Rehanging at Castle Howard
April 23 2025
Video: The World of Interiors
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The World of Interiors have published this short interview on Instagram with Nick Howard, the custodian of Castle Howard in Yorkshire. The video provides more details about the recent renovations there including the new hang of pictures in the Long Gallery.
The Luzzetti Collection in Grosseto
April 23 2025
Video: Polo culturale Le Clarisse
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Polo Culturale Le Clarisse in Grosseto, central Italy, has just opened a new exhibition with loans from the Luzzetti collection in Florence. Artists included are Pinturicchio, Amico Aspertini, Giorgio Vasari, Sandro Botticelli and Giovanni Bellini and the show will run until September.
£3m Hans Eworth coming up at Sotheby's London
April 23 2025
Picture: artscouncil.org.uk
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Returning again to the UK Arts Council's 'Private Treaty Sales' page, the following portrait of Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk by Hans Eworth has been announced as part of the Sotheby's London Old Master's Sales in July 2025. The painting, which descended with the Earls of Westmorland until it entered a private collection around the late 19th century, carries a guide price of £3m.
The World of King James VI and I at the SNPG
April 23 2025
Picture: nationalgalleries.org
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The National Galleries of Scotland: Portrait will be opening their latest exhibition on Saturday 26th April 2025 entitled The World of King James VI and I.
According to their website:
Marking the 400-year anniversary of King James’s death, this exhibition will chart his remarkable reign through stories of friendship, family, feuds and ambition. Son of Mary, Queen of Scots, successor to Elizabeth I, King James (1566–1625) was the first monarch to rule over Scotland, England and Ireland.
Drawing on themes with contemporary relevance including national identity, queer history, belief and spirituality, The World of King James VI and I is an enriching journey through the complex life of a King who changed the shape of the United Kingdom. Over 140 objects will be on display, including ornate paintings, dazzling jewels, lavish designs and important loans from galleries across the UK, celebrating craft and visual art from the 16th and 17th centuries.
The show will run until 14th September 2025 and the exhibition catalogue is already available for purchase here.
Master I.S. – From Lost to Almost Found
April 23 2025
Picture: Gösta Serlachius Fine Arts Foundation, Mänttä
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
CODART (the international network of curators of Dutch and Flemish art) have just published an interesting article by Janneke van Asperen and Tomi Moisio on the elusive painter known as Master I.S. The piece delves into questions regarding defining this master's style and characteristics, drawing on new research and examination of pictures in collections such as the Gösta Serlachius Fine Arts Foundation in Finland. Click on the link to read more.
Upcoming: Turner's Vision at Petworth
April 23 2025
Picture: nationaltrust.org.uk
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The National Trust and Petworth House will be putting on an exhibition in June to mark the 250th anniversary of JMW Turner's birth.
According to their website:
For the first time in 20 years, a wide range of JMW Turner’s artistic studies of the Petworth landscape will be exhibited in the very place that inspired him. Visitors will be able to discover more about his approach, and the impact of Petworth’s extraordinary landscape on Britain’s most celebrated artist.
Turner’s Vision at Petworth will include 10 views of the Petworth landscape, including oil paintings and works on paper on loan from Tate, that give a unique insight into his methods and artistic inspiration. They tell the story of Turner’s connection with the landscape, and with George O’Brien Wyndham, 3rd Earl of Egremont (1751-1837) who collected many of his works. This exhibition is a celebration of an extraordinary landscape seen through the eyes of a master painter.
The show will run from 21st June until 16th November 2025.
Sleeper alert! (ctd.)
April 22 2025
Picture: Christie's
Posted by Bendor Grosvenor
In de Volkskrant, Dutch journalist Tjerk Gualtherie van Weezel reports on a court case about a possible Rembrandt sleeper first covered on AHN in October 2021. Back then, a small Adoration of the Magi panel was sold at Christie's in Amsterdam as 'Circle of Rembrandt' for €860,000. The estimate having been €10-15,000. Two years later it emerged at Sotheby's in London as 'Rembrandt', and sold for £10.9m.
As de Volkskrant reports, the consignor of the picture to Christie's Amsterdam sued Christie's for negligence. In her view, the picture was a Rembrandt, and Christie's were negligent for failing to identify it as such. The painting had been accepted as Rembrandt in the earlier 20th century, but fell out of favour by the 1980s. But Christie's won the case.
The judges did not have to adjudicate on whether the painting was indeed by Rembrandt, but whether Christie's had undertaken reasonable steps to be sure, in their view, that it was not. What emerges from the case is who saw the painting, and that none of them agreed it was by Rembrandt. From de Volkskrant (via Google Translate):
Christie's itself consulted five experts and its own team that examines old masters in 2020, the ruling shows. They were all dismissive. "The way in which the figures in the painting are composed is atypical for Rembrandt," wrote the late Rembrandt expert Ernst van de Wetering, adding that he had decided to no longer make attributions.
Other scholars who shared Ernst van de Wetering's view include Gregor Weber, then head of visual arts at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, David de Witt of the Rembrandt House in Amsterdam, Christiaan Vogelaar of Museum De Lakenhal in Leiden, and the art historian Jaco Rutgers.
Vogelaar was cited in the Christie's catalogue, mentioning the name Jan Adriaensz. van Staveren:
[...] it reminds of the oeuvre of the Leiden painter Jan Adriaensz. van Staveren (1613/14- 1669) who is thought to have trained with Gerrit Dou. Vogelaar points out that the similarity is especially strong with Van Staveren's Circumcision of circa 1640 [...] and Esther before Ahasuerus in The Leiden Collection, New York [...]
Here is the van Staveren Esther before Ahasuerus. I see little similarity with the putative Rembrandt Adoration. Van Staveren, being a pupil of Dou paints with a much more precise technique than we see in the Adoration. But that in a sense is beside the point - to show that they didn't let the consignor down, Christie's had only to demonstrate they consulted enough of the right kind of experts. Generally, these negligence cases are hard to win, partly because consignment agreements these days don't give you much to fall back on. You have to prove an auction house really screwed up. Christie's evidently did not.
So, given the painting then made over £10m, who did? It seems strange to say, but nobody, really. When the picture was offered by Sotheby's it had the endorsement of Professor Volker Manuth, a Rembrandt scholar of long standing. They also presented new technical evidence to support an attribution to Rembrandt. You can read Sotheby's extensive catalogue note for the painting here. Sotheby's were entitled to offer it as a Rembrandt, just as Christie's were entitled to sell it as not by Rembrandt.
The reason paintings like the Adoration can be in a state of Rembrandt purgatory is that in 2023, as now, there was no consensus in either the art market or the art historical community as to who had the most authoritative opinion on Rembrandt. So it will be possible to have some experts who say 'yes' and some who say 'no'. Of course, this would not have been possible when the late, great Rembrandt scholar Ernst van de Wetering was alive. His voice was considered definitive. But he died in 2021. Had he been alive in 2023, I doubt Sotheby's could have sold the painting as 'Rembrandt'.
And that for me is the most interesting element of this case; how the art market awards and then removes 'authority'. It seems strange that sometimes we are happy to rely on a single voice of authority, even for major artists like Rembrandt, on whom there will always be multiple scholars working at any one time. It is stranger still that when that single voice dies, we begin a kind of reset, almost as if they never existed.
I think I prefer a consensus approach, getting as many views as possible, even if that means there is less certainty. One of my little crusades is to get people, be they art lovers, auction specialists, buyers, or sellers to form their own view, rather than outsourcing it to people we assume have authority, often because they wrote a book on a particular artist. Writing and looking are different skills.
Only die-hard AHNers will care what I think about the attribution, but for what it's worth I thought (when the picture was at Sotheby's) that it probably was mostly by Rembrandt. The main caveat I had was that with Rembrandt's earliest work, which is what the Adoration would be, one sometimes gets glimpses of early Jan Lievens, with whom he shared a studio in Leiden.
As ever, let us know what you think!
Happy Easter!
April 18 2025
Picture: The National Gallery, London
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Wishing all the readers of AHN a Happy Easter!
9 works by Evaristo Baschenis donated to Museo Diocesano Bernareggi
April 18 2025
Picture: santalessandro.org
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
I'm a little late to news that the recently reopened Museo Diocesano Bernareggi in Bergamo has received a generous donation of 9 paintings by Evaristo Baschenis (spotted via @Mweilc). The gift was made by the collectors Guido Crippa and his wife Carmen Oberti and will be displayed in an entire room dedicated to the artist's work.
Siena and the Renaissance at Christie's
April 18 2025
Picture: Christie's
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
I'm a little slow to the news that Christie's have organised and put on a Selling Exhibition entitled Siena and the Renaissance. Their display will be in London until 28th April and will move through New York, Paris and back to London throughout the spring and early summer.
Temporary Export Ban on Agostino Brunias Pair
April 18 2025
Picture: Sotheby's
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The UK Government has placed a temporary export ban on two paintings by Agostino Brunias. The pair were sold at Sotheby's London last July and made £240,000 and £180,000 respectively (inc. commission). Any interested UK institution has until 15th July 2025 to make a pitch to keep them in the country.
Getty acquires Luis de Morales
April 18 2025
Picture: Getty
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Getty in Los Angeles has announced its acqusiton of Luis de Morales's Christ Carrying the Cross.
As The Art Newspaper has pointed out, the work appeared as a 'sleeper' at Nagel back in 2021 where it was catalogued as 'Morales or Studio (Attributed to)' and went on to make 1,180,000 EUR over its 10,000 EUR estimate. The acquisition was made through the Daniel Katz Gallery.
According to their press release:
After an extensive conservation treatment, the painting will go on view May 1, 2025 in the Getty Center Museum’s North Pavilion gallery 205.
“Referred to as ‘El Divino’ by early sources, Luis de Morales’s devotional paintings are the most intense expression of the salvational trauma that religious paintings were intended to convey,” says Timothy Potts, Maria Hummer-Tuttle and Robert Tuttle Director of the Getty Museum. “The exquisite detailing of Christ’s features, hair, tears, and bloodstained forehead commend this as a major masterpiece of 16th-century Spanish painting, and a powerful proclamation of the Catholic faith as espoused by the great Spanish mystics.”
NGA acquires Louise Moillon Still Life
April 18 2025
Picture: NGA
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. (NGA) has acquired Louise Moillon's 1636 Still Life with a Basket of Peaches and Grapes (spotted via. @Mweilc). The work was offered at Christie's Paris back in 2021 but failed to sell with its estimate of 300,000 - 500,000 EUR. The work was eventually acquired by the NGA through the London dealers Ben Elwes Fine Art in 2024.
From Botticelli to Mucha: Beauty, Nature, Seduction, a Journey through Beauty
April 18 2025
Video: Il Sole 24 ORE
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Musei Reali Torino has just opened a new exhibition examining and following representations of beauty from the age to Botticelli to Mucha. Drawing on 100 works, many borrowed from Italian institutions, artists represented in the show include works by Canova, Leonardo, Botticelli, Lorenzo di Credi, Lambert Sustris and others.
It will run until 27th July 2025.
Baroque in Slovenia
April 18 2025
Picture: Narodna galerija
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
A reader has kindly been in touch with news that the Narodna galerija in Ljubljana, Slovenia, has just opened a large exhibition dedicated to Baroque in Slovenia. With a display that features no fewer than 170 works, the show will concentrate on works created in and for present-day Slovenia in the 17th and 18th centuries.
The exhibition will run until 11th September 2025.
Sleeper Alert!
April 18 2025
Picture: Wannenes
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
News on social media (via @auctionradar and others) that the following picture catalogued as 'PITTORE CARAVAGGESCO DEL XVII SECOLO' realised 190,000 EUR over its 2,000 - 3,000 EUR estimate at Wannenes in Genoa the other day.
Research on Rediscovered Medieval Panel from Hexham Abbey
April 18 2025
Picture: newsroom.northumbria.ac.uk
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
News from Northumbria University that a medieval panel, discovered in the triforium in Hexham Abbey back in 2017, has been the subject of a research project. Work undertaken by Dr Charis Theodorakopoulos, a heritage scientist at Northumbria University who was commissioned by the Abbey to look into the matter, will be unveiled in an online presentation on 30th April 2025 (more details via the link above).
$30m - $50m Monet coming up at Christie's New York
April 18 2025
Picture: Christie's
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Christie's New York will be offering a $30m -$50m painting by Claude Monet in their upcoming sales next month. Interestingly, Peupliers au bord de l’Epte, crépuscule (1891) will be unveiled to the public by the auction house in Taipei, Taiwan, tomorrow.
According to the artnews.com article linked above:
“Taipei, in particular, has really had strong interest in classic Impressionism,” Fusco said. “We have seen strong bidding coming from clients in that region for Monet and Impressionist pictures. And we expect that we’ll see a lot of the Western clients having the opportunity to view the work in person.”
Our Three Paintings are not by Rembrandt, says the Mauritshuis
April 18 2025
Picture: Mauritshuis
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
We are very accustomed to exhibitions drawing attention to exciting new research regarding upgrades in attribution. However, The Mauritshuis in The Hague has just opened a display which examines three paintings that curators have concluded are not by Rembrandt. Here's a webpage which explains their reasoning behind the rejections. Of course, explaining why a painting is not by an artist takes a great deal of reasoning too. This is why, I have noted from experience, that valuers of works of art are often also highly skilled at being able to deliver bad news.
According to their website:
The Mauritshuis also has seven paintings that have once been purchased as Rembrandts, but which have now been written off or are strongly called into question. Three of the paintings in this last category were recently re-examined in our conservation studio with the most modern techniques available to us today. Two of those works have also been restored. What has this taught us? Rembrandt research is never done, and that includes the work we do at the Mauritshuis.
The display will be on view until mid-July 2025.
Update - Bendor here with a question. The Mauritshuis says of one of the paintings, the c.1650 Study of an Old Man, that their analysis has demonstrated the 'Rembrandt' signature is genuine. However, they also say:
You might think “Rembrandt signed it, so it must be ‘a real Rembrandt’.” But it’s not that simple. It was not unusual for a master to sign the work of a student. If it was painted at Rembrandt’s studio, it was his ‘product’. With Rembrandt’s signature, a painting by a student could be sold as if it were a piece by the master.
So my question is - how usual was this really? I think it was unusual, in the 17th century at least, for a master to sign a painting which was wholly the work of a student. We also have to ask, what is the evidence Rembrandt himself was in the habit of signing works by his pupils? As far as I know, this is a theory which developed as later generations of Rembrandt scholars, especially during the Rembrandt Research Project, tried to explain away paintings which were signed, but which they did not believe on the basis of connoisseurship were by Rembrandt. The theory was developed to fit the conclusions (even as the connoisseurship has now evolved, and many previously rejected paintings have now been accepted again). But I don't think we have any direct, contemporary evidence that Rembrandt did this, even though the assertion that he did has passed into general fact nowadays. I would be glad to hear other views!
PS - my other question is; if this exercise is all about studying Rembrandt's technique and inviting views on connoisseurship, could The Mauritshuis please allow us to see some proper high resolution photos? Thanks!
Update II - there is a good essay on the Leiden Collection website by Michiel Franken and Jaap van der Veen, “The Signing of Paintings by Rembrandt and His Contemporaries” (2022), which goes into the signing question in some detail. The essay demonstrates that we have very little contemporary evidence that artists signed works entirely by pupils, still less that it was common, and none at all that it was Rembrandt's practice.
Data on the sale of Rembrandt’s works is extremely scarce, but a note by Rembrandt himself provides some insight. He recorded the sale of certain studio works on the back of a drawing, which can be dated around 1636. Rembrandt documented the names “Fardynandus” and “Leendert,” as well as the subjects of three of the paintings that were sold, namely a “Flora,” a “Vaandeldrager” (standard-bearer), and an “Abraham.” [...]
The fact that Rembrandt included on the back of this drawing the names of his pupils who made these paintings could indicate that he sold them not under his own name but as works made by advanced pupils under his supervision. [...] The relatively low price paid for such studio work must mean the buyers knew that these pieces—signed or not—were absolutely not by the master himself.
None of this is to doubt that Rembrandt had, at times in his career (though NB, not always), a busy studio. Nor that many of his works, even signed ones, contain studio participation. This would indeed be normal artistic practice for a successful painter. The question is whether Rembrandt signed works entirely by pupils, or allowed works by pupils signed 'Rembrandt' to be sold as 'Rembrandts' from his workshop, which is a theory that has come to be commonly accepted in Rembrandt scholarship.
I have been interested in where this theory developed. As I mentioned above, it appears to have grown out of needing to explain how works which the Rembrandt Research Project (RRP) did not think were by Rembrandt nonetheless bore 'genuine' and contemporary Rembrandt signatures. An early example was this 1633 Portrait of a Lady in the Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Braunschweig. It had a long tradition of being by Rembrandt, and was signed as such with a provably contemporaneous signature. But in 1986 it was doubted by the RRP, mainly on stylistic grounds. How to solve this puzzle? As Josua Bruyn wrote [Vol.2, p.105]:
Since the woman's portrait in Braunschweig is to be seen as the work of one of the assistants in who helped in Rembrandt's workshop with carrying out the portrait commissions that were flooding in the 1630s, one would have to assume that such an assistant appended the master's name to his own work in this and other instances, and did so in the form Rembrandt was using at that particular moment.
The reason I think the case of this portrait is so interesting in the Rembrandt signature story is that it is now once again accepted as a genuine Rembrandt, and was included by Ernst van der Wetering in his revised Vol.6 of the RRP. So the portrait's attribution to Rembrandt has been reaccepted, but the signature thesis behind its former rejection still stands.
It is also worth noting that in Volume 3 of the RRP, Josua Bruyn wrote that while:
[...] it is conceivable that Rembrandt signatures were appended in the workshop by his studio assistants - as a kind of trademark [...] It is remarkable that to date we have met nothing that argues for the theoretically perfectly plausible opposite situation - that of Rembrandt putting his own signature on the work of pupils.
So even the RRP themselves were uncertain about the signature thesis, which (as the Mauritshuis project demonstrates) has now nonetheless passed into commonly accepted wisdom.
Upcoming: Passion, Wisdom and Violence: Titian and Venice in the Cobbe Collection
April 18 2025
Picture: Cobbe Collection
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Cobbe Collection and the National Trust are putting on an exhibition at Hatchlands Park next month entitled Passion, Wisdom and Violence: Titian and Venice in the Cobbe Collection.
According to the press release:
The exhibition, curated by Paul Joannides, Emeritus Professor of Art History at the University of Cambridge, showcases works from the prestigious Cobbe Collection, some of them unrecorded in the literature on Titian before the Collector discovered them, while others had been for many years lost to sight in obscure private collections. [...]
An illustrated catalogue has been generously sponsored and produced by the Colnaghi Foundation. Edited by Paul Joannides, it contains contributions from Mark Broch with Mattia Biffis, Sir Timothy Clifford, Paul Grinke, Peter Humfrey, Giorgio Tagliaferro, and Matthias Wivel.
The exhibition will run from 13th May until 30th September 2025.
