Category: Research

The wrestlers’ existence was known only from a reference in one of the Dutch master’s letters, written aged 33, just four years before his tragic death. On 22 January 1886, he wrote: “This week I painted a large thing with two nude torsos – two wrestlers.” 

There is no other painting of wrestlers. It is this painting that now confirms the still life’s authenticity. They are both on the same canvas. Van Gogh painted the still life over his wrestlers which could not be seen until now.

The still life was acquired in 1974 by the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, Holland, which boasts one of the world’s largest Van Gogh collections. But the painting’s link to Van Gogh had been repeatedly dismissed over the years because it was thought to be “uncharacteristically exuberant”.

In 2003, it was finally “deattributed” on stylistic grounds and unceremoniously relegated to a back room out of public view, listed merely as “artist: anonymous”.

The National Gallery of Art announces the launch today of NGA Images, a new online resource that revolutionizes the way the public may interact with its world-class collection at http://images.nga.gov. This repository of digital images documenting the National Gallery of Art collection allows users to search, browse, share, and download images believed to be in the public domain, underscoring the Gallery's mission and national role in making its collection images and information available to scholars, educators, and the general public.

Designed by Gallery experts to facilitate learning, enrichment, enjoyment, and exploration, NGA Images features more than 20,000 open access digital images, up to 3,000 pixels each, available free of charge for download and use. 

 With the launch of NGA Images, the National Gallery of Art implements an open access policy for digital images of works of art that the Gallery believes to be in the public domain (those not subject to copyright protection). Under the open access policy, users may download any of these images free of charge and without seeking authorization from the Gallery for any use, commercial or non-commercial. 

Meanwhile, the Tate and NPG have their fingers in the dyke...

When the Prado copy was being studied, infrared images revealed that a section of the original design for the rocks beneath the paint surface had been based on a drawing now in the Royal Collection. Martin Clayton, the senior curator at the Windsor print room, dates the drawing to 1510-15 on stylistic grounds. 

The Prado copy of the Mona Lisa was worked on side by side with the Louvre painting, so this connection has important implications for the dating of Leonardo’s original.

Louvre specialists went back to photographs taken of the original Mona Lisa in 2004. They realised that the design for part of the rocks on the right side in the Prado copy also appears in the underdrawing of the original, in a blurred form. This can just be made out in an emissiograph, an image made using an x-ray technique.

ATTRIBUTED TO ANTONIO TOTO DEL NUNZIATO (1499-1554) 

The Nonsuch Panels’

Oil on Canvas; 50 by 17 ¾ inches, 127 x 45 cm

Provenance

Commissioned for Henry VIII; In the possession of Sir Thomas Cawarden (c.1514–1559); His executor Sir William More (1520–1600); By descent at Loseley Park Surrey to Mr & Mrs James More-Molyneux; Until gifted to John Paul Getty c.1980, at Sutton Place, Surrey.

Literature

Decorative Painting in England 1537-1837, Edward Croft-Murray, London 1962, Vol. I p.18, Vol II p.313. Marcus Binney, ‘Loseley Park’, Country Life, October 9th 1969.

These paintings are known by tradition as the ‘Nonsuch Panels’, due to their apparent origin at Nonsuch Palace, the greatest of Henry VIII’s Tudor palaces. They can be attributed with some certainty to Henry VIII’s Sergent Painter, Antonio del Nunziato, or, as he was known in England, Anthony Toto, and are part of a series of his only attributable works. They were painted c.1543-4, probably for an important royal celebration or Henry’s final wedding to Katherine Parr, and represent a rare and highly important survival of decorative art from the Tudor court. 

The present panels are two of a larger surviving set of at least a dozen others at Loseley Park in Sussex, home of the More-Molyneux family for over four hundred years. The panels came to Loseley through Henry VIII’s Keeper of the Tents and Master of the Revels [1], Sir Thomas Cawarden, and there remained until the 1980s, when the present paintings were given to John Paul Getty. All scenes in the series depict classical figures, and are of varying condition. The present pair have been the subject of recent renovation, during which numerous layers of later overpaint have been removed.

The panels were first attributed to Anthony Toto by Edward Croft-Murray in his 1962 survey Decorative Painting in England 1537-1837, on the basis of a listed receipt in Toto’s hand and signed by him “for painting of hatchements, arms and badges of the King’s to be set upon his Highness’s tents and pavilions” in the Loseley archives dated May 31st 1544 [Loseley MS 1893]. This view was reaffirmed by Marcus Binney in a 1969 article for Country Life. The present works would have been typical of the temporary ‘hatchements’ painted for the interior of a royal ‘tent’, or pavilion. 

Further research by the present author has unearthed an additional, more comprehensive, description of the work carried out by Toto for Carwarden. The document, in Toto’s own hand, not only helps confirm the attribution of the present pictures, but sheds important light onto the activities of an artist in the Tudor court. It is undated, but was drawn up between 1544-47. The list of work carried out begins, “Things made and paynted for the kings Majestie by Antony Totto Serjeant Paynter [for] Sir Thomas Cardew Knyght” and goes onto detail a mass of heraldic hatchements “of the Kings Armes wt the beasts around the garter, and the Kings words [ie, motto]”, and large number of smaller “pensills paynted upon Burkeram wt the Kings badge” [Loseley MSS 1891/2]. There are also a number of painted earthenware pots listed, apparently for use in stables, suggesting that the riot of colour and decoration seen in the present paintings was employed in even the most mundane corners of the court.

Researchers in Florence say they are one step closer to proving a lost masterpiece by Leonardo da Vinci, The Battle of Anghiari, is painted on a hidden wall in a cavity in Florence's town hall, where it has remained unseen for five centuries.

After drilling tiny holes in a fresco painted on a wall which hides the cavity, the researchers inserted a 4mm wide probe and took samples of paint, which they say is similar to that used by Leonardo when he painted the Mona Lisa. [...]

The research team's probe confirmed the existence of an air gap, originally identified through radar scans conducted of the hall, between the brick wall on which Vasari painted his mural and the wall located behind it. "No other gaps exist behind the other five massive Vasari frescoes in the high-ceilinged hall," the team said.

A sample of black material removed from the back wall was analysed with a scanning electron microscope using energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy to identify its chemical makeup.

The chemical composition "was similar to black pigment found in brown glazes on Leonardo's Mona Lisa and St John the Baptist, identified in a recently published scientific paper by the Louvre, which analysed all the Da Vinci paintings in its collection", the team said.

"Note that Leonardo painted the Mona Lisa in Florence at the same time," said Seracini, who was featured in Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code.

Flakes of red material were also found. "Analysis of these samples seems to identify them as organic material, which could be associated with red lacquer. This type of material is unlikely to be present in an ordinary plastered wall," the team said.

Tomaso Montanari, an art historian who has led the opposition to the research said that he did not "consider the source of these findings credible."

He added: "What do they mean by saying the findings are compatible with Leonardo? Any painting from the Renaissance would be. Anything from that era could be painted on that wall."

In Renaissance art historical scholarship, the category of the portrait has provided a key framework for thinking about and discussing representations of the individual, an emphasis that has been echoed in a range of recent exhibitions celebrating Renaissance ‘faces’.

The inaugural Renaissance postgraduate symposium invites new scholars to explore the limits of this framework. It aims to encourage students of the Renaissance, in its broadest definition, to consider the domestic, devotional and urban environments of portraits. Contributors are invited to consider how the experience of viewing, commissioning and living with portraits affects our understanding of their meaning and function, situating the images within their historical contexts rather than within the museum’s exhibition space. Likewise, we invite participants to challenge the terminology of portraiture and to consider objects and images which do not fit into the conventional category of the ‘portrait’ but which nevertheless ‘portray’ individuals.

"Leonardo’s lover probably painted the Prado’s Mona Lisa"

In attempting to identify the copyist, curators at the Prado began by eliminating pupils and associates such as Boltraffio, Marco d’Oggiono and Ambrogio de Predis—since they each have their own individual styles. They also eliminated two Spanish followers of Leonardo, Fernando Yáñez and Fernando de Llanos, whose work is distinctively Valencian.

Miguel Falomir, the head of Italian paintings at the Prado, now believes that the copy of the Mona Lisa “can be stylistically located in a Milanese context close to Salaì or possibly Francesco Melzi”. Melzi was an assistant who joined Leonardo’s studio in around 1507, but the Prado’s copy may well have been started earlier. Of the two, Salaì now seems the most likely.

On the Importance of Connoisseurship

When the celebrated English philosopher John Locke sat to Godfrey Kneller for his portrait in 1704, he made a special request. He asked “Sir Godfrey to write on the backside of mine, John Locke 1704 ... this is necessary to be done,” he continued, “as else the pictures of private persons are lost in two or three generations and so the picture loses of its value, it being not known whom it was made to represent.’” 1

Sadly for Locke, not everyone has followed his advice. About a year ago, Philip Mould and I found a fine portrait drawing of him (Fig. 1) in a sale at Christie’s secondary saleroom in London. It was catalogued as Portrait of a Gentleman, and, proving that Locke was right to worry about his portrait’s future value, was bought for just £386 — a fraction of its true worth. It relates to a painting by John Greenhill in the National Portrait Gallery, London (Fig. 2).

Picture: National Portrait Gallery. Fig. 2, John Greenhill (c. 1644-1676), 'Portrait of John Locke', c.1672-76, Oil on canvas, 22 1/8 in. high (oval)

As director of the Photo Library of an art historical research institute (a German institution with seat in Florence) working also theoretically on photo archives, I would like to draw your attention to the "Florence Declaration - Recommendations for the Preservation of Analogue Photo Archives". 

To the many reasons that were mentioned in the article and in your blog, why throwing away such photographic holdings is an unforgivable crime against the scientific community and the entire society, I would like to add some new research perspectives on photographs and photo archives as material objects that cannot be substituted by digital surrogates. These new studies go beyond the disciplinary borders of art history and see photographs and archives as research objects on their on.

The "Florence Declaration" aims at an integration between the analogue format and the digital format, which only can guarantee the correct conservation of the photographic heritage for future studies and at the same time the implementation of digital instruments.

[Photographic] archives are valuable both as active research tools and as historical entities. They contain images that are records within the history of art, but are in themselves objects of study as historical photographs (for example as parts of bequests by major art historians, collectors, or photographers) and also as documents of art historical practices over time.

Photographic archives not only support but they generate research. Each archive has its historical and conceptual logic, which often raises as well as resolve research questions.

Additionally the mounts hold information about the photographs and the objects they represent.

The main role of photo archives, like that of every archive, is to guarantee the conservation and future accessibility of documents from the past for their possible future use for research purposes. 

The introduction of digital technologies has made new, powerful tools available for conservation and access requirements. Almost all photo archives are currently involved in electronic cataloguing and photographic print and negative digitization projects and new methods of online consultation have been developed. The digital technologies applied to the archive have thus undisputed advantages. 

However, for this very reason, there is a tendency to consider the consequences of these processes too superficially. In particular, the debates on digitalization imply that once digitally reproduced, the original artefacts can be removed from consultation or even dispensed with altogether. The Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut on the other hand, supported by the other subscribers to these recommendations, believes that it is essential for the future of studies in historic, human and social sciences to generate a greater understanding of the inescapable value of photographs and analogue archives.  

The conviction that it is useful and necessary to preserve the analogue photo archives is based on two simple considerations: 

- the technologies not only condition the methods of transmission, conservation and enjoyment of the documents, but they also shape its content; 

- the photographs are not simply images independent from their mount, but rather objects endowed with materiality that exist in time and space.

Art historians have been disturbed by allegations that the Tate was about to dump its invaluable photographic archive in a skip when another institution realised its importance and rescued it, and that the Victoria & Albert Museum has already destroyed its own thematic archive. Curators, who consider such resources vital, were not consulted.

The archives were full of photographs of artworks from their collections and beyond – crucial visual histories, invaluable for comparative research and for studying any deterioration as a result of time or restoration.

Brian Allen, director of the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, a UK educational charity with links to Yale University, expressed disbelief that the Tate, as the holder of a national collection of British art from the Tudors onwards, did not treasure its archive.

Allen says he received a call out of the blue from a "low-ranking" Tate employee, who told him: "Someone said … you might like the curatorial photo archive because we're about to throw it on to a skip."

The V&A admitted dumping archival material using "a secure data disposal service". A spokeswoman denied the decision was a mistake, explaining that in removing the picture archive in 2007 to make way for new gallery space, it believed that a thematic archive "wasn't a method of classification that was really necessary any longer", as it had duplicates of photographs and digital files.

The other key pillar of the self-regulating market is the scholarship that produces reliable catalogues raisonnés. But, the field appears increasingly under threat. The troubling retreat of scholars in the case of a group of Francis Bacon drawings (The Art Newspaper, December 2011, pp1, 8) indicated that experts, fearful of costly lawsuits, are shying away from taking a public stance on what is, or is not, a legitimate work. [...]

Ultimately, the best way to protect the art market—and address the issue of regulation—is to safeguard scholarship: this underpins an artists’ value, provides proof of provenance and lubricates an expanding market. As the art business continues to globalise, its growth depends upon making scholarship reliable and accessible. Because, in the end, the experts are the only candidates who can provide the adult supervision the market desperately craves.

As always, enjoyed logging on to Art History News but I think Marion Maneker, whose article I also read with much interest – valuation and attributions being such  vexed subjects – is male not female.  Maybe Marian/Marianne = female! 

And to be completely pedantic, it should be catalogues raisonnés (old French grad here).

...charcoal remains found beside six of the paintings – preserved in Spain's Nerja caves – have been radiocarbon dated to between 43,500 and 42,300 years old.

That suggests the paintings may be substantially older than the 30,000-year-old Chauvet cave paintings in south-east France, thought to be the earliest example of Palaeolithic cave art.

The next step is to date the paint pigments. If they are confirmed as being of similar age, this raises the real possibility that the paintings were the handiwork of Neanderthals – an "academic bombshell", says Sanchidrián, because all other cave paintings are thought to have been produced by modern humans. 

There was an even greater surprise: infrared reflectography images of the Prado replica were compared with those obtained in 2004 from the original of the Mona Lisa in the Louvre. This process enables conservators to peer beneath the surface of the paint, to see underdrawing and changes which evolved in the composition.

The underdrawing of the Madrid replica was similar to that of the Mona Lisa before it was finished. This suggests that the original and the copy were begun at the same time and painted next to each other, as the work evolved.

There will be an official press release coinciding with the presentation of the work once the restoration has ended. We will do a press conference in the week of the 20th of February to announce the final works of conservation and all the information regarding the research done on the painting.