Attribution Ups Portait's Value Ten-fold!

 Apologies for the very poor quality of this image!  To better see this painting, go to Christie's website.

I was delighted this Fall to take a Renaissance art history course with Prof. Elizabeth Pilliod at Princeton’s Italian club. A very entertaining lecturer, Elizabeth is also the author of  Pontormo, Bronzino, and Allori: A Geneaologyof Florentine Art. 

During our penultimate class she told us about having been asked by Christie’s to write a catalog entry about a Portrait of Francesco I de' Medici that was to go up for auction at their Old Masters and British Paintings Evening Sale in London on Dec. 4th.

Heretofore the painting had long been attributed only to an anonymous 16th century Florentine, but after doing some research, Elizabeth concluded that it was painted by FrancescoMorandini, called il Poppi (Poppi 1544-1597 Florence?). Morandini was a student of and collaborated with the artist and biographer, Giorgio Vasari (1511 – 1574).    

I was fascinated to learn about Elizabeth’s research process and to hear that her attribution of the work to Morandini caused Christie’s to put aside their original sale estimate of around $25,000 in favor of a new estimate of $96,180 - $128,240! Brava!

I went straight home and looked up Christi’s sale catalog to read her essay. Really interesting stuff … right up my alley! Unfortunately, I’m not able to find the pre-sale catalog on-line anymore, but the article is reproduced in the Lot Notes, without the accompanying secondary images, which added dimension to the intriguing tale. 

The sale took place during the ensuing week, and Elizabeth opened our last class by telling us the actual price realized … $253,015 … double the revised estimate ... and ten times the original estimate! Too bad she received a fixed fee for her work – as any honest professional art historian would – rather than a percentage!

Bernini's Bozzetti and Modelli

The temporary exhibit I've just seen at the Metropolitan Museum in NYC was right up my alley! Bernini: Sculpting in Clay was so informative for the Jane’s Smart Art Guides™ audio guide to the Fountains of Rome, Part 2: Fountains of the Acqua Felice.  (Part 1: Fountains of the Acqua Vergine will be available for download in a few weeks!) 

Among the fountains I’ll cover in Part 2 are Bernini’s Four Rivers and Il Moro in Piazza Navona, and Il Tritone in the Piazza Barberini, so it was fascinating to see the artist’s preliminary terracotta work for many of the marble figures in those fountains.  

Bernini: Sculpting in Clay looks at how Bernini changed the face on Rome during the course of his long 17th century career. The show features 39 of Gian-Lorenzo Bernini’s 52 known works in clay, along with some 30 related sketches. Besides the fountain sculpture, the exhibit also considers much of his other sculptural work, including Blessed Ludovica Albertoni (Altieri Chapel, San Francesco a Ripa, Trastevere) and The Ecstasy of St Theresa (Cornaro Chapel, Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome).

During the first stages of realizing a design, Bernini used clay to conceptualize his ideas, starting with very loosely worked bozzetti (from the Italian word abbozzare, “to sketch”). Once he’d achieved a design he was happy with he usually made a larger, more finished clay figure called a modello. He might show the modello to a patron or give it to an assistant to use as a guide for carving the much larger marble figure. In themselves Bernini’s modelli are awesome works of sculpture displaying a wealth of texture and details.

On the walls adjacent to the sketches on paper and the clay models are large pictures of the actual marble sculptures that resulted, providing real insight into Bernini’s artistic process from start to finish.

If you’ve seen Bernini’s Four Rivers Fountain (c.1650), you may remember the beautiful marble lion that emerges from a cavern in the rock to take a drink from the pool. Here was that lion, crouching as if to drink from a stream, modelled at half size. Even in clay, one can sense the power and alertness of the beast, despite the stillness of the moment. 

Bernini: Sculpting in Clay runs through January 6^th at the Met, and then can be seen at the KimbellArt Museum in Ft. Worth TX, Feb 3^rd - April 14^th, 1213.

The Long Arm of the Law

24 years after they were stolen from the Solomon Gallery on Madison Avenue in NYC, four important contemporary paintings -- by Robert Motherwell, Franz Kline, Jean Dubuffet, and Fernand Leger -- have been recovered in Cologne, Germany.

On July 4^th, 1988, an unidentified intruder picked the locks of the gallery and made off with six paintings. At the time, the theft was reported to the NYPD, the FBI, and Interpol, and was registered with the International Foundation for Art Research and with the Art Loss Register.

Here's the story as released today by the Art Loss Register: “An oil on canvas by Karel Appel,was the first work to resurface and was recovered in 2003 when a German art dealer searched the ALR Database through his lawyer in Stuttgart, Germany. The dealer claimed to have purchased five of the six stolen works on a buying trip in New York but the lawyer could produce no documentation of the sale and refused to divulge the name of his client to authorities.

A German public prosecutor issued a warrant for aiding and abetting the sale of stolen goods but a police raid of the lawyer's home and office failed to uncover the other pictures. According to law enforcement, all references to the dealer had been removed from the firm's case files and in a bizarre series of events, one law firm partner was charged with threatening a police officer involved in the raid.

The sudden focus on the law firm meant the lawyer could no longer represent the art dealer who quickly retained new counsel. Hiding behind this second lawyer, a criminal specialist from Munich, the German dealer once again refused to cooperate and the case went cold.

Over the course of the next nine years, no attempts were made to contact the ALR or authorities over the stolen pictures. Finally, in 2012 the daughter of the now deceased dealer contacted the Dedalus Foundation in New York to authenticate the stolen Motherwell. The daughter, a fine art professional, had also approached a local auction house but was quickly referred back to the ALR. The ALR Recovery Team immediately flew to Cologne where they met with police authorities and positively identified the works as the paintings stolen in 1988.

Christopher A. Marinello, a lawyer who specialises in recovering stolen and looted artwork for the ALR, negotiated the return of the four paintings with the lawyer for the family. ‘At the Art Loss Register, we're going to make life difficult for those who attempt to sell stolen art. You can hide behind lawyers and look for loopholes in civil law jurisdictions, but eventually you're going to have to deal with some very uncomfortable issues. The problem will not simply disappear with the passage of time. Leaving stolen artworks to the next generation is a losing proposition.’

Marinello credits authorities in the US and Germany for their strong support: ‘International cooperation among law enforcement is alive and well when it comes to recovering stolen art. The determination and tenacity of Special Agent Meredith A. Savona of the FBI Art Crime Team, NYPD Detective Mark Fishstein and the Cologne Police Department were critical in bringing these pictures home.’

Despite this auspicious ending one final work remains unrecovered. Mulberry Centre by Franz Kline appears to have been separated from the others.”

Museum Attendance Up In 2011

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!

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

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?”

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?

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

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

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.