhibition of Bernini's work in North America and the first ever comprehensive exhibition of the artist's portrait busts.

On view at the Getty Center through October 26, 2008 , the special exhibition also includes Bernini's portrait drawings, as well as portrait busts by other important sculptors in 17th-century Rome such as Francesco Mochi, François Duquesnoy, Giuliano Finelli, and Alessandro Algardi. If you’ve been to Rome, you know Bernini. If you’ve listened to the Jane’s Smart Art audio guide to St. Peter’s Basilica, you’re also familiar with the work of Mochi, Duquesnoy, and Algardi.

As a complement to the Baroque portraiture exhibit, the Getty Center has mounted another temporary exhibit at , Faces of Power and Piety: Medieval Portraiture -- also through October 26, 2008.

The goal of medieval portraiture was to present a subject not at a particular moment in time, but as the person wished to be remembered through the ages. “While modern portraiture strives to capture the accurate likeness of a specific person, medieval portraiture was primarily valued for its ability to express an individual’s social status, religious convictions, or political position,” says Elizabeth Morrison, curator of manuscripts, J. Paul Getty Museum.

Art Daily provides a schedule of related lectures, gallery talks, & concerts in Sept and Oct.

New operating hours and parking fees

Henceforth, the Getty Center will close at 5:30 pm (a half hour earlier than previously) on Sundays and Tuesday through Friday. Saturdays it will remain open until 9pm. The Getty Center is closed on Mondays. Ticketed events and performances will still be presented on Friday evenings, but the galleries will not be open to the general public. Getty Villa hours will remain unchanged.

Admission to both Museums remains free.

In addition, beginning on Sept. 9, parking fees at both the Getty Center and the GettyVilla increased from $8 to $10.

Grand Canal Gets 4th Bridge, Finally

2008-09-10T10:17:00.002-04:00

VENICE - Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava’s new Venetian bridge has been taking a beating from the critics. Focusing largely on its high cost, the local government has decided not to officially inaugurate it on September 18 as planned.

The first bridge constructed in Venice in 125 years, it connects the train station to the vehicular area of Piazzale Roma. It represents a decided break with the traditional architecture of the city.

An exquisitely historic thoroughfare, the the Grand Canal is lined with ancient palaces. Among them are the Ca’ Rezzonico, Ca’ d’Oro, Ca’ Foscari, Palazzo Barbarigo and the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, which houses the Peggy Guggenheim Collection. The churches along the canal include the basilica of Santa Maria della Salute. Centuries-old tradition such as the Historical Regatta take place every year along the Canal.

The famous stone Rialto Bridge that stands today was built in 1591, but was preceded by, first, a pontoon bridge erected in 1181, then a timber bridge built in 1255. For centuries this was the only bridge crossing over the Grand Canal. In the 1800s two more bridges, the Ponte degli Scalzi and the Ponte dell’Accademia, were built. There’s a nice little history of the Rialto Bridge on Wikipedia.

During the long period of construction, Calatrava's bridge project went though numerous structural changes because of the mechanical instability of the structure, and the excessive weight of the bridge which would cause the bank of the canal to fail. Over 10 years the project was inspected by at least eight different consultants, and the cost grew to more than three times original projections.

Santiago Calatrava Valls (b 1951) is an internationally recognized, award-winning Spanish architect, sculptor and structural engineer. His early career was dedicated largely to bridges and train stations, and his style has been heralded as bridging the division between structural engineering and architecture. Calatrava is currently designing the future train station at Ground Zero in New York City. He has also designed three bridges that will eventually span the Trinity River in Dallas. Construction of the first bridge, named after donor Margaret Hunt Hill, has been repeatedly delayed due to – once again — high costs. If and when completed, Dallas will join the Dutch county of Haarlemmermeer in having three Calatrava bridges.

Special Exhibits: Dali in Istanbul / El Greco in Zaragoza

2008-09-09T14:51:00.001-04:00

I’ve learned to scan my art-related news sources super-quickly — otherwise I get sucked into daydreaming about traveling hither and yon to experience all the great art the world has to offer!

I've struck upon an excuse to pause in my scanning, when something grabs my interest, to pass it along in this blog to the traveling art-afficionados among you who might be in the enviable position to actually be able to hie yourselves hither!

Istanbul - Istanbul’s Sakip Sabanci Museum will host a huge modern art exhibition of 270 works by the late Spanish surrealist Salvador Dali, from September 19 until January 19.

With 33 oil paintings, 113 sketches and 123 graphics, it will be the largest ever mounted by the Gala-Salvador Dali Foundation outside the artist’s Catalan hometown of Figueres.

In 2005 and 2006 a major exhibition of works by another Spanish painter, Pablo Picasso, broke all records for a Turkish gallery, attracting a quarter of a million art lovers, so this show opens with high expectations for another blockbuster.

While you’re there be sure to check out the Museum’s permanent collection, which includes early Turkish painting as well as the works of foreign artists who worked in Istanbul during the later years of the Ottoman Empire; 500 years of the art of Ottoman calligraphy; and exhibited in the garden of the Museum, archaeological stone pieces of the Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman eras.

Zaragoza - Last week an exhibition “El Greco. Toledo 1900″ opened in the recently renovated Paraninfo Building of the University of Zaragoza until November 30.
The exhibition of 27 canvases produced by El Greco and his workshop, is a gathering of works which have hung in different public and private collections in the city of Toledo. Among the canvases is a group of portraits of the Covarrubias brothers, sons of the architect who designed the Cathedral in Toledo.

Admission to the exhibit is free. The open hours are Monday through Saturday 10am – 2pm and 5pm - 9pm (only 5pm - 9pm on Fri Sept 19); Sunday and holidays from 10am to 2pm.

From the Art Daily Newsletter: “El Greco was born in Crete, which was at that time part of the Republic of Venice, and the centre of Post-Byzantine art. He trained and became a master within that tradition before travelling at age 26 to Venice, as other Greek artists had done. In 1570 he moved to Rome, where he opened a workshop and executed a series of works. During his stay in Italy, El Greco enriched his style with elements of Mannerism and of the Venetian Renaissance. In 1577 he moved to Toledo, Spain, where he lived and worked until his death. In Toledo, El Greco received several major commissions and produced his best known paintings.

“El Greco’s dramatic and expressionistic style was met with puzzlement by his contemporaries but found appreciation in the 20th century. El Greco is regarded as a precursor of both Expressionism and Cubism, while his personality and works were a source of inspiration for poets and writers such as Rainer Maria Rilke and Nikos Kazantzakis. El Greco has been characterized by modern scholars as an artist so individual that he belongs to no conventional school. He is best known for tortuously elongated figures and often fantastic or phantasmagorical pigmentation, marrying Byzantine traditions with those of Western painting. ”

Andrea della Robbia Injured in Fall

2008-07-03T15:09:00.000-04:00

Can you imagine how it would feel to arrive at work one sunny summer morning to find a prized 15thC work of art – an Andrea della Robbia glazed terracotta relief sculpture – lying in pieces on the floor?

"Heartsick" I think would be the word for it.

Sadly, that happened this morning at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Apparently, the metal mounts that held 62-x-32-inch relief on the wall over a doorway gave out sometime during the night. The wood-framed lunette, Saint Michael the Archangel, fell to the stone floor below, crashing into pieces.

Della Robbia’s blue-and-white lunette of Saint Michael, dressed in armor and holding a sword and the scales of justice, was commissioned c. 1475 for the church of San Michele Arcangelo in Faenza, a small town between Bologna and Ravenna. The church was dismantled around 1798, and the Saint Michael ended up in private hands. It was acquired at auction by the Metropolitan Museum in 1960.

Curators and conservators were at work this morning assessing the situation. Their preliminary inspection indicates that the relief was not irreparably damaged, that it can be repaired and again put on display. The European Paintings and Decorative Arts Galleries will be temporarily closed, until the sculpture is transferred to the conservation area of the Museum for a full assessment of the damage.

What constitutes a “Major” museum?

2008-06-06T12:34:00.001-04:00

What constitutes a “Major” museum? This announcement from artdialy.org gives us one way of looking at it:

Philippe de Montebello – the eighth and longest-serving Director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York – announced in January his plans to retire at the end of the year. To celebrate Mr. de Montebello’s long stint as Director, the curators of the Museum announced plans today for an exhibition of approximately 300 of the more than 84,000 works of art acquired during his 31-year tenure. The project will be a collaboration of the curators currently working in the Museum’s 17 curatorial departments.

The Philippe de Montebello Years: Curators Celebrate Three Decades of Acquisitions will be on view in The Tisch Galleries from October 24, 2008, through February 1, 2009. With so much to choose from, the 300 selected items promise to be significant. It's on my calendar.

Perhaps Nothing Is Meant To Last Forever

2008-05-02T17:31:00.000-04:00

I suppose I’ve never actually thought about it until now, but I think I’ve been fooled into a subconscious assumption that modern science and civilized conscience can indefinitely protect whatever fragments of ancient life remain to us. But learning of yet another World Heritage Site in peril makes me realize that “indefinitely” is an unrealistically long time.

It’s been known since 2006 that melanin, a black pigment produced by a bacteria, has been staining the walls and permanently affecting the 17,000 year old cave paintings of Lascaux, in France.

According to CultureGrrl, Lascaux's administrators have been implementing an aggressive treatment they call "decolorization" to remove the melanin by physically scraping the affected areas. The scraping not only removes the melanin but also layers of the walls' surface, whether painted or unpainted, thus irrevocably altering one of mankind's most famous works of art.

While French officials assert the cave is close to reaching a microbiological equilibrium, members of the International Committee for the Preservation of Lascaux strongly disagree. They claim that just the opposite is happening. They can't both be right. We can only hope that this is not a case in which the cure is worse than the disease.

An incalculable amount of human creativity has been eradicated by war, arrogance and simple unmindfulness – realities of the human condition. But there’s something particularly sad about the destruction resulting from misguided preservation efforts. Our documentary use of today’s photographic technologies may be some consolation for generations to come who at least will have some visual evidence of what’s been lost. But they may well be saddened by the fact that they have the technology that could save what we couldn’t.

Valuing Art

2008-05-01T14:52:00.001-04:00

I'm afraid I just don't get why a 4000 year old clay tablet from the fabled Sumarian city of Ur is expected to sell for just £30,000-40,000 at auction, while Jeff Koons’ and Damien Hirst’s work sells for multi-millions of dollars. I'd never make it in the art valuation business!

The clay tablet, dated to 2046-2038 B.C., is listed at Bonhams as Lot 145. The columns of cuneiform text record the administration of domestic animals, and lists the manner in which the flocks were divided during the course of one year. Some were marked as being for government supplies, while others were destined to be supplies for the officially supported religious cults.

The tablet provides a remarkable insight into the daily life of this ancient civilisation and details the particular manner in which animals of one type are distinguished from others within their group. Sheep, for instance, are described as grass-fed or grain-fed, unplucked or plucked, which shows the importance placed upon specific features of the livestock.

News Flash: Oil painting NOT invented in 15th C Europe!

2008-04-30T11:16:00.001-04:00

It’s been 7 years since the Taliban blew up two ancient colossal Buddha statues in the Afghan region of Bamiyan. What wasn’t widely reported at the time was that behind the statues were caves -- decorated with precious paintings from 5th to 9th century A.D. -- which also suffered damage.

According to ArtDaily Newsletter, the paintings are probably the work of artists who traveled on the Silk Road, the ancient trade route between China and the West, across Central Asia's desert.

Now a World Heritage site, thanks to UNESCO support for a conservation project, the Bamiyan paintings have recently become the source of a major discovery for art historians.

Painted in the mid-7th century A.D., the murals show scenes with Buddhas in vermilion robes sitting cross-legged amid palm leaves and mythical creatures. As a result of experiments performed at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF), the scientists discovered that 12 out of the 50 caves were painted with oil painting technique, using perhaps walnut and poppy seed oils.

The Bamiyan cave murals predate by hundreds of years the first documented use of oil paint in Europe. Art history books have long proposed that oil painting was invented in 15th century Europe.

I was thinking about the Taliban’s destruction of the colossal Buddha statues at Bamiyan just a couple of weeks ago. It was hearing about the mind-bendingly oblivious Finnish tourist who broke off part of the ear of an Easter Island Maoi statue that got me thinking about the destruction of ancient art by humans.

There are nearly 900 moai on Easter Island, in various stages of construction, some of them more than 33ft tall and weighing more than 80 tons. The statues are believed to be up to 1,000 years old, representing Polynesian ancestors. Rapa Nui National Park, in which the moai are situated, became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1995.

My reaction to the Taliban’s desecration was utter shock … and disbelief that people can be so full of hatred. My reaction to the Finnish fool’s desecration was a flare-up of anger … and disbelief that a person can be so selfish and ignorant. Was he drunk? Showing off? Or was he just arrogant and self-centered? When the vandal broke the earlobe off, it fell to the ground and shattered into small pieces, which he then attempted to steal. His spokeswoman said, "He really didn't realize the magnitude of his actions. We all make mistakes in our lives, and this was his mistake." And what a whopper is was!

In the end … is there any difference between the politically-motivated destruction of antiquities and that inspired by individual stupidity? The damage is done.

The Return of Samson & Delilah

2008-03-03T17:22:00.003-05:00

Not long after his return from Italy in 1608, Rubens was commissioned to paint a Samson and Delilah for Nicolaas Rockox. Rockox was a wealthy and influential Antwerp burgher who was a great friend to Rubens and who become one of his greatest patrons.

If you've listened to my Jane's Smart Art audio guide to Antwerp Cathedral, you know that Rockox had a hand in commissioning Rubens to paint the magnificent Arquebusiers' Guild altarpiece, The Descent From the Cross -- for which Rubens expressed his appreciation by including a portrait of his friend on one of the side panels.

And if you've seen the Descent, you'll recognize the old woman who here peers over Delilah's shoulder. Rubens often repeated certain figural types that he'd used successfully in previous works ... which was one way he was able to be so prolific.

Although we're not told how it came to pass, The Art Newspaper tells us that, from 1700 until 1880, the Samson and Delilah was in the collection of the Prince of Liechtenstein, and then was sold to the National Gallery, London. The "return" of the title refers to the loan of the painting to the now-closed exhibition in Rockoxhuis, Antwerp, as well as to its appearance at the Palais Liechtenstein where it is now being shown (through 25 May, 2008) along with other works collected by Rockox.

I'd say this is a "don't miss" opportunity if you find yourself anywhere near Vienna in the next three months.

"The Most Beautiful Drawing inthe World"

2008-02-18T11:16:00.005-05:00

People generally don't think of Birmingham, Alabama as a destination city for art, but there's now a good reason for art afficionados to plan a visit this Fall:

The Birmingham Museum of Art has just announced that between September 28 and November 9, 2008 it will be host to one of the most significant collections of Leonardo da Vinci drawings. This will be the first time the Biblioteca Reale (Royal Library) in Turin, Italy has made the collection available, in its entirety, outside of Italy.

Among the most celebrated of the Turin sheets is the preparatory sketch of the angel for the first version of the Madonna of the Rocks (ca. 1483), originally intended for a chapel altarpiece in the church of San Francesco Grande in Milan. Its powerful and expressive silverpoint parallel hatching led art critic and connoisseur Bernard Berenson (1865-1959) to describe it as the “most beautiful drawing in the world.

The works date from about 1480 to 1510 -- the most fertile period of da Vinci's career --and demonstrate his acutely observant, imaginative, and intellectual faculties. The collection includes one of his most celebrated notebooks, the Codex on the Flight of Birds, and 11 important drawings, including anatomical studies and utilitarian working drawings; one sheet includes a fragment of a poem. They are executed in a variety of media, including chalks, metal point, and pen and ink—some on color-prepared paper.

Quite a coup for the Birmingham Museum, and worth a trip.

Going Beneath The Surface

2008-02-12T11:27:00.000-05:00

X-ray technology is used in the art world to see beneath the surface of paintings, and under plaster on walls, to document the artist's process and to find lost works. This is done despite the fact that x-rays can damage the organic pigments ... I presume, because the learning is deemed to outweigh the risks.

According to the Discovery Channel, however, there’s a benign form of electromagnetic radiation that is beginning to be used in the art world. Most of us have never heard of T-rays (terahertz rays), although the technology has been in use by electrical engineers for decades. The new technique should be able to detect particular pigments in old artwork that other types of scans miss -- such as sanguine, a reddish-brown color that Flemish painters often used.

Right now T-ray images are only generated in black and white, but scientists are working on developing the technology to produce color images. From what I understand there are just two T-ray machines currently being used for scanning art, and only one of them is portable. Researchers at the University of Michigan are planning on using it to find murals hidden beneath layers of plaster in centuries-old churches in France.

I'd wager that we're going to be hearing alot more about T-ray scanning projects in coming years.

Might David Really Leave Florence?

2008-01-28T20:45:00.000-05:00

If you’ve ever battled the tourist crowds in Florence, and stood in line waiting to get into the Accademia to see Michelangelo’s magnificent David, you’ll understand at least part of the proposal being made by Tuscany's cultural chief, Paolo Cocchi, to move the statue to a new location some distance outside of the city center. He argues that moving David would ease tourist congestion in the historic center of Florence, and says, ''Keeping him in a museum where hundreds of tourists have to line a 45-cm wide pavement doesn't seem the best place for him''.

Opposition to the idea came fast and furious.

The idea of taking David out of his newly improved setting at the Galleria dell'Accademia elicited a quick response from the head of the city's museums, Cristina Acidini, who cited the millions of euros the city recently spent cleaning the statue and installing sophisticated anti-pollution systems to protect it.

According to LifeinItaly.com, “Officials at the Accademia stressed it would be 'extremely risky' to move the masterpiece out of the building that has been its home since 1873, when it was removed from its original position in front of Palazzo Vecchio.

“‘The home of David must be in the centre of Florence, for historical reasons,’ said Accademia director Franca Falletti. Branding Cocchi's suggestion ‘absolutely out of the question,’ she recalled the statue's fragility. An eight-month restoration to get it ready for its 500th birthday in 2004 revealed structural frailty, especially in the ankles, and the continuing impact on its surface of the bad air and street dirt brought in by millions of tourists.

“In the light of these risks, some art experts even suggested the statue should be moved to the Accademia's cellar.”

Fortunately, a less radical solution was implemented. Instead of being removed from public view, the David was placed behind an insulating barrier of circulating air, whereby streams of air protect it against the dust and particles which could further corrode its delicate surface. Special carpeting traps dirt as visitors approach the sculpture.

Given the cultural, historical, and conservation issues that are being raised in opposition to Cocchi’s proposal, my guess is that people wanting to see David century from now will still inch along, single-file, on the same narrow sidewalk as they do today.

The Cardsharps

2007-12-22T15:30:00.000-05:00

I wasn't able to upload this image on Dec 17th when I wrote about the discovery of Caravaggio's previously mis-attributed painting, an earlier version of The Kimbell's "The Cardsharps". Here it is.

Previously Unknown Caravaggio Discovered

2007-12-17T15:27:00.000-05:00

It was just over a year ago (Nov 14 , 2006) that two lost Fra Angelico panels were found hanging behind a bedroom door in a librarian's house. She'd bought them some years earlier for a few hundred dollars.

Now comes word of the discovery of an undocumented painting by Caravaggio. The work, previously attributed to an anonymous follower of that artist, was bought by a British art historian for $100,000. He happened upon it while sitting in a restaurant, leafing through an auction catalog. A strong hunch that there might be more to it than previously thought, led him through the necessary steps to verify his initial intuition.

An article in the Associated Press recounts that analysis of the paint showed traces of very fine sand, which was a Caravaggio trademark, and that x-rays exposed detailed underlying sketching. According to an Italian art historian involved in the verification, “That's the ultimate proof. A copycat doesn’t do that.”

It is now believed that this work is a slightly earlier version of Caravaggio’s well-known painting "The Cardsharps" (1594) which can be seen at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas.

What other art wonders are just waiting to be found?

But is it art?

2007-09-04T17:21:00.000-04:00

This from London, according to ArtDaily: London’s White Cube gallery announced that British artist Damien Hirst's glittering skull sold for $100 million dollars, a record price for work sold by a living artist. The work is entitled "For the Love of God". According to the gallery a group of anonymous investors purchased the work.
The skull is made of platinum, encrusted with 8,601 diamonds. It cost $20 million to make the skull (diamonds and fabrication).

Speaking of Record Prices at Auction ...

2007-07-07T11:49:00.000-04:00

Speaking of auction record prices ... Recently at Sotheby’s in London, a rare work by Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez 1599 - 1660 – Saint Rufina, sold for £8,420,000 ($17,003,348), setting a new world auction record for the artist, and also becoming the most expensive Old Master Painting by a Spanish artist ever sold at auction.

Saint Rufina was one of only a handful of works by the artist ever to have come to auction. A work of particular intimacy and simplicity, Saint Rufina may even have reflected the likeness of one of the artist’s own daughters, Francisca or Ignacia, who were aged around twelve and fourteen years old when the painting was executed in the early 1630s.

The good news is that the painting was bought by the Focus Abengoa Foundation from Seville, the painter’s birthplace.

Alex Bell, head of Sotheby’s Old Master Paintings department in London, said: “I am thrilled that this beautiful portrait of Seville’s patron saint has found a permanent home in the artist’s birthplace.”

Following the sale, Anabel Morillo León, the Managing Director of the foundation said “We are absolutely delighted to have had the opportunity to bring the painting back to Seville, and to its people, who have shown such interest in this image of the city’s patron saint. The success of this joint effort between the Town Hall and the Focus Abengoa Foundation is a model of cooperation that will benefit the city of Seville.” “The Town Hall and the Focus-Abengoa Foundation have reached an understanding to work together to promote Velázquez’s oeuvre for 75 years. This agreement will encompass the creation of a centre to house the work by the artist, including Santa Rufina and La imposición de la Casulla a San Ildefonso, as well as a library and documentation centre on the life of this painter who is so important to the people of Seville.”

While Saint Rufina was the highlight of Sotheby’s evening sale of Old Master Paintings, the auction began with the sale of Turner watercolours from the collection of Guy and Myriam Ullens. Spanning 44 years of Turner’s career, the 14 works offered represented the finest group of watercolours by the artist to have come to the market since the 1920s.

After the sale, Baron Guy Ullens said: “The decision to part with the Turner watercolours was a difficult one. My wife Myriam and I have enjoyed the privilege of living surrounded by Turner’s genius for many years, and their absence now will be acute. But parting with these wonderful works has been made easier because of the knowledge that they will now be enjoyed by other collectors. The success of this evening’s sale means that we now have the additional resources we need to pursue a dream that Myriam and I both treasure: the building of a museum for Contemporary Art in Beijing.”

Aside from the record price for the Velázquez, eight further auction records were achieved,. Among the most notable new records was that for a work by Jan Brueghel the Elder, whose harrowing depiction of hell (Aeneas and the Sybil in the Underworld) realised £1,924,000 (17,003,348 ). Unrecorded until its rediscovery in 2001, the work was the only known example of the artist’s famous hell scenes remaining in private hands.

Raphael Portrait Goes to Private Collection

2007-07-07T11:05:00.000-04:00

On May 28th I expressed the hope that Raphael's portrait of Lorenzo de’ Medici, Duke of Urbino -- which was soon to go up for auction -- would go to a public museum rather than a private collection. ArtDailyNews calls it: "The most important Renaissance portrait to be offered at auction for a generation, and the most important work by the artist to be offered at auction in recent decades."

The remarkable painting sold at Christies in London yesterday after a ten minute bidding battle. It went to an anonymous private collector bidding over the telephone .

Oh, well.

It sold for £18,500,000 ($37,277,500). This is a world record price for the artist at auction and a world record price for an Italian Old Master picture. Yes, indeed, there are some rather wealthy people in the world!

The Raphael was the highlight of the auction, but plenty of other magnificent works were snapped up. Said a Christies spokesperson, "This evening’s sale attracted clients from around the world, including a significant number who were new to the category, and particularly competitive bidding was seen for the best works on offer.

We are pleased with the price achieved by [the Baroque master Domenico Zampieri] Il Domenichino’s Pietà which sold for £3.04 million, a record price for the artist at auction. Venus and Cupid by Sir Peter Lely sold to a private collector within the estimate of £1,500,000-2,000,000.”

Portrait of a Lady by Lucas Cranach II (1515-1586), far exceeded its pre-sale estimate of £500,000-700,000, eventually selling to an anonymous bidder in the room for £1,812,000 ($3,651,180), setting a world record price for the artist at auction.

The Revel of Baachus and Silenus by Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678), which had been hidden from public view since 1953, realised £1,700,000 ($3,425,500).

The Woodland Maid by Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830) realised £1,196,000 ($2,409,940).

'Clueless' thieves sell £1million painting for £350

2007-06-08T19:36:00.000-04:00

From the June 4th Daily Mail :

A £1 million painting stolen by a gang of 'clueless' thieves was discovered on sale at a flea market for 500 Euro. Giandomenico Tiepolo's Scenes from a Venetian Carnival was stolen last year from a private collector.
It was recovered from Pordenone, near Venice, along with more than a dozen other works of art worth more than £2.5million, following raids on a number of markets across Italy.

Tiepolo, whose works are characterised by vivid colour and movement, was born in Venice in 1727.

A spokesman said yesterday: "This gang was peddling works of art worth millions for just a few hundred euros. They were completely clueless and had no idea of the real value. "In fact to call them clueless would be a compliment." Who says the carabinieri are humorless?

I think from now on I'll spend more time at flea markets when I'm in Italy!

Speaking of Raphael

2007-05-28T10:28:00.000-04:00

Speaking of Raphael – which I have been doing a lot in preparation for the release of our newest title, Raphael’s Stanza della Segnatura -- one of the few of his works that remain privately owned is is going up for auction at Christies in London on July 5th.

I do hope it will be acquired for a museum collection, rather than being snatched up by one of the world’s super-rich. But I fear that the cachet of owning one of the last privately-held Raphaels will send the bidding beyond the reach of museum budgets.

"The portrait shows a swagger Lorenzo de’ Medici standing proud and resplendent against a rich green background. In the Duke’s right hand he holds what is probably a portrait miniature showing his future wife."

The resplendent color, and the delicate treatment of the fur on his cape highlight Raphael’s exceptional ability and technique. This explains is reputation of ‘the Prince of Painters'.

The Medici gained great power through a series of appointments, conquests and strategic marriages. The second son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, Giovanni di Lorenzo de' Medici (1475-1521), was elected Pope Leo X in 1513. "Seeking to consolidate the position of the Medici family on an international stage, the Pope arranged for his nephew, Lorenzo, to be married to Madeleine de la Tour d’Auvergne, a cousin of Francois I, King of France. At the time, France was an important ally of the Vatican against the Holy Roman Empire."

"As neither the Duke nor the bride-to-be had met, an exchange of portraits was arranged in order that they could see what to expect. On 2 May 1518 the Duke was married in the château of Amboise in France. Returning to Florence with his bride, their entry to the city was celebrated with a banquet at which Raphael’s portrait of the Pope, now in the Uffizi, Florence, was exhibited. The couple had a child, Catherine de Medici, who went on to marry King Henry II of France, but less than a year after the marriage, the Duchess died. Lorenzo died soon afterwards in 1519."

3-Month Long, 40-Mile Long Art Exhibition

2007-05-22T16:19:00.000-04:00

Although the Loire River no longer looks as it did in W.M.Turner’s day, it continues to inspire artistic endeavor.

For three months this summer, running for 40 miles along the river will be more than 40 installations created by an international cadre of artists. Visit http://www.estuaire.info/.

Artists including Anish Kapoor and Daniel Buren will install what we’re told will be a “lively, fun and unusual” variety of works in the cities and ports, on the riverbanks, on the water -- and even in the water -- to build a geographic and symbolic link between Nantes ando St Nazaire, two cities which share a common history of shipbuilding.

The works include “an 80 foot duck, astonishing feats of architecture, dramatic fountains and a floating house,” all of which can be viewed free of charge.

One way to see the river’s landscapes, its cultural and historic heritage, and the installations themselves will be to take a three-hour river cruise on a specially-built mirrored boat, while listening to the audio-guided tour designed by the artists (available in English and French).

Alternatively, the area is wonderful to explore on foot or by bicycle.

Not going to the Loire Valley this summer? Not to worry … you can start planning now to see the repeat of The Loire Estuary Project in 2009 and 2011!

2007-05-05T10:06:00.000-04:00

"Rafael Moneo has done something very odd, even unorthodox, to the Prado, Madrid’s world-renowned city-centre art gallery,” The Guardian newspaper reported in an article dated May 1, 2007. Over the past five years, the architect has overseen construction of a major new extension to the 18th-century neoclassical building that is surprisingly serious and well-crafted. “Flying in the face of 21st-century orthodoxy, he has avoided the temptation to design an ‘iconic’ (in other words, showy) gallery that might have rivaled Frank Gehry’s phantasmagorical Bilbao Guggenheim,” said the London newspaper.

"Those 'cool-seekers', as Madrid guidebooks have it, who are hoping for an all-singing, all-dancing extension to the Prado may well be disappointed by Moneo's quietly heroic work. Here, an architect of the first order has chosen to let the art that will be on display steal the show. What he has created over long years is a building of immense skill, craft, solidity and intelligence, which redefines a part of Madrid's city centre and makes the Prado itself a far more immediate gallery than it has been for some while."

The expansion was sorely needed. A few years ago I had the unpleasant experience of waiting in a v-e-r-y slow-moving line for upwards of an hour, outside -- in the pouring rain -- while their seriously inadequate and decidedly officious post-9/11 security efforts were exerted -- one visitor at a time – in a tiny log-jam of a foyer. Once inside, the experience was absolutely worth that discomfort, but how lovely I imagine it will be now that the space -- and undoubtedly the security process – have been enhanced. I so enjoy the sense of luxury about Madrid and about the Prado -- that dreary cattle-call entry was disappointingly unwelcoming and incompatible with that sense of elegance.

More On Conservation Controversies

2007-05-02T13:19:00.000-04:00

In light of my posting last week about the controversy among art historians and conservators about restoration techniques and their results, I was intrigued by a 4-year-old item I found on the ArtWatch International website, which I have copied in below.

I am in the process of creating a webpage presenting the newest Jane’s Smart Art Guides audio tour of Raphael’s Stanza della Segnatura in the Vatican, and I came across the ArtWatch article while searching Google Images for a complete view of Raphael’s panoramic Dispute Over the Sacrament (La Disputa).

It was no surprise, actually, that this article was illustrated with an image from the Stanza della Segnatura, given that the President of ArtWatch International is none other than James Beck, Professor of Art History at Columbia University. Professor Beck authored the book in The Great Fresco Cycles of the Renaissance series, on which the Jane’s Smart Art Guides audio tour, Raphael’s Stanza della Segnatura, is based.

Vatican Wins an Award for Restoration! 12/11/2003

Biennale in Florence Gives the Nod

It seems truly unbelievable. The fourth Biennale Internazionale dell'Arte Contemporanea, which convenes in Florence this December, has awarded one of its Premio Lorenzo il Magnifico awards to the restoration laboratory of the Vatican Museums (the other went to Ferrari) in honor of the laboratory's "unequalled and continuing efforts" in its projects, "above all the complex restoration of the cycle of frescoes (15th-century works and those by Michelangelo) the Sixtine Chapel".

All of this despite the fact that the restoration of Michelangelo's frescoes in the Sistina was -- and remains -- among the most controversial cleanings of the past decades, garnishing richly deserved criticism from both artists and art historians. Not deterred by public outcry or calls for open debate and discussion, the Vatican has continued its drastic cleaning methods, applying them not only to the lower register of 15th century frescoes in the Sistine Chapel by Perugino, Ghirlandaio, Botticelli and Cosimo Rosselli, but also to the Raphael's frescoes in the Stanza della Segnatura and Fra Angelico's frescoes in the Chapel of Nicholas V, all with equally drastic and irreversible results.

Perhaps this award is appropriate in light of the fact that the Biennale is celebrating contemporary art, which these radically cleaned 15th and 16th century works may now rightly be considered. Nonetheless, any celebration of the efforts of the Vatican's cleaning machine can only be considered an attempt to attract publicity and to flatter a powerful institution.

Dog Drool on a DaVinci

2007-04-29T10:41:00.000-04:00

Having just posted thoughts about restoration of paintings, I came across this tale of restoration woe in Artemisia, by Alexandra LaPierre, translated from the French by Liz Heron.

Background: By the 1620s, the Gonzaga dynasty in Mantua had declined from five consecutive generations of extremely refined art connoisseurship, combined with great wealth, to a series of disinterested Dukes who had no real interest in art and a desperate need for cash. The Spanish and French monarchs also coveted the Gonzaga collection, but it was the English King, Charles I, whose emissary carried away the hugely valuable art collection -- hundreds of antiquities, decorative artifacts and Renaissance paintings.

It was the celebrated collection of which Rubens had been curator for eight years, and it included, besides Caravaggio’s Death of the Virgin which is now in the Louvre, a Raphael Holy Family, Titian’s Entombment, and several dozen other paintings by the likes of Mantegna, Correggio, Giulio Romano and Leonardo da Vinci.

Having concluded the arduous, clandestine negotiations on behalf of his King, Nicholas Lanier packed the art works for transport to London. Knowing that the watercolors would not fare well on a sea voyage, he carried those with him on his overland journey. The rest was crated up and stowed aboard the Margaret –carefully segregated on one side of the hold, away from the sacks of grapes and barrels of mercury.

But Lanier hadn’t considered “the effects of heat and condensation on the sugar and the mercury in the hold.” Uncrating the artworks in England, Lanier discovered that the evaporating mercury had left a sticky layer of ink-colored quicksilver on the canvases, and had saturated the drawings.

A frenzied restoration effort ensued. Although Lanier was by now being castigated by the French and the Spanish (and by the Mantuan people who knew what they had lost) for having “stolen” the collection – having paid far below its market value – nonetheless a large hole had been made in the English Treasury to acquire these works. The King would not be pleased.

“But sponges soaked in milk or dog’s slaver – the customary methods – had not completely erased the ghastly overlay.” The most famous chemists in the realm suggested countless ineffective solutions. He swabbed the canvases with brandy. He dripped droplets of alcohol distilled from wine. Still a film remained. “Finally, he washed the finest canvases with plenty of water. Determination, luck and a mastery of the techniques of painting enabled him to restore some of the masterpieces. He enjoyed His Majesty’s favor more than ever.”

Imagine calling Fido over to drool on a DaVinci!

Color Controversy in Art History

2007-04-26T09:20:00.000-04:00

The controversy around the restoration of the Sistine Chapel ceiling in the 1990s has always struck me as odd. A surprisingly large cadre of critics objected to the brilliance of the colors when the restoration was unveiled, believing them to be too “modern”. I find this odd because it’s widely known that Mediaeval and Renaissance fortunes were made, intrigue and political manipulations abounded and, I suspect, murder was even done in pursuit of control of the components of brilliant colors.

For example, after the Ottomans gained control of and limited access to traditional sources of alum, the Papacy took aggressive steps to control new-found alum sources in Italy. One of the important uses for alum was as a color fixative in dyes and paints, the light-colored alumen being useful in brilliant colors, the dark-colored black or very dark colors.

Certain paint colors were extremely expensive. This added value – both monetary and symbolic – to any work in which they were used. For example, in the more than 50 frescoes he painted at the San Marco priory in Florence, with Cosimo dei Medici financing the work, Fra Angelico -- true to his monastic principles -- used just a single passage of pure ultramarine blue. He used it only in the most prominent fresco, to highlight the importance of the subject: coloring the Virgin Mary’s cloak the unique clear blue that only ultramarine could produce.

Ultramarine is the oldest and most technically specific device whereby a painter and his patron could honor a distinguished personage. That is because ultramarine was by far the most precious of all the painter’s materials. It's beautiful, it’s extremely resistant to the damaging effects of light, and it’s very rare. Consequently, painters’ contracts of the period frequently specified the exact quantity of ultramarine that the patron authorized the master to use. At San Marco, whose frescoes are distinctive for technical as well as aesthetic reasons, the message is clear: in the spirit of humility, the opulent blue pigment appears at San Marco only on the Virgin Mary and only in the Chapter Room.

Referring to the importance of identifying historically-true colors in art restoration, Stephanie Reitz, in an article in the ArtInfo newsletter says, “The implications go beyond aesthetics to cold cash. For example, the use of pure Prussian blue—the first synthetic color of the Industrial Revolution—can cause a painting's value to skyrocket.” So what’s changed?

Theoretical and practical approaches to art restoration change over time, influenced largely by available technologies, and also by cultural trends.
Until a quite recently, restoration and preservation was a “best guess” proposition, with the restorer -- typically an artist by training -- making assumptions about what paints, varnishes and other materials were originally used. Results varied from good to disastrous. Restorers today often find themselves having to undo ill-advised past restoration efforts.

In much the same way as a good historian pursues the truth about what happened at a distant past point in time, a good art restorer seeks to know the facts related to the creation of a particular artwork.

Today chemists are involved in restoration, using invisible-to-the-naked-eye samples of paint taken from the piece. Henry DePhillips. a Trinity College chemistry professor says, ''The whole goal of art conservation is to preserve the original vision of the artist, not my vision of what it could or should be,'' alluding to the guesswork in outdated theories of restoration.

Using cutting-edge science chemists can identify the mix of ingredients – like iron oxide, mercury, titanium dioxide, lapis lazuli -- that constitute various colors. For example, titanium dioxide is what made white, white.

“If you're going to restore a piece of art to the way it was on the day it was finished, you need to know exactly what materials they used. Our job has been done correctly if you, a viewer of the piece, cannot tell that anything has been done,'' DePhillips said. ''That is meeting our responsibility to history.''

Rare exhibition of 2000 yr old frescoes

2007-03-26T08:39:00.000-04:00

Here's an exhibit not to miss if you can hie thyself to Madison WI between now and June 3rd, '07 ... Stabiano: Exploring the Ancient Seaside Villas of the Roman Elite. The Chazen Museum of Art has mounted an extremely rare exhibition of 2000 year old frescoes that have never before this tour been seen in the US.

In the first centuries BC and AD, the sumptuous villas dotted all around the Bay of Naples served as summer residences for leisure and political entertaining . In the hot months Rome was empty of the rich and powerful, and the area surrounding the Bay of Naples became the virtual capital of the Empire.

The villas were designed to provide fabulous views of the Bay and also contained serene garden courtyards. According to ArtDaily.org , the exhibition features twenty-six remarkably well-preserved fresco wall paintings and eleven wall reliefs made of stucco among the more than seventy works of art and artifacts recovered from five partially-excavated ancient Roman villas located in Stabiae.

The eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 a.d. destroyed a wide swath of populated territory, bringing an end to the area's era of affluence. But the thick layer of ash and pumice functioned exceptionally well as a preservative, and the Restoring Ancient Stabiae Foundation has as its mission the excavation and conservation of at least two of the enormous villas and the transformation of the site into one of the largest archaeological parks in modern Europe. The site of Stabiae (Castellammare di Stabia) is 2.5 miles from Pompeii and is currently open to the public.

The four-year tour of this exhibition represents the first long-term loan of major cultural treasures from Italy to the U.S. After Madison, it will travel to the Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX (July 8 – October 7) and then to the Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens, Jacksonville, FL (November 7- Feb 3, 2007/08).

Celebrating Easter on the Wrong Date?

2007-03-21T08:45:00.000-04:00

For many of us it’s just one of those bits of knowledge that we absorbed somewhere along the way: Easter falls on different dates for the Latin and Greek Orthodox churches. We know it, and it never occurs to us to wonder about it, until someone asks the question – a child, maybe, or a Jeopardy contestant.

The Pope endorses his scientific advisors’
GregorianCalendar Reform
Detail from Gregory XIII tomb
by Camillo Rusconi, St. Peter’s Basilica, Rome

Why does Easter fall on different dates in the Latin Church and the Greek Orthodox Church? And which one’s the “right” one? Until the latter part of the 16th century, all Christians celebrated Easter on the same date. So what happened? The answer is found in a fascinating little slice of history.

Ancient calendars were based on the lunar cycle until around 45 BC, when Julius Caesar decided that his vast Roman Empire should adopt a new calendar, one based upon the earth's revolution around the sun. By giving up a link with the moon, the Julian calendar – so-called in honor of Caesar -- gained about three days every 400 years. By the 16th century, this error had accumulated to 10 days, and the discrepancy between the calendar dates of the solstices and the actual occurrence of the solstices had become a real concern to the Roman Church.

The long-standing formula for dating Easter depended upon the lunar cycle and the vernal equinox. Easter was being celebrated on the wrong date!

A solution challenged astronomers and mathematicians until 1582. Pope Gregory XIII endorsed their recommendations to modify the calendar and the new Gregorian Calendar changed leap-year rules to synchronize with the solar year -- to an accuracy of about 1 day in 2500 years!

To adjust for the discrepancy that had accumulated since 45 BC, the year 1582 was shortened by 10 days. The days between October 4th and 15th were abolished. So that the last day of the Julian calendar, October 4, 1582, was followed by the first day of the Gregorian calendar, October 15! Roman Catholics and Protestants use the Gregorian calendar, while Greek Orthodox Christians base their liturgical dates on a much older calendar.

How come?

The 16th Century was the era of the Protestant Reformation, and papal decrees carried little weight with non-Catholic Christians, so Gregory’s calendar reform was not soon adopted in Protestant countries. By the time Britain adopted it in 1752, an eleventh day had to be dropped. Russia didn’t adopt it until the 20th C. That’s why the October Revolution of 1917 actually occurred in November!

The Greek Orthodox Church has never endorsed the Gregorian Reform of the Calendar, so Orthodox Easter (and Christmas) falls some days later than the same celebrations in the Latin Church.

Seeing ancient structures as they were

2007-03-03T08:28:00.000-05:00

"The aqueducts had to drop the width of a finger every 100 yards -- any more and the flow would rupture the walls; any less and the water would lie stagnant ...
Their greatest glories, such as the triple-tiered bridge in southern Gaul, the highest in the world, that carried the aqueduct of Nemausus, were frequently far from human view. Sometimes it was only the eagles, soaring in the hot air above some lonely mountainscape, who could appreciate the true majesty of what men had wrought. " Pompeii, by Robert Harris

As isolated as it was then, these days the Pont du Gard attracts well over a million visitors a year! I am often struck by how hard it is for us to imagine the original context of historic sites while one's senses are being assaulted by the jostle of fellow tourists, the babel of languages, the din and smell of tour buses.

Parenthertically: This speaks to one of the benefits of audio guides: Headphones help blockout distracting sound, and an engaging narrator can bring the original context into the present, and convey the true meaning of the site.

According to Wikipedia, the Pont du Gard was designed to carry water across the small Gardon river valley. It was part of a nearly 50 km (31 mi) aqueduct that brought water from springs near Uzès to the Roman city of Nemausus (Nîmes). The full aqueduct had a gradient of 34 cm/km (1/3000), descending only 17 m vertically in its entire length and delivering 20,000 cubic meters (44 million gallons) of water daily. http://www.pontdugard.fr/index.php?langue=GB

How hard it is for us to apprehend the magnitude of the accomplishments of Roman engineers! The aqueduct was constructed entirely without the use of mortar, probably during the 1st Century. The stones – some of which weigh up to 6 tons – are held together with iron clamps.

And still it stands! In 1998 the Pont du Gard was hit by a major flood which caused widespread damage in the area. The road leading up to the bridge and neighboring structures were badly damaged, but the aqueduct itself was not seriously harmed.

But Is It Art?

2007-01-20T10:13:00.000-05:00

I've just finished reading an engaging little book by Cynthia Freeland, called But Is It Art?.

The day before I started to read it someone was telling me about how he sees art in everything, so it seemed a nice coincidence that, only two pages into her book, Freeland writes that many people "would not distinguish art from artefact or ritual. Medieval European Christians did not make art as such, but tried to emulate and celebrate God's beauty. In classical Japanese aesthetics, art might include things unexpected to modern Westerners, like a garden, sword, calligraphy scroll, or tea ceremony.”

This resonated for me because I consider virtually anything made by human hands to be art ... not always necessarily good art, but art nonetheless! I also see art and architecture in nature. It's all there: form, color, line, pattern, compositional balance ...

I take particular pleasure in architectural detail. But I've observed that relatively few people seem to notice it. In Italy there are exquisite floors everywhere you look, painstakingly laid centuries ago by amazingly skilled craftsmen; but most people don't seem to notice what's under foot.

I feel fortunate to have "seeing eyes", and part of my purpose in creating Jane's Smart Art audio guides is to help others see in art and architecture what I see, and then to explore the historical context that provides meaning. I love the exploration process!

If you’ve ever wanted to learn a bit about art theory, but have been put off by arcane and pompous grandstanding, then I recommend Freeland’s lively little book, But Is It Art?: An Introduction to Art Theory. It’s very readable and – although not an in-depth review of aesthetic theory – enlightening: “eye-opening” in the sense of enlarging one’s ability to thoughtfully see “art” where previously one might have reacted with disinterest, perplexity, amusement or disapproval. Freeland is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Houston, and an active member of the American Society for Aesthetics, so she knows whereof she speaks!

St. Paul's New Morality

2006-12-16T10:09:00.000-05:00

I've long been uncomfortable with the saying, "That's not very Christian ... ." It strikes me as insulting to all the good people who hold other theological beliefs. But when I overheard it said again recently, I began to wonder what it really means.

I'm currently reading Bruce Shelley's Church History in Plain Language, and I've just come across the answer to the question. Shelley attributes the following words to the apostle Paul:
"The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control." (Galatians. 5:22-23)

According to Shelley, "Spiritual regeneration and the moral life were not merely one side of Christianity to Paul but its very fruit and goal on earth."

Little wonder, then, that the new Christian message was so appealing to so many in the Roman world -- where slavery, cruel punishments like crucifixion, and beastly entertainments like gladiatorial combat were accepted. Paul himself, initially a persecutor of those Jews who believed in Christ as the Messiah, "saw the light" and became an apostolic messenger. Caravaggio represented Paul's conversion in this image in the Cerasi Chapel in Sta. Maria del Popolo in Rome.

So, "That's not very Christian ... " refers to the moral origins of Christian belief. Others can of course be good, moral people. But to be a true Christian requires living to a high standard of "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control."

Does the most moving Christian art reflect this spirit?

Alinari National Museum of Photography Now Open

2006-11-29T09:46:00.000-05:00

A month ago, in Florence, the new Alinari National Museum of Photography opened in a renovated historic structure in Piazza Santa Maria Novella.

Now the collection from the fabulous Alinari Archives will be displayed to the public, representing an astonishing patrimony of documentary material pertaining to art, history, folklore, landscape, industry and society. The particularly exciting thing to me is that Alinari has, from the beginning, specialized (among other things) in the documentation of works of art and historic monuments.

Founded in Florence in 1852, Fratelli Alinari is the oldest photography firm in the world. Through Alinari photographs – dating from the second half of the 19thC to the present – the history, society, art and culture of Italy and Europe and the rest of the world, have been preserved and catalogued.

Alinari owns more than 3.5 million images, plus the firm manages or represents more than 21 million photos owned by other organizations, including 400,000 images from the archive of the Touring Club Italiano.

Not going to be in Florence any time soon? You can gain on-line access to the Alinari Archive at http://www.alinariarchives.it/login/index.asp?languageID= The website also has a bookstore with interesting books of photography, and also selections of cards.

According to the official press release announcing the opening, “The itinerary begins with the year 1839, with the first daguerreotypes, and goes as far as the digital images and photocellular phones of today. It is a fascinating itinerary that journeys through the era of the pioneers; the new world of a picture that can be technically reproduced, thus revolutionizing possibilities for knowing and seeing; … the relentless technological advances which created a market for everyone; photography which refines its language to become an art; and an infinite number of promotional objects. Hundreds of rare photographs, vintage objects, cameras of the past and the most up to date … in a presentation designed by the Oscar winning film director Giuseppe Tornatore."

There is also a space for temporary exhibits. The first themed display is called View of Italy, 1841-1941: The Great Masters of Italian Photography in the Alinari Collections.

Finally, one very interesting first-of-its-kind experiment that the Museum developed in collaboration with the Stamperia Braille of the Region of Tuscany is the “touch tour for the blind.” It’s a unique collection of 20 pictures re-created in relief to be seen by the blind through touch. Even as a sighted person, I look forward to experiencing the touch tour. I wonder if feeling the dimensionality of an image will enhance my seeing in any way.

In the words of Florence’s mayor Leonardo Domenici “The MNAF ( Museo Nazionale Alinari della Fotografia) is a new treasure for Florence, a museum of modernity of exceptional cultural value. It also has allowed the city to reclaim in the best of ways the historical Leopoldine complex threatened with deterioration. Once restoration is completed the complex will also house the Museo del Novecento (20th C) dedicated to contemporary Italian art.”

I won’t be in Florence again until next Fall, so I’ll have to make do ‘til then with on-line access to the archive. But the MNAF will definitley be on my itinerary when I do get there!

Fra Angelico Hiding in the Bedroom!

2006-11-14T14:29:00.000-05:00

If you have a love for early Renaissance art -- perhaps Fra Angelico in particular -- (or if you're a fan of The Antiques Roadshow) the recent discovery of two Fra Angelico panels in a modest home in Oxford, England, should give you a little shiver of excitement!

The panels are recognized by art experts as being from the San Marco Altarpiece, painted by Fra Angelico, c. 1439, commissioned by Cosimo dei Medici. The central panel of the altarpiece is still at San Marco, but the smaller panels surrounding it were dismantled 200 years ago during Napoleon's occupation of Italy. Today most of these secondary panels can be seen in Museums scattered around the world. Some, however, remained unaccounted for, including these two. I wonder how many of these little treaures remain lost.

According to a Reuters report from London, two panels painted in tempera on a gold background, each showing a standing figure of a Dominican saint, were found tucked away behind a bedroom door by an art auctioneer who had been asked to carry out a valuation after the owner of the house died in July. The homeowner, a librarian, had retrieved the paintings from a box of odds and ends while working as a manuscript curator at a museum in Huntington, California, in the 1960s. Unaware that they were by Fra Angelico, she thought they were "quite nice" and persuaded her father to buy them for a few hundred pounds. Today, they are expected to bring more than a million pounds at auction.

"We are dealing with two works of art painted by one of the 'greats', intended for his own church and commissioned by one of the greatest art patrons in history," the auctioneer, Guy Schwinge, said in a statement. "It simply does not get much better than that."

Angels Of The Mud

2006-11-01T17:13:00.000-05:00

On November 4th, 1966 -- after days of rain -- the Arno flooded its banks to a depth of roughly 12 feet, destroying everything in its path. As an impassioned 16-year-old, I had fallen in love with Florence in April of that year, and I remember that hearing the news of the flood affected me as nothing had ever done before in my short life. When I heard that people from all over the world were converging to help with the clean-up, I begged my parents to let me take a semester off from high school ... to no avail.

If I were forced to produce a list of my regrets in life, that would be one of them. Had I been a couple of years older I would have gone to Florence to be one of what were soon dubbed as "gli angeli del fango" -- the angels of the mud.

The official Angeli del Fango website is definitely worth looking at, with photos and videos and eye-witness accounts of the event and its aftermath. To see images of the water rushing through streets and past the Duomo, and to see priceless frescoes and sculpture blackened with filth is really sobering. It's hard to imagine today what an undertaking it was, how extensive was the damage to a vast amount of irreplacible art.

This Saturday will be the 40th anniversary of that heart-wrenching event, and a reunion of "gli angeli" will take place in Florence.

Hats off to the volunteer angels and the professional restorers who slogged through muck for months,living in seriously uncomfortable conditions, to reclaim the city's artistic and architectural heritage from the mud.

Pope Descends into Chasm in the Earth

2006-10-27T09:00:00.000-04:00

I've just come across something that I would definitely have included in the Jane's Smart Art Audio Guide to St. Peter's Basilica had I known it.

According to R.A. Scotti, in her recent book about the building of St. Peter's, Basilica, the trench excavated for the foundation of Bramante's enormous piers was 25 feet deep. Think about it ... dug by hand, the mucky soil drawn up from the depths, bucket load by bucket load ... a 25 foot deep trench running the circumference of each massive pier is a huge amount of earth-moving!

Scotti's description of the ceremony which was held at first light on April 18th, 1506, is delightful. She tells of a fierce wind whipping at the cardinals' crimson cassocks, and the bull-like figure of Pope Juilius II visible above the sea of humanity, tossing commemorative coins into the crowd as he was borne to the site, seated in a sedia gestatoria.

"Two masons descended first, followed by two cardinals, and then the pope, grim-faced. He climbed down the ladder carefully, his ringed fingers grasping the rungs, encumbered by the heavy clothing, the weighty tiara, descending lower, lower yet. The Ager Vaticanus was marshy, the earth in the pit damp, the air close."

"As Julius disappeared into the trough, the crowd pressed forward for a better view. Dirt flew, striking his tiara. For a terrifying moment he thought the sides would cave in and bury him. ... The trench was 'like a chasm in the earth,' the papal master of ceremonies, Paris de Grassis, recorded in his journal, 'and as there was much anxiety felt lest the ground should give way, Pope Julius thundered out to those above not to come to nearer the edge.'"

I love the visual image of this burly white-haired pontiff, larger-than-life and glorious in voluminous brocade, jewels a-glitter, descending gingerly into the muddy pit to lay the first stone in the foundation of what was to become, over the course of two centuries, one of the most remarkable achievements of the Renaissance.

One ought to be required to pass a test before being permitted to enter St. Mark's

2006-10-15T11:50:00.000-04:00

Miss Julia Garnet's severe schoolmarmishness was overwhelmed by the mysteries and aesthetics of Venice. Nonetheless, stern criticism did still invade her new-found generosity of spirit from time to time:

"The Japanese were out in force again. A party stopped and aimed a bank of phallic cameras at Adam and Eve. No wonder they felt embarrassed in their nakedness. Julia turned aside in disgust. Really, she thought, it should be made difficult not more easy to get to places of beauty. One ought to be required to pass a test before being permitted to enter St. Mark's."

This passage evoked my own recollections of techno-buff tourists with their large-lensed digitals or purring video cameras. Yes, they are often Japanese - who do seem to travel in little swarms --but most any nationality can be substituted in this picture.

Julia's uncharitable thoughts about the Japanese in St. Mark's Basilica reminded me of an incident in the Duomo, called La Collegiata, in San Gimigniano. I had been standing for a long time, awe-struck, below Taddeo di Bartolo's Last Judgement, taking in the gruesomely graphic -- even pornographic, some might say -- portrayal of what the Damned have to look forward to on the day of judgment. Out of respect for some readers' sensibilities, by way of illustration I have chosen to show Gluttony, one of the tamer details of the fresco.

Despite knowing that the intent of the horrific scenes was to strike fear in the hearts of mortal Christians, I was startled to find such images in a church, and I stood crunching my neck in the dim light, trying to take it all in. Suddenly, a tall, lanky middle-aged American man was at my elbow. His video camera whirred softly as he panned down the length of the fresco, his voice reverently low as he recorded his caption, "This is another painting in another church in Italy."

Guessing that he had no idea what he'd just filmed, I resented the intrusion --- until I imagined him getting home and sitting Granny and the kids down to show them the video of his trip to Italy. SURPRISE! That brought tears of malicious mirth to my eyes! Just that morning I had been lamenting how crowded Europe has become, as great numbers of people from all over the world have gained the economic means to travel. If they travel because they are really interested, I thought, that's a good thing. But if they are simply accumulating bragging rights, adding one more place to the list of where they've been, then that's something else entirely! In retrospect, it was very Miss Garnet -- strict and uncharitable -- of me!

Miss Garnet's Angel by Salley Vickers would be a delightful book to read before your next trip to Venice. I suppose some might read it as a simple story of a spinster tuning in to Venice. But, as the layers are peeled back, there's a thought-provoking ethereal depth to it that I found intellectually gratifying.

Living in the moment with limoncello

2006-10-06T16:20:00.000-04:00

We've just spent a couple of days mellowing out at a yoga retreat. On the drive home, I was thinking about the rather spartan, almost-vegetarian meals we'd been eating, and ... maybe I dozed off or something ... suddenly I found myself dreamily reliving meals I've had in Italy. Anything but spartan... and I've certainly never gone three days in Europe without a glass of wine!

Perhaps it was the retreat's ubiquitous jugs of water packed with lemon slices that made me think of limoncello. In Rome, we often stay in an apartment around the corner from Sta. Maria della Pace, and when we do, we frequent the little neighborhood osteria that's tucked in just steps from our 15thC doorway. (Osteria del Pegno, Vicollo Montevecchio,#8) The last time we stayed there we supped at del Pegno the night before our early morning departure for home. We had planned to eat and run, get packed and go to bed.

But that plan changed when we asked for the check. Instead of il conto, two frosty little glasses of limoncello were delivered to our table, compliments of the house. I suspect the waiter picked up on -- and disapproved of -- our haste, and this was his subtle way of making us slow down and live in the moment! And it did do just that ... we lingered over the tangy liqueur, then decided to take a leisurely dawdle around the neighborhood before going up to pack. We strolled over to the local alimentari and bought a bottle of limoncello to bring home with us, even though we seldom carry anything back that we know we can get here.

Anyway, having thought about this sweet experience yesterday, today quite coincidentally I came across an article about limoncello at the Dream of Italy website which, after providing some fascinating historical and cultural background, provides a recipe for concocting limoncello at home.

Well, I seem to have produced another food-related posting, with no mention of art and history ... I don't think referencing the history of limoncello really counts. I'll get back on track next time, I promise!

Mangia Bene - Gelato's a Good Thing !

2006-09-19T10:55:00.000-04:00

This post has nothing to do with art or history, but everything to do with Roma! If you happened to read my interview featured on TangoDiva.com, you'll know that when I'm in Rome I can often be seen prowling the streets in the deep of night, in search of il gelato perfetto. Giolitti, near the Pantheon, has long been my favorite gelateria, as it is for so many gelatophiles.

I've just come across a July 21st dispatch on WorldHum by Valerie Ng -- a fellow Giolitti fan -- on How to Find Good Gelato in Italy. I was delighted to learn from her article that, while ice cream as we know it has a butterfat content of as high as 30%, "gelato is typically made with milk, water or soy as a base, and it has a fat content of between 1% and 10%." Ng points out that besides being healthier than ice cream, gelato's lower fat content allows one to experience the flavor more clearly, without a blanket of saturated fat dulling the tastebuds.

It seems somehow counter-intuitive that a sweet treat that's lower in fat would actually be yummier! Ahh, but what good news for those of us who have always felt we should confine ourselves to a single scoop!

2006-09-18T09:54:00.000-04:00

Michelangelo's Late-Life Accomplishments

I've heard people as young as 50 lament that their productive years are behind them. Perhaps it's the times, our society's idolatry of youth. Surely, the speed of technological change contributes. Perhaps in Michelangelo's day, the wisdom and experience gained over years was valued more than it is today. But to anyone who thinks (s)he's all washed up at 50, I say, "Consider Michelangelo's productivity after age 50 ..."

After 50, he sculpted 15 statues, including the masterful Dawn, Dusk, Night and Day in the Medici Chapel in Florence.

From age 62 to 67 he painted the Last Judgement in the Sistine Chapel, and then frescoed The Conversion of St. Paul and the Crucifixion of St. Peter in the Pauline Chapel. He was 76 when he finished them.

He became an architect! He designed and supervised the building of The Laurentian Library in Florence, and in Rome, the 3rd story cornice and courtyard of the Farnese Palace, the Piazza del Campidoglio on the Capitoline Hill, the Porta Pia, St. Peter's Basilica and its amazing dome, and ... at age 88 ... he designed the conversion of a portion of the Baths of Diocletian into the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli!

2006-09-13T16:32:00.000-04:00

How a Centuries-Old Fresco Is Removed From The Wall

A couple of months ago I visited the The Cloisters in Fort Tryon Park in upper Manhattan. The Cloisters is a branch of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, devoted to the art and architecture of mediaeval Europe. The construction of the neo-mediaeval building and its cloisters incorporated Romanesque and Gothic architectural fragments, dating from the eleventh through the fifteenth centuries, originating primarily in Spain and France. They were brought over from Europe in the 19thC by an American sculptor, George Grey Barnard, and assembled on this site as a museum for Barnard's collection, through the generosity of John D. Rockefeller, Jr.

A stone castle with cloistered gardens, set high on a bluff overlooking the Hudson River, the setting itself was worth the trip, and the mediaeval atmosphere added to my enjoyment of the art treasures on display: sculpture, tapestries, illuminated manuscripts, goldsmiths' and silversmiths' work, stained glass and enamels and ivories, and ... .

I joined a docent-led tour, which I found disappointing. It added little to what I already knew. I guess I was hoping for something along the lines of a Jane's Smart Art Guide -- that is, more substance -- for the highly-motivated person who already has some background in the subject.

Our guide wasn't able to answer the one question I posed -- "How is a fresco removed from the wall it was originally painted on?" Not only did I think he should have known, I realized that I shouldn't have had to ask!

I've wondered this before, 'though never urgently enough to look into it. This time, however, the fresco in question had been painted on a curved wall, centuries ago, in Spain. It had been removed from that wall and transported across the ocean, to be integrated into the decoration of a chapel at The Cloisters -- still (or again?) curved! There was something about the fact that it had been removed from a curved support, rather than the usual flat wall, that pushed my curiosity over the brink, into research mode!

First, it helps to understand the fresco painting technique:

Unlike a mural, which is painted onto a dry wall surface, a fresco becomes part of the wall it's painted on -- literally part of the architecture. The fresco painter would begin by preparing the wall with a coat of coarse plaster, called “arriccio”. The Italian word “fresco” -- meaning wet or "cool” -- refers not to the paint but to the surface to which the paint is applied. The surface would be coated with a finely ground plaster, which was often mixed with marble dust to increase its smoothness. This plaster -- called “intonaco”-- would be applied in very thin layers over the arriccio, whose rough surface provided the necessary adhesion.

The paint used in these mural paintings, like all paint, is made of a colored powder or pigment suspended in a medium that makes it into a liquid, which becomes a paint film when it dries. In fresco painting, the binding medium is glue and limewater. When applied to wet plaster, the limewater causes the paint to bind with the wall itself. When dry, this sort of traditionally-applied fresco painting -- known as “buon fresco” -- becomes an actual part of the wall.

Because both the paint and plaster were quick to dry, this meant that painters had to plan to work in single sessions, on patches of fresh plaster: called “giornate,” after the Italian word meaning “day’s length.”

Art conservators have learned how to separate the intonaco layer of a fresco from the underlying arriccio. The technique had to be used, for example, to save a number of frescoes in Florence after the Arno flooded its banks in 1966 and damaged numerous important Renaissance works.

A fresco is removed from the wall by being transferred onto canvas, using what's known as the "Calicot method": invented by someone named Calicot, I presume. There are two processes used, depending on the condition of the underlying plaster:
"strappo da muro" = "pulling [of the fresco] from the wall" (strappare = to pull away) and "stacco" (staccare: to detach).

The stacco process detaches the fresco painting from the wall by removing the entire intonaco layer. A special water-soluble glue is applied to the painted surface and then two layers of cloth (calico and canvas) are applied. When the glue is dry, the cloth is peeled from the wall -- very carefully, I imagine! --pulling the painted intonaco with it. Once the fresco is off the wall, stuck to the cloth, it's taken to a laboratory where the excess plaster is scraped away and a fresh canvas is attached to the back with a permanent glue. This done, the water-soluble glue is dissolved and the cloths on the face of the fresco are removed. At this point, the fresco is ready to be mounted on a new support: the canvas stretched on a frame, like a regular painting, or glued to a solid base.

The strappo process is used when the plaster on which a fresco is painted has deteriorated badly. Strappo takes off only the color layer with very small amounts of plaster. The glue that's used in strappo is considerably stronger than that used in the stacco technique, but the procedure that follows is same. Sometimes when a fresco is removed by means of strappo, a colored imprint may still be seen on the plaster remaining on the wall, evidencing the depth to which the pigment originally penetrated the wet intonaco.

And that's how they managed to get The Cloisters' fresco off a curved wall, and back onto a curved wall!

2006-09-04T13:34:00.000-04:00

Michelangelo's Battle of the Centaurs

In June I was in Florence to test the script for the new Jane's Smart Art Guide title, Fra Angelico: San Marco Florence, which will be available in late September. We stayed at the Hotel Orto dei Medici, near the Piazza San Marco where sits the Dominican convent-turned-museum that houses Fra Angelico's wonderful fresco cycle. Our room overlooked an enclosed courtyard that apparently was part of the Medici sculpture garden where Michelangelo was taught by Bertoldo, and carved his earliest works.

I returned home with a hankering to reread Irving Stone's The Agony and The Ecstasy, which I last read -- and loved -- at age 16.

Michelangelo was about that age in 1490 - 92, when -- while residing in the Medici household and working in that garden -- he created The Battle of the Centaurs (marble, 33 1/4 x 35 1/8 inches). Both his early biographers, Condivi and Vasari, wrote that this classical subject was suggested to him by the great humanist poet and scholar, Angelo Poliziano. This is certainly a credible claim, given that Poliziano had recently translated -- from the original Greek into Italian -- Ovid's Metamorphoses, a poetic recounting of Greek legend, in which was told Nestor's tale of the battle between the centaurs and Thessalians.

"Pirithous took as bride young Hippodame;
To celebrate the day, tables were set up
And couches placed for greater luxury
Beside them in a green, well-arboured grotto.
Among the guests were centaurs, rugged creatures
(Half horse, half man, conceived in clouds they say),
Myself, and noblemen of Thessaly ...

... Oh the bride was lovely!
Then we began to say how sweet the bride was
But our intentions began to bring ill fortune to the wedding.
Eurytus, craziest of rough-hewn centaurs,
Grew hot with wine, but when he saw the bride
Was that much hotter; tables were rocked,
Turned upside down, then tossed away.
Someone had seized the bride and mounted her.
It was Eurytus, while the other centaurs
Took women as they pleased, first come, first taken,
The scene was like the looting of a city ... "

Gaiety turned to mayhem ... joy to outrage ... pleasure to plunder. That context lifted my appreciation of this work to an entirely new plane, adding a dimension of emotional involvement with the subject and an understanding of the artist's intentions that was previously impossible.

Michelangelo's Battle of the Centaurs is on display at the Casa Buonarroti in Florence. The above quote is taken from H. Gregory's 1958 translation of Ovid's Metamophoses.

2006-08-28T16:33:00.000-04:00

On the Importance of Dates in Art Appreciation

I know how irritating it can be when someone reviews something I've written, but misrepresents or didn't quite understand a point I made. So I want to share a portion of the e-mail I received from Rob Burdock, the blogger whose "embedded dates" technique I last wrote about.

Rob wrote: "Perhaps I wrongly give the impression that my reason for devising this system for remembering dates was due to a real need to regurgitate an artwork's date during an Art History test. While this may earn an extra point the real reason for devising this system was so I could place the piece into the correct context with other creations of the same period. When I first began studying the subject my lack of Art History knowledge and my inability to remember dates resulted in me quite easily visualising Giotto skipping hand in hand through the streets of Florence with da Vinci or Bernini telling Michelangelo that his David was frankly a bit of rubbish! (Bernini's words, not mine) so being able to accurately date artwork was important for me to understand artist's influences, contemporary conventions etc. ... "

I absolutely agree with Rob about how important it is to know the relative position on a timeline of different artists and artistic styles in order to appreciate art in the context of contemporary influences. That's the sort of integrating knowledge that takes one's appreciation of what one is looking at to "the next level".

Here's a terrific resource: The best art history timeline I've found is on the New York Metropolitan Museum's website, at http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/splash.htm?HomePageLink=toah_l

Beware: you can spend hours on this site, traveling around the world and back again, on a magical art history tour!

I have to admit ... this is the best I've found ... but once I found it, I stopped looking! If you know of other good art timelines, I'd love to hear of them.

2006-08-27T13:20:00.000-04:00

Looking at the Details in a Work of Art

Just back from a short (computerless) trip and feeling anxious that it's been so long since my last post. I think if I'm going to maintain a blog, I'll have to learn to let that worry go ... this is supposed to be a pleasure!

Following a thread in an art forum discussion this morning, I came across a clever blog entry that you might enjoy. I think the focus of this particular blog is a tad off-track for my interests, but this entry is fun.
http://www.paperlessundergrad.co.uk/pu/2006/02/putting_a_date_.html

One of the examples this blogger (named Rob) used to demonstrate his technique was Bramante's Tempietto, dated c.1502. I love this little structure and, if I have time, I always go see it when I'm in Rome First, Rob points out that the shape of the Tempietto is round =0. Then he noted the two shell reliefs in the niches flanking the central escutcheon on the upper drum = 2. Hence the memory aid for the date, '02.

The real advantage I see in using this embedded date approach is not so much as an assist in the memorization of precise dates -- which is a gripe of mine about how art history is so often taught. Rather, what I like about it is that it draws you in to study the painting or sculpture or architecture closely, so you really look at and think about the details. THIS is what art appreciation is all about!

2006-08-10T10:46:00.000-04:00

The more one knows, the more confusing it can be!

Sometimes artists would give the physcial features of the reigning pope to the historic pope who figured in the event being portrayed. It was an "honor thy father" thing, or ... perhaps more likely ... a sycophant thing. As one gains more experience viewing art, one might come to recognize, from contemporary portraits, what, say, Clement VII looked like. So one might be a tad confused whan looking at Giorgio Vasari's Mass of St. Gregory the Great (1540), in the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Bologna. ... St. Gregory (590-604) happens to look exactly like Clement VII (Papacy: 1523-1534)!

It was also common for an artist to depict his patron in a history painting, but viewers today are less likely to recognize a mere cardinal!

2006-08-03T21:57:00.000-04:00

1511: Martin Luther at Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome

For part of the year 1511, Pope Julius was away from Rome, battling enemies near Bologna … and incidentally, ignoring Michelangelo’s pleas for at least partial payment for his work on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

At the same time, there was much activity at the Augustinian monastery and church of Sta. Maria del Popolo . Raphael had started his extraordinary work on the Chigi chapel (pron. KEEgee). And two Augustinian monks arrived from Germany to present a petition to the head of their order, who resided in Rome. When the two monks learned that the man they sought was with the pope in Bologna, they settled into their lodging at Santa Maria del Popolo to await his return.

Upon their arrival in Rome, just inside the Porta del Popolo, the younger of the two had fallen to his knees, kissed the ground, and shouted, "Blessed art thou, holy Rome!" It was Martin Luther, aged 27.

But Luther’s joy quickly turned to dismay, and he soon came to hate everything about the city: what he viewed as the ignorance and irreverence of the priests, the highly visible prostitutes, the rubbish in the river. He deplored the Roman habit of urinating in the street, even though decorum dictated that this should not be done within view of an image of a saint! He even loathed the vigorous gesturing that accompanied Italian conversation!

It was Martin Luther’s only visit to this city, but once was all he needed to be convinced that Rome was in the clutches of the devil. His disgust was much like the reaction of St. Augustine himself, who had been appalled by Roman life more than a millennium before.

Just six years later Luther posted his 95 topics for debate on the door of Wittenburg Cathedral, and started the ball rolling towards the Protestant Reformation.

When Julius returned to Rome from his military endeavors, having lost Bologna to the French, he hung above the altar in Santa Maria del Popolo -- suspended by a silver chain -- a cannonball that had almost taken his life on the battlefield.