Category: Conservation

Louvre unveils Leonardo cleaning

March 29 2012

Image of Louvre unveils Leonardo cleaning

Picture: Louvre

It took many years, had become controversial, and even been described as the fault of 'les Anglais'. But now the Louvre has finally revealed its cleaned Leonardo Virgin and Child with St Anne. You can see not particularly good images here on the Louvre site. (If the Louvre doesn't make high-resolution images available, one might begin to wonder why.)

The picture is part of a new exhibition at the Louvre on the painting, which runs until 25th June, and to which the National Gallery has loaned the Burlington Cartoon. The loan was all part of the deal to secure the Louvre's Virgin of the Rocks for the recent 'Leonardo' exhibition in London. More details and photos of the exhibition here.

If you want to see this again in the next ten years...

March 27 2012

Image of If you want to see this again in the next ten years...

Picture: Czartoryski Foundation

...then you'll have to go to Poland. 'Polish authorities' (say the Associated Press) have decided not to let the painting be loaned again for 'at least ten years'. More here.  

Update - a reader writes:

It will probably be easier to see Cecilia in Cracow...

Re-hanging the Wallace Collection

March 26 2012

Video: Wallace Collection

A fascinating video on the the now completed refurbishment of the Dutch Galleries at the Wallace Collection. (Here's hoping they dusted the frames this time...)

Drilling for Leonardo - Martin Kemp's view

March 19 2012

The noted Leonardo scholar, Professor Martin Kemp, has written some penetrative insights on the results from the Leonardo drilling in Florence. And you have to say that, from the drillers' point of view, they're not good:

The search is important. It has been underway, on and off, since the late 1970s. It needs to be resolved one way or the other. Maurizio Seracini, who is leading the investigation, has the skills to pursue it. If the unfinished Battle of Anghiari - the central knot of fighting horsemen - is discovered in legible condition, it will be one of the greatest art finds of any era - much like the unearthing of Laocoon. The timing and handling of the announcement is, however, unfortunate, and is clearly driven by political, media and, I guess, financial imperatives. The mayor is pressed by critics, and Maurizio presumably needs funding to be sustained. The timing is also related to screening of the National Geographic TV programme on the search. The whole project over the years has been dogged by premature ejaculations via the press. This, as I know from the story of the portrait in vellum, is precisely how not to secure scholarly assent. I have been fed bits of somewhat garbled information by the media.

It is said that there is "proof" that Leonardo's lost Battle has been discovered. My reactions are:

1) the published data about Vasari having built a wall specifically to protect Leonardo's painting is inconclusive;

2) I have seen no evidence that the layers behind Vasari's fresco feature a continuous, flat, primed and painted surface;

3) the "manganese" pigment that has been identified in the core sample taken by the small bores is said to match that in the Mona Lisa. Manganese is a standard component in umber or burnt umber, and cannot be taken specifically to signal Leonardo;

4) the "red lacquer" in the press reports is presumably a red lake pigment - based on an organic dye. The best red lakes were expensive but were used in tempera and oil painting. They could also be used on walls with a binder;

5) it is claimed that there was no other painting in the Council Hall from its construction in 1494 until Vasari's intervention. The idea that the hugely important Council Hall would have been left with bare plaster walls during the almost 20 years of the Republic is untenable. The precise location of Leonardo's horsemen is not certain, and the pigments could well be traces of other decorations in the hall, such as heraldic shields;

6) if Vasari did wall up Leonardo's painting, what might remain? The long-term adhesion of oil paint on a wall in such circumstances is hugely questionable. We might well have only a micro-jigsaw puzzle of fragments fallen off the surface.

This all seems to undermine the confident messages coming from Florence. Meanwhile, over on the indispensable 3 Pipe Problem, we find news that a total of six holes were drilled (a planned seventh was abandoned), as well as the views of Dr Cristina Acidini, the Superintendent of the Polo Museale in Florence. She seems to be more persuaded than Kemp that the pigments found so far can certainly be linked to Leonardo. But note the final sentence of her remarks:

We are dealing with a winding road. Now it is necessary to go deeply into these initial results of the investigation and months will be required to carry out the necessary analyses. When we reach the end, there might be a disappointment. As of today, our only certainty is that there is an intervening space and that there are the same substances that Leonardo used for the Gioconda and the Saint John the Baptist....it is now necessary to proceed step by step, using non-invasive methods.

In other words, if you think we're going to start removing more bits of Vasari to get to the Battle of Anghiari - if it remains - think again. 

Regular readers will remember that when the drilling plan was first mooted, I was fairly relaxed about it. As Professor Kemp notes, to find even a fragment of Leonardo's lost work will be exciting. But there is something grating and unnecessarily flamboyant about the way the latest procedures and results have been announced to the world. So far, the evidence that we are dealing with a lost Leonardo is very thin. For example, it looks as if the sophisticated endoscopic cameras inserted into the supposed gap behind the Vasari can show a great deal of information, and relay easily viewable images. I suspect, therefore, that if they had spotted anything like a flat painted surface, we would know about it. There is, of course, the possibility that the best bits of footage are being kept for the National Geographic's programme - perhaps there really will be a glimpse of a hoof, or a finger.

And yet I can't shake the sense that the discovery of a few old flakes of paint, which may or may not relate to Leonardo, constitute an anticlimax for the team behind the search. For if they had found that glimpse of finger, they wouldn't need to test any paint. It would incontrovertibly be the Leonardo. In the meantime, we have beamed images to millions of people around the world which say that no matter how implausible your theory (and please let's get over this Da Vinci Code-like idea that just because Vasari wrote 'Cerca Trova' he was suggesting there was a Leonardo behind his painting) it's ok to start drilling into old masterpieces. Is art history really the winner in all this? Not yet.

A rare Tudor survival

March 15 2012

Image of A rare Tudor survival

Picture: Philip Mould Ltd

Last night at the gallery we hosted the launch of Tudor historian Suzannah Lipscomb's new book, the enjoyable and thoroughly useful Visitor's Companion to Tudor England. In her speech, Suzannah mentioned some of the only remains of Henry VIII's magnificent Nonsuch Palace, a series of painted canvas panels at Loseley Park in Surrey generally accepted to have been commissioned for Nonsuch. This reminded me that some years ago we handled two of the panels (above), showing Juno and Neptune. And since they haven't been widely published, I thought I would post them here, for any Tudor art lovers among you.

The two panels had left the Loseley Collection when they were given to John Paul Getty in the 1980s. We bought them after Getty's death, when they were sold by his estate through a London auction house. The auctioneers hadn't really grasped the importance of what they had, and we were lucky enough to acquire them. Like the rest of the set at Loseley, the panels were covered in literally centuries of over-paint and dirt. We were able to remove this, so in these two panels at least, we can see them more or less as Henry VIII would have seen them all those years ago. What surprised us most about what emerged was the overall quality. The detail and colouring is quite sophisticated, especially for English 16th Century decorative painting. 

Here is my research note on the panels. It looks at the probable artist, Antonio Toto del Nunziato (1499-1554), one of many Italian itinerant painters working at the Tudor court.

ATTRIBUTED TO ANTONIO TOTO DEL NUNZIATO (1499-1554) 

The Nonsuch Panels’

Oil on Canvas; 50 by 17 ¾ inches, 127 x 45 cm

Provenance

Commissioned for Henry VIII; In the possession of Sir Thomas Cawarden (c.1514–1559); His executor Sir William More (1520–1600); By descent at Loseley Park Surrey to Mr & Mrs James More-Molyneux; Until gifted to John Paul Getty c.1980, at Sutton Place, Surrey.

Literature

Decorative Painting in England 1537-1837, Edward Croft-Murray, London 1962, Vol. I p.18, Vol II p.313. Marcus Binney, ‘Loseley Park’, Country Life, October 9th 1969.

These paintings are known by tradition as the ‘Nonsuch Panels’, due to their apparent origin at Nonsuch Palace, the greatest of Henry VIII’s Tudor palaces. They can be attributed with some certainty to Henry VIII’s Sergent Painter, Antonio del Nunziato, or, as he was known in England, Anthony Toto, and are part of a series of his only attributable works. They were painted c.1543-4, probably for an important royal celebration or Henry’s final wedding to Katherine Parr, and represent a rare and highly important survival of decorative art from the Tudor court. 

The present panels are two of a larger surviving set of at least a dozen others at Loseley Park in Sussex, home of the More-Molyneux family for over four hundred years. The panels came to Loseley through Henry VIII’s Keeper of the Tents and Master of the Revels [1], Sir Thomas Cawarden, and there remained until the 1980s, when the present paintings were given to John Paul Getty. All scenes in the series depict classical figures, and are of varying condition. The present pair have been the subject of recent renovation, during which numerous layers of later overpaint have been removed.

The panels were first attributed to Anthony Toto by Edward Croft-Murray in his 1962 survey Decorative Painting in England 1537-1837, on the basis of a listed receipt in Toto’s hand and signed by him “for painting of hatchements, arms and badges of the King’s to be set upon his Highness’s tents and pavilions” in the Loseley archives dated May 31st 1544 [Loseley MS 1893]. This view was reaffirmed by Marcus Binney in a 1969 article for Country Life. The present works would have been typical of the temporary ‘hatchements’ painted for the interior of a royal ‘tent’, or pavilion. 

Further research by the present author has unearthed an additional, more comprehensive, description of the work carried out by Toto for Carwarden. The document, in Toto’s own hand, not only helps confirm the attribution of the present pictures, but sheds important light onto the activities of an artist in the Tudor court. It is undated, but was drawn up between 1544-47. The list of work carried out begins, “Things made and paynted for the kings Majestie by Antony Totto Serjeant Paynter [for] Sir Thomas Cardew Knyght” and goes onto detail a mass of heraldic hatchements “of the Kings Armes wt the beasts around the garter, and the Kings words [ie, motto]”, and large number of smaller “pensills paynted upon Burkeram wt the Kings badge” [Loseley MSS 1891/2]. There are also a number of painted earthenware pots listed, apparently for use in stables, suggesting that the riot of colour and decoration seen in the present paintings was employed in even the most mundane corners of the court.

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Drilling for Leonardo

March 12 2012

'Lost', 'hidden', 'Leonardo'; three words guaranteed to deliver a cascade of press interest. The quest to find Leonardo's lost painting The Battle of Anghiari in Florence's Palazzo Vecchio, which some say was covered up by Vasari's later murals, has uncovered... some old flakes of paint. From The Guardian:

Researchers in Florence say they are one step closer to proving a lost masterpiece by Leonardo da Vinci, The Battle of Anghiari, is painted on a hidden wall in a cavity in Florence's town hall, where it has remained unseen for five centuries.

After drilling tiny holes in a fresco painted on a wall which hides the cavity, the researchers inserted a 4mm wide probe and took samples of paint, which they say is similar to that used by Leonardo when he painted the Mona Lisa. [...]

The research team's probe confirmed the existence of an air gap, originally identified through radar scans conducted of the hall, between the brick wall on which Vasari painted his mural and the wall located behind it. "No other gaps exist behind the other five massive Vasari frescoes in the high-ceilinged hall," the team said.

A sample of black material removed from the back wall was analysed with a scanning electron microscope using energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy to identify its chemical makeup.

The chemical composition "was similar to black pigment found in brown glazes on Leonardo's Mona Lisa and St John the Baptist, identified in a recently published scientific paper by the Louvre, which analysed all the Da Vinci paintings in its collection", the team said.

"Note that Leonardo painted the Mona Lisa in Florence at the same time," said Seracini, who was featured in Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code.

Flakes of red material were also found. "Analysis of these samples seems to identify them as organic material, which could be associated with red lacquer. This type of material is unlikely to be present in an ordinary plastered wall," the team said.

And on the BBC, a note of dissent:

Tomaso Montanari, an art historian who has led the opposition to the research said that he did not "consider the source of these findings credible."

He added: "What do they mean by saying the findings are compatible with Leonardo? Any painting from the Renaissance would be. Anything from that era could be painted on that wall."

Whether this was worth all the effort remains to be seen. If the Battle of Anghiari has miraculously survived, and if it is anything like Leonardo's other famousy fragile frescoe, The Last Supper, there won't be much left to see. One could reasonably believe that if it was covered up by Vasari, it must have been done so for a good reason - that is, it had perished beyond use. We know Leonardo took great risks with his murals, and was constantly experimenting. After all, what are the chances that Vasari, the first great art historian and Leonardo's biographer, deliberately covered up a viewable Leonardo? 

Cleaning Vermeer

March 5 2012

Image of Cleaning Vermeer

Picture: Rijksmuseum

Martin Bailey in The Art Newspaper reveals that the Rijksmuseum's has recently cleaned Vermeer's Woman in Blue:

Visitors to the Rijksmuseum will soon be able to see Vermeer’s newly restored Woman in Blue Reading a Letter, 1663-64, when it returns home following a Japanese tour which funded the work’s restoration. A century ago, the critic Jan Veth wrote that “nothing has ever been painted that is more noble and refined than this blue young woman”, but age took its toll and the blue appeared to gradually fade beneath the varnish. The painting has once again regained its colour and is due to be unveiled at the museum on 30 March.

Mona Lisa copy - it was painted by Leonardo's lover??

March 1 2012

Image of Mona Lisa copy - it was painted by Leonardo's lover??

Picture: Prado

The speculation on this is just going to run and run. Here's the latest headline from The Art Newspaper:

"Leonardo’s lover probably painted the Prado’s Mona Lisa"

How do we get to this news-tastic conclusion on the basis of hard-to-interpret infra-red imagery - and no other evidence whatsoever

Here's the reasoning:

In attempting to identify the copyist, curators at the Prado began by eliminating pupils and associates such as Boltraffio, Marco d’Oggiono and Ambrogio de Predis—since they each have their own individual styles. They also eliminated two Spanish followers of Leonardo, Fernando Yáñez and Fernando de Llanos, whose work is distinctively Valencian.

Miguel Falomir, the head of Italian paintings at the Prado, now believes that the copy of the Mona Lisa “can be stylistically located in a Milanese context close to Salaì or possibly Francesco Melzi”. Melzi was an assistant who joined Leonardo’s studio in around 1507, but the Prado’s copy may well have been started earlier. Of the two, Salaì now seems the most likely.

So it's by a process of elimination. Boltraffio, d'Oggiono and da Predis must be ruled out because they are far superior painters than the hand responsible for the Prado's copy. Presumably the same goes for Yáñez and Llanos. Melzi only joins Leonardo after he began the Mona Lisa, so that's him out. And we're left with Salai, for whom, perhaps conveniently, we have very few firmly attributable works for comparison. I'm not sure about this...

Titian - now that we've bought it...

March 1 2012

Image of Titian - now that we've bought it...

Picture: National Gallery

...please can we restore it? Like many Titians, Diana and Callisto has suffered over the centuries, and is in less than ideal condition. For me, the most jarring passage is seen in Diana's head, above. All sense of definition around her profile has disappeared, and, through a combination of abrasion and transparency, her face dissolves into the background. Surely Titian never intended the star of his picture to be so obscure and hard to see. Judicious intervention through minor retouching would easily remedy the situation, and make the picture's sense of narrative work once more. 

You can zoom in on the painting here

On dusting at the Wallace Collection

February 29 2012

Video: BBC

Following my little rant about dusty frames, a reader writes:

I loved your idea of moonlighting at the Wallace Collection with a duster. It reminded me of my favourite Two Ronnies sketch [above, about the cleaning tramp].

Another reader writes:

On “doing the dusting”: when I had a very modest family “ancestor” oil painting cleaned, the restorer suggested turning the picture upside down in the frame and hey presto the nice clean section showed up well at the bottom of the picture and the dirty old one with years of accumulated dirt and dust is barely visible!

Excellent idea. But not necessary! For (and now it's confession time) when I was at the Wallace last weekend, I sidled up to one of the said dusty frames, and gave it a very gentle puff. Up flew a plume of dust. Apologies to the Wallace Collection for this - and for the record, I'm not encouraging anybody else to do the same...

Finally, in the interests of balance, another reader writes:

I prefer the dusty frames to the brash wall coverings.

Very true - but the mix of the two is what jars.

More on the Tate archive debacle

February 28 2012

Image of More on the Tate archive debacle

Picture: KHI

Dr Costanza Caraffa, the director of the Photo Library at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz (founded in 1897, one of oldest research institutions on art and architecture in Italy) has been in touch about the Tate's disposal of their photographic archive. She writes:

As director of the Photo Library of an art historical research institute (a German institution with seat in Florence) working also theoretically on photo archives, I would like to draw your attention to the "Florence Declaration - Recommendations for the Preservation of Analogue Photo Archives". 

To the many reasons that were mentioned in the article and in your blog, why throwing away such photographic holdings is an unforgivable crime against the scientific community and the entire society, I would like to add some new research perspectives on photographs and photo archives as material objects that cannot be substituted by digital surrogates. These new studies go beyond the disciplinary borders of art history and see photographs and archives as research objects on their on.

The "Florence Declaration" aims at an integration between the analogue format and the digital format, which only can guarantee the correct conservation of the photographic heritage for future studies and at the same time the implementation of digital instruments.

Quite. Indeed, these points were considered so important that there was a conference on them in 2009 attended by, amongst others, the Courtauld, the Getty, and Holland's RKD, all of which have large photographic archives. Their premise was that:

[Photographic] archives are valuable both as active research tools and as historical entities. They contain images that are records within the history of art, but are in themselves objects of study as historical photographs (for example as parts of bequests by major art historians, collectors, or photographers) and also as documents of art historical practices over time.

Photographic archives not only support but they generate research. Each archive has its historical and conceptual logic, which often raises as well as resolve research questions.

Additionally the mounts hold information about the photographs and the objects they represent.

There, in a nutshell, are several valid reasons as to why the Tate should not have disposed of their photographic archive. The mystery to me is this; if institutions such as the RKD and the Getty thought keeping the actual photos was so important, why didn't the Tate?

And here is the preamble from the Florence Declaration, which goes into more detail on why simply keeping a digital record of the photos is not the same as keeping the photos themselves:

The main role of photo archives, like that of every archive, is to guarantee the conservation and future accessibility of documents from the past for their possible future use for research purposes. 

The introduction of digital technologies has made new, powerful tools available for conservation and access requirements. Almost all photo archives are currently involved in electronic cataloguing and photographic print and negative digitization projects and new methods of online consultation have been developed. The digital technologies applied to the archive have thus undisputed advantages. 

However, for this very reason, there is a tendency to consider the consequences of these processes too superficially. In particular, the debates on digitalization imply that once digitally reproduced, the original artefacts can be removed from consultation or even dispensed with altogether. The Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut on the other hand, supported by the other subscribers to these recommendations, believes that it is essential for the future of studies in historic, human and social sciences to generate a greater understanding of the inescapable value of photographs and analogue archives.  

The conviction that it is useful and necessary to preserve the analogue photo archives is based on two simple considerations: 

- the technologies not only condition the methods of transmission, conservation and enjoyment of the documents, but they also shape its content; 

- the photographs are not simply images independent from their mount, but rather objects endowed with materiality that exist in time and space.

Van Eyck in ultra-high resolution

February 27 2012

Image of Van Eyck in ultra-high resolution

Picture: Universum Digitalis

A reader has alerted me to this excellent site on Van Eyck's Ghent Altarpiece. You can even zoom in on the infra-red images.  

A hidden Benjamin West

February 27 2012

Image of A hidden Benjamin West

Picture: BG

An illness in the family means I'm spending a lot of time around Harley Street in central London. So I was pleased to find yesterday hidden in a corner of Marylebone Church this Holy Family by Benjamin West, painted in 1818. It is listed in Allen Staley's catalogue raisonne of West's works, which reveals that it used to be the main alterpiece, but was later moved. It was also vandalised in 1859, which may account for its poor condition. But to me it mainly looks dirty, and it has been rather badly restored by a recent hand in the faces. I wonder how much it would cost to clean the picture. It's a fine thing - West at his best.

Doing the dusting

February 27 2012

Image of Doing the dusting

Picture: BG

The Wallace Collection is marvellous. But why do they never dust their picture frames? The problem is more noticeable now that they've redecorated many of the upstairs galleries. The rows of greying frames detract from the newly hung, bright fabrics. It wouldn't really matter if frames became dusty consistently - but the dust settles only on the lower horizontal part of the frame, so you get three shiny sides, and one dusty one. Give me an hour with a feather duster, and I'd transform the place.

Prado reveals evidence behind 'earliest Mona Lisa copy' claim

February 22 2012

Image of Prado reveals evidence behind 'earliest Mona Lisa copy' claim

Picture: Museo Prado

A few weeks ago the Prado unveiled a newly-cleaned copy of the Mona Lisa, and claimed that not only was it the earliest known copy of the original, but that it was made in Leonardo's studio alongside the master by one of his pupils. And today they released an excellent series of images and videos setting out the evidence behind the claim, in a first-class presentation that should be the model for all future museum discoveries.

The main evidence behind the claim is the infra-red imagery. Briefly, the Prado say that the infra-red image of their picture matches the infra-red image of the original, including in areas where Leonardo subsequently changed his mind. So, for example, in the infra-red images of both the original and the Prado copy we can see a line of under-drawing to the right of the Mona Lisa's veil at about the level of her neck. But in both the finished original and the copy this change is not visible on the final painted surface. This must mean, say the Prado, that the copy was drawn alongside the original, and when Leonardo made a change, so did the copyist. There is other quite convincing evidence to put the picture in Leonardo's studio, such as the walnut panel, and the type of ground layer used.

[more below]

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Save Battersea Power Station

February 15 2012

Image of Save Battersea Power Station

Picture: 'Battersea Power Station' by Robert Lowry, Wandsworth Museum

Have you noticed? It seems there has been a quiet campaign in the press recently to demolish Battersea power station, the iconic building designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott (he of the red telephone box). The campaign would appear to have has the hallmarks of a cunning PR operation by someone. You don't normally get spontaneous op-ed pieces and calls from influential voices like the Daily Telegraph's City Editor, Richard Fletcher, in favour of demolishing heritage sites. Fletcher's piece was even accompanied by an online poll cunningly devised to make it look like a majority of people wanted to demolish the Station (by splitting the no votes into three options, with the single 'yes' vote in the lead at 41%). 

What's going on? Well today we find out: a report has concluded that the site will be worth almost an extra £470m without the station. Permission to knock the station down would make it easier for the site's owners (largely banks such as government-owned Lloyds) to sell to a developer.

At the moment the site is Grade II listed, and English Heritage would no doubt object to the station's demolition. But, sadly, that doesn't mean very much these days. Recently, the heritage minister John Penrose over-ruled (in my opinion, shamefully) English Heritage's call to protect the concourse buildings at Waterloo Station, and now the fine early 20th Century arches and columns are being covered by hideous steel and glass 'retail spaces'.

So will the government be able to resist calls from 'business', and their friends in the press, to demolish Battersea power station? I doubt it, on the evidence so far. But let's hope so. Someone should see what the London mayoral candidates, Boris and Ken, want to do with the station. Remember, if the similarly sited and designed Bankside station had been demolished, we'd have no Tate Modern. In the meantime, I urge you to at least click your way over to the Telegraph Poll, and vote 'no' to the station's destruction.

Update: There's a new poll here. Vote no!

The best art charity you've never heard of?

February 9 2012

Image of The best art charity you've never heard of?

Picture: Shakespeare's Birthplace Trust/Public Catalogue Foundation

A giant round of applause please for the Woodmansterne Art Conservation Awards, an independent fund that supports the restoration of oil paintings in British public collections. The award is operated by Woodmansterne greetings cards, which have long printed cards with fine art reproductions. Since 1995, 60 paintings have been conserved at a total cost of £357,000. Last year, Woodmansterne funded the restoration of the above portrait by Pickenoy at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust

If you work in a museum which has a painting which needs restoring, then you have until 21st February to apply for this year's award

The Mona Lisa's curious new face

February 2 2012

Image of The Mona Lisa's curious new face

Picture: TAN/Museo Prado

There was much excitement in the press yesterday about the Prado's newly restored copy of the Mona Lisa. To recap, the Prado have cleaned what they thought was a not-very-important copy of the Mona Lisa, only to discover that the black background was over-paint, revealing a landscape background underneath. The Prado say that their version is the 'earliest known' copy of the Mona Lisa, and that it was painted in Leonardo's studio at the same time as the original by one of his pupils. 

Now this is some claim: a copy of the most famous painting in the world, painted under Leonardo's own supervision? But hang on - where is the evidence? Apparently the copy is painted on walnut, which was used as a support in Italy at the time Leonardo painted the Mona Lisa. But it was also used in France in the later 16th Century, and cannot be dated by dendrochronology. So we cannot rely on the panel for a date. Has there been any paint analysis? Is there any documentary evidence to support its creation in Leonardo's studio? Have the Prado analysed all the other early copies, and proved they post-date the Prado's copy? We are not told. The only compelling evidence we have so far relates to the under-drawing in the copy, and comes from The Art Newspaper article by Martin Bailey (who broke the story):

There was an even greater surprise: infrared reflectography images of the Prado replica were compared with those obtained in 2004 from the original of the Mona Lisa in the Louvre. This process enables conservators to peer beneath the surface of the paint, to see underdrawing and changes which evolved in the composition.

The underdrawing of the Madrid replica was similar to that of the Mona Lisa before it was finished. This suggests that the original and the copy were begun at the same time and painted next to each other, as the work evolved.

This is a curious claim, for we know that Leonardo took many years to complete the Mona Lisa. So at what stage was the copy made? If the under-drawing in the copy was made before the original was finished, then why does the painted surface of the copy look like the original after it was finished? Perhaps the copy was completed alongside the original at each stage of its execution. Or perhaps the different nature of the under-drawing in the copy could suggest that it is not as sophisticated or complete as that in the original - which is inevitably the case with a copy. 

I'm sorry to sound unneccessarily sceptical, but presenting conclusions without the evidence to back them up is bad practice, in any discipline. It only gives rise to peevish questions from people like me. And in the meantime, the conclusions get exaggerated by the press: in the Washington Post the copy is now described as 'painted with help from Da Vinci'.  It is of course entirely up to the Prado to announce their findings when they want. But I bet there's a whole load of art historians out there who are as frustrated as I am by the delay. For if the Prado is right, then this is indeed a great discovery, one which can really advance Leonardo studies. So why not release the evidence now? I asked the Prado if they had any more details, and received the following:

There will be an official press release coinciding with the presentation of the work once the restoration has ended. We will do a press conference in the week of the 20th of February to announce the final works of conservation and all the information regarding the research done on the painting.

Maybe I should just be more patient. So - until 20th February we have only the various photographs released to the media to go on. Is anybody else puzzled by this? Or am I just being cantankerous?

Restoration programme at the Courtauld announced

February 2 2012

Image of Restoration programme at the Courtauld announced

Picture: Courtauld

Yesterday the Courtauld unveiled their newly restored Cain Slaying Abel by Rubens (1608-9). It looks very nice. They also announced a new series of restorations of 20 works, including Tintorett's Il Paradiso. The restorations will be funded by Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Good for them. You can see 18 of the works here

More on the Poussin attack

January 30 2012

There was an intriguing nugget of information buried in a recent Guardian piece on yet another strike by room warders at the National Gallery:

The PCS [Public & Commercial Services Union] claims that last year, when a man walked into the gallery and threw red paint over Poussin's The Adoration of the Golden Calf, the assistant on duty was in the adjoining room. Had he been there, the union says, the attack "would not have happened".

The National disputes this version of events: it insists the assistant was shown on CCTV to have been in the doorway of the room during the attack.

I wonder which account is correct, the union's or the Gallery's. Given the layout of the galleries where the Poussin hangs, I presume the doorway in question was that between room 19 and room 20 (click here for the NG floorplan). The other possible doorway opens onto a much larger central gallery, 18, which would, one expects, have its own guard. If this scenario is correct, then it means a warder was practically adjacent to the painting when it was attacked.

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