17 July 2006 | Renaissance
Why did Cellini reveal so many trade secrets? To build up his reputation for authority and expertise, according to a new book. Cellini’s treatises on goldsmithing and sculpture are out in a new German edition with editing and commentary by Erhard Brepohl, himself a goldsmithing master. His intimate knowledge of the field pays off (writes [...]
10 July 2006 | Renaissance
In the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Jutta Held discusses Titian’s Flaying of Marsyas, in particular the tension between its iconography and its pictorial syntax. She reevaluates Jaromir Neumann’s Panofskian 1962 monograph on the picture, which posited a neo-Platonic scheme of three-layered meaning (allegory of art, transformation and salvation of the soul), noting that the book also [...]
23 June 2006 | Renaissance
From the Times of London: “A mystery that has tantalised art scholars for centuries moved closer to resolution today when part of a scandalous Renaissance fresco came to light after almost 400 years. The fresco, painted by the early Renaissance artist Pinturicchio (1454-1513) for the Borgia apartments in the Vatican, showed the Borgia Pope Alexander [...]
23 June 2006 | Renaissance
From the Wall Street Journal: “Santa Maria delle Grazie, already home to Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘The Last Supper,’ may provide a second reason to visit if a recently discovered fragment of a fresco in an infrequently visited room turns out to be another work by the Renaissance master. The as-yet unnamed fragment, a meter wide [...]
26 May 2006 | Museums, Renaissance
Perspective, sure, but other interests also occupied the early Quattrocento. The exhibition “Gentile da Fabriano and the Other Renaissance,” on view in Fabriano through July, explores Gentile’s courtly elegance, his luxurious use of gold and other materials, his portrait-physiognomical sensitivity, and his expert treatment of atmosphere. Works by other painters from the Marches provide context. [...]
24 May 2006 | Islamic, Renaissance
The “Bellini and the East” exhibition, which examines artistic exchange between Venice and the Ottomans, is getting a lot of attention at the National Gallery in London. (It was recently at the Gardner Museum in Boston; catalog by Yale UP.) Most critics try to draw a lesson for today’s relations between Islam and the West. [...]
18 May 2006 | Renaissance
In a Wall Street Journal article titled “An Art History Mystery Solved?”, Francis P. De Stefano writes: “No great work of art has mystified art historians and critics more than Giorgione’s ‘La Tempesta’ … It is only the depiction of the man and the woman that has deterred experts from recognizing this painting as the [...]
15 May 2006 | Renaissance
Tom Henry and Francesco Federico Mancini tackled the controversial topic of Raphael’s early career for an exhibition in Città di Castello. Mancini discusses the show in a lengthy interview in La Repubblica.
24 April 2006 | Books, Renaissance
There’s no consensus yet on whether the original German version of Frank Zöllner’s Botticelli book is as dry as the English translation seems to be. In reviewer Martin Warnke’s comparison with Pater (“What is the peculiar sensation, what is the peculiar quality of pleasure, which [Botticelli's] work has the property of exciting in us, and [...]
13 April 2006 | Renaissance
According to ANSA, “A huge fresco of the Last Supper has been found in an old convent in Siena. The fresco covers some 60 square metres of a wall in the refectory of the Santa Marta convent. It was discovered under thick plaster during restoration work on the building. The face and bust of Christ [...]
6 April 2006 | Journals, Renaissance
In the latest issue of The Burlington Magazine, a controversial drawing is attributed to Holbein on the basis of new technical examination, while another article argues that certain Figino drawings offer us a secondhand glimpse of lost Leonardo anatomy studies.
5 April 2006 | Books, Renaissance
In his new Michelangelo biography, expert restorator Antonio Forcellino reports a couple of modestly sensational discoveries — for instance, that the marble flame held by the Caritas figure on Pope Julius II’s grave would have been understood by the artist’s reform-minded circle as a symbol of salvation through faith — but its strength lies in [...]
30 March 2006 | Renaissance
Leonardo is much in the news, and not just because journalists have boundless enthusiasm for Dan Brown articles. “Art officials in Florence, Italy, have resumed the search for a fresco by Leonardo da Vinci believed to be hidden in a Palazzo Vecchio wall. The fresco called Battle of Anghiari is described as the Holy Grail [...]
24 March 2006 | Museums, Renaissance
A new Antonello da Messina exhibition is “offering experts a unique opportunity to view most of his oeuvre together. Of the 45 surviving masterpieces attributed to Antonello da Messina, 37 of them are on show in the Scuderie del Quirinale … Curated by art historian Martin Lucco, it is the first exhibition devoted entirely to [...]
21 March 2006 | Renaissance
Aaron De Groft thinks that the portrait of the Duke of Mantua once attributed to Titian, de-attributed in 1938 by August Mayer, should once again be ascribed to him. “Mayer wrote … that the Duke of Mantua died only 11 days after he wrote the letter proposing to have Titian paint his portrait. The timing [...]
17 March 2006 | Renaissance
Blogger “Bild Wissenschaftler” notes that “According to the web page of the journal Art History, “Bernini’s Light” by Frank Fehrenbach was its most accessed article online in 2005. This is the only easily accessible online work by Fehrenbach (PDF CV), who was hired as Harvard’s senior Italian Renaissance scholar last year (Gazette; Crimson).”
15 March 2006 | Renaissance
Westmont College professor Lisa DeBoer “enjoy[ed]” the book, she writes in an online essay for Sony Pictures (makers of the film version) but “I for one am willing to stake my reputation as an art historian, as a Christian, and as a feminist on the traditional, accepted reading of Leonardo’s Last Supper.”
10 March 2006 | Renaissance
Robert Schoen “is convinced Michelangelo created the Marcialla fresco after his return from Bologna in December 1495, inspired by Giotto’s Deposition fresco in the Scrovegni Chapel.” He “has pored through Michelangelo studies and found corroborating views expressed by a well-known Italian cultural critic, Roberto Weiss, in 1949.” Lynn Catterson finds it “extremely interesting.”
7 March 2006 | Renaissance
“Mona Lisa probably wasn’t a man, and it’s even more unlikely that the famous artist who painted the famous painting used himself as the model. So conclude University of Illinois researchers, who created a buzz last year when their facial-recognition software was used to analyze the Mona Lisa’s enigmatic smile. (Conclusion: The model was happy, [...]
6 March 2006 | Renaissance
The “save the villa” petition has attracted many signatories, including “Annamaria Petrioli Tofani, former director of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence; Gerhard Wolf, director of the Kunsthistoriches Institut in Florenz, Max Planck Institut, Florence … Charles Hope, director of the Warburg Institute, London; and Elizabeth Cropper, dean of the Center for Advanced Study in the [...]
