Archive for the ‘News’ Category

28
Jul

Carracci’s celebrated ceiling to be cleaned

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Annibale Carracci’s ceiling frescoes in the Palazzo Farnese are considered by many to be one of the most influential Renaissance commissions in Rome. When the Bolognese artist’s love-themed cycle was unveiled in 1600 it was hailed as a masterpiece. Carracci’s mix of northern Italian naturalism and Roman idealism laid the foundation for Baroque art. Now, thanks to the combined efforts of the World Monuments Fund, the French Embassy in Italy (which occupies the palace along with the Ecole Française de Rome) and the Paris-based Fondation de l’Orangerie pour la Philan­thropie Individuelle, around €1m has been allocated for the restoration of the “Carracci Gallery” frescoes. Work is expected to begin this year.

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Restaurierung der Bildtafeln zur Ausstellung: Hans Holbein d.Ä.: Die Graue Passion in ihrer Zeit, 1494-1500, Öl auf Fichtenholz jeweils ca. 89 x 87 cm. Staatsgalerie Stuttgart.

STUTTGART.- Hans Holbein the Elder: The Grey Passion in its Time opened at the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart on 27 November as part of the Große Landesausstellung Baden-Wurttemberg is the first exhibition devoted to the artist in 45 years. At the heart of the exhibition is Holbein’s Grey Passion, a series of twelve panels painted between 1494 and 1500. The artist’s magnum opus is presented in the context of other treatments of the subject, both in painting and in print, by Holbein’s precursors and contemporaries, among them Jan van Eyck, Hans Memling, Martin Schongauer, Albrecht Dürer, Hans Baldung Grien and Matthias Grünewald.
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PARIS— With their strong tradition of state sponsorship of the arts — which dates all the way back to the centralization of political power in the person of Louis XIV — the French are not at all accustomed to relying on the individual donors who play such a crucial role in American and British cultural funding. But in its attempt to purchase Lucas Cranach the Elder‘s 1531 masterpiece “The Three Graces,” the Louvre is one million euros shy of the €4 million ($5.4 million) price tag and has created a Web site and a Facebook page to appeal to French citizens to pick up the tab, encouraging the public to “participate in the acquisition of a masterpiece.”

“The Three Graces” painting has always been in private hands, has, in fact, been owned by members of one French family since 1932, Le Parisien reports. The small work depicts three nude women — seen from the back, the front, and in profile — whose identity is not certain. The fundraising Web site asks, “Are these the three Graces, as the title indicates, or, as some specialists believe, is this an allegorical representation of Charity, Friendship, and Fidelity?” The unusual poses of the three young ladies add to the mystery: the woman in the center for instance sports an unusual flat hat, which is somewhat out of keeping with an allegorical representation, and the woman on the right clasps her raised ankle as if stretching her quadriceps.

The Louvre is eager to bring the painting into its collection, declaring on the Web site that “the work’s astonishing perfection, its extreme rarity, and its remarkable state of preservation allow it to be called a ‘national treasure,’” though it was painted not in France but in Germany. The work’s small size likely indicates that it was commissioned for a patron’s home, and Louvre experts speculate that this allowed Cranach to make the painting more provocative, for the painting emits a “disturbing eroticism,” according to the site, with the black background focusing all attention on the women’s flesh. In a video interview, Vincent Pomarède, head of the museum’s painting department, praises the artist’s extreme skill at depicting nudes, adding that laboratory testing showed that there were no preliminary studies underneath the painting, indicating that it was the work of Cranach the Elder’s hand alone.

While this kind of public fundraising by a museum is a first in France, it happens frequently in Great Britain. The Tate Gallery used publicly-raised funds to buy a Rubens drawing for £5.7 million ($10.5 million) in 2008. Even more impressively, the National Gallery of Scotland managed to raise £100 million ($156 million) to purchase two Titian paintings from the Duke of Sutherland in 2009. And back in 1994, the National Gallery of Scotland kept a different “Three Graces” in its country — this one a sculpture by Canova — using funds from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and a large donation by the late philanthropist John Paul Getty II.

The three million euros raised so far come from the Louvre’s acquisitions funds and the support of the Mazars Company. On the Louvre’s fundraising Web page, gifts as small as €20 ($27) are accepted, but individuals contributing €200 ($270) will be invited to a special viewing of the painting, while those who donate €500 ($680) will have the opportunity to preview the work before it is revealed to the general public. The museum has until January 31, 2011, to raise the necessary funds.

Cranach is known to have treated the theme of the three Graces only twice. The other painting, which dates from 1535, is in Kansas City’s Nelson-Atkins Museum. Cranach must have had his previous “Three Graces” in mind, for the women’s bodies are similarly arranged, though their gestures are more formal, and the flashy hat has disappeared.

The unearthed double limestone statue of Ahmenhotep III, one of the most powerful pharaohs, who ruled nearly 3,400 years ago, was discovered in Kom el-Hittan, the site of the temple of Amenhotep III. The temple is one of the largest in the southern temple city of Luxor. (AP Photo/Supreme Council of Antiquities.

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3
Oct

Versailles, Site of Murakami Controversy

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VERSAILLES, France— Takashi Murakami’s show at Versailles has drawn worldwide attention for its juxtaposition of the Japanese artist’s manga-influenced work with the Gallic splendor of the Old Regime French kings, but next year the Château will not give over its gleaming halls to contemporary art. Instead, the series of shows by living artists — inaugurated by Versailles president Jean-Jacques Aillagon in 2008 with a Jeff Koons exhibition — will take place in the palace’s gardens.

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1
Oct

Naked Dwarf Revealed Again in Painting

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The naked image of a dwarf who starred at the Medici court in the Florentine Renaissance, has been revealed after nearly three centuries of oblivion, Italian art experts announced last week at a press conference in Florence.

Known as the Portrait of Dwarf Morgante, the painting, a two-sided canvas which portrays a court jester, was made before 1553 by mannerist painter Agnolo di Cosimo, better known as Bronzino (1503-1572).

Long considered to be obscene, the full frontal view of the naked dwarf was painted over in the 18th century.

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PARIS— It’s certainly appropriate that French artist Mathieu Mercier won the prestigious Marcel Duchamp Prize in 2003, since he has always shown a special interest in the ground-breaking conceptual artist. Now Mercier has found a novel way to pay tribute to one of Duchamp’s most famous works, the “Boîte-en-valise,” by making it more accessible, so that it can really be enjoyed in the playful spirit in which it was created. He’s turned the work into a pop-up book, which will be published by Anabet on October 22.

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PARIS—The Russian government has officially refused to allow abstract canvases by artist Avdei Ter-Oganyan to appear in an upcoming exhibition at the Louvre, objecting in particular to a painting that they say advocates the assassination of prime minister Vladimir Putin. In response, several other Russian artists included in the show, which has been planned as part of a  diplomatic France-Russia Year, will boycott the exhibition out of solidarity with Ter-Oganyan, according to the Agence France-Presse.

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Experts say the collection of gold and silver pieces, completely reshape our understanding of the Dark Ages. The find containing almost fifteen hundred gold and silver items thought to date from the 7th or 8th century, staggering archeologists with it’s unparalleled in size and may be worth millions. It has been declared treasure by South Staffordshire meaning it belongs to the Crown. A hoard of this historical importance is a national treasure and therefore will be destined to go into a museum for the benefit of the nation.

The hoard was found on farmland using a metal detector by Terry Herbert, as he searched land belonging to a farmer friend over five days in July. The Staffordshire hoard contains about 5kg of gold and 2.5kg of silver, making it far bigger than the Sutton Hoo discovery in 1939 when 1.5kg of Anglo-Saxon gold was found near Woodbridge in Suffolk.

Scientist are saying this could alter our perceptions of Anglo-Saxon England as radically, if not more so, as the Sutton Hoo discoveries, and is seen by some to be the equivalent of finding a new Lindisfarne Gospels or Book of Kells.

The Book of Kells and Lindisfarne Gospels are intricately illuminated manuscripts of the four New Testament Gospels dating from the 9th and 8th Centuries. So little is known about the period that the artifacts have already led historians to question some of their fundamental beliefs — such as whether Christianity had been embraced by the pagan Saxons much earlier than previously thought. This is possibly evidences by a war cross potentially found at the site.

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23
Feb

Exhuming Leonardo’s Corpse???

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News that recently shakes art lovers is Exhuming Leonardo’s Corpse… Scientists hope to exhume the remains of Leonardo da Vinci so they can reconstruct his face to discover whether the Mona Lisa is a disguised self-portrait.

How do you feel about this???

I really don’t agree with this… Maybe some things should be better to let it go and  focus on something else… Feel free to comment this news… :)