Category: Discoveries
A fragment of Henrietta Maria's lost Guido Reni?
May 29 2012
Pictures: Sotheby's
There's an intriguing lot coming up at Sotheby's New York next month, catalogued as 'Attributed to Guido Reni'. The picture purports to be a fragment from Guido Reni's long-lost 1637-40 painting Bacchus and Ariadne on the Island of Naxos, which was commissioned by Queen Henrietta Maria. It never arrived in London because of the Civil War, and not long after Henrietta Maria's death was cut up due to its salacious nature. The composition is known from an engraving (below). From the Sotheby's catalogue:
The present composition would appear to be the right hand extremity of Reni's original Bacchus and Ariadne, showing two faun followers of Bacchus with Silenus beyond, on his donkey, supported by two putti. Upon firsthand inspection of the work both Keith Christiansen and David Stone recognized the hand of Guido Reni in the faces of the fauns and in the hands holding the tambourine though suggested, as with the majority of Guido's large scale compositions, the likely involvement of his studio in the execution of certain passages. Camillo Manzitti, meanwhile is in favor of a full attribution to Guido Reni, believing this work to indeed be a fragment of the original. He furthermore suggested that the addition to the right edge of the painting was executed in order to centralize the figures within the composition andto avoid any concealment of Silenus by an eventual framing of the work.
Although there are indeed variances in detail between Bolognini's engraving and the present composition, these would appear incidental. The drapery over the hip of the right hand figure may have been added later and so too the still life of flask and glass of wine, perhaps subsequent to the painting's division in order to bestow the fragment with the more cohesive and traditional composition of a Bacchanal. Yet the presence of a tambourine, under the feet of the larger faun and still visible to the naked eye below the paint surface, provides a compelling argument in favor ofthe fragment's origin. This corresponds with the engraving closely and may have been covered over at the time the other changes were made. This Two Fauns in a Bacchic Dance is not the first fragment from the composition tosurvive; in 2002, Denis Mahon and Andrea Emiliani discovered a fragment portraying the beautiful and vulnerable figure of Ariadne, now in the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna.The addition to the left hand edge of the Ariadnecanvas shows that, far from being obliterated, the canvas had been carefully cut to preserve the figures, presumablyto facilitate their sale as individual fragments. It too is painted on a heavy weave canvas that appears to correspond to that used in the present picture.
The estimate is $100,000-150,000. The picture has been given several cleaning tests, presumably to tempt the trade. It's hard to be conclusive from the photo, but the drapery over the larger faun's groin appears to be a later addition. In which case, the painting is closer to the engraving. I find the case quite convincing.
A puzzling acquisition by LACMA
May 25 2012
Picture: LACMA/Tribune De l'Art
Didier Ryckner at La Tribune de l'Art has news of an intriguing acquisition in Paris by the Los Angeles Museum of Art of the above picture. Nobody knows who it is by, or what it is of. But it's a great thing nonetheless. Let me know if you have any clues. More details here.
More celebs in art
May 23 2012
Picture: Dorotheum
Silliness alert: I recently featured The Sun's attempt to spot celebrities in art (with Rocky in a Raphael). I've just come across this fellow at an auction in Austria. Charlton Heston, anyone?
Celeb-tastic
May 23 2012
Picture: Uffizi
Further to the post below, a reader has kindly alerted me to this tumblr of famous faces in art history. To be honest, some of them are a bit far out. But Georg Penckz's 1544 Portrait of a Man with an Enormous Red Codpiece Portrait of a Seated Youth does look eerily like man-of-the-moment Mark Zuckerberg. And oddly enough, the actor Hugh Bonneville seems to vaguely crop up in a number of pictures, one here, and another here.
A lost Bonnie Prince rediscovered
May 15 2012
Picture: Fife Council/Your Paintings
I've been meaning to do a round up of all your excellent 'Your Paintings' discoveries - but I'm afraid I've been a little busy lately. So apologies to all of you who sent in suggestions. I promise I'll put them up soon. Straight to the front of the queue though, since I'm slightly obsessed with the Jacobites, is this excellent spot from a noted sleuth (in fact, from a family of noted sleuths) of Bonnie Prince Charlie, after the original by Louis Tocque. It belongs to Fife Council, who have it down as 'Portrait of a Man in Armour'.
Is that Rocky in Raphael's Vatican Mural?!
May 14 2012
Picture: The Sun
No! But that didn't stop The Sun asking the question:
A visitor to the Vatican was shocked to discover that one of the artistic masterpieces contained a dead ringer for Hollywood star Sylvester Stallone.
The likeness of the screen hardman, best known for playing boxing underdog Rocky, appears in the background of a 1511 fresco by Old Master Raphael.
The artwork is displayed in one of the Raphael Rooms at the Catholic city-state inside the boundaries of Rome, Italy. Called The Cardinal and Theological Virtues, it shows Pope Gregory IX approving new Papal laws.
The hilarious likeness was spotted by Harvard student Anthony Zonfrell, 20, who was on holiday in Italy with his family.
Thrilled with their art historical scoop, The Sun then scoured the world's Old Masters to see what other celebrities could be spotted. My favourite is Mr Bean in Philippe de Champaigne's Last Supper.
Meanwhile, The Irish Sun has another historical scoop: 'Cromwell was gay Metrosexual'.
Durer exhibition - the real discovery
May 2 2012
Picture: Playmobil
A reader writes:
I enjoyed reading your story on Durer, but for once your journalistic instincts have deserted you. Somehow you've missed the big story about the Nuremburg show - which is that, in his honour, Playmobil have produced a special-edition mini Durer figure, painting his self-portrait.
I got one at the Prado a couple of months ago - you can pick them up from the Nuremburg tourist office, here:
http://tourismus.nuernberg.de/shop/
I mean, how cool is that?
This goes way beyond cool. The only thing wrong with it is the suggested age range, '4-10'. Every art historically minded adult must surely want one. I want several. In fact, I want a whole edition of artists painting their self-portraits (starting with Van Dyck).
Longstanding readers may remember another art historical toy featured here on AHN, the unique Ken-as-David Michelangelo homage. If you know of any others, send them in!
Upgrades & downgrades in art
May 2 2012
Picture: Christie's
The current High Court case against Christie's over the above allegedly fake Kustodiev, has prompted an interesting article in today's Telegraph on upgrading and downgrading works of art (and it features me!):
So how can you be sure the auction houses are intercepting any dodgy Dalís before they make it onto the rostrum? Only last year, a former art teacher, Rizvan Rahman, was jailed for 18 months for selling UK galleries some £180,000 worth of fakes, including a £35,000 Lowry lookalike.
Naturally, there’s a fair amount of caveat emptor when you’re buying at an auction. None the less, the experienced London art-verifier Bendor Grosvenor says auction houses are keen to avoid a stain on their good name. “If it turns out there’s any kind of justification for questioning a work’s authenticity, I can’t envisage an auction house doing anything other than refunding the money,” he says. “Fighting the case just isn’t worth the potential damage to their reputation.”
Absolutely right, says Julian Roup, head of press at Bonham’s Auctioneers. Though he won’t discuss the Vekselberg case, he can assure customers that the company takes allegations of fakery most seriously.
If there’s any question over authenticity, “an immediate investigation is launched,” he declares. “We bend over backwards to establish the facts.”
And it’s amazing what a bit of forensic work can find out. Visit the web-archives of Freemanart, and you discover the tiny giveaway clues that can mean the difference between a painting securing you a fortune – or a spell in prison. Take the seemingly genuine Gainsborough, for example, where microscopic examination showed that the artist’s signature had been traced in pencil first for the forger to copy. Or the otherwise perfect Gauguin, given away by the paper it was painted on: the corners were straight, when they should have been round.
But while science’s principal contribution is to downgrade by proving that paintings are fakes, it can sometimes work the other way. Not just by showing that the Mona Lisa is holding a shawl (she is, though it’s invisible to the naked eye), but by upgrading a previously disregarded work.
For example, thanks to the miracle of dendrochronology (the science of dating objects using tree bark), a painting of Mary Queen of Scots, thought to have been an 18th-century copy, has been promoted by the National Portrait Gallery to the status of 16th-century original (tree ring analysis suggests 1560-1592).
Meanwhile, a Gloucestershire art collector, Frank Faryab, has, after five years and a lot of consultants’ fees, gathered sufficient scientific evidence to convince the art world that his oil painting of a distant ship is not the doodle of some old sea dog, but a lost Turner masterpiece, worth as much as £4 million.
Which is heartening news for all of us who dream of stumbling upon a Leonardo da Vinci in the lumber room. But that’s not to say, though, that the art world is always ready to welcome new paintings with open arms, just as it doesn’t like to see authenticated works discredited.
“For a previously disregarded work to be declared authentic, or a previously accepted work to be downgraded, a lot of people have to be proved wrong,” says Dr Grosvenor. “And if there’s one thing people in the art world don’t like, it’s being proved wrong.”
You spent how much?
April 30 2012
Picture: Mail
The story of a newly discovered 'Lost Turner' hit the news this weekend, with a big splash in the Sunday Times. I've only seen the picture from the press photos, so can't comment on the attribution. But one thing struck me as very odd about the tale:
When Frank Faryab bought an obscure oil painting for thousands of pounds in a private sale, it was just the start of his outlay on the work.
For the art and antiques dealer has since spent more than £2million and much of the past five years trying to convince others it was by JMW Turner, one of Britain's greatest painters. [...]
He will not say how much he paid for the seascape, a 20in x 16in oil-on-pine panel of a hazy sailing ship, but he can list the great lengths he went to for the painting to gain recognition.
He has had the painting cleaned and reframed and has gathered scientific evidence, including infrared dating, checking fingerprints and artistic tests to prove its provenance.
Now I flatter myself that I know a thing or two about authenticating pictures. There's no way you could ever spend £2m on such a process. And even if you could, wouldn't you prefer to go out and buy an undoutedly authentic Turner?
Martin Kemp on the Prado Mona Lisa
April 27 2012
Picture: Prado
On his blog, Leonardo scholar Professor Kemp gives his views on the Prado's revelations on their copy of the Mona Lisa. To my slight surprise, he seems to go along with the theory that some rocks in the background of the copy help date the original. But happily, he seems to agree that the nonsense about Salai is just that.
The idea that a copy should be produced in workshop is hardly a surprise. In our book on the Madonna and the Yarnwinder, Thereza Wells and I showed that the two prime versions developed alongside each other, in this instance with Leonardo's participation in both. The only surprise is that a copy should be made of an intimate, domestic portrait of a bourgeois sitter. Perhaps Francesco del Giocondo wanted two versions. But it is odd. The implications of the landscape for the dating of the Mona Lisa - the background in the copy is aligned with drawings dateable to after 1510 - provides useful confirmation that the painting took a long time, but is not surprising. Was it ever completely finished? Were any of his paintings completely finished? The London Virgin of the Rocks, which was supplied for the frame in S. Francesco in Milan, is not finished. Only the Louvre seemed to think that the ML was completed before Leonardo left Florence in 1507.
Perhaps I shouldn't complain. It all helps sustain interest and helps sell (my) books.
By the way, we have absolutely no reliable evidence about what Salai looked like - and almost no firm evidence of how he painted. The pretty boy with ringlets, often identified as Salai, was a favourite facial type for Leonardo well before Salai came on to the scene.
Another Art History first!
April 26 2012
Picture: BBC
Our newly discovered portrait of the Chevalier D'Eon, the earliest certainly known oil painting of a male transvestite, appeared on the BBC comedy show Have I got News for You recently. You can see the clip here at 34 minutes in.
That 'Bronte discovery'
April 25 2012
Picture: J P Humbert
That 'newly discovered' portrait of three anonymous women by nobody in particular 'the Bronte sisters by Landseer' has been withdrawn from tomorrow's auction. The auctioneers say that 'dramatic new evidence' has come to light. Curiouser and curiouser...
Today...
April 25 2012
Picture: Samuel Johnson Birthplace Trust
...sorry for the lack of AHN (as if news of the Double Dip* wasn't bad enough). I was at the Oil Painting Expert Network conference at the National Gallery. It was a good day, about which more anon. In the meantime, here's another little discovery from the Public Catalogue Foundation, which I mentioned in my talk. The portrait belongs to the Samuel Johnson Birthplace Trust, and shows Johnson's friend, Dr John Taylor. It is listed as 'attributed to John Opie', but is a good example of a 1760s Joseph Wright of Derby. It appears to be in excellent condition. Fortunately, the attribution to Wright found favour today at the conference. A 'Dr John Taylor' also appears in Wright's correspondence.
* official - the longest downturn in British history.
A lost work by Angelica Kauffmann
April 24 2012
Picture: BBC/PCF/Russell-Cotes Art Gallery
Many apologies for the slow service these last couple of days. Filming for the second series of 'Fake or Fortune?' isn't leaving much time for the day job, to say nothing of blogging...
I'm also scratching my head trying to write a paper for tomorrow's conference at the National Gallery, on the proposed Oil Painting Expert Network (OPEN). I will mention some of the excellent discoveries readers have sent in identifying sitters in lost portraits - so thanks again for those.
I shall also be moving onto the more perplexing area of attributions, and in particular attributing anonymous paintings. In other words, connoisseurship, or, as some art historians say, 'the C-word'. One of the pictures I'll mention will be the above portrait of an unknown sitter at the Russell-Cotes Art Gallery in Bournemouth. Described on the Your Paintings website as a copy 'after Beechey', it is in fact a very fine portrait by Angelica Kauffmann. I'm pleased to say that the Kauffmann scholar Professor Wendy Wassyng Rowarth agrees with the attribution (on the basis of photographs).
How do I know this? The answer is of course connoisseurship - the ability to look at a painting and tell, sometimes with no other evidence at all, who painted it. Some people (mainly those who can't do it) think connoisseurship is a dastardly, complicated and snobbish word. But in fact it's a very simple concept, and merely reflects hard work and looking at lots of paintings. And there's nothing snobbish in that. The word itself is derived from the Latin 'cognoscere', to get to know - and if you look at enough Kauffmanns over the years, pretty much anyone can 'get to know' what a Kauffmann looks like. That's all there is to it!
Update - a learned reader writes:
Blessings on your last on ‘connoisseurship’. Which is why serious museums and galleries need curatorial photo-archives. Tell that to the Tate.
Quite! And I also learnt today at the OPEN conference that the noted military historian Andrew Cormack has identified the uniform of the sitter in the above Kauffmann as being the Cheshire militia. Now we just need to figure out who he is. Any ideas?
The Lost Prince found
April 23 2012
Picture: PCF/BBC/Wellcome Library
More lovely discoveries from Your Paintings have been coming in - continued thanks. I'll put them all up soon. In the meantime, a particularly sharp-eyed reader has sent in this fine contemporary portrait of a 'Portrait of a Young Man', or Henry, Prince of Wales (1594-1612). Henry, a much forgotten figure, was the eldest son of James I and considered the great hope of the Stuarts. His tragic death at the age of 18 paved the way for Charles I.
Later this year, a new exhibition on Henry will open at the NPG in London, so it's nice to add this portrait of him to our records. I think the head type was originally by Robert Peake.
Crowd-sourcing the national art collection
April 20 2012
Pictures: Your Paintings/PCF/BBC
I've had some excellent responses in the quest to find lost paintings on the new Public Catalogue Foundation website, Your Paintings. Thanks to all of you for writing in.
The title of Chief Sleuth this week goes to the director of the Avoncroft Museum, Simon Carter, who has identified the following impressive list of previously unnamed portraits: Archbishop Laud in the collection of Hampshire Country Council (after Van Dyck); Robert Burns at the Atkinson Art Gallery (after Nasymth); Anthony Van Dyck at the Worthington Art Gallery (my hero, above, hooray!); and Charles James Fox at the Haslemere Education Museum (after John Raphael Smith). Simon used to be a curator at the Palace of Westminster, so knows his portrait onions.
Meanwhile, my colleague Lawrence Hendra spotted the below portrait of Samuel Johnson, called 'Old Man at a Desk'. We don't know the artist yet, but it relates to this engraving, and appears to be a good example of a 19th Century genre picture.
And finally, I can add this not particularly distinguished portrait of Sir Walter Ralegh at Maidstone Museum, which is taken from this engraving. Now it may be that none of the portraits we've uncovered so far this week are great works of art. But, along with the others we've discovered so far, it shows the immense value of having collections online with decent sized photos. Who knows what else we'll find?
Update - a reader writes:
I think the Johnson portrait may be by Edward M Ward; he did a similar one of Johnson and Chesterfield.
'Portrait of an Artist', or...
April 19 2012
Picture: PCF/Atkinson Art Gallery
More lost picture hunting fun from the PCF/BBC/Your Paintings website. After my call to arms, a particularly sharp-eyed reader writes:
What fun! [...] I found the BBC's site and clicked on "unknown artists" and got to page 4 before finding this gem [catalogued as 'Portrait of an Artist', by an Unknown Artist at the Atkinson Art Gallery in Southport]. I can't imagine why this isn't an autograph version of the Christian Seybold self portrait to be found in Leichtenstein (on copper) [below].
It's hard to assess from the above image whether it is by Seybold - is the mouth a little awkward? - but it's certainly of him! I'll try and track down a better photo.
Keep 'em coming please. So far this week we've added to the national collection portraits of a king, a celebrated composer, a Prime Minister, and now a famous artist. Not bad...
Reporting arts discoveries
April 18 2012
Picture: JP Humbert
Regular readers will know we've had a few art history stories in the press lately that seem to question the thoroughness of art historical reporting. First, there was the recovered haul in Italy which apparently included a Van Dyck, a Rubens, and a Poussin, but which was in fact just a load of copies and pastiches. Then there was the bizarre story of the 'early Warhol'. Both stories enjoyed global media coverage.
Today we have an interesting case study in how discovery stories are picked up by the media. This morning I received a press release from local auctioneer J P Humbert about a newly discovered 'portrait of the three Bronte sisters', above, which has been attributed to Landseer (why?). You can find the text of the press release below, by clicking 'Read on'. Now see if you can spot the difference between the press release, and the story as it appeared on The Daily Telegraph website soon afterwards.
You can see the same auctioneer's previous two 'Bronte discoveries' here.
'Portrait of a Man in Blue', or...
April 18 2012
Picture: PCF/Herbert Art Gallery & Museum
... a portrait of certain well known composer?
I'm continuing my roams around the new Public Catalogue Foundation website Your Paintings in preparation for my talk at the OPEN conference next week, looking for lost paintings. You should try it - it's great fun for us nerdy art history anoraks.
Here is the picture catalogued as 'Portrait of a Man in Blue (possibly the Reverend G Greenway)' at the Herbert Art Gallery in Coventry. Below is the original portrait, by Thomas Hudson, in the University Library of Hamburg. Click here to find out the sitter.
If you come across any other good examples, let me know.
'Portrait of an Unknown Man', or...
April 18 2012
Picture: PCF/Rochdale Arts & Heritage Service.
... a four time Prime Minister? A reader has sent in this excellent spot from 'Your Paintings'. More please!
