Previous Posts: February 2022
Murillo: Picturing the Prodigal Son
February 22 2022
Picture: The National Gallery of Ireland
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Meadows Museum in Dallas, Texas, have just opened a new exhibition reuniting Murillo's six canvases representing scenes from the parable of the Prodigal Son. Murillo: Picturing the Prodigal Son, which had previously been on display at the Prado last year, will be at the Meadows Museum of Art between 20th February 2022 and 12th June 2022.
According to the museum's website:
Murillo skillfully embellished the narrative, conveying the story’s themes of virtue and vice, regret and forgiveness, through the figures’ dramatic gestures and facial expressions. Each composition is at once singular and dynamic despite its preservation of narrative continuity. It is therefore all the more remarkable that the series has remained intact, the only by Murillo to be so, despite changing hands many times since its creation during one of the artist’s more prolific decades. Since 1987, the paintings have been in the collection of the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin.
In 2022, all six canvases will travel to the United States for the first time to be featured at the Meadows Museum, their only venue in this country. Marking the Meadows’s first collaboration with the National Gallery of Ireland, Picturing the Prodigal Son was inspired by the recent conservation work and the extensive technical analysis of the canvases carried out in Dublin, which has highlighted the beauty of Murillo’s technique and revealed new insights into his working method at a critical point in his career. The exhibition therefore marks a rare opportunity for American audiences to view an important painting series by Murillo in its entirety, just as it was created to be seen. As the largest repository of paintings by Murillo in the United States, the Meadows Museum is the ideal venue to exclusively present Murillo: Picturing the Prodigal Son.
NPG cuts ties with BP
February 22 2022
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The National Portrait Gallery (NPG) in London has announced the cutting of ties with its 30-year sponsor BP. The gallery has said that it will not renew its contract with the oil company when it comes up for renewal in December 2022. Although director Nicholas Cullinan has said that gallery is "hugely grateful" for the decades of money and sponsorship, increasingly loud pressure groups have maintained that the NPG should be a "forward-looking institution that’s on the right side of history”.
Face to Face: Picasso and the Old Masters in Málaga
February 22 2022
Picture: Picasso Museum Málaga
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Picasso Museum Málaga have opened their latest exhibition today entitled Face to Face: Picasso and the Old Masters.
According to the museum's website:
From 22nd February until 26th June 2022, visitors to the Museo Picasso Málaga will have a unique opportunity to discover the links between Pablo Picasso and leading artists of the past. The MPM will be hosting Face to Face. Picasso and the Old Masters, an exhibition, jointly organized with Museo de Bellas Artes de Sevilla, in which paintings by El Greco, Francisco Pacheco, Giovanni Battista Caracciolo, Francisco de Zurbarán, Cornelius Norbertus Gijsbretchs, Bernardo Lorente Germán and Diego Bejarano will be hung alongside major works by Pablo Picasso.
Face to Face. Picasso and the Old Masters presents paintings from the Museo de Bellas Artes de Sevilla’s remarkable collection of Spanish and other European Masters opposite nine important works by Picasso belonging to the Fundación Almine y Bernard Picasso para el Arte (FABA).
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These pairings not only enable viewers to make specific comparisons between the work of Picasso and the Masters in order to understand how deeply Picasso’s art was rooted in Spanish traditions. The juxtapositions also allow us to discern how he transformed these traditions into the revolutionary art of the 20th century.
Wawel Castle acquire Brueghel the Younger and Willem Claesz Heda
February 21 2022
Picture: thefirstnews.com
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Wawel Castle in Poland have acquired two paintings by Pieter Brueghel the Younger and Willem Claesz Heda. The works were purchased from a French private collection and will be hung alongside the castle's Dutch pictures (which number to around 100, so it seems!)
Lincoln's Portrait Restored
February 21 2022
Picture: The Washington Post
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Washington Post have published a short article on a recently restored portrait of President Abraham Lincoln owned by the Hartley Dodge Foundation, New Jersey. The painting, completed by W.F.K. Travers in 1864 or 1865, had once been debated in Congress regarding its purchase for the Capitol. After this plan failed to materialise, the work was purchased by Rockefeller and later fell into several private collections until it was largely forgotten. Its current owners have only recently had the portrait restored and commissioned research to re-establish its provenance.
Donato Montorfano's Crucifixion undergoing Conservation
February 21 2022
Picture: finestresullarte
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Italian art website finestresullarte have published an extended article on the conservation of Donato Montorfano's (1460-1502) Crucifixion in the Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan. Famously, this fresco is situated opposite Leonardo's Last Supper. In fact, this large work opposite contains rather damaged portraits of Ludovico il Moro with his wife Beatrice d'Este which have been attributed to Leonardo himself. The link will also take you to many interesting pictures showing the work being undertaken on these fragile wall paintings.
18 Officers on Display
February 21 2022
Picture: Facebook via. Jeroen Punt
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Museum de Tiid in Bolsward, the Netherlands, have just opened a special exhibition focusing on 18 portraits of officers who served in a Frisian regiment against the Spanish during the Eighty Years' War. It is believed that the set may have been commissioned by Hendrik Casimir I of Nassau or the Frisian States, with artist Wybrand de Geest having produced a number of them.
Paintings on Stone to open (finally) in St. Louis
February 18 2022
Video: Saint Louis Art Museum
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Saint Louis Art Museum will finally be opening their much-delayed exhibition Paintings on Stone: Science and the Sacred 1530-1800 over the weekend.
According to the museum's website:
In 2000 the Saint Louis Art Museum purchased Cavaliere d’Arpino’s Perseus Rescuing Andromeda, an exceptional painting on lapis lazuli. The acquisition of the small, stunning work of art spurred extensive research that culminates in Paintings on Stone: Science and the Sacred 1530–1800, the first systematic examination of the pan-European practice of this unusual and little-studied artistic tradition.
By 1530 Italian artists had begun to paint portraits and sacred images on stone. At first artists used slate and marble. By the last decades of the 16th century, the repertoire expanded, eventually including alabaster, lapis lazuli, onyx, jasper, agate, and amethyst. In addition to demonstrating the beauty of these works, Paintings on Stone explains why artists began using stone supports and the role that stone played in the meaning of these endeavors.
Bringing together more than 70 examples by 58 artists, Paintings on Stone represents major centers of stone painting and features 34 different stones, nearly the full range that were used.
The show will run from 20th February 2022 until 15th May 2022.
Save Venice target Works by Women Artists
February 18 2022
Picture: Save Venice
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Art Newspaper have published an article on the conservation charity Save Venice's new initiative to raise money to conserve 30 works by Women Artists.
The idea was hatched during the restoration of a Tintoretto which is kept in the same church as a neglected picture by Giulia Lama (1681-1747) (another of Lama's works is pictured above):
“The minute [the spandrels] started to come out from all of this grime, people went, ‘Right, we know this artist. There’s work by her in the Accademia, major altarpieces… Wait a minute, why are we not paying more attention to Giulia Lama?’” recalls Tracy Cooper, a Save Venice board member and art history professor at Temple University in Philadelphia, who is leading research for the organisation’s Women Artists of Venice (WAV) programme.
Other works on the radar include paintings by the likes of Irene di Spilimbergo (who studied briefly under Titian), the 17th-century portraitist Chiara Varotari, Bernardina di Zuan Mathio, Caterina Tarabotti and Marietta Robusti.
£10m - £15m Freud coming up at Christie's
February 18 2022
Picture: Christie's
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Christie's London will be offering a £10m - £15m painting by Lucian Freud in their upcoming 20th / 21st Century Sale on 1st March 2022. Girl with Closed Eyes was painted in the mid 1980s and is being marketed as a hark back to Venuses by the likes of Giorgione, Canova and Modigliani. The model for the picture was Janey Longman whose mother Elizabeth had been a bridesmaid at Queen Elizabeth II's wedding.
According to their website:
The canvas was sold as soon as it was painted and, having been in the same private collection ever since, now comes to market for the first time. It has been exhibited only occasionally in the three and a half decades of its existence, notably in the landmark retrospective Lucian Freud Paintings, which toured the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., the Musée National d’Art Moderne in Paris, the Hayward Gallery in London and the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin in 1987-88.
Royal Museums Greenwich raising funds to Conserve Tapestry
February 17 2022
Video: Royal Museums Greenwich
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The National Maritime Museum in Greenwich is raising funds to restore the Solebay Tapestry. The wall hanging, commissioned by King Charles II and dated to c.1672, was designed by artist Willem Van de Velde. The museum is hoping to raise £15,000 for the project which will hopefully be completed in time for the museum's 2023 exhibition on the Van de Veldes (!)
See the Brancacci Chapel by Scaffold
February 17 2022
Picture: madeoftuscany.it
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Upcoming visitors to Florence will have the most marvellous opportunity to see the famous Brancacci Chapel like never before. (spotted via. @maaikesartstories) Due to the aforementioned restoration project announced last year, a scaffold has been erected in the Carmine Church to allow conservators to get up close to these important frescos by Masaccio and Masolino.
In fact, visitors will now have the opportunity to book a special ticket to walk on the scaffold to see the wall paintings up-close for themselves. The Chapel will be open to the public four days a week: Friday, Saturday, Monday from 10 am to 5 pm and Sunday between 1pm to 5pm. Tickets are limited and must be booked in advance.
Farinelli's Paintings up for Sale (?)
February 17 2022
Picture: diapasonmag.fr
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Interesting news from France that the auction house Aguttes will be offering two recently rediscovered pictures by Francesco Battaglioli (1725-1796) in March. The pictures have been identified by the scholar Mickaël Bouffard as opera stage sets for productions of Nitteti. This opera, with a libretto by Metastasis set to music by Nicola Conforto, was performed in 1756 at the Theatre of the Buen Retiro Palace on the occasion of the birthday of King Ferdinand VI.
Researchers have gone as far to suggest that the paintings might have belonged to the famous castrato Farinelli. The works have been linked to two others kept in Library-Museum of the Paris Opera, which were said to have been brought back by the singer as gifts from the Spanish court.
The pair will be sold on the 25th March 2022.
Velázquez Portrait coming up for sale in Madrid
February 17 2022
Picture: abc.es
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
News from Madrid that a Portrait of an Unknown Gentleman by Diego Velázquez is coming up for sale at the auction house Abalarte on 2nd March 2022.
The owners of the painting, which is part of the collection of the Vizcondes de Roda, had tried to sell it in the 2000s until the Spanish Government stepped in to declare it an Asset of Cultural Interest. Press reports do not make it clear whether the painting would be allowed to leave Spain or not.
Interestingly, the report linked above suggests that scholars believe the intricate lace ruff is a later addition by another hand. It is thought that the face is the work of the artist himself. The likes of the late Alfonso Pérez Sánchez (former Director of the Prado) and Carmen Garrido have supported the attribution.
The painting will be sold on 2nd March 2022 carrying an estimate of €2.5m - €3m.
The Duke of Bedford's Canalettos head to Greenwich
February 16 2022
Picture: Woburn Abbey
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Brilliant news for those of us who didn't get the chance to visit Bath last year. The Duke of Bedford's Canalettos will be heading to the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich later in Spring. This outstanding set of 24 Venetian views by the artist will be exhibited for the public in gallery conditions whilst the Duke's ancestral home Woburn Abbey is being refurbished.
The exhibition will run from 1st April until 25th September 2022.
Lemoyne Annunciation returns to Winchester College
February 16 2022
Picture: Winchester College
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
News from Hampshire that François Lemoyne’s Annunciation (1727) has returned to Winchester College after a ten-year loan to the National Gallery in London.
According to the school's website:
The Annunciation had been at the College since 1729 and originally hung above the altar in Chapel. It was a gift from John Burton, headmaster of Winchester from 1724 to 1766. The painting illustrates a passage in St Luke’s Gospel, where the archangel Gabriel announces to Mary that she will give birth to Jesus. This subject was particularly appropriate for Winchester College, which is dedicated to the Virgin Mary, but the choice of a Catholic artist was unusual at the time. Lemoyne’s work is probably the earliest example, after the Reformation, of a foreign painter being commissioned to produce an altarpiece for an English church.
Visitors will be able to see the picture in the school's museum which is open from 2pm- 4pm every afternoon.
UK Ivory Act to be Enforced
February 16 2022
Picture: @AntiquesRescue
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The UK Ivory Act 2018 is due to be enforced on 24th February 2022.
Although the Act does contain many exemptions, including pre-1918 Miniatures on Ivory up to 320cm², it seems that many antique works of art will soon become illegal to sell. Items such as this c.1820 silver fork (with a c.1650 carved handle) will not be covered by the exemptions list, as it contains more than the 20% (in weight) allotted ivory covered by the law. Owners of items not covered by the exemption list will have to apply for exemption certificates issued by a list of sanctioned museums to prove that it is of great cultural significance.
Many antiques enthusiasts, collectors and dealers are worried that the new law might result in the destruction, scrapping and disfiguring of many historic artworks. Silver specialist and dealer Michael Baggott has written in the Antiques Trade Gazette on plans to start a new charity called the Antiques Rescue Centre. The charity will hopefully allow owners to donate items in order for them to be saved from the industrial shredder, crusher or scrap metal merchant.
Prado Unveil Revamped Goya Rooms
February 16 2022
Picture: elimparcial.es
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
News from Spain that the Prado Museum in Madrid has unveiled their newly organised Goya rooms. The refurbishment has focused on the removal of a wall partition, repainting and rehanging rooms 37 and 38 in the Villanueva building which contain some of the museum's most significant paintings by the Spanish artist. In addition to this work, new dialogues have been created by hanging a Venus by Titian next to Goya's Las Majas (pictured) to demonstrate the influence of this Venetian painter.
Apologies...
February 15 2022
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Apologies for the delay in getting started this week, I have been rather tied up with some important work. I'll be posting a long list of stories tomorrow (Wednesday).
KHM Goes Digital
February 11 2022
Picture: Kunsthistoriches Museum
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
I couldn't help but repost this rather amusing reinterpretation of Parmigianino's Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror that has been published by the Kunsthistoriches Museum in Vienna. The image was featured a recent-ish press release which gives a full and impressive list of all the digital resources published by the museum.
