His decision comes as he approaches his 65th birthday this December. The exact date of his retirement will depend on the appointment of his successor. 

Under Dr Nicholas Penny’s Directorship, the National Gallery staged the most successful exhibition in its history, Leonardo da Vinci, Painter at the Court of Milan, as well as major exhibitions on painters including Barocci, Veronese and, this autumn, Rembrandt. In 2013, for the first time ever, annual visitors to the Gallery exceeded 6 million.

Reflecting on his six years as Director, Nicholas said “I have enjoyed my years as Director and am grateful to the Trustees, staff and to the Gallery’s supporters for helping to ensure that the Gallery has continued to prosper despite a steadily declining grant – to flourish both as a great and popular resource and as a home for scholarship, a national gallery admired internationally."

He added “Following my retirement I have many plans, but chiefly look forward to spending more time with my family, friends and books.”

Mark Getty, Chairman of the National Gallery Trustees, expressed the Board’s gratitude to the Director for all he has done for the Gallery, saying “Nick has been an extraordinarily successful Director of the National Gallery, steering the nation’s acquisition of the two great Titian paintings, ‘Diana and Actaeon’ (pictured) and ‘Diana and Callisto’ jointly with the National Galleries of Scotland, and this year securing the acquisition of the Gallery’s first major American painting, ‘Men of the Docks’ by George Bellows. The Board are hugely grateful to him for his energy, vision and commitment to the Gallery’s work. We will miss him greatly.”  

The Board of Trustees will shortly begin its search for a new Director. Under the Museums and Galleries Act of 1992, the Director of the National Gallery is appointed by the Trustees with the approval of the Prime Minister.

Nicholas Penny has agreed to stay in office for the entirety of that recruitment process, in order to affect a smooth handover to his successor.

It is very worrying that two such talented museum directors have apparently had enough. What have they had enough of?

Ultimately their dignified departures are personal matters and their own business. But it must be getting harder to run a big London museum. The capital is famous for art in a way it has never been before, and tourists flow ceaselessly through its galleries. There's a media assumption that every exhibition should be a hit, a political belief that galleries should provide not just well-run collections, but entertainment and education for everyone. Publicity and accessibility are everything.

Nicholas Penny and Sandy Nairne are characterful people with ideas about art. Is that kind of originality being driven out of a museum world driven by increasingly populist expectations and, at the same time, shrinking budgets? Are we about to see a new technocrat generation of museum bosses who keep their heads down, put PR first and do all they can to meet goals defined by politicians and the press?

This year has seen a taboo broken when a critic actually called for a museum director to be sacked because of (supposed) poor attendances. That kind of pressure doesn't exactly leave much room to experiment. Museums cannot just be machines for entertaining us. They should have a quieter side where the art comes first, the crowds second and a scholarly side that reveres someone like Penny.

This looks depressingly like the end of individuality in the museum world.

But though he’ll be missed, he’s doing the right thing at the right time, when he can still do the shows and write the books that no one else alive could have done or written. But of that’s only if you believe he is really retiring – and if I were a betting man I’d wager that he’s had a call from a large American museum.

Head of Marketing: 'We need someone to be on hand for the press photographers, any ideas?'

Head of Sale: 'What about John, who secured the consignment?'

Head of Marketing: 'I wonder if the piece doesn't require a female hand, to, er, resonate with the masculinity of Giacometti's vision?'

Head of Sale: 'Ok, what about Catherine, our senior specialist who wrote the catalogue entry? She knows all about the piece'.

Head of Marketing: 'Hmm. Not quite the right look.'

Head of Sale: 'Marie, the intern?'

Head of Marketing: 'Great idea!'

Yes, quality in art and monetary value these days seem to have little in common. I met Andy Warhol in the 1980s when he came here to Kong Kong for an exhibition of his Xerox-type portraits of local big-wigs, whether done by him or his "Factory" workers I know not. It was quite difficult carrying on a conversation with him because of his minimalist line in dialogue. At the time this seemed to me quite smart because his verbal technique generated maximum publicity with minimum effort. It was interesting to see that when he died his apartment was filled  with antiques like a country house; there were no "Factory" products in sight.

I haven't been to the Tate 'Folk Art' show, but I did see some nice examples of 17th century British folk art, some quite good pictures, and textile representations of animals made in the Caucasus in the C19th in Cheffins in Cambridge today, for free.  The Cheffins exhibition continues until Wednesday, when, unlike the items in the Tate, they can be bought. How great is that?

When angry collectors started suing Knoedler & Company for selling dozens of multimillion-dollar forgeries, the gallery’s former president, Ann Freedman, insisted that she and her colleagues had had no reason to think that any of the paintings were counterfeit.

“If Ann Freedman had any questions about these works, she and her husband would not have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in them,” her lawyer, Nicholas A. Gravante Jr., said of the paintings attributed to modern masters like Robert Motherwell, Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock.

Now, newly released documents in a continuing civil case show that at least one of the works bought in 2000 by Ms. Freedman herself contained a prominent clue that something was awry. The artist’s signature was spelled incorrectly: Pollok instead of Pollock.

The purchaser of a fake is deceived, and has every right to feel aggrieved; and the claim that the dealer has no notice of the forgery seems tenuous at best, one would think that Freedman should be able to correctly spell the artist's name.  That said, the misspelling of Pollock's name was also a clue for any prospective purchaser acting prudently and in the protection of their own interest.  At the least it should prompt a question to the seller.

Sandy Nairne is to step down as head of the National Portrait Gallery in February after more than a decade at the helm.

The director, who has been hailed for boosting visitor numbers by 40 per cent, “wonderful” exhibitions and acquiring acclaimed work, announced today he was to leave in order to pursue his writing and advisory work.

“It has been a great privilege to lead such a special institution as the National Portrait Gallery, and I am very proud of what we have achieved over the past decade,” he said, adding that the gallery was “in very good shape and will go from strength to strength”.

Sir William Proby, chairman of the trustees, said Mr Nairne “has done a tremendous job and will be greatly missed. He has significantly increased visitor numbers, put on some wonderful exhibitions… and overseen many major commissions and acquisitions.”

Mr Nairne, who had been director of programmes at Tate, was appointed NPG director in November 2002, following the departure of Charles Saumarez Smith. At the time attendance annual figures were 1.4m; they have since risen past 2m.

Before the Tate, Mr Nairne had worked at the Arts Council of Great Britain, the Institute of Contemporary Arts and the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford.

Among the recent acclaimed exhibitions at the NPG under Nairne’s stewardship were Lucian Freud Portraits and the current Bailey’s Stardust exhibition of the photography of David Bailey.

During his tenure, the director oversaw the acquisition of the Van Dyck self-portrait earlier this year as well as the acquisition of a John Donne Portrait and Mark Quinn’s Self. He also commissioned portraits of Dame Judi Dench, Simon Weston and David Beckham.

In one of his last acts as director of the museum before he resigned last October, David Franklin agreed to lend the Caravaggio and other works in exchange for an exhibition of Sicilian antiquities.

Cultural authorities from the island region had previously agreed to send the exhibition to Cleveland after its run at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. The two institutions co-organized the show.

Nevertheless, after an election and a change of government in Sicily, a new group of authorities threatened to cancel the show's run in Cleveland unless the museum paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in loan fees imposed at the last minute.

The Sicilians withdrew the demand after Franklin offered to lend the Caravaggio, which he called "a bargaining chip," along with other works.

Franklin and the Cleveland museum earned praise for not knuckling under to the financial demand, which could have set a dangerous precedent for other museums. At the same time, the arrangement raised questions about whether the painting is too delicate to make the trip to Sicily.

The Cleveland museum now says the deal has not been finalized. Its leaders say that Sicily has not yet responded to requests for information about climate control and security in venues where the Cleveland artworks would be shown.

On 22 January 2014, the Supreme Court delivered a judgment at odds with the previous line of cases.

The dispute concerned a painting attributed to French Cubist painter Jean Metzinger known as La Maison Blanche [above].  Its owner, Laurent Alexandre, sought a certificate of authenticity from Bozena Nikiel, the author of the artist’s forthcoming catalogue raisonné.  Nikiel disputed its authenticity.  Alexandre took Nikiel to court, and the court-appointed expert concluded that the painting was an original work by Metzinger.  Nikiel was ordered not only to include the work in her catalogue raisonné, but to pay Alexandre damages in the sum of €21,000.  On appeal in 2012, the Court increased the amount payable in damages to €30,000, unless she granted Alexandre a certificate of authenticity within a month of the decision.

Refusing to let go, Nikiel appealed the decision to the French Supreme Court.  She fiercely contested the credentials of the court-appointed expert.  She argued that his research should have led him to consider the authenticity of the work as “doubtful”.  Nikiel’s insistence on an indisputable authenticity finding sheds light on the differing standards of proof applied by the courts and the art market when considering the authenticity of an artwork.  On the one hand, the standard of proof applied by the courts is the “balance of probability”.  By contrast, the market applies a higher standard.  If doubts are cast over the authorship of an artwork, it is generally un‑saleable (as a work by the artist).

In the end, the Supreme Court found for Nikiel.  It overturned the decision of the Court of Appeal by recognising that Nikiel’s refusal to authenticate the painting was as a result of her “intimate conviction”.  By finding her liable in damages because she held the opinion she did, the Court of Appeal had breached her right to freedom of expression under the European Convention of Human Rights.

The decision is striking as it is the first time that France’s highest court has ruled that the expert’s freedom of expression is an absolute right, trumping other obligations.  It contradicts earlier decisions on authenticity (many of which were decided by the Supreme Court itself) that the freedom of expression must be qualified by an imperative requirement to “objectively” record the full body of an artist’s works.  In a departure from earlier decisions, the Supreme Court declined to engage in a balancing exercise of the differing expert opinions, leaving it to the market to follow its course.

Twelve old master paintings worth an estimated €4 million ($5.5 million) have been returned to the Museo Nazionale San Matteo di Pisa (National Museum of San Matteo, Pisa), according to the AGI. The works were missing from the museum for over ten years. Yet, for most of the time, no one even knew to look for them.

Dario Matteoni, the museum’s new director, spearheaded an investigation into the museum’s inventory last year. The museum then discovered that 12 paintings, which had been sent to a restorer in the city of Lucca in 2002 never returned. That restorer is reported to have been paid approximately €31,000 for his work on a total of 17 canvases for the museum.

Matteoni filed a lawsuit last December, demanding the paintings’ return. That suit lead to an investigation by the cultural heritage department of Italy’s national police force, which began in January 2014. They have since recovered ten of the works. The restorer had sold six of the paintings on to foreign dealers from whom they were confiscated.

The restorer, himself, turned over the remaining four canvases. Due to Italy’s 10 year statute of limitations on stolen property, he cannot be criminally prosecuted for keeping the paintings.

The work was tentatively attributed to Vermeer after it appeared in an exhibition at New York's Metropolitan Museum in 1969, and the authorship was reinforced in 1986, when leading Vermeer scholar Arthur Wheelock argued it was authentic.

But other experts remained skeptical. The painting was not included in a Young Vermeer exhibition in The Hague in 2010, but was displayed in a 2012 show of the artist's work in Rome.

Christie's said Friday it was declaring the work a Vermeer after scientists at Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum and Free University carried out isotope analysis on its lead white — a coveted but toxic type of paint made with lead and vinegar.

"They're able to basically DNA-test lead white," said Henry Pettifer, Christie's head of Old Master paintings.

The tests found that the lead white was a precise match for that used in another early Vermeer, Diana and her Companions — "So precise as to suggest that the same batch of paint could have been used," Pettifer said.

He said the research, along with analysis of the date and signature on the painting, amounted to "a compelling endorsement" of Vermeer's authorship.

I’ve known the picture for some time, it was (I believe) first proposed by Stanley Spencer, a dealer of OMP in NYC, and has been the subject of considerable debate. Less well known is the work by the Florentine Ficherelli on which the painting can be said to owe no small debt

This painting it has been argued never left Italy, and it has been proposed that Lead White pigment travels much more easily than either artists or paintings, and that possibly the paint itself was made in batches and sold to various artists. (At best this so-called Vermeer can only be described as juvenilia).

But your last few posts beg an intriguing point. Somewhere on the spectrum is a gifted Scholar with a “golden eye”, who through connoisseurship honed by decades of study, can identify an autograph work by a master others have overlooked. But on one extreme is a museum curator convinced that Western White, Male hegemony has corrupted art history and the art “experience”, and shows work without identification, context, or labels. On another extreme, a technologist is advancing an attribution offering laboratory analysis for evidence, perhaps even in the face of less than convincing visual similarities. I guess I want to ask, “can the center hold”?

I am not at all convinced by tests on lead white paint being used to support an attribution to any particular artist.

I am a painter using lead white (there is no modern substitute for lead for impasto work) from a large tube (circa 1927) inherited from my painter grandmother who may well have used the same colour man as her teacher Sickert for buying her paints.

If this was the case, then using the same tests applied to the Vermeers it should be possible to prove that my one Sickert, all my own paintings and my grandmother's  paintings are by the same painter on the basis that the lead white used was from the same 'batch' of paint with the same 'DNA'. 

One also thinks of the attribution difficulties caused by Rembrandt and his pupils sharing the same models, batches of paper and boards and presumably batches of paint including lead white. Apprentices learned to mix paint as an important and responsible part of their basic training. Consistency between batches, resulting from following exact formulae would have been a basic requirement, especially considering the cost of some of the ingredients. Different studios and individual artists would often follow the same recipes. ( See Daniel V. Thomson 'The materials and techniques of medieval painting'. Dover 1956). 

Clever fakers can also easily buy C.19 boxes of watercolours and antique paper which would pass all scientific tests for say a  mid nineteenth century water colour by any number of different artists. This wouldn't help the faker to make a convincing Cotman which would pass any connoisseurship test.

Scientific tests on the constituents of any paint can only prove that that that paint is consistent with paints of a particular, quite broad period. They cannot indicate when a painting was made, without other types of additional evidence, or by whom the paint was used. So the correct attribution of the 'earliest Vermeer' will always be a matter for debate and opinion rather than scientific certainty.