Exhibitions

Information about exhibitions (mostre)

Extraordinary artworks on exhibition, but a lost opportunity as well

Extraordinary artworks on exhibition, but a lost opportunity as well

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An astonishing sixteenth century Florentine school painting exhibition is currently on display at Palazzo Strozzi in Florence. Some of the masterpieces of Western art have been gathered for this occasion, including the massive altarpieces “Deposition from the cross” of Volterra (1521) by Rosso Fiorentino and “Deposition of Santa Felicita” (1525-1528) by Pontormo. Also on display e.g. the sculpture “River God” (1526-1527) by Michelangelo, in raw earth or, better said, in clay, earth, sand, vegetable and animal fibres, casein, on an iron wire core. In short, a sort of “bozzetto”, where only the extraordinary hand of the master can transform such down-to-earth materials in such noble art.
The exhibition celebrates a unique and difficult season, marked on one hand by the legacy of the masters, with whom it was impossible to compete, and, on the other hand, by the conclusions of the Council of Trento, imposing new prescriptions on the layout of churches, namely forbidding barriers to divide church members from laymen, and causing to re-arrange the lateral chapels. For them new and grandiose altarpieces were commissioned. The painting subjects had to be sacred episodes easy to understand and characters were to wear modern dresses, for the believers to more easily identify themselves with the stories.
New languages and new techniques emerged too. However, unfortunately, they have not been presented at the exhibition. The diagnostic surveys mentioned are mostly dated and are not displayed. Art-Test, instead, herewith offers you a detail of the reflectography, made on another occasion, of the altarpiece, also present at the exhibition, “Lamentation on Dead Christ” by Pietro Candido (Pieter de Witte, Bruges 1548 – Munich 1628), ante 1586, oil on table, cm 298.5 x 183. Volterra, Pinacoteca and Civic Museum. A splendid and visionary work of an artist born in Flanders, formed in Florence, active in Volterra, and finally famous in Munich at the service of the Duke of Bavaria. Very little underdrawing, very much reworking. Remarkable, isn’it?
If you are interested in the underdrawing of the whole painting, or any other reflectographic investigation we performed, do not hesitate to contact us to check availability and cost.

Elegance from the East: New Insights from Old Porcelain

Elegance from the East: New Insights from Old Porcelain

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Art and Science are close in many ways. “Elegance from the East, insights from old porcelain” (Indianapolis Museum of Art, till 22nd October)  explores the popularity and variety of Chinese porcelain objects made for export to Western consumers in the 17th and 18th centuries. Chinese artists customized their traditional forms and decoration for European and American commercial tastes. This exhibition reveals the effects of these efforts to translate consumer demand from half a world away.

Like “Chemistry of Color” and “What Lies Beneath”, also on view, this exhibition relates science to art. Guest curator Shirley M. Mueller, MD, connects the past to the present and illustrates, through neuropsychological insights, the similarity of human feeling and motivation across time.

http://www.imamuseum.org/exhibition/elegance-east-new-insights-old-porcelain

Goya at Pontedera before taking the flight to the Hermitage!

Goya at Pontedera before taking the flight to the Hermitage!

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From June 15th  to August 10th, the PALP (Palazzo Pretorio di Pontedera) will host the exhibition “Goya and Guido Reni. Art Treasures at the Palp”. Two intense self-portraits of Goya, one of 1771 and the other of 1782 will be shown to the public after years of specialist study, accompanied by the diagnostic campaign conducted by Art-Test. The scientific data will be given great relevance and the results will be exposed to the audience who will so be invited to participate in the discovery of these intriguing works of art.
These works, after this Tuscan preview, will be exhibited, together with other paintings of the Spanish genius, in 2018 in St. Petersburg at the Hermitage Museum. In Pontedera, the two portraits will also be joined by a painting by Guido Reni, “Susanna and the Oldies”, that belongs to the artist’s mature age.
The exhibition is promoted by the Pontedera Culture Foundation
(http://www.pontederaperlacultura.it/la-fondazione/ or https://www.facebook.com/PontederaperlaCultura/) and the municipality of Pontedera.

An opportunity not to let go!

https://www.facebook.com/PontederaperlaCultura/?fref=ts

Art is Science 2016

Art is Science 2016

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As usual by this time of the year, AIAr organizes a new edition of “Scienza e’ Arte”. And Art-Test takes part in one of the events. This time we will be in Paestum!
The museum of the Archaeological Park hosted a particularly interesting exhibition entitled “Possession”. During the exhibition, AiAr, with its institutional partners and the companies in its network (among which Art-Test), has promoted a diagnostic campaign on numerous finds.
Next 2nd December, in Paestum, at the Museum of the Archaeological Park, a workshop will be held on the topic of possess, robbery and antique art, and the assessments which are possible via archaeometric techniques:  Possessione. Trafugamenti e falsi di antichità a Paestum. Le indagini archeometriche.
Art-Test will present, together with the Florentine colleagues of ICVBC-CNR, the scientific data emerging from the analysis of a tomb that was stolen from the Archaeological Park and returned to the museum a few years ago, following a police action in switzerland
.Join us and discover beautiful and hidden treasures!

http://www.museopaestum.beniculturali.it/possessione-trafugamenti-e-falsi-di-antichita-a-paestum/

http://www.associazioneaiar.com/wp/as/?page_id=438

La scapigliata Leonardo

Analysing the Scapigliata by Leonardo

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La scapigliata Leonardo

The wonderful “Female Head” of Leonardo, also known as “Scapigliata” or “Lady of disheveled hair” preserved at the National Gallery of Parma,  represented for Leonardo da Vinci a sort of manifesto of his status of excellent painter and, at the same time, a sort of a safe-conduct for his habit of not finishing his paintings, according to the latest research of Carmen Bambach, published on the occasion of the extremely intersting exhibition “Unfinished” at the MET of New York.  In fact, it would seem that Leonardo wanted to compare himself with Apelles of Kos, the legendary ancient Greek painter. In a book that Leonardo is known to have owned, Pliny wrote that the Apelles had worked on a Venus without being able to bring it to completion, remaining however, despite this “failure”, the greatest painter ever existed, and rather “inventing” the “unfinished” genre.

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Art-Test has performed investigations on the Scapigliata at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MET) of New York, to evaluate its conservation status before its transfer to Paris, for the exhibition “Leonardo in France – The Master and his Pupils 500 years after crossing the Alps. 1516-2016”,  open at the Italian Embassy till November 20, 2016.

Mostra Parigi

Art-Test has also performed analysis on two other of the most important paintings on display in Paris:  the “Saint John” of Salaì of the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana of Milan and the “Salvator Mundi” (or “Head of Christ”) also currently generally attributed to his favorite assistant and friend Salaì but by other eminent scholars reputed of being by the hand of Leonardo himself.

The reflectographies of these great artworks, together with many other diagnostic images are published with considerable size and quality in the catalogue of the exhibition.

Scapigliata

Dolci: sweet name, icy brush

Dolci: sweet name, icy brush

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Carlo Dolci a patient technique

Carlo Dolci, said Carlino, a beloved and acclaimed artist by the critics of his time, considered the greatest Florentine painter of the seventeenth century, contended by European nobility (although he almost never left the Tuscan territory), is now back in the spotlight thanks to the monographic exhibition running until November 15 at the Galleria Palatina of Palazzo Pitti in Florence. The exhibition brings together works from numerous European museums: the British Museum in London, the Musée du Louvre in Paris, the Staatliche Museen in Berlin, the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, the Cleveland Museum of Art in Cleveland, the Alte Pinakothek of Monaco Bavaria, the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, theAshmolean Museum in Oxford, the Burghley House in Stamford, the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Brest, the Thyssen Bornemisza Museum in Madrid and the British Royal Collection, reflecting the international scope of his works.

Interior of the exhibition ” Io, Carlo Dolci “, Galleria Palatina, Palazzo Pitti, Florence

The exhibition brings together nearly 100 paintings, of which seventy of Dolci, and the remainings by his contemporaries, to facilitate comparisons and show connections, in a sort of compendium of his descriptive style, rigorous and meticulously attentive to detail, smooth, icy but sensual, which has been called “hyperrealist” before its time. His almost obsessive rendering of details is exemplary: from the soft and almost palpable fabrics of the robes, to the splendid jewels, which, quoting the biographer Filippo Baldinucci, were “imitated in such a gorgeous (and realistic) fashion, that, as much as one touched and retouched the canvas to make sure they were painted, the eye was left in doubt.”
This exhibition has been a precious opportunity to kick off a major campaign of restoration and overhaul of 33 works of the Master, also important for the study of the unique painting technique used, which involved innovative wits to reach the coveted mimesis. Moreover, radiographic analyses have allowed to add completely unexpected insights to the knowledge also of well-known paintings of Dolci’s catalogue, such as in the case of the diagnostic tests on the “Madonna with Child” of the Palatine Gallery (performed by Art-Test, not yet published), which revealed substantial changes to the composition.

“Madonna with the Child”, Carlo Dolci, Galleria Palatina, Palazzo Pitti, Florence

When technique matters: extraordinary effects, extraordinary losses.

When technique matters: extraordinary effects, extraordinary losses.

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Piero di Cosimo

On show this summer in Florence the monographic exhibition “Piero di Cosimo eccentric painter between Renaissance and Mannerism” (Uffizi, until 27/9), following the one recently concluded at National Gallery of Art in Washington.
Lent to Washington and now worth a visit in Florence, among others the extraordinary “Liberation of Andromeda“, as according to Vasari: “Piero never made a lovelier or more highly finished picture than this one“, (diagnostics by Art-Test, not yet published)

In the Florentine exhibition, paintings and drawings by Piero relate with works by artists such as Filippino Lippi, Fra Bartolomeo and Lorenzo di Credi, to highlight how the pupil di Cosimo stands out as an original painter, whose style was said to be more Flemish (or Venetian), rather than Florentine, as his paintings were more relying on color values ​​rather than on the preparatory drawing. But is this what emerges from the investigation?

A solitary painter, he was however greatly demanded by the most prominent families of Florence (including Strozzi, Capponi, Vespucci). He was an experimenter, one of the firsts, along with Leonardo, adopting the oil painting technique. The studies conducted byE. Walmsley reveal, in fact, how Piero was also eccentric in the way he was making use of his tools, with overlapping and peculiar brushstrokes and sometimes also of fingertips. It was in fact just uncovering the use of such a particular way of working that helped to solve several cases of dubious attributions.

Attempting new ways, away from the established traditional ones, however, could also be the cause of the difficult state of conservation faced by several of his works.

For example, the great altarpiece “Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine and Saints“, alongside the high quality of the original painting, revealed also significant losses under the multiple layers of repainting (diagnostic analyses by Art-Test, not yet published). This masterpiece was unexpectedly found, resurfacing in the antiquarian market, in a private collection. On special loan for the exhibition, you can now admire it during the challenging phases of restoration. Such a unique opportunity should also not be missed!

The top part of the altarpiece was missing, but a befitting fragment displaying two angels distributing incense and jointly carrying a crown, listed as “style of Piero di Cosimo” was identified at the National Gallery in Edinburgh. When it came to Florence to undergo the necessary conservation treatments, the examinations revealed on the altarpiece, concealed by overpainting and restoration, the feet of the angels of the top. The testing (performed by Art-Test, still to be published) left no doubt! The repainting has been removed and the two parts are now joined for the display. So the angels got their feet again, but only temporarily, since after the exhibition they will be separated by over 1700 km again!

“Angels holding a crown “, before restoration, Piero di Cosimo, National Gallery of Edinburgh

 

“Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine”, before restoration, Piero di Cosimo, private collection; currently on display at the Florentine exhibition in the course of the conservation treatment

Manudi Cosimo_ritagliata e ritorta

Piero di Cosimo in America!

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For the first time the Uffizi Gallery in Florence is co-organizer of an exhibition along with another museum; we are referring to the first major retrospective of Piero di Cosimo, that the National Gallery of Art in Washington is hosting from February 1st to May 3rd, 2015: “Piero di Cosimo: The Poetry of Painting in Renaissance Florence”. There has been just one precedent case in the United States: the exhibition in New York, in 1938, of seven works at the Schaeffer Gallery, a small but important contribution to the dissemination of works of the great masters in museums that were among its clients.

Forty-four artworks are arranged along the six galleries of the West Building: altarpieces, private devotional pictures and portraits. The style of the Master distinguished by an “abstract and uneven” ingenuity, as claimed by Vasari in “Le Vite”, is traced according to the changeability that characterized him: pagan themes, divine themes, mythological and allegorical scenes. The exhibition includes paintings from Italian churches and the masterpiece of the Museo degli Innocenti “Madonna and Child Enthroned with the Saints Elizabeth of Hungary, Catherine of Alexandria, Peter and John the Evangelist with angels.”

Art-Test had the pleasure to perform diagnostic campaigns of three works by Piero di Cosimo including one of the paintings on display in Washington, the famous “Liberation of Andromeda” (about 1510-1513), chosen as the cover image of the exhibition. This work is a symbol of the imagination of the Master who expressed himself more in the subjects than the techniques, such as the sea monster pictured here, which seems to come from a bizarre bestiary. We cannot give any anticipation about the results of the analysis because they are confidential until published, but we will update you as soon as possible!

Soon you will be able to visit the exhibition in Florence, albeit in a different form. It will be the Uffizi Gallery hosting it from June 23 to September 27. Save the date!

Manudi Cosimo_ritagliata e ritorta

An image of Art-Test at work during the acquisitions on the painting by Piero di Cosimo in the laboratories of the Uffizi in Florence

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Ars Narrandi in Europe’s Gothic Age, Siena and Art-Test at the BOZAR in Bruxelles

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More than 800 people took part to the inauguration of the exhibition “Painting from Siena: Ars Narrandi in Europe’s Gothic Age”, last September 9th at the Palais de Beaux-Arts (BOZAR) in Brussels.
Also the President of the European Commission, Jose’ Manuel Barroso, joined the event, (and in his speech mentioned his love for Siena), together with the Italian Minister for Environment, Galletti, the Italian Ambassador in Belgium, Bastinelli, and the host, the BOZAR director Dujardin, welcoming the exposition and its curators: the Superintendent of Siena and Grosseto, Scalini, and the director of the Sienese Pinacoteca, Guiducci.
Art-Test produced a slide presentation describing some of the results of the analyses on about 50 of the paintings currently on show, which is not displayed within the exhibition. We are happy to hear that is was well received both by the public and the scholars.
The next 18th January a symposium, co-organized by BOZAR and UCL, on “Byzantium and the Flemish Art, Contact and Influence” will be held on the occasion of the exhibition. Both dr. Scalini, for MIUR, and dr. ing. Anna Pelagotti, for Art-Test will give a talk, focusing on the findings possible with the information available within the database.
To know more about Bozar: https://www.bozar.be/activity.php?id=14090&selectiondate=2014-11-06

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The Superintender Scalini and the President of the European Commission at the opening.

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