Previous Posts: January 2025
Luca Signorelli's Saint Cecilia Altarpiece Conserved
January 6 2025
Video: Retesole TV Umbria
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Luca Signorelli's Saint Cecilia Altarpiece, one of the star attractions of Pinacoteca comunale di Città di Castello, has been conserved and redisplayed to the public.
Curate Illuminated Manuscripts at The British Library
January 6 2025
Picture: jobs.ac.uk
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The British Library are hiring a Curator of Illuminated Manuscripts.
According to the job description:
The British Library has an internationally renowned collection of illuminated manuscripts made in Britain and Europe before 1600. We have an exciting opportunity for a permanent Curator of Illuminated Manuscripts, based in the Ancient, Medieval and Early Modern Manuscripts team.
You will help to develop, manage and interpret the Library’s collection of illuminated manuscripts. You will be responsible for cataloguing these manuscripts and presenting them to a variety of audiences, through online resources, writing blog posts, answering specialist enquiries, and contributing to exhibitions and the public programme. You will oversee digitisation projects, including the selection of manuscripts to be digitised. You will also contribute to fund-raising initiatives, and strategic communications with our stakeholders.
The job comes with an annual salary of £34,608 per annum* and applications must be in by 9th February 2025.
Good luck if you're applying!
______________
* - I don't usually comment on salaries for jobs I posted here, but I'm rather baffled exactly how one of the world's greatest collections of manuscripts can value a position like this so lowly. In comparison a 'Product Manager' role (something vaguely tech related that doesn't require a degree let alone the 'doctoral degree' required for the curator position) at the BL received a salary of up to £40,950.
Leonardo's Sala delle Asse Fresco to be Restored by 2026
January 6 2025
Picture: Wikipedia
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
News from Italy that a restoration project on Leonardo da Vinci's frescos for the Sala delle Asse at Castello Sforzesco in Milan are in the final preparation stages. The final donations to reach the 914,925.25 EUR required to complete the work are being raised. It is hoped that the conservation treatment will be completed in time for the Winter Olympics in February 2026.
The Portrait of the Artist in Forlì
January 6 2025
Picture: Tiscali Cultura
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Museo civico San Domenico in Forlì will be opening their latest exhibition at the end of February. Entitled (from translation) The Portrait of the Artist. In Narcissus' mirror., the show will feature 200 works from the classical to modern periods examining the role of self-portraits throughout the history of art. The display will run from 23rd February until 29th June 2025.
Upcoming: A New Look at Cimabue - At the Origins of Italian Painting
January 3 2025
Picture: Louvre
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Louvre in Paris will be opening their latest Old Master Paintings exhibition on 22nd January 2025. A New Look at Cimabue - At the Origins of Italian Painting has been organised to celebrate both an acquisition and restoration of works by the artist.
According to the museum's website:
For the first time, the Musée du Louvre is dedicating an exhibition to Cimabue, one of the most important artists of the 13th century. The exhibition is the product of two ‘Cimabue-centric’ events of great importance for the museum: the restoration of the Maestà and the acquisition of a heretofore-unseen Cimabue panel, rediscovered in France in 2019 and listed as a French National Treasure: Christ Mocked.
These two paintings, whose restoration was completed in 2024, provide the starting point for this exhibition, which, by bringing together some forty works, aims to illuminate the extraordinary richness and undeniable innovation of Cimabue’s art. Cimabue was one of the first to open Western painting to naturalism, seeking to represent the world, objects and bodies as they truly existed. With him, the conventions of representation inherited from Eastern art, so highly valued until this period, gave way to an inventive art of painting seeking to evoke a three-dimensional space, bodies in volume shaped by subtle shading, articulated limbs, natural postures and human emotions.
The show will run until 12th May 2025.
Matthias Stomer Rediscovered in Genoa
January 3 2025
Picture: finestresullarte.info
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
I failed to spot this news from Italy at the end of last year that an Adoration of the Shepherds by Mattias Stomer had been rediscovered in the collection of the Diocese of Genoa. The discovery was made by Giacomo Montanari who spotted the picture whilst on a visit to the Diocesan archives. The canvas, which is in a less than perfect state, has been redisplayed in the Diocese Museum in the city.
Upcoming: Farm to Table: Art, Food, and Identity in the Age of Impressionism
January 3 2025
Picture: fristartmuseum.org
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Frist Art Museum in Nashville TN will be opening a rather interesting exhibition entitled Farm to Table: Art, Food, and Identity in the Age of Impressionism at the end of this month.
According to the museum's website:
Farm to Table: Art, Food, and Identity in the Age of Impressionism explores the intersections of art, gastronomy, and national identity in late 19th-century France. Beginning with the 1870 Prussian siege of Paris and the resultant food crisis and continuing through the 1890s, Farm to Table showcases the work of artists such as Rosa Bonheur, Gustave Courbet, Paul Gauguin, Claude Monet, and Camille Pissarro, who captured the nation’s unique relationship with food, from production to preparation and consumption.
Featuring approximately 50 paintings and sculptures, the exhibition’s portrayals of farmers in fields and gardens, bustling urban markets, and chefs and diners in the age of grand banquets and a burgeoning café scene underscores connections between urban and rural life while capturing changing notions of gender, labor, and class.
The show will run from 31st January until 4th May 2025.
Upcoming Exhibition & Release: The Solomon Collection
January 3 2025
Picture: Yale Books
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Exciting news that the Harvard Art Museums will be celebrating their acceptance (from back in 2021) of 260 works from Arthur and Marny Solomon collection with a brand-new publication and temporary exhibition. The exhibition is due to open in May 2025 and the book will be published in June 2025.
According to the book's blurb:
Arthur and Marny Solomon assembled a superlative art collection spanning Old Master prints, nineteenth-century French paintings, and trailblazing contemporary works. This book documents for the first time some of the finest examples from the more than 260 works in the collection, gifted to the Harvard Art Museums by bequest in 2021. Full-page illustrations and new research accompany the works, some never before published, by Dürer, Tiepolo, Fragonard, GeÌricault, Corot, Delacroix, Degas, CeÌzanne, Renoir, Henry Moore, David Smith, Kenneth Noland, and Larry Poons, among many others.
Lecture on Ralph Sheldon's Henry VIII Portrait
January 3 2025
Picture: Warwickshire County Council
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Just in case any readers might be dropping by the Midlands later in March, I'm giving a lecture for the Warwickshire County Council on Ralph Sheldon's recently rediscovered portrait of Henry VIII. It will hopefully feature some new research about the painting, including details of how it was made, its provenance and what might happen to it next. I'll be joined by my friend and colleague Aaron Manning (from HRP) who will discussing some of his own research into one of England's most recognisable monarchs. The lecture will be on 1st March 2025 at Warwick Old Shire Hall (where the painting was hanging) and will cost £11.29 to attend.
I might also mention this other rather fascinating work, which has had a mini-upgrade from 'attributed to' to by the artist 'in full'. Can any reader identify the painter?
Update - Well done to all of you who got in touch to point out this is a painting by Sir Peter Lely. Intriguingly, the picture was previously given to Mary Beale (which I think in this market would make it a touch more valuable I suspect), and the Woburn Abbey provenance is still being investigated as it does not appear in the 1951 Duke of Bedford sale.
Sotheby's New York Drawings Online
January 3 2025
Picture: Sotheby's
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Whilst we're waiting for the upcoming Sotheby's New York Old Master Paintings sales to be published, here's the upcoming Master Works on Paper from Five Centuries auction. The sale will take place on 5th February 2025 at 11.00 EST.
Top lots include this fine study of heads by an artist in the Circle of Gerard David (pictured), a marine drawing by Caspar David Friedrich, a Swiss watercolour by JMW Turner and a mythological drawing by Claude Lorrain.
Sir Thomas Lawrence's love child?
January 3 2025
Picture: Royal Academy / Art Institute of Chicago
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
I'm sure Bendor would want me to point out this interesting article (here's versions from The Times and Artnet) which was published over the Christmas period, drawing attention to some overlooked aspect of Sir Thomas Lawrence's relationship to Isabella Wolff (pictured). Indeed, the article focuses on research which suggests that Isabella's son Hermann may have been fathered by Lawrence and not her husband Jens Wolff. Click on the links, or find a copy of Bendor's book The Invention of British Art, to read more!
