Category: Discoveries
Mona Lisa - the prequel
September 24 2012
Picture: Mail
Richard Brooks in The Sunday Times yesterday broke news of 'an earlier version of the Mona Lisa'. The Times is pay-walled, so here's the subsequent report in the Mail:
The claims of the Swiss-based consortium which owns the painting are supported by Professor Alessandro Vezzosi, who has set up his own art museum in Vinci. He will present evidence alongside Professor Carlo Pedretti of the Armand Hammer Center for Leonardo Studies at the University of California. The Isleworth Mona Lisa was discovered shortly before the First World War by Hugh Blaker, an English art collector, while looking through the home of a Somerset nobleman. He bought the painting and took it to his studio in Isleworth, London, from which it takes its name.
Art critics conjectured that Leonardo had in fact painted two portraits of Lisa del Giocondo, with one hanging in the Louvre and the other now with Mr Blaker. He in turn sold it to an American collector, Henry F Pulitzer, who in turn left it to his girlfriend. On her death, it was bought by a consortium of unnamed individuals who have kept it in a Swiss bank vault for 40 years.
But despite claims the Isleworth Mona Lisa is indeed the work of Leonardo da Vinci, Martin Kemp, emeritus professor of the history of art at Oxford disputes this.
'So much is wrong,' he told The Sunday Times. 'The dress, the hair and background landscape. This one is also painted on canvas, which Leonardo rarely did.' Like the majority of his works, The Mona Lisa in the Louvre is in fact painted on wood. And while the lady in the Isleworth Mona Lisa does appear to be a younger version of the model in the more famous painting, Kemp said this did not prove the two were produced by Leonardo da Vinci. 'She might look younger but this is probably because the copyist, and I believe it is a copy done a few years after the Mona Lisa, just painted it that way,' added Mr Kemp.
A commenter in the Mail agrees with Kemp, and writes:
I think it was done by Ceilia Gimenez.
It's hard to say much from the image of course. The Mona Lisa Foundation website says it is currently 'under construction' till 27th September. But given Prof. Pedretti's recent involvement in the 'Leonardo sculpture' project, forgive me if, for now, I place more trust in Kemp's view. I've been summoned to bank vaults to look at 'consortium-owned masterpieces' before, and they're always duds.
Update - a reader writes:
You probably were not summoned to give an opinion on the Salvator Mundi - now accepted (?) as by Leonardo (certainly by Kemp) - but that is apparently owned by a US 'consortium of art dealers' - therefore a 'dud'?
I don’t think (tho' I don't know) that the Salvator Mundi was ever held in a bank vault. My point was that if things are held in bank vaults, and not a gallery or proper art store, it’s usually, in my experience, an indicator that something isn't quite right.
Newly discovered Turners everywhere?
September 21 2012
Picture: Guardian
Hot on the heels of last week's '£20 million Turner discovery', here's another '£20 million Turner discovery'. From The Guardian:
Experts will present evidence next week claiming to have uncovered a long-lost painting by JMW Turner, bought for £3,700 but now valued by one insurance firm at £20m.
Jonathan Weal, 54, who works for an art investment fund, spotted the seascape eight years ago in an auction at a Kent golf club.
After years of research, his belief in the work – entitled Fishing Boats in a Stiff Breeze – has apparently been backed by art experts and by scientific tests that investigated everything from pigments to the signature. He said Hiscox, the specialist art insurers, had valued the work at £20m.
Dr Selby Whittingham, a Turner scholar and a former curator at Manchester City Art Gallery, has described it as an exciting discovery. He will be among specialists attending a conference on the painting at the Dulwich Picture Gallery on Wednesday.
Tests to be presented include a report by Art Access & Research, a specialist in the scientific analysis of paintings. Its investigations focus on pigments and techniques whose introduction or disuse can be dated.
Its report concludes: "Work thus far has not revealed any features wholly inconsistent with the hypothesis that the painting was executed by Turner in 1805."
This all sounds most exciting. But I've checked with other more prominent Turner scholars, and they haven't been shown this picture yet. So while there's every chance it could indeed be an important discovery, it is open to the charge of being yet another case of premature attribution.
Spot the difference - new Vernet discovered
September 19 2012
Picture: Telegraph
In The Telegraph, Colin Gleadell has news of an impressive new discovery by my fellow London dealer Theo Johns:
Spotted high up on a wall at Sotheby’s last year, the painting of a shipwreck and its survivors was attributed to “the Studio of Claude-Joseph Vernet”, a French artist who catered for the 18th-century romantic taste for the “terrible” and the picturesque. Although signed, it was thought not to be by Vernet, but by one of his studio assistants. Consequently, it was knocked down to London dealer Theo Johns, for just £25,000.
Since then, Johns has had the painting cleaned to reveal one of Vernet’s trademark lighthouses perched on a cliff (pictured above), which, for some unknown reason, had been painted over in the 20th century. Johns then tracked the painting’s exhibition history and found it had been included in the 1926 catalogue raisonne of the artist’s work. It is now on offer for £400,000, which is par for the course for a large, early shipwreck scene by Vernet, an artist who is represented in museums the world over.
More details and better photos here.
Henry IX restored
September 19 2012
Picture: National Portrait Gallery
I'm delighted to report that the National Portrait Gallery has finally agreed to re-identify its portrait of Prince Henry Benedict Stuart, Cardinal York (or Henry IX as he is known to Jacobites). As I mentioned recently, the portrait had long been called a portrait of Prince Henry, but was then debunked some years ago. This means that, following my 2008 article in the British Art Journal, I've been able to re-identify portraits of Henry in both the London NPG and the Scottish NPG. The latter portrait, a fine pastel by La Tour, was being displayed as Henry's brother, Charles, and had appeared on countless posters, tea towels and book covers. (Sorry for the boast, but I'm rather proud the research). Now I just need to persuade the NPG that their portrait is actually by Mengs, not just 'circle of Mengs'. But this may take another five years...
X-ray reveals Velasquez original
September 17 2012
Picture: Meadows Museum, Dallas
Intriguing story in The Washington Post about Velazquez's portraits of Philip IV, which are known in a number of autograph versions. An x-ray of a version in Dallas has apparently proved that it is the first. It will be exhibited alongside a version from the Prado in a new show, which runs until January 13th. Regular readers will remember the Met's restoration of their version, which saw them upgrade the attribution to Velazquez in full.
No more holes - search for 'Leonardo' mural ends
September 17 2012
Picture: National Geographic
I learn from the ever-indispensable Three Pipe Problem that the search for Leonardo's mural, The Battle of Anghiari, has ended. The news comes from a few small announcements in Italian press, and means that the National Geographic Channel is no longer funding any research. This is surely a Good Thing. The initial results were rather blown out of proportion (for more see Martin Kemp's view here). But it was all good fun while it lasted.
More on the Degas
September 17 2012
Picture: BBC
We had a 20% audience share last night for the first episode of 'Fake or Fortune?', with 3.8m viewers. The grand fromages at the BBC are pleased with the figures, which are high for an arts programme. We hope to do better next Sunday, when we're back at our usual 7pm slot. If you saw it, thanks for tuning in. Next week's programme should be even better, with not one but three paintings up for inspection.
The critical feedback so far has been encouraging, with the Telegraph being very kind:
It’s hard to imagine a more artfully crafted – if you’ll pardon the pun – piece of Sunday night factual telly than the return of Fake or Fortune?
Meanwhile, over on Twitter the programme has its very own troll, and a famous one too. The critic and arts presenter Waldemar Januszczak (of whose programmes and writing I'm a great fan) really doesn't like the show. He dismissed the Degas as 'dodgy' and a wrong 'un before he'd even seen the evidence in the programme, on the basis of a short clip on the news. That's an impressive display of connoisseurship, don't you think? One might have thought there'd be a certain solidarity among arts TV makers, especially those that share commissioning editors...
Still, the main thing for me was that we were able to showcase some quite complicated art historical investigations to the broadest possible audience. Normally, terms like 'connoisseurship', 'provenance research' and 'pigment analysis' are banished to BBC2, BBC4 or even the radio. Sadly, there was quite a lot of research we weren't able to squeeze in. Untangling the provenance of the two versions of Blue Dancer was highly complicated, and made our brains hurt. But a saving grace was that the sizes were listed, and of course matched up.
Another unbroadcast but key part of the research we presented to the Degas catalogue compilers focused on our theory that Patrick Rice's picture was a study for the one in Hamburg. The alleged weaknesses in Patrick's picture are all forgiveable if one accepts that it was no more than a preparatory effort for the finished picture in Hamburg. Patrick's picture had to be judged not against the many famous, finished Degas' we are familiar with from books and museums, but against his sketches and studies, which are far less known, and hardly ever reproduced (in some cases only in poor black and white photos in the catalogie raisonne). And the best proof that Patrick's picture was indeed a study came in the discovery of two important pentimenti, or changes, in the painting. The first was that Degas had changed the position of the right hand double bass head - it was originally substantially further to the right. He had also painted the dress of the dancer before he then moved the double bass head over to the left. Such movements rule out any suggestion that Patrick's picture was a straightforward copy of the one in Hamburg.
A few Tweeters, including Waldemar, are still convinced that the picture is a fake. Let us consider, then, the probability that we are dealing with a faker. If so, we have to have a pre-war faker who was able not only to pre-empt pigment analysis techniques not yet invented, but, even more specifically, to find and use the unusual pigments that Degas favoured. How did this faker, before 1945, know how to do this? How did they have access to the Goupil stock books to find the missing provenance of another version of the Hamburg picture, and get the right size? Why did they bother to introduce pentimenti? Not even Han van Meegeren, the famous forger of Vermeer, went to such lengths.
Finally, some readers have suggested, in light of our debates here at AHN on connoisseurship, that the scientific tests and documentary research we carried out on the picture mean that the judgement of connoisseurs, who had previously rejected the picture, are redundant, and thus is connoisseurship itself. I would argue instead that our programme merely highlighted what happens when connoisseurship goes wrong. As I've said before, there are good connoisseurs and bad connoisseurs - but the latter does not mean we should condemn the practice of connoisseurship itself. If a doctor misdiagnoses you, do you question medical science itself, or do you get a second opinion?
And in any case, scientific testing and provenance research must all form part of any connoisseurial analysis these days, if necessary. For what it's worth, I was at first very sceptical of the picture, but then my expertise in Degas is very limited indeed. I run out of steam after about 1830. It was only after looking away from the image I had in my mind of Degas' work - that is, the well-known museum, book, and poster examples - and started to focus on his lesser known (and frankly lesser) works such as studies and sketches, that I began to see comparisons that could be made. The most valuable aspect of the whole exercise, for me, was endless close looking at as many Degas' as I could find. I mean real, get the binoculars out and look like a nutter close looking. For it is the art of close looking, so rarely taught and encouraged among art historians these days, that any aspiring connoisseur needs to learn. If it means getting told off for leaning over ropes in galleries, so be it. But, armchair connoisseurs please note, it's more useful than making judgements from the telly.
Update: an interesting response from a reader, posted above.
The wisdom of crowds
September 13 2012
Picture: Cambridge University Library/PCF
Or in this case, art historian and reader Tim Williams. He has found that one of the unattributed pictures in yesterday's post on mystery PCF pictures, the portrait of Thomas Broughton at Cambridge above, is by (or after, I can't tell from the image online) Nathaniel Dance. Below is the engraving which carries the attribution to Dance [courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery].
Excellent work Tim - Cambridge University Library owes you one. Thanks for your suggestions on the others everyone - keep 'em coming.
Optimism
September 13 2012
Picture: Daily Mail
It could be a £20m Turner! Or a £500 copy. You decide. Either way, it seems that the easiest way to get free publicity these days is to claim that you might have found a masterpiece. It doesn't matter if it's a worthless copy - few journalists can begin to tell the difference, and fewer still can be bothered to ask someone who can. We saw a similar story last month with yet another 'Leonardo' discovery. (Is it a coincidence that both stories were featured in the Daily Mail?) Soon, we will be able to bastardise Andy Warhol's famous line, and say 'In the future, every painting will be world-famous for 15 minutes.'
BBC SouthEast (the 'Turner' belongs to a Kent antiques dealer) asks me if I can go on telly and talk about the discovery. Should I be kind and optimistic, or should I give the picture, and the world's press, both barrels of brutal, AHN honesty?
Sleeper Alert
September 12 2012
Picture: Bonhams
At least two people got excited enough at yesterday's minor Bonhams sale to bid this '19th Century French School' head of a monk to £49,250 (inc. premium), from its £700-£1,000 estimate. Clearly 17th Century, and Flemish, I thought it had a sniff of Jordaens about it. It looked much better in the flesh than the illustration. Perhaps we will soon see it again.
Update - a reader writes:
Isn’t someone guessing it’s a study of the monk on the lower right of Ruben’s altarpiece of “The Last Communion of St Francis” [KMSKA, Antwerp]?
Finding Richard III
September 12 2012
Picture: Philip Mould/Historical Portraits
I've long been sceptical of archaeologists leaping to conclusions from, say, one shard of pottery - but the latest evidence from the search for Richard III's body is potentially of exceptional importance.
The bones found underneath a car park in Leicester, in a former Franciscan friary where Richard is thought to have been buried, have to be sent for DNA testing before any positive identification can be made. However, it has been revealed that the battle-scarred skeleton suffered from scoliosis, and so one shoulder would have been visibly higher than the other. That's not quite the same thing as having a hunch back, but a deformity of sorts nonetheless.
If that is the case, then we can clear Shakespeare of at least one accusation of Tudor propoganda, and begin to reinterpret Richard's iconography, which almost universally shows him with a raised shoulder. It gets higher and higher the further one goes into the 16th Century, as can be seen in an example we sold a while ago, above. Compare that to the much earlier version belonging to the Society of Antiquaries, below. It's often been thought that all the portraits of Richard showing a 'hump' were the result of the Tudor black legend. But if he really did have a raised shoulder, that tells us a great deal about how we should view 16th Century royal iconography.
By the way, no amount of digging will persuade me that he did not kill the Princes in the Tower.
When science takes over art history
September 10 2012
Picture: Sunday Telegraph/Rubenshuis
A consequence of the decline in connoisseurship is the disproportionate weight placed on science when attributing paintings. In the world of science, an answer is usually binary - something either is or it isn't. When scientists get involved in art history, therefore, they often attempt to bring too much certainty to a situation.
Here's an example: 'This zippy new machine and Professor X say this painting is by Van Dyck. Therefore it must be by Van Dyck.' And today's art historians, increasingly unsure of how to assess paintings because their teachers taught them that connoisseurship is a Bad Thing, are often only too happy to go along. Of course, Professor X may have looked at as many Van Dycks in his life as his zippy new machine has - ie, none. But because 'science' is involved, the decision is final. Nobody ever asks how much the new machine costs, and whether the scientists are overly keen to market their new invention.
Yesterday we had the Sunday Telegraph reporting that a a new 3D X-ray 'Minidome' machine had proved that a painting thought to be by Rubens of Van Dyck was in fact a self-portrait by Van Dyck. The key fact was this:
By looking at the brush strokes on the surface of the painting, the researchers found that it had been built up in layers, continually revised during its creation – a technique associated with van Dyck, who lived from 1599 to 1641 and is best known for his portraits of the pre-civil war royal court. Art historians know that he continually rethought his composition and technique as he went along.
Rubens, by contrast, did not; he would paint according to a pre-conceived plan, not revising his earlier work, meaning that his brushstrokes would show up entirely differently under 3D examination.
This is such a load of old phooey that I can scarcely believe it to be true. (If you don't believe me, make a quick trip to the National Gallery and look closely at any of the Rubens' on display there. You'll soon find evidence of Rubens changing his mind - moving the leg of a cow here, or the finger of a model there - or as we call them in art history jargon, pentimenti.)
But let's leave aside the question of whether that's the only evidence for changing the attribution from Rubens to Van Dyck, and hope that the facts will be better presented in a proper article, which we can return to. The main point here is that before we go around changing attributions based on a zippy new x-ray machine, we surely need that machine to make many, many scans of other paintings by Rubens and Van Dyck (for example). Then we will not only have a proper body of comparable information from which to draw our conclusions, but we can also be sure that we are interpreting these new images correctly.
I'm certainly all in favour of using science to help attribute paintings. We will feature three examples of how just how important it is in our new series of 'Fake or Fortune?' But we must be careful how much emphasis we place on science, which by and large can only tell you what a painting is not, not what it is. If we rely too heavily on new technology, we may find to our cost that old fashioned art history is discarded entirely. And as the poorly written article in The Sunday Telegraph shows us, it's already happening.
Picasso found
August 27 2012
Picture: Evansville Museum of Arts
A museum in Indiana has apparently found a Picasso in its store. It had been missed for 49 years following a cataloguing error. And how does the museum react to this great discovery? By opting to flog it. More here.
A hair to prove a Van Gogh?
August 9 2012
Picture: Telegraph
A hair found on a disputed Van Gogh is going to be DNA tested to see if it is Van Gogh's. From The Telegraph:
In a bid to settle one of the mysteries of the art world, the three inch long, red hair was lifted from "Still Life with Peonies" and DNA samples taken from it will be compared with those from Van Gogh's living relatives.
If confirmed a Van Gogh, the painting could fetch a value of £39 million and make Cologne art collector Markus Roubrocks, its owner, a multi millionaire.
The bright painting of a vase of multicoloured peonies resting on a wooden floor was discovered in a Belgian attic in 1977, and since then debate has raged in the art world whether it is the work of the Dutch master.
Mr Roubrocks, who inherited the painting from his father, has always argued it is an original Van Gogh dating from the spring of 1889 just a year before the artist took his own life. Two independent art experts who examined the picture independently backed his claim, but the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam contests this, saying the brush strokes are inconsistent with Van Gogh's style, and therefore the painting is nothing more than an expert piece of forgery.
Pity the article doesn't tell us what type of hair it is. Attribution by pube - now that's a story.
Cranach returned to Poland
August 8 2012
Picture: Art Newspaper
The Art Newspaper reports on one of the strangest restitution cases I've ever seen:
According to Poland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the painting was taken from the cathedral in Wroclaw, then known as Breslau and part of German territory, to protect it from Allied air raids. Cranach was known to be one of Hitler’s favourite artists and it is possible that it was ear marked for inclusion in the planned Führermuseum, Linz.
After the war, the picture was returned to the Diocesan Museum, Wroclaw rather than the war-damaged cathedral. It had been broken in two and officials decided to have it restored. Siegfried Zimmer, a German priest and amateur art collector and painter, was commissioned to take care of the restoration work, but he instead had a copied made between 1946 to 1947 and stole away to Berlin with the actual Cranach. The hoax was not uncovered until 1961, when a Polish conservator examined the picture and found it to be a modern copy. The original passed through private hands until it made its way to an unnamed Swiss collector who held it until his recent death, when it was left to the Diocese of St Gallen.
Update - a reader writes:
Surely the photo is of the forgery, or much overpainted if it's the original. The Madonna's face looks very 'South Pacific' and the whole thing is like those murals in Greek hotels when I was young.
The painting in the photo is certainly the one handed over to the Poles - see more photos here and a high-res here. But that would be a great way to steal a painting; persuade some faraway museum that they have a copy by inventing a tale of post-war duplicity, and then present them with the 'real' picture while you take away the copy. I feel a novel coming on...
Optimism update
August 8 2012
Picture: Daily Mail
More on that loony Leonardo 'discovery'; here's the official website, and apparently The Daily Mail has 'won serialisation rights' to the book. This says a lot about the Mail.
More optimism. Bordering on Loonery.
August 6 2012
Picture: Daily Mail
I know it's August and, Olympics aside, there's not much news about - but this latest art 'discovery' really pushes the limits of credulity. How did it ever get taken seriously? Why are the media so easy to fool on art 'discoveries'? Above is a work claimed by its owner, Fiona McLaren, as a Leonardo - and not just any Leonardo. It is supposed to be Francis I's last commission from the artist, and shows not the Virgin and Child with St John the Baptist, as you and I might think, but Mary Magdalene with Jesus' son. The Daily Mail has the story:
The striking portrait, which shows woman embracing a young child, was nearly assigned to the rubbish tip on several occasions, but facing financial difficulties Ms McLaren, 59, from Scotland decided to take the painting to an expert for a valuation.
Auctioneer Harry Robertson, the director of Sotheby's in Scotland, gasped when he saw the art 23ins by 28ins work which had hung on a landing and in a bedroom in London for decades, before being transferred to Scotland when Ms McLaren and her mother moved into a farmhouse. 'I showed it to him [Mr Robertson] and he was staggered, speechless save for a sigh of exclamation,' said Ms McLaren, according to The People.
Mr Robertson took the work to London for further testing by specialists on old masters and next year the painting will be closely inspected by experts at the Hamilton Kerr Institute at the University of Cambridge, where it should be dated conclusively. [...]
Other experts have stated that the painting is at the very least from the da Vinci school. Professor Carlo Pedretti from the University of California said he thought it was by a Leonardo da Vinci pupil of a later generation, possibly the 16th century.
Ms McLaren said her father used to call the painting 'Madonna and Child with John the Baptist, but having spent a decade researching the history of the work, the nurse believes the painting is actually not the Virgin Mary with baby Jesus, but Mary Magdalene and her son. She thinks the true meaning of the artwork may have been disguised for centuries because such a work would have been considered heretic by the Roman Catholic Church. The Pope decreed the Virgin Mary should be illustrated in blue whereas Mary Magdalene had to be shown in red attire, as depicted in this painting.
Regular readers will know we've seen quite a few art history fantasies over the last few months. This, though, is the most fantastical of them all. The 'evidence' that this is by Leonardo goes as follows:
Indications of a da Vinci: 1. A similarity between the boy and child in his famous piece Madonna of the Rocks, 2. A distinctive 'v' shape in the middle of the woman's hairline reminiscent of that shown in the last supper, 3. The fleur-de-lys is often said to be a hidden emblem of the secretive Priory of Sion, 4. The area by the woman's shoulder is unfinished, common in da Vinci works, 5. A tracing of the figure in the Last Supper matches exactly the outline of the woman in this painting, 6. The baby's second toe is longer than the big toe - another classic da Vinci feature.
Yes, that classic Leonardo technique, the one we all looked out for in the recent National Gallery exhibition: the crap drawing of the toes. This mad story has made The Scotsman and The People, as well as The Daily Mail. A book will also be published, by a reputable publisher, Mainstream, which is part of the Random House group. The book will be available in hardback, paperback and e-book, suggesting the publisher thinks big things of their potential blockbuster. On their website, they describe the book thus:
Da Vinci’s Last Commission by Fiona McLaren is one of the most astonishing detective stories in the history of art. It is also a tale of the courage and tenacity of a woman who challenged the international art establishment, orthodox history and the Church in her quest for the truth.
There's even talk of a newspaper serialisation. How the hell did a respectable publisher fall for this barrel of palpable nonsense? And why are they publishing the book before the Hamilton Kerr have even begun their tests?
Now you might say, 'calm down Bendor - isn't this all harmless fun?' But actually, it isn't. The occassional fantasies are I suppose inevitable. But as readers, you and I deserve better of our newspapers and publishing houses than to read utter nonsense presented as 'news' or 'the most astonishing art detective story in the history of art', by clueless journalists and publishers who can't be bothered to pick up the phone and ask a real expert about the painting in question. (And even when they do ask an expert, then not understand what the expert is saying, as in this case with Carlo Pedretti, who said 'it's by a 16th C follower' - which means it isn't by Leonardo.)
We're now getting to the point where anyone can cobble together a few nutty facts, leap to conclusions, and make an outlandish claim that garners the world's media attention. Last month we had the Caravaggio hoo-ha. Before that we had the 'Bronte Sisters' portrait 'discovery', in which an auctioneer's error-strewn press release made it into The Daily Telegraph verbatim. Soon, newspaper readers and book buyers will see another 'art discovery', and think, 'oh another fantasy'. Genuine art historical discoveries will be like the boy who cried wolf; nobody will believe them anymore.
So much for that then
August 2 2012
Picture: Art Newspaper
There was great excitement last night when The Art Newspaper reported that the Polish Foreign Ministry had announced the re-discovery of Raphael's Portrait of a Young Man. The picture is perhaps the most famous 'lost' painting in the world since its disappearance after the war, when it had been looted from the Czartoryski family by the Germans. Viewers of the first series of 'Fake or Fortune?' may remember Fiona Bruce interviewing Prince Czartoryski about his frustrating hunt for the painting. The Art Newspaper said:
A spokesman for Poland's Ministry of Foreign Affairs' Office for the Restitution of Cultural Goods told the Polish media today (1 August) that he is confident the painting will be returned to Poland. “Most importantly, the work was not lost in the turmoil of the war. It has not been burnt or destroyed. It exists. It is safely waiting in a region of the world where the law favours us,” he said, declining to disclose in which country.
The same story was also reported in the Polish media. But alas, this morning The Art Newspaper carries an update, stating:
In a subsequent statement on its website the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has tried to calm expectations, saying: "We have no information as to where exactly the image is... however, we can confirm that [the ministry] continues to monitor all signals reaching us about the image's location."
So what's going on? It's unlike The Art Newspaper to break such a big story without getting everything thoroughly checked out. Rummaging around the Polish news sites, the story today is that some remarks by Professor Wojciech Kowalski, who is the Polish foreign ministry's adviser on the restitution of cultural objects, were 'misinterpreted'. Instead, he seems to have said that although he does not know where the painting is, he knows it hasn't been destroyed. Which of course sounds even more curious. And curiouser still, the Dziennik Polski reports that the picture has apparently been seen by a number of Italian art historians since the war. But nobody is prepared to say where it is. Huh.
Update - a reader writes:
Even the painting looks embarrassed.
Found - a Lichtenstein 'lost' for 42 years
August 1 2012
Video: New York Post
Interesting how the art historical time-scales shrink for modern and contemporary art: these days, a painting unseen for just a generation can be hailed as a 'lost' work - with all the attendant publicity. In this case (a Roy Lichtenstein painting that's been found in storage in New York), it seems 'mislaid' is a more appropriate word. And (am I being too sceptical?) standby for the picture to appear at auction soon, heralded as a major 'discovery'.
