Fri - July 6, 2007

Sold for £18.5m, a Raphael portrait that once cost $325

By Emily Dugan

A rare portrait by Raphael that had not been seen by the public for more than 40 years sold for £18.5m at Christie's last night. It was the largest sum ever paid at auction for a work by the Renaissance painter.

The work, an oil portrait of the Florentine ruler Lorenzo de' Medici which has been described as "the most important Renaissance portrait to be offered at auction for a generation", had been predicted to fetch between £10m and £15m.

But its recent history has been far from illustrious. Sold to the American collector Ira Spanierman for just $325 in 1968, the painting ­ then in poor condition ­ was regarded with scepticism by many, who doubted that it was the work of the Italian master.

Three years later, art historians confirmed that the work was indeed by Raffaello Sanzio, popularly known as Raphael, leaving Mr Spanierman sitting on a potential gold mine.

Full article at independent.co.uk >>>

Posted at 12:51 PM    

Wed - February 21, 2007

Mona Lisa is Believed To Be Buried at Convent

By Maria Sanminiatelli

It may be that the world's most famously enigmatic woman has shed some of her mystery.

An amateur historian believes he has found the final resting place of the Florentine Renaissance woman who inspired Leonardo da Vinci's most renowned painting: the Mona Lisa.

Giuseppe Pallanti, a high school economics teacher from Florence who has written a book about the Mona Lisa, has unearthed a death certificate that shows the woman believed by some to have inspired the artist, Lisa Gherardini, died on July 15, 1542, in Florence and is buried in a convent in the center of the Tuscan city.

"Maybe Leonardo chose a woman like many others. She was not a noblewoman, or a princess. She was a family woman," Pallanti said Friday.

Full article at firstcostnews.com >>>

Posted at 10:28 PM    

Thu - December 7, 2006

Record Price For Work By Rubens At Swedish Auction

Art and auction experts marvelled Wednesday after a missing work by 17th century Flemish master Peter Paul Rubens fetched a record-price at a Swedish auction house.

The bidding price was only 15,000 kronor (2,200 dollars) for the scene of the Roman hunting goddess Diana and a group on horseback that the auction house catalogue said was likely painted by a student of Rubens.

Swedish art expert Henry Avar thought otherwise when he spotted the oil painting for sale in Uppsala, north of Stockholm.

Full article at playfuls.com >>>

Uppsala auktionskammare >>>

Posted at 03:09 PM    

Tue - December 5, 2006

Tue - November 14, 2006

Lost Angelico paintings turn up in U.K.

Two paintings by Renaissance artist Fra Angelico that were missing since the Napoleonic era have been found hanging in an Oxford, England, house.

The works belonged to an elderly Oxford woman who died earlier this year and were expected to be worth a combined 1 million pounds ($1.9 million) at auction, The Telegraph said Monday.

The paintings of Dominican saints were part of an eight-panel set that had been commissioned by Italy's famed Medici family for the altar at the Church and Convent of San Marco in Florence in the 1430s.

Full article at washingtontimes.com >>>

Posted at 04:32 PM    

Mon - September 4, 2006

Hans Memling's 15th Century Painting The Annunciation

By Heather Wood

Hans Memling's The Annunciation is an incredible composition which can be found displayed in The Robert Lehman Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The museum label states that Memling's purpose was to cloak religious imagery in the pictorial language of everyday life while paying close attention to naturalistic detail. 

The icons sprinkled throughout the work are plentiful and contain various religious connotations. Memling's work is of the highest technical quality and he uses compositional devices, such as symbolism and use of color, that are common within fifteenth century Flemish art.

One of the first noticeable elements of the composition is the way that the tiles on the floor draw you into the action of the piece. Memling uses a grid pattern with uniformed geometric shapes. Memling creates the floor with the rigid use of compositional lines. The floor conceptualizes space in the piece by providing the viewer with the idea of a three dimensional setting. There is also a definitive balance in the composition. The four figures complement each other.

Full article at associatedcontent.com >>>

Posted at 01:08 PM    

Mon - August 14, 2006

Locarno gets its own da Vinci mystery

The great Italian artist, Leonardo da Vinci, may have helped design the Visconti Castle in the southern Swiss town of Locarno, say experts.

Research by Italian historian Marino Viganò has convinced Carlo Pedretti, director of the Los Angeles-based Armand Hammer Center for Leonardo Studies, that da Vinci created the castle's bastion.
 
"There is a 95 per cent probability that the ravelin [a defensive outwork, or bastion] of Locarno is a brainchild of Leonardo," Pedretti told a news conference in Locarno, in the Italian-speaking canton of Ticino, earlier this month.

Pedretti is convinced that a document exists proving the Renaissance genius, who was also a scientist, inventor and architect, was involved.

"I'm absolutely sure that we will find a slip of paper, small though it may be, which will be written evidence of the presence of Leonardo in Locarno. This in turn will allow us to prove that he designed the Visconti Castle."

His comments came more than four years after Viganò began his painstaking investigations and analysis of the remains of the bastion which was built in the early 16th century.

Pedretti said it had only recently been proven that da Vinci had visited the court of the French king, Louis XII, in 1507 – the year the Visconti castle, which was then part of the French empire, was built.

Full article at swissinfo.com >>>

Posted at 11:26 AM    

Tue - March 28, 2006

Acquiring an impeccable Mannerist

When David Franklin, chief curator at the National Gallery, went to see the painting that would become one of the most important acquisitions in the gallery's 126-year history, he expected to be unimpressed.

As an expert in Italian Renaissance art, he'd been asked to examine a piece that had surfaced after a century of ownership by French aristocrats. The London dealer believed that Francesco Salviati, a 16th-century artist who left behind just 30 paintings, had created the work, but he needed confirmation from a reputable scholar before he could sell the painting on the lucrative Old Master art market.

Franklin had other business in London, so he agreed to visit Hazlitt, Gooden & Fox to look at the painting. He thought it would be like the hundreds of others he examines each year, the vast majority of which are of no interest to the gallery.

Full article at canada.com >>>

Posted at 03:50 PM    

Thu - January 26, 2006

Tue - September 13, 2005