… Letters written by the artist suggest his hand symptoms appeared late in life.
According to a letter written to his nephew in 1552, they caused him great discomfort.
Nevertheless he continued to create one masterpiece after another and was seen hammering only a few days before his death in 1564, three weeks before his 89th birthday.
By then, he was unable to write, and could only sign his letters. …
Rediscovered painting of Michelangelo by Milton Esterow A painting in the Metropolitan long attributed to the circle of Francesco Granacci is really by Michelangelo— according to experts who cite underdrawings, imagery, and aspects of the artist’s own biography as clues. “I’m acutely aware that Michelangelo, like van Gogh, attracts a lot of crazy ideas, and people are going to say, ‘This is another absurd idea,’” said Everett Fahy, one of the world’s most distinguished scholars of the Italian Renaissance, who retired in March as John Pope-Hennessy Chairman of European Paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. “I’m expecting that they’re going to throw brickbats.” The brickbats may come from scholars who disagree with Fahy when he asserts that Saint John…
Italian Renaissance portrait was unmask as a remarkably sophisticated 20th-century forgery. Sometimes we see what we want to see. When this Italian ‘Renaissance’ portrait was acquired by the National Gallery in 1923, it was hailed as a unique painting by an undiscovered master of the 15th century. Since the 1950s, connoisseurship, art historical research and scientific analysis have combined forces to unmask a remarkably sophisticated 20th-century forgery. This portrait was acquired by the National Gallery in 1923 as a painting of the late 15th century, possibly by an accomplished but unknown artist in the circle of Melozzo da Forli (1438?1494), an artist primarily active in Urbino and Rome. The armorial badge stamped into the gesso at upper right suggested the…
Article by Nicole Winfield The Vatican’s top art historian has shot down a report in its own newspaper that suggested a recently discovered painting was a Caravaggio. The head of the Vatican Museums, Antonio Paolucci, wrote in the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano that the work was most likely a copy of an original by a Caravaggio-influenced artist. L’Osservatore set the art world aflutter last week with a front-page article headlined A New Caravaggio detailing the artistry behind the Martyrdom of St. Lawrence, which had been discovered in the sacristy of a Jesuit church in Rome. The author of the article, art historian Lydia Salviucci Insolera, had made clear that she was not making any conclusions about the authenticity of the…
STOLEN ARTWORKS TO BE RETURNED The Carabinieri art squad recovered 16 paintings stolen over a period of decades in the house of a Roman designer. The designer has been charged with receiving stolen goods. His collection is enormous. Police found 180 paintings from a variety of periods reportedly purchased in markets and fairs over the past 30 years. Authorities were tipped off to the collection by a would-be buyer. Unlike the accused, this collector, who was hoping to buy a 15th c. painting of the Sienese school, checked with the Carabinieri art squad to ensure the piece was legitimately owned by the seller. The squad looked into the collection and found one piece listed in their stolen art database: Suicide…
The controversial Restoration of Holbein’s “Ambassadors” The Early Music pioneer (Sir) John Eliot Gardiner recently left the Daily Telegraph’s music critic, Ivan Hewett, reeling with incredulity by saying that he had not seen himself as a crusading musicological force but simply as a jobbing musician who recognised that “other views are valid, as long as they’re convincing in performance”. For Hewett, Gardiner had long epitomised the radical movement to “scrape the varnish” off music by playing on obsolete period instruments and eschewing later styles and types of musical understanding in attempt to produce historically authentic performances. For over half a century after the Second World War picture restorers at the National Gallery, London, sought to recover the historically authentic appearances of paintings by first removing…
The Controversial Restoration of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel Ceiling No single proof of a restoration-induced injury to a work of art could be clearer than the photograph shown here (Fig. 1) of a section of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling frescoes. It was taken after the last restoration and shows in its centre section a repair made in 1566 by the painter Domenico Carnevale when a section of Michelangelo’s fresco fell away during settlement of the building (see Fig. 2 diagram). Carnevale had re-plastered the loss and, while the plaster surface was still wet, faithfully painted it to match Michelangelo’s (then) surrounding colours and tones. The repair was a good one and for centuries it remained almost invisible (see Figs….
Van Gogh’s palette Why preserve an artist’s palette? The daubs of raw pigment or the mixes left in position can be an intriguing index to the working method and the mind of the artist. And most, once the status of art had been elevated above the realms of mere craft, would paint themselves palette in hand. Where and how colour is laid can convey emotion, psychology, religious significance. “The whole value of what you are about” wrote John Ruskin in his Elements of Drawing, first published in 1857 “depends on colour. If the colour is wrong, everything is wrong: just as, if you are singing, and sing false notes, it does not matter how true your words are.” In a letter to…
Palettes of Famous Painters: The Degas palette The Degas palette above is from earlier in his career, when he was still using the earthy tones common to the Dutch tradition. It lightened considerably in later years as his subject matter altered. Although there are a number of prescribed ways in which to lay out oil paint – light to dark; as per the colour wheel; basic palettes of three colours and white – all artists begin by lining up pigments at the top of the palette and use the remainder of its space for mixing.
The biggest art theft in American history occurred at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston on March 18, 1990. The stolen paintings, including the one that hung in this frame, Rembrandt’s “Lady and Gentleman in Black,” remain unrecovered. It was the art heist of the century, and 20 years on, Boston billboards are being used to jog the public’s memory, reportsTom Moroney ART LOVERS who didn’t catch Rembrandt’s The Storm on the Sea of Galilee at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum before 1990 can now see it on electronic billboards outside Boston – courtesy of the FBI. Twenty years ago, on March 18th, the Dutch master’s only seascape, along with a dozen other artworks, disappeared from the museum. Two billboards…