Previous Posts: January 2013

It was no problem getting an appointment, but I struggled a bit with the meaning of the 'red items' that could be seen only once.  Turns out it means that you can only request them once, ever - they keep a record of which drawings you've looked at, and on subsequent visits you can't request any 'red' items that you've seen before.  

The Art Newspaper reports that the government provided free insurance for loans of works of art worth £8.6bn last year.  It is a shameful and stupid subsidy that incentivises perverse behaviour. 

This insurance isn't free.  There are costly claims for damage, and there is always the risk of a catastrophically high claim if something goes horribly wrong.  Governments shouldn't be in the business of providing services that they don't understand and can be more efficiently supplied by the private sector.  Insurance is a complex business, and a worst-case outcome (fire at the Leonardo show) could put a meaningful dent in state finances at a time when it's especially unaffordable.  I'm all in favour of government subsidising the arts, but this is an arbitrary subsidy that encourages institutions to borrow the costliest works because they never bear the full cost.

The dreadful story of the damaged Miro at the Tate is a salutary warning of the real harm that can be caused, which no amount of cash can put right.  It's not just specacular instances of damage that are of concern, but the ongoing stresses caused by packing and unpacking delicate works of art and moving them between different environments.  The state shouldn't be encouraging this by picking up a big part of the tab. 

The Art Newspaper estimates that commercial insurance would have cost about £15 per visitor to the Van Gogh exhibition at the Royal Academy (which I heard was too crowded for any of the 411,000 visitors to have seen much anyway).  The implication is that it's a Good Thing because it allowed the exhibition to go ahead with ticket prices at a reasonable level (less than half the cost if insurance were purchased commercially).  But why - especially in times of austerity - is the government providing a £15 a head subsidy to the well-heeled visitors to the RA?  And is this really the best way for the government to subsidise the arts at a time when the National Gallery cannot even afford to pay enough guards to cover all of its rooms?

We have also obtained data on indemnity payouts. In the 14 years up to 2010/11, there were 28 claims on behalf of lenders (an average of two a year), totalling £303,000 (an average of £10,800 each). These were all for conservation repairs, and not a single indemnified work was stolen. 

Last year, there were two claims, totalling £236,000. One was for a minor item, but the other was for damage to Miró’s Painting on White background for the Cell of a Recluse I, 1968, on loan to London’s Tate Modern.

The paintings loaned to the Prado, Thyssen and Reina Sofia Museums are covered by free insurance provided by the Spanish government called "Garantia de Estado" (State Guarantee) . Without this insurance would be impossible for public museums with very limited funds (even before the crisis) hold exhibitions, such as the Late Raphael or The Young Van Dyck, with works valued at exorbitant amounts. This expenditure, combined with the cost of transportation, would make it impractical exhibition with dozens of paintings from all over the world.

I’m not sure whether one should encourage too much open discussion of this surprisingly complicated question – but...

When you write “All of which means that in 15 years, total claims on the Government Indemnity have been just over £.5m. It represents a signficant net saving to the government, for if museums had been forced to get private insurance, the bill to the taxpayer would have been in the tens if not hundreds of millions of pounds (since the governmnet funds museums to the tune of about 35%-45%)”, there are several debatable points. Not all my answers point in the same direction, and I find myself both agreeing and disagreeing with the Grumpy Art Historian.

Firstly if one were to go down the private insurance route, it is rather unlikely in the present climate that the Government would in fact increase explicit funding, even to the 35–45% level. The fear is that, once out in the open, the value of the scheme would be retained by the Treasury and arguments such as the value of tourism etc. generated by the exhibition would be lost.

More insidiously you ignore what in the world of finance would be termed the “option value” inherent in insurance. I can chose not to insure my house, but it would be a category error to call that a saving of the amount of the commercial premium; and my wife might take a different view of the wisdom of my gamble. So far HMG has got lucky, but it is playing at the casino (best left to financial institutions): you simply don’t know when over the next 15 years, or 150 if necessary, the catastrophe will strike that will change the perceived value of the cover. There may be a saving in “self-insurance”, but it is only the profit element retained by insurers, a far smaller amount than the commercially appraised risk value. With or without profit, the hidden subsidy the Government has provided is an eye-catchingly large number to flaunt before ministers who (according to today’s Sunday Times) dare not even tell us they have been to the theatre, such is the perceived philistinism of the voter. And whatever you think of Gordon Brown’s numerous errors, taking the chips off gold bullion, even though the bet came up, was at least logically defensible.

A serious question for some of these high value exhibitions is whether the commercial insurance market would be able to provide sufficient cover for the very concentrated risk.

An even broader perspective: whether as tax payer or through my pension fund or other investments in insurance companies, I am probably footing this bill anyway. 

This gets a bit more complicated in an international perspective. If the National Gallery and the Louvre each self-insures their own Leonardo when they remain in the respective museum, how much of the premium notionally attached for insuring one on loan is covering a risk that wouldn’t have been covered before? In other words are we just talking about the extra risks from transportation? Of course the risk of loss goes up on a move, but if you sought commercial insurance for a Leonardo in situ only, you would still have to pay a vast amount to reserve the “line” of cover, however minute the risk. And of course if the Treasury started to think about the full implications of self-insuring the National Gallery’s permanent collection…

Which raises the crucial point: whoever pays, money is not an acceptable substitute for the loss or damage to a major artistic masterpiece. The price of commercial insurance cover merely focuses the mind on this – and the GAH is right to that extent. But actually curators are not better placed than civil servants to decide these questions: asking scholars to take round the begging bowl to the usual suspects just won’t work for these amounts. The numbers simply won’t permit a curator to trade off the insurance costs of a high-value loan against say the production costs of colour printing in the exhibition catalogue, and the market discipline the GAH seeks won’t work in practice. The result is that the major masterpieces would never be shown in the UK.

The reason for reducing the number of blockbuster exhibitions should be caution rather than Treasury politics. And if that is a spur to curators to follow Nick Penny’s lead in emphasising focused, scholarly exhibitions, so much the better. But the idea that we should never again be able to borrow a good Titian or Leonardo – for a serious exhibition that justified the risk – would be crushing.

Wait....didn’t Kate receive a degree in the history of art not too long ago? Either her degree should be revoked, or it’s a sad testament to the quality of higher education in this country (not to mention the whole connoisseurship issue...)  Here was a good chance for her to champion all the things one hopes and assumes a history of art graduate would have learned with a unique practical demonstration of that knowledge, and all I can hear is scores of parents saying ‘we paid good money for you to study the history of art and that’s what you learned??’ 

I found the portrait pretty revolting to look at – it reminded me of a Breck shampoo advertisement from the 1960s aged to show how the sitter (missing? dead? fugitive from the law?) might appear today.

At first glance 'Kate' is so ghastly that it transcends the Ecce Mono, and then gradually I wonder if the NPG was tricked into commissioning a conceptual, and subversive, Great Work of Art.

Photorealism is an impressive style of art when painted well. However, more often than not this style of painting places the viewer's focus on the painting's technique rather than its subject (and as such, arguably emphasises the achievements of the artist rather than the sitter). 

If the aim was to make Kate's portrait seem modern and up to date then it seems a shame, with so many fantastic portrait photographers working in this country,  that the final outcome was not a photograph. On the other hand, if the aim was to produce a painted portrait for the sake of tradition and Kate's art historical background, then why not fully exploit the fact that paint is not reliant on reality alone. The result is an uncomfortable  hybrid of these two media, no doubt caused by an over-zealous attempt to express the new 'with-it' generation of royals but in a traditional manner. In doing so the painting becomes the equivalent of a postage stamp - it shows the image of the (future) queen, but not much else.

I would hazard a guess that it is a rather poor attempt to make the Duchess of Cambrige look a bit like Leonardo's? Salvator Mundi. The blurry picture on the front of the weekend's newspapers made me come to this realisation.

The only real mystery seems to me to be why the expression of her lips don't seem to match the rest of her face.

Seven months later, Uriel Landeros, 22, turned himself over to marshals at the international bridge near McAllen, Texas on the U.S.-Mexico border.

"I don't regret anything that I've done," Landeros told KPRC-TV of Houston in an interview.

Landeros was charged in June with felony graffiti and criminal mischief for vandalizing the 1929 artwork at the Menil Collection in Houston.

As a history of art student at Cambridge University, I have had direct experience of the stigma attached to the subject. I am regularly confronted with the attitude that, as one recent Cambridge graduate put it: "History of art is a niche subject, one that isn't particularly relevant or useful for future life."

The public and students alike regard it as a subject reserved for wealthy students from top private schools. This belief has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. As a student who came to the subject from a state school background, I am in the minority.

The subject's elitist image has been exacerbated by the long list of royals who have studied it – Prince William, Kate Middleton and Princess Beatrice to name a few. This not only gives the impression that you have to be from the right background to study it, but also reinforces the notion that this subject is not useful in the current barren landscape of graduate recruitment.

In 2011 25 people from state schools and 38 from independent schools applied for history of art at Cambridge University. Just five of the available 16 places were awarded to state school students. Admissions tutors have to select the best applicants. These are most likely to be those who visited art galleries when they were children. They will also be those who studied the subject at A-level, something often only offered by private schools.

But strip history of art of its seemingly pretentious finery and it's clear that it's anything but elitist. In my three years at university I have discovered that art is one of the most vivid ways of viewing history — it is an intimate glimpse into someone's world.

Always surprising that such a broad subject like Art History is considered niche compared to, say, English Literature.

I think the issue highlighted by Joy Starkey is one of class and wealth as opposed to academic elitism i.e a suggestion of not understanding art historical terms like sfumato, imprimatura or chiaroscuro because you're from a state school might seem incredibly patronising! Those can be learnt.

In my experience, I grew up in a council flat on a sink estate, I did a full time degree in art history supporting it by working 35 hours a week in a petrol station, whilst living at home. The other students on my course apart from one or two others came from privileged backgrounds, had their fees and rent paid, and had the opportunity to spend more time in the library and visiting galleries etc (whether they did or not I've no idea). I could never afford to do an internship, and have attempted a Ph.D (no chance of funding for 16th century Flemish) whilst working two jobs, but that was doomed to failure from the start. In the rare instances where my skills (as opposed to my background) have been noted, such as being offered the opportunity to curate an old masters exhibition (obviously unpaid) I've washed dishes in a restaurant in order to do so, which is far worse in reality than even Orwell makes out.

In the rare instances I've been offered job interviews I get asked why I haven't done an internship. I wouldn't have afforded a weeks worth of suits and shirts let alone the bus! I've discovered unknown paintings in public collections, increasing their value ten fold, yet try to get a job in one of these intuitions when your peers have had the opportunity to do internships at the Met or the Frick or the Prado or their father is on the board at Christie's....banging your head against a brick wall is an understatement. 30 or so years ago you could get a job as a porter at a London auction house, with relatively little qualifications and work your way up the ladder (the same can be said for the BBC and other institutions), those days are sadly over. I would be very surprised if anyone working at the top London commercial galleries (apart from Front of House) came from state schools or lower class backgrounds. 

The way we make it more accessible is by employing on merit, and acknowledging there is a problem (particularly nepotism). If I walked into the door of [several London art dealers] asking for a job, I'd expect to be ushered out the door at the earliest opportunity. These galleries seem to employ anonymously through elite agencies who must have a special furnace reserved for my CV. It's as if the very act of advertising their need for an employee is deemed uncouth, so they cloak it in mystery. (Sotheby's also do this). It's sewn up.

Amusingly I was once asked by one of the elite agencies 'what experience do you have with high net worth individuals?'

I didn't realise they were a different species, but nevertheless I would have told them everything they wanted to know about the painting they were buying....!

You wrote "For me, the key skills I need were learnt by training as a historian - for example, the ability to look for and evaluate evidence."  Right on! Those skills are indeed crucial, and not at all only for art history or history generally, but they much less common than they should be.  At the same time, some 'analytical' disciplines short-change students by treating imagination and artistic sensibilities as unimportant if not disreputable. Are there universities/colleges which encourage one to combine art history with exposure to disciplines that emphasize analytical skills, not only history but even (don't scream!) basic economics? 

I don't believe that technical vocabulary is a serious barrier, at least to primary school-age children, who pick up vocabulary effortlessly: I suspect it's more their teachers who have the problem with technical terms. (Though I can see why some may find 'connoisseurship' a bit irritating, as it's an ugly combination of French and English: perhaps the 17th century French 'connoissance' would be preferable?)

However, it may be possible to teach terminology by linking 'high art' with the digital arts, in particular films and video games. For example, Glennis McGregor's blog 'Rennaisance for Real' explains sfumato, chiaroscuro, cangiantismo and unione by comparing examples from Renaissance artists with stills from 'Monsters Inc.', Tim Burton's 'Alice in Wonderland', and other films. See http://glennis.net/real/

I'm interested to see that Michael Daley of Artwatch UK has recently (and surprisingly, at least to me) adopted a similar strategy, by comparing techniques in Burton's 'Frankenweenie' with those of Michelangelo. See http://artwatchuk.wordpress.com/

On your suggestion of taking pictures out of their frames or displaying them in industrial warehouses: while the thought of the first makes me shudder, I do like the notion of the second, if it were done in a comparative setting. It seems to me that comparative exhibitions like the National Gallery's 'Metamorphosis: Titian 2012' or 'Seduced by Art: Photography Past and Present' were misguided, because they were in the wrong location: anyone who visits the NG will not need any encouragement to view Renaissance art. They'd be more useful in the context of an industrial warehouse or modern equivalent like the Tate Modern or the Saatchi Gallery, where those visitors who already appreciate the art of Chris Ofili and Mark Wallinger may be helped by seeing 'high art' treatments of similar subjects or using similar techniques. Although a comparative 'hang' has the danger that it may be too diverse to make much sense, this could I think be avoided by restricting the traditional artworks to a few examples which can easily be compared with the modern works. I'm thinking of something like Tracey Emin's exhibition 'She Lay Down Deep Beneath the Sea', where she selected a few erotic drawings by Turner and Rodin to hang among her works: see http://www.turnercontemporary.org/exhibitions/tracey-emin-she-lay-down-deep-beneath-the-sea

(I suppose the ratio could be reversed: for example by displaying Damien Hirst's 'For the Love of God' amongst an exhibition of traditional 'vanitas' works,  but I don't somehow see this as so focussed.)

Finally, It seems crucial to encourage the practice of painting and sculpture to the very young: it's a cliche that we are all artists at the age of 5, but very few of us still are by the age of 15, when active participation in drawing and painting has usually become peripheral to our lives. There's a musical parallel here: I'm thinking of the phenomenon of El Sistema currently sweeping the world, which has led to the foundation of hundreds of classical music centres, targetting children from deprived backgrounds in 22 countries including Britain. Most of its alumni will not have careers as professional musicians, but all will have developed a love of the music, and will no doubt enthusiastically attend classical concerts for the rest of their lives. And by active participation in music, they will have picked up the vocabulary painlessly. No doubt the same applies to visual art.

Ultimately, all this comes down to our government's education policy. If schools are not encouraged (or required) to set time aside for art classes and visits to galleries, whatever is done by art teachers, historians and curators will still affect only a minority of the population.

In response to your recent post ‘Is history of art only for poshos?’, and with regard to art history’s profile in higher education, we can ask three questions:

Is the subject itself inherently elitist?  Yes, insofar as it is, vicariously, about the study of elites.  This fact is only slightly qualified when we consider the study, by no means widespread, of subjects such as the popular print.  (I’ll put aside the long-standing debate about whether art history is, or should be, ’visual culture’).

Is subject studied by elites?  It follows that art history will be more attractive to those who are familiar with the kind of art and cultural milieu studied on art history degrees, than to those who are not, just as degrees in a foreign language tend to contain a disproportionately large number of students from that country, or with connections to that country of one kind or another.  Pupils exposed to art, and also to art history, whether at school or at home, are more likely to know about the subject and want to study it, and to be supported in turn by parents and teachers.  (I myself only came into the subject through the enthusiasm of an A-level art teacher, Mr Cooper, who supplemented our lessons with enthusiastic talks on artists such as Hogarth, and annual school visits from Rotherham to the galleries in London).

What can be done to change things?  This begs the question of why we think people should want to study a subject so closely associated with ‘elites’ in the first place.  A greater co-ordination of effort among interested parties in answering this question would be welcome, starting perhaps with a serious study of the key issues affecting widening participation in art history. 

Regarding making the Art History degree less formal, could not disagree more. A degree is not a workshop! If people decide to get a degree they are seeking specialization and professionalization. So, simplify what exactly? I do not even consider Art History very challenging concerning technical vocabulary, especially if compared with Medicine or Law. 

A completely different thing is, afterwards, to adapt the speech according to the public and the language used should vary depending whether it is addressed to the museum, the gallery or auction house. May be considered patronizing, but it seems only logical that a museum guide do not mention to a group of school children the provenance of an artwork, information that may be interesting to an adult audience which, in turn, probably is not interested in its number of inventory. Those speaking have to adapt, nevertheless, those speaking are the Historians, the Curators, the Gallerists and should know all about the art they are representing - That is professionalism.

Those seeking for a more informal environment can always try Contemporary Art as a work field - Not being ironic, it is less formal...

Grayson Perry is a fine pundit, an interesting curator, but as a visual artist he is a hack whose work churns around and teems with futile incidents in a way that totally fails to soar. Tracey Emin draws with more life than he does, but not half as well as any newspaper cartoonist. If you think Antony Gormley is a good sculptor, go and see the childish figures he carved on boulders outside the British Library in London. Jenny Saville? A heroic mediocrity. The bloated reputations of so many artists of our time offer critics a lifetime's supply of truth telling, so why hold back? We should be going after this lot (and loads more) all the time, and at full volume. Instead, they are more or less guaranteed nice reviews that ignore the pustules of badness that seep out of chic galleries.

Maybe a prize would help?

[...] must mean the National Gallery now has the finest collection of Titians in the world – it already owned (among others) the elegantly frenzied Bacchus and Ariadne, the heartbreaking Easter landscape Noli me Tangere, and his portrait of a man with a mesmerising blue sleeve. But Penny, who is not given to hype, points out that the Museo del Prado in Madrid also has a few Titians. I think he is being modest.

Nice to have one's opinions vindicated: even if it is after 30 years! Actually my view was that the work was simply better than the Gallery thought it was: Titian attributions being moot and a very murky area.

It does strike me as remarkable that, given the National Gallery has one of the smallest collections of its type in the world and that it has been comprehensively studied for decades - starting with Martin Davies' work on the detailed and brutally honest catalogues produced during the war, so many "discoveries" have been made in recent years.   Indeed, at times it seems startling.

Aside from the Titian, here are a few works that have been recently been re-examined and declared originals:

• Bellotto - Venice: The Grand Canal facing Santa Croce
• Botticelli - Saint Francis of Assisi in Ecstasy
• Bouts - Christ Crowned with Thorns
• Canaletto - Venice, Palazzo Grimani
• Cesare da Cesto - Salome
• Ghirlandaio - The Virgin and Child
• Gossaert - The Virgin and Child
• Master of Moulins - Charlemagne and the Meeting at the Golden Gate
• Perugino - Christ Crowned with Thorns (actually attributed)
• Poussin - Nymph and Satyrs
• Reni - Saint Jerome
• Reni - Saint Mary Magdalen
• Reni - Susannah and the Elders
• Rubens - A Wagon Fording a Stream
• Strozzi - The Annunciation
• Veronese - The Rape of Europa
• Verrocchio - The Virgin and Child with Two Angels

 The have been a few "losses" over the years of course but in general I would say that the Gallery is "up".  And there are, I believe, more discoveries in the basement.

Shocking news!  This picture sticks out like a sore thumb amongst the ext siting display of undisputed masterpieces.  The quality of paint and general execution is poor and it very much looks like a studio work.  It's nowhere near the level of quality of any other portrait by Titian I am aware of.  Titian may well have been involved in the initial 'design' but the this picture was not painted by him.  Another case of wishful thinking but generating great publicity.

When I was revamping my website about a year ago, I thought to find some suitable images to reflect the different aspects of my work.  To go with the pictures for sale (“Selected Inventory”) I chose Zoffany’s Tribuna, and for my consultative and appraisal services I used another version of the Siegert painting.

As you can see the Paisley painting turns out to be a somewhat reduced variant of the composition that I used – and in the reduction the meaning seems a little different.  With the full composition we can see that the child connoisseur is studying his or her father’s painting as he sits in another room working at another.  Without the context, the child is just another one of us,  earnestly trying to make sense of the work of a master.  Also, without the presence of the father at work in his studio,  the riding crop lying next to the child may suggest something other than the fact that it is one of the father’s studio props.

Salary c.£30,000 including free accommodation in the Curator’s House, plus free utilities and council tax.

We are seeking to appoint an innovative, skilled and ambitious Curator who will take forward the vision of creating a lively and varied exhibition programme ranging from in-focus displays to important loan exhibitions attracting national and international attention.

We are looking for a passionate and experienced specialist with a minimum of 10 years’ museum or gallery experience, including five years in a senior position with Curatorial responsibilities.

Please apply with a CV and covering letter to the Director@wattsgallery.org.uk by 11 February 2013.

You ask, "Isn't it time The Burlington made its content freely available online? It is after all a charitable publication." But how would the magazine cover its considerable costs if it made content available free online immediately on publication? The result would be to lose paying subscribers. The magazine's finances are already extremely tight. There is a unwarranted sense that online content should be free. Great to have things free but actually they still have to be paid for, whether through subscriptions, donations, taxation or advertising.

I couldn't agree more about Burlington - not so much the free vs. subscription argument - but rather the lack of clarity of its articles. Talking of which you used to mention the British Art Journal which, on the hand, seems far better written than Burlington, but you don't seem to have referred to it for quite some time.

He was the eyes and ears of Elizabeth I, the loyal spymaster and ruthless counterterror chief: Sir Francis Walsingham was the man who knew everything. Or not quite everything, it seems. Certainly not that his portrait was secretly painted over an overtly Roman Catholic image of the holy Virgin and Child.

“He would not have been delighted,” speculated Dr Tarnya Cooper, standing in front of the remarkable new discovery going on show at the National Portrait Gallery. “You do wonder if the artist might be enjoying a private joke."

The gallery on Thursday opened a display showing x-rays of devotional paintings it has discovered underneath its portraits of two key Tudor statesmen. As well as a Virgin and Child under Walsingham, researchers found A Flagellation of Christ under the Queen’s lord treasurer Thomas Sackville.

The Walsingham portrait dates from the 1580s when Protestant England was isolated and supporting the war in the Netherlands against the Spanish.

“The Catholics are the absolute enemy at this period so the idea that you’ve got this wonderful devotional image underneath your portrait would probably be rather horrifying to him,” Cooper, the NPG’s chief curator, said.

It was a surprise finding. “There is not very much that Walsingham does not know about of what’s going on in courts across Europe, he has a huge network of informers, is an incredibly wily man and is someone with a public reputation. For somebody who is not wonderfully keen on Walsingham this would be a clever way of getting at him."

The NPG believes it cannot be accidental that after x-raying more than 120 Tudor portraits and mostly finding nothing, it found an image so emblematic of Roman Catholicism under Walsingham. “It is intriguing that it is under the spymaster-general,” said Cooper.

Fascinating.  Although I tend to think you are right to take the practical view of painters re-using panels no longer wanted in order to make their work easier and probably cheaper, it also seems to me -- contrary to the experts you quote -- that Walsingham would very much have approved of painting his portrait on top of a 'heretical' (in his view) Catholic artwork: how better to demonstrate the Elizabethan triumph over 'popery' and the Catholic dissidents whom Walsingham opposed and spied on!!??

When the NGC bought the painting in 1928, it was believed to be a Titian. Letters between the bishop and Barbaro confirmed its history.

But there is another painting of Daniele Barbaro in Spain’s Prado Museum and scholars were divided on whether both works were by Titian or if the NGC portrait was a copy by one of his acolytes. In 1991, the two paintings were compared side-by-side at a specially arranged meeting and experts decided the NGC was not by the Venetian master.

But a recent restoration revealed the sensitivity and skill used in painting the NGC portrait.

Stephen Gritt, NGC director of conservation and technical research, arranged to work with an expert at the Prado to compare the two paintings again. X-ray images showed the underlying images, including ways that the painter had adjusted the collar height and repainted the sitter’s prominent nose.

"I spent an afternoon in front of a light-box with the Prado's technical documentalist,” Gritt said in a statement.

“By painstakingly comparing subtle features of execution as revealed on the X-ray, we were able to demonstrate that while the paintings were painted more or less at the same time, the Ottawa canvas was the one with all the thinking in it, the one that leads the way," he said.

The conclusion was that the paintings were painted side by side, but that the NGC’s portrait was the one where Titian had worked out details such as colour and composition, and it was most likely finished with Barbaro present.

The Vatican has published a vast online catalogue of the Italian Catholic Church’s artistic heritage. The project, which began 16 years ago, is ongoing but in the meantime the Church hopes the database will help in the recovery of works if they are stolen.

The website contains almost 3.5m objects, from paintings and sculptures to ornaments, crucifixes, altarpieces and other items belonging to some of Italy’s 63,773 churches in 216 dioceses. The database will be subject regularly updated. Thousands of works held in the churches of certain dioceses, such as those of Florence and Naples, are still to be catalogued.

The project is a collaboration between Church and State, involving the dioceses, the Ministry of Culture, the Italian Episcopal Conference and the National Office for Ecclesiastical Heritage. Initial funding was set at around €51.6m.

I am something of a recent subscriber to your excellent website so did not see any earlier postings about the so called Versailles portrait of BPC.  However the portrait I suspect might be of the Comte de Maurepas.  I say this as the sitter appears very similar to a full length by van Loo engraved by Petit and he seems to be wearing the same fancy coat.  It was the detail of the design of the coat which put me on to the possibility.