Previous Posts: entries 2023
Annibale Carracci. The Herrera Chapel
March 4 2022
Video: Museo Nacional del Prado
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Prado in Madrid will be opening their latest exhibition in a few days' time. The delayed Annibale Carracci The frescoes from the Herrera Chapel will be opening on the 8th March 2022 and run until 12th June 2022.
Meat Company buy Triptych
March 4 2022
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Interesting news from Spain that one of the country's largest meat producers the Jorge Group have recently purchased a triptych at auction. The local church of Santa María in the Zaragoza town of Maluenda had sold the painting in 1946 to fund restoration works after a disastrous fire. The triptych, whose whereabouts was unknown since the 1946 sale, reappeared at auction in Madrid the other week where it was spotted by the art historian José Luis Cortés. The new owners of the artwork, which was catalogued as by a follower of Jan Gossaert, will now have the painting returned to Zaragoza where it will be put on display.
This is not Katherine Parr (ctd.)
March 4 2022
Picture: ITV
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
ITV have shared news that Hever Castle in Kent have discovered that their portrait of Katherine Parr depicts the wrong Katherine. Research has uncovered that it actually depicts King Henry VIII's first wife Katherine of Aragon and corresponds to a reidentified portrait in the NPG. Regular readers of AHN might remember that Bendor made this point no less than ten years ago on this very blog.
But of course, this story is really about promoting Hever Castle's upcoming exhibition Becoming Anne: Connections, Culture, Court which opens today and will run until November 2022.
Gwrych Castle acquires Portrait
March 3 2022
Picture: rhyljournal.co.uk
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Rhyl Journal in Wales have published news that the Gwrych Castle Preservation Trust has acquired a portrait which was previously thought to be lost. The picture depicts Marianne Jones-Bateman (1799-1874), a figure who played an important part in the local history of neighbouring Abergele.
According to the article:
Mark Baker, chairperson of the trust, said: “She was a force of nature locally and her diaries, which are in the National Library of Wales, are a great source for learning about life in Abergele nearly 200 years ago.
“This portrait hung at Gwrych Castle from 1902 and disappeared from the records in 1928.
“We believe it dates to about 1825 and the time of Marianne's marriage.
“In the 1870s, the house was said to house 'many interesting works of art, including several family portraits by Richard Wilson, and one by Beechey of Barbara Lisle Bowles, the great-great-great niece of Sir Isaac Newton'.
“We believe Marianne's portrait is by an artist called Henry William Pickersgill RA (1782-1875), who was a noted painter, and his sitters were all the notables of the day.
Magritte realises £59.4m
March 3 2022
Picture: Sotheby's
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Despite the absolute horrors unfolding in Eastern Europe at the present, Sotheby's London managed to sell ReneÌ Magritte's L’empire des lumieÌ€res (1961) for a record-breaking £59.4m (inc. commission) last night. Both modern and contemporary sales realised high prices. The Now Evening Auction realised £29,982,500 (inc. commission) and the Modern & Contemporary Evening Auction realised £192,161,150 (which included the Magritte, of course).
Neighbouring London auction house Phillips also made headlines by announcing they would be donating the entirety of their fees from the 20th-century and contemporary art evening auction in London to the Ukrainian Red Cross Society. The donation from the Russian-owned auction house amounts to £5.8 million ($7.7 million) for the charity.
Upcoming Release: Histories of Conservation and Art History in Modern Europe
March 3 2022
Picture: Routledge
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The publishers Routledge will be releasing the following book later this month. Histories of Conservation and Art History in Modern Europe features a collection of essays edited by Sven Dupré and Jenny Boulboullé.
Here's a list of the essay titles featured within:
1 Introduction: Experts in the Interbellum
Part 1 Science, Authentication and Issues of Conservation
2 "We Cannot Splash Light onto Our Palettes": The 1893 Munich Exhibition and Congress and Its Public Demand for Research on Painting Materials and Techniques
3 A. P. Laurie and the Scientific Appreciation of Art
4 Seeing Through the (Old) Masters: The Crisis of Connoisseurship and the Emergence of Radiographic Art Expertise
5 Rome 1930, the International Conference on the Scientific Analysis of Artworks and Its Legacy in Italy
Part 2 Education and Professionalisation
6 Mending, Sticking, and Repairing: Reconstructing Conservation Expertise in Archaeology in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
7 Wissenschaft, Vocation, or Bildung?: Debating the Sites and Aims of German Art History at the End of the Nineteenth Century
8 Education in the Art and Conservation Field in German Countries
9 Experiments in a Teaching Museum: The Fogg’s "Laboratory for Art"
Part 3 Museums and Institutions
10 Omnium Gatherum to a ‘Treasury of Art and Science’: The Development of Conservation Expertise at the Ashmolean Museum
11 The (In)visibility of the Paintings Restorers of the Rijksmuseum in the First Half of the Twentieth Century
12 Gemäldekunde. German Pioneers of the ‘Science of Painting’
13 Invention as Necessity: The Salvage of Italian Frescoes During World War II
14 Expertise, Multiple Actors, and Multiple Voices
The book will be released on 15th March 2022.
Musée des beaux arts de Lyon conserve and redisplay picture acquired in 1875
March 3 2022
Picture: Musée des beaux arts de Lyon via. Jean-Christophe Stuccilli
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The art historian and heritage conservation officer of the Musée des beaux arts de Lyon Jean-Christophe Stuccilli has shared news that the museum has conserved and redisplayed Sébastien-Melchior Cornu's (1804 - 1870) Augustus giving the constitution to Gaul. The work, dated to 1869, was acquired by the museum in 1875 but has never been on public display before.
Recent Release: Brilliant Bodies - Fashioning Courtly Men in Early Renaissance Italy
March 3 2022
Picture: Penn State University Press
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Here's a new release that might be of interest to some readers. Penn State University Press has just published Timothy McCall's new book Brilliant Bodies: Fashioning Courtly Men in Early Renaissance Italy.
According to the book's blurb:
Italian court culture of the fifteenth century was a golden age, gleaming with dazzling princes, splendid surfaces, and luminous images that separated the lords from the (literally) lackluster masses. In Brilliant Bodies, Timothy McCall describes and interprets the Renaissance glitterati—gorgeously dressed and adorned men—to reveal how charismatic bodies, in the palazzo and the piazza, seduced audiences and materialized power.
Fifteenth-century Italian courts put men on display. Here, men were peacocks, attracting attention with scintillating brocades, shining armor, sparkling jewels, and glistening swords, spurs, and sequins. McCall’s investigation of these spectacular masculinities challenges widely held assumptions about appropriate male display and adornment. Interpreting surviving objects, visual representations in a wide range of media, and a diverse array of primary textual sources, McCall argues that Renaissance masculine dress was a political phenomenon that fashioned power and patriarchal authority. Brilliant Bodies describes and recontextualizes the technical construction and cultural meanings of attire, casts a critical eye toward the complex and entangled relations between bodies and clothing, and explores the negotiations among makers, wearers, and materials.
Sleeper Alert!
March 3 2022
Picture: La Suite Subastas
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
News on Twitter this afternoon (via. auctionradar) that the following Portrait of a Man catalogued as 'Flemish School 15th - 16th century. In the Italian renaissance taste' realised €288,000 over its €8k - €12k estimate at the auction house La Suite Subastas in Barcelona today.
Update - @artidbits on Instagram has shared this image of a painting formerly in the Spiridon Collection in Rome which was later sold in Amsterdam in 1928. The exact relationship between these two paintings is unclear.
The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco are Hiring!
March 3 2022
Picture: fasmf.org
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco are hiring an Assistant / Associate Curator of European Paintings.
According to the job description:
Under the supervision of the Curator in Charge of European Paintings, the Assistant or Associate Curator will support the department in caring for, researching, documenting, interpreting, and displaying the Fine Arts Museums' permanent collection of European paintings. Strong preference will be given to candidates with some specialized knowledge of Dutch and/or Flemish art before 1700-whether paintings or works on paper.
This role includes wide-ranging research, interpretation, and collection care responsibilities, with special emphasis on their area(s) of specialty: drafting related interpretive text for multiple platforms (gallery, print, digital); offering lectures and gallery talks; proposing and developing original exhibition projects and gallery installations; and recommending to the Curator in Charge works for potential acquisition and deaccession. This position will regularly serve as a venue curator for exhibitions, involving European art, developed at other institutions and presented at FAMSF; this aspect of the position will require a wide-ranging, synthetic knowledge of European art history and a degree of comfort working outside the Assistant or Associate Curator's immediate area of expertise. This role will play an active role in the digital cataloguing of the permanent collection (TMS) and will be called upon to assist in related administrative matters: assessing and tracking loan requests; responding to collection inquiries; facilitating research visits; orchestrating gallery movements; etc. The Assistant or Associate Curator will collaborate closely with colleagues in European Paintings, in other curatorial departments, and in departments throughout the museum...
Neither an expected salary or closing date for applications has been posted.
Good luck if you're applying!
Casa Buonarroti Conserve two Michelangelo Bas-reliefs
March 3 2022
Picture: ansa.it
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Florence's Casa Buonarroti have shared news of the conservation and restoration of two bas-reliefs by the young Michelangelo. The Madonna della scala (pictured) and the Battle of the Centaurs both date to the early 1490s and were recently treated to some dusting and light-cleaning by conservators. Both artworks will be redisplayed in the newly renovated marble rooms of the museum which also features brand-new LED lighting.
Unexportable Velázquez sells for €4.27m
March 3 2022
Picture: abc.es
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The aforementioned portrait of an unknown gentleman attributed to Diego Velázquez achieved €4.27m (inc. commission) at the Abalarte auction house in Madrid yesterday. Two collectors were said to be involved in the final few bids. Furthermore, the new owner will have to keep the work in the country as it was declared an Asset of Cultural Interest by the authorities in Madrid in 2007.
Portrait of first Female French Academician coming up for sale
March 2 2022
Picture: Artcurial
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The French auction house Artcurial have uploaded the online catalogue of their upcoming Old Master & 19th Cent. Art sale due to be held on 23rd March 2022. Alongside the aforementioned €12m - €15m Chardin is this rather interesting portrait. Ascribed to 'French School 17th century', it depicts the flower painter Catherine Duchemin (1630-1698), who was not only the wife of sculptor François Girardon but also the first ever female artist accepted into the French Academy of Art. The catalogue note, which provides an interesting biography of the painter, is well worth a read.
The painting will be offered for sale carrying an estimate of €100,000 - €150,000.
The National Gallery are cleaning Reynolds's Captain Robert Orme
March 2 2022
Video: The National Gallery
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The National Gallery in London have made this video regarding the conservation of Sir Joshua Reynolds's Portrait of Captain Robert Orme (1756). In particular, conservator Hayley Thomlinson explains why the artist's experimental techniques made his pictures so difficult to tricky to treat even in our modern age.
Mather Brown's rediscovered Death of Nelson up for sale
March 2 2022
Picture: newsanyway.com
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
A rediscovered painting showing the Death of Nelson by Mather Brown (1761-1831) is to be unveiled at the The Chelsea Antiques & Fine Art Fair in London later this month. The picture was rediscovered in a private collection by the Nelson specialist and former-Sotheby's director Martyn Downer.
To quote the article linked above:
Martyn Downer explains: “Mather Brown was one of a small group of artists – such as his fellow American Benjamin West, who were well known to Nelson in London. That familiarity is evident in Brown’s vivid and theatrical representation of Nelson receiving his fatal wound at the battle of Trafalgar which, amid the smoke of conflict, offers us one of the most compelling and well-informed late portraits of the admiral. The re-discovery of Brown’s bold attempt to win the 1805 competition for the best painting of the dramatic scene is an exciting moment for Nelson enthusiasts and for scholars of eighteenth-century art, especially for followers of this fascinating and complex artist.”
The picture will be displayed at the Chelsea fair with an asking price of £350,000.
Rembrandthuis loaned a rediscovered Jan Lievens
March 2 2022
Picture: @rembrandthuis
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Museum Het Rembrandthuis in Amsterdam have announced the loan of a recently rediscovered portrait by Jan Lievens. The Portrait of a Man with a Gold Chain dates to 1637/8 and has been loaned by its owners David and Michelle Berrong-Bader. Unfortunately, the sitter is yet to be identified.
Introducing the 'Viennese Salvator Mundi'
March 2 2022
Picture: KHM
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Kunsthistoriches Museum (KHM) in Vienna have shared news that it has completed a research project which has reattributed a painting to Titian. The museum embarked on the campaign in 2021 to investigate whether the following Christ with a Globe or the Viennese Salvator Mundi (as some have been calling it) could be the work of Titian during the 1520s. As is so often the case, the oil on canvas bears some old damages and rather unsympathetic overpainting (visible in the hair, nose and right eye, it seems).
X-rays have revealed that the present work was painted on top of a Virgin and Child:
The museum have started a crowdfunding campaign to have the work fully-restored in time for an exhibition in October 2022.
Manet and Renoir given the McDonald's Treatment
March 1 2022
Picture: DDB Athens & McDonald's
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
News from Greece that the advertising agency DDB Athens have just completed a new ad campaign for the fast-food giant McDonald's. The campaign features McDonald's packaging inserted into various paintings by Edouard Manet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir with the tagline Meant to be Classic written underneath.
Here is the Courtauld Gallery's A Bar at the Folies-Bergère given the chicken-nugget treatment:
And here is the MET's Renoir featuring a greasy paper bag:
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None of this is brand new, of course. Famous paintings have been featured in ad campaigns for many decades now. Will this be an increasing trend in the age of Open Access images, I wonder?
Superbarocco set to open in Rome!
March 1 2022
Picture: ansa.it
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Rome leg of the previously cancelled Genoese baroque exhibition is set to open this month. Superbarocco. Arte a Genova da Rubens a Magnasco will feature no fewer than 120 works produced in Genoa between the years 1600 and 1750.
The exhibition will be held in Rome's Scuderie del Quirinale between 26th March 2022 until 3rd July 2022.
The English exhibition catalogue can already be purchased here.
The National Trust conserve three Fathers of the Church
March 1 2022
Picture: The National Trust
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The National Trust have shared news of the conservation and restoration of three oil paintings of Saints, known as the Fathers of the Church. The works, which depict Pope Gregory I, Saint Jerome and Saint Augustine Bishop of Hippo, are in the collection of Chastleton House in Oxfordshire. It is believed the panel paintings date to around the time the house was built in the opening decades of the seventeenth-century.
The article linked above explains that the fourth 'father' is missing:
However, a fourth painting of Saint Ambrose, a fourth century theologian and Bishop of Milan, is missing. A magazine article in 1919 noted the four paintings as a set so while it is thought to have hung in the house until the early 20th Century, nobody knows where it is now.
“It is a mystery,” said Ruth Peters, Senior Collections and House Officer at Chastleton. “We have an idea of what it would look like as the paintings are based on - but are not an exact copy of - a set of four Flemish engravings. The last members of the family to live at Chastleton before it came into the care of the National Trust have no memory of the fourth painting. It might have been sold or given away and so could be hanging on somebody’s wall, unrecognised.”
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As a brief aside, I thought I would share this sneaky picture I took many years ago when I last visited Chastleton. It's a beautiful house filled with some interesting things. However, I could never quite understand why they decided to hang this rather fine Thomas Hudson (one of the collection's best pictures) well behind a rope off of a corridor.
