Category: Discoveries

For his part, Feigen, who saw Leonardo's Salvator Mundi in London, does not find it to be as commanding a work, and observes that it would be a lonely old master in a European paintings department in Dallas with strengths in the 18th through the 20th centuries.

"To me it is not a gripping masterpiece," he says. "For me Dallas would make a more serious splash by going after several lesser priced paintings in very fine condition. It would be cause for chatter in the museum world if Dallas bought eight or 10 really serious old master paintings, a field where they had not previously ventured."

Salvator Mundi has been "very considerably overpainted," according to the catalogue from the National Gallery's exhibition, and subsequently "aggressively over-cleaned," in addition to, at some point, suffering a split in the wood panel, resulting in some paint losses.

These condition issues, along with the high price, may be the reason the sellers have found no takers after offering the painting to other museums, which three sources who spoke to A.i.A. said it had been. The price and condition are also said to have led to considerable debate among those connected to the Dallas Museum.

"With an acquisition of that magnitude there's always some divided opinion," said a Dallas-based source with knowledge of the situation who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Its price and condition have led to some doubts."

[The picture] was a mess — dirty, water-damaged (not irreparably), and the victim of earlier, regrettably bad restoration. It looked, Gritt says, like “it was dragged through the hedge backwards.” Its sorry state, and the royal pedigree of the Madrid Titian, contributed to a drift in scholarly opinion, and by the 1980s the Ottawa Titian was considered a copy of the other. Then came a side-by-side comparison in Washington, D.C. in 1991.

“The general consensus of everyone in the room was that the Prado was probably the real one by Titian and the Ottawa painting was a copy of it,” Gritt says. “So pretty much that was the lid on the coffin being tightened.”

The Ottawa Titian, now not a Titian at all, sat in its grimy, faded glory in storage. Curators at another gallery asked to borrow it, but backed out when they saw its condition. Oh, the indignity. Then, one morning, a glimmer of redemption arrived in the daily mail.

In 2003 a Toronto man wrote to the gallery’s then deputy-director, David Franklin, to ask why the only Titian in Canada was not on display. The reply — that scholarly opinion no longer considered it to be a Titian, and that it was too dirty to hang in public — could have been the end of it. Enter Stephen Gritt.

Gritt, who is from London, England and joined the gallery that same year, kept thinking about the tenuous Titian as he restored other important paintings, such as Tom Thomson’s iconic Jack Pine and, in 2007, Veronese’s Petrobelli Altarpiece. (Veronese also painted a portrait of Barbaro.)

In 2009, Gritt formally put up the Titian and began hundreds of hours of work to undo four centuries of degradation. Gradually, the vibrancy of the original portrait emerged – the nobleman’s perhaps pensive expression, with a sliver of crimson red neckpiece showing beneath his dark cloak. This, Gritt believed, was no workshop copy.

The team turned to X-rays, which see beneath the surface of a painting, and they showed evidence of changes made by the artist during production. For example, Gritt says, “you can see him wrestling over how to paint the nose, because Daniele has a peculiar nose.” Such changes made no sense if the Ottawa Titian was a copy, as a copy would directly echo an original.

Gritt brought the X-rays to Madrid and, with a Prado specialist, compared them in light of these new revelations. “Those really subtle shifts, things that were adjusted by millimetres, the Prado painting doesn’t have them,” he says. “It’s really rather direct.” The conclusion was clear. The Madrid Titian is a copy, and the Ottawa portrait is re-established as Titian’s original Barbaro.

On July 12 2012 you described the debate over the "new" Caravaggio discoveries as "an academic bitch fight of epic proportions..."  Some of your readers may have imagined you guilty of hyperbole, but in Italy unfortunately, there is an alarming tendency toward behaviour among some scholars that can only be described as unprofessional. Things took a turn for the worse when the researchers behind the new discovery - Maurizio Bernardelli Curuz and Adriana Conconi Fedrigolli - presented their findings at a press conference in Leno, near Brescia earlier this week. 

As the  video highlights, a member of the audience was singled out by Ms. Conconi Fedigrolli  for his smile of disbelief, and then directly confronted by Mr. Bernardelli Curuz, with members of the audience having to intervene. 

In the several videos posted so far, the full presentation is not shown. Subsequently we only see the most contentious parts of the discussion, and we are left to wonder at the context of some of the statements and behaviour which resulted in the altercation. The crux of the matter seems to be that audience member Professor Marco Vallora expressed that the findings of the the pair were an expression of opinion rather than a standard of proof. 

This incident causes us to reflect on how art historical research in Italy is portrayed to the world at large. There are many serious, hard-working scholars and technicians whose work barely rates a mention in local or international press - yet when the likes of Maurizio Bernardelli Curuz, or Maurizio Seracini (searching for Leonardo's "Anghiari") are embroiled in squabbles around major artists such as Caravaggio and Leonardo (respectively), such news travels fast. At some point, when the clamour subsides, we may hope that substantive evidence becomes the focus of such announcements.

Known for controversial claims, like that letters and numbers are hidden inside the Mona Lisa painting, Vinceti has based his search in the convent on documents found by historian Giuseppe Pallanti some years ago. "Lisa Gheradini did exist and lived a rather ordinary life," Pallanti, who is not involved in the project, told Discovery News.

The historian traced back Lisa's life from her birth on June 15, 1479, to her death at the age of 63. In his research, Pallanti found several important documents, such as Francesco del Giocondo's will. There, the merchant asked his younger daughter, Marietta, to take care of his "beloved wife," Lisa. At that time, Marietta, one of Lisa and Francesco's five children, had become a nun, thus she brought her mother to the nearby convent of Sant'Orsola.

Lisa remained there until her death, according to a document known as a "Book of the Dead," found by Pallanti in a church archive. "Lisa di Francesco Del Giocondo died on July 15, 1542 and was buried in Sant'Orsola," the document stated.

The record noted that the whole parish turned out for her funeral, showing that Lisa was rather famous among Florentine society. Vinceti said that the newly discovered bones will undergo radiocarbon dating, hystological analysis and DNA testing.

"If the bones turn to be those of a female skeleton there will be two possibilities: Either they belong to the noblewoman Maria del Riccio or they belong to Lisa Gherardini. According to historic records, only these two women, who were not nuns, were given special burials in the convent," Vinceti told the local daily La Nazione.

Eventually, comparisons will be made with the DNA of Bartolomeo and Piero, Lisa's children who are buried in the church of Santissima Annunziata in Florence.

Many years ago, my Grandfather claimed to have been shown 'the skull of Shakespeare as a child'...

Unfortunately, an email dated 11 May last year has now surfaced in which the pair [of art historians who made the discovery] appear to be requesting electronic copies of the works. Neither are there any official records of them having viewed the works in person, according to Francesca Rossi, the official in charge of access to the castle's art and antiquities. She told Corriere della Sera newspaper: "I've never seen them here. They've never had access to the collection, they studied the images exclusively from the computer disc."

Reports yesterday suggest the disc sent from Milan to Brescia contained over 1,700 jpeg images – at low resolution. And in a very Italian twist, authorities in Milan have also announced an internal inquiry to establish if unwarranted collusion and even corruption was involved.

Mr Bernardelli disputed the claims of the Milan officials. "We saw the collection various times, even if these were outside normal hours, accompanied by different people," he said.

Other art experts have taken issue with the pair's conclusions. One critic, Professor Philippe Daverio, said that identification of a Caravaggio's organic and ever-evolving work could not be made by looking for the presence of key "designs". "Design doesn't exist in the character of Caravaggio," he said. "And design wasn't needed in his painting. These sketches can't really be compared to anything."

Another critic, Francesca Cappelletti, who helped to establish that The Taking of Christ was painted by Caravaggio, was blunter: "To me, these pictures still seem like typical works of Peterzano." Another critic, Tomaso Montanari, said sarcastically the claim was akin to taking 100 drawings by Verrocchio (Leonardo da Vinci's master) and attributing them to the creator of the Mona Lisa.

...celebrate the conservation of Venus and Adonis, a painting produced by Titian’s workshop after the celebrated prototype painted by Titian for Philip II, King of Spain in 1554. The painting has been in storage since the early twentieth century and was in desperate need of restoration, as can be seen from the photograph. The removal of discoloured varnishes and retouchings has revealed the work to be an evocative rendition of an episode from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, centring upon the last meeting of the ill-fated lovers Venus and Adonis. This was the most famous of Titian’s poesies, his series of mythological paintings that he envisaged as visual equivalents to poetry. The Dulwich version stands as an example of early artistic massproduction, providing striking comparison to the Andy Warhol Portfolios exhibition.

"We always felt it was impossible that Caravaggio left no record, no studies in the workshop of a painter as famous as his mentor," Maurizio Bernardelli Curuz Guerrieri, artistic director for the Brescia Museum Foundation, told Italian news agency Ansa.

Dear Sir, we verify on your website the publication of 2 images under ANSA copyright mistakenly attributed to La Stampa. 

Please remove immediately and get in touch with our commercial department to clear the rights and pay the usage on your website.

Having just read about your transvestite triumph at the NPG, I wondered whether your readers might be interested to hear that the gallery is still acquiring pictures of reassuringly tweedy English gentlemen, in this case the only known double portrait (non photographic) of Eric Ravilious (standing) and Edward Bawden (seated) by Michael Rothenstein, dating from 1933.

Was there a greater character in history than Vincent Van Gogh? After all this is a man who chopped off his ear in the name of love. With the Vincent Van Gogh Action Figure, you can see him before and after his self-conducted surgery; with 2 ears or with bandaged head. Place the Vincent Van Gogh Action Figure in front of easel with interchangeable versions of his mini masterpieces. Celebrate one of the world's favorite artists or use him as an inspirational tool. Specs: 5-1/4" inches tall vinyl figure Two interchangeable heads Comes with a paintbrush, palette, an easel, a frame and some mini masterpieces to display. Illustrated blister card.

Charles Geneviève Louis Auguste André Timothée d'Éon de Beaumont, to give her full name, is one of the most important transvestites in history. She was "a fascinating and inspirational figure", said Lucy Peltz, the gallery's curator of 18th-century portraits.

"We are absolutely delighted to be able to acquire this portrait. D'Eon is a particularly fascinating and important figure from 18th-century British history."

The painting was discovered by the London dealer Philip Mould at a provincial sale outside New York last year. It was being mistakenly sold as a portrait of an unknown woman by Gilbert Stuart, most famous for painting George Washington on the dollar bill.

"Even in its dirty state it was quite clear that this woman had stubble," said Mould, who bought it, brought it to the UK and began further research and restoration.

"Cleaning is always a revelation and on this occasion it revealed that not only was it in lovely condition but, more pertinently, the Gilbert Stuart signature cleaned off revealing the name Thomas Stewart, a theatrical painter working in London in the 1780s and 1790s."

Everything then began to click into place. "What is so unusual about this portrait is that it is so brazenly demonstrative in a period when you don't normally get that type of alternative persona expressed in portraiture," said Mould. There is no attempt to soften his physiognomy – basically, he was a bloke in a dress with a hat."

The discovery was tremendously exciting, said Mould. "We are the main dealers in British portraiture, doing it for something like 30 years and I must have sold two or three thousand British portraits to museums and institutions – but never have I come across something quite so idiosyncratic. I've never had anything which is so off-beam."