Test your connoisseurship - and win a holiday!
October 4 2012
Picture: Teylers Museum
Over at Art History Today, David Packwood alerts me to an intriguing method of attributing Raphael drawings. At a new exhibition on Raphael drawings at the Teylers Museum in Haarlem, visitors can vote on whether they think the above Raphael drawing is by Raphael or not. The museum's website tells us why their curators need the public's help:
Research carried out for this exhibition led to three more of the drawings in the collection of Teylers Museum being attributed to Raphael. But there is one drawing about which the experts cannot agree: the three women’s heads, dating from around 1518.
Visitors can record their own reactions and give their opinions straight away by using a special voting machine set up in the first gallery. All those taking part have a chance of winning a trip for two to Raphael’s home country, offered by Labrys Reizen. The winner will be announced on this site on Friday 11 January 2013.
Update - a reader writes:
When I was younger and a porter in the English Drawings and Watercolour Dept at Christies, I used to watch, listen and talk to my boss Noel Annesley about the Old Master Drawings and as he called it, 'first instinct of the eye'.
So, my heart leapt as I scrolled down and before I reached the text I thought Raphael. The two upper heads are just too good, the lips and the noses are spot on and the angle of the heads have sold me, so I'm voting yes.
