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Tale of two copies and one thief (a Cardinal)

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When in 1507 the Raphael‘s Baglioni Altarpiece was placed on the altar of San Matteo in the Church of San Francesco al Prato, in Perugia, no one would ever have imagined that about 100 years later Cardinal Scipione Borghese would have craved its possession so much to commission its theft. Robbery that, following the riot of the Perugians, in a few days became a “voluntary donation” by the friars, immediately ratified by Scipione’s uncle, Pope Paul V.

At the time of the crime, in 1608 Raphael’s art, the Baglioni Altarpiece and the subject of the central altarpiece, “The Transport of Christ“, still enjoyed great fortune. Therefore, many copies had been made over the years.

Two of these are now preserved in the National Gallery of Umbria.

Although of the same size (184 × 176 cm), and equal to the original one, which is now in the collection of the Galleria Borghese in Rome, the Perugian copies were made at different times and on different media.

A copy on wood was made in 1554, when the original was still in its initial location, by Domenico Alfani, a friend of Raphael, in collaboration with his son Orazio. The panel was destined to the church of Sant’Agostino, also in Perugia.

The other copy, instead, on canvas, is attributed to Cavalier d’Arpino, and dated 1609, considering that it was commissioned by the cardinal to compensate the city for the deprivation of the original.

On both of these two copies, Art-Test Firenze performed with the Vis-IR scanner Infrared Reflectography on the entire surface. Thanks to the particular flexibility of the instrumentation, and to excellent coordination with the restorers and art historians of the National Gallery of Umbria, we were able to complete the works in just two consecutive days.

The reflectographic campaign, returning the image of the preparatory drawing, will be used by scholars to study the theme of “copies”, evaluating the methods of execution, through similarities and differences between them and with the original, that was also recently investigated and restored. All of this was to be on display at the exhibition, currently canceled for the closing period due to COVID19, entitled “The fortune of Raphael’s Pala Baglioni through its copies”. 

We hope it will be rescheduled soon!

(Emanuela Massa)

fakeforreal

A scientific approach is always crucial. Even museums know it!

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The case of the Ludwig Museum in Cologne is very topical, with the exhibition “Russian Avant-garde at the Ludwig Museum: original and fake. Questions, research, explanations“, which sees works certified as authentic (for example by Kazimir Malevich and Natalia Goncharova) alongside others whose attribution was rejected by the museum’s researchers, following an investigation campaign diagnostics carried out on each artwork.

It is interesting to note the participation of other museum institutions, such as the Momus Museum in Thessaloniki and the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid, which have lent some pieces from their collections.

The emergency of Covid-19 has unfortunately led to the suspension of the exhibition until 30 September, which for the moment remains scheduled until 3 January 2021.

The exhibition scheduled at the House of European History  in Brussels Fake for Real, A History Of Forgery And Falsification is also temporarily closed, but scheduled until next October 2021.

“In the routine of daily life, the sensational, spectacular and supernatural are sweet seduction. They allow us to escape the ordinary. But the game of deception is only fun when we have agreed to it. When we are deliberately deceived, we are on the losing side in many regards, losing our money, credibility, integrity or even our existence”

We hope that it will be possible to return to visit museums soon and soon and that they will remain a beautiful example of historical-artistic and technical-scientific research finally “exhibited” together!

(Federica Fani)

Boetti Senza Titolo (uno nove sette otto), 1978

From riches to rags

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It goes without saying that the certainty of authenticity is an indispensable prerequisite for a work of art and is what allows the collector, in some cases together with a certain amount of valerian, to sleep soundly.

We can only imagine how abrupt the awakening of the buyer must have been, when he, ten years after the purchase of a tapestry by Alighiero Boetti (1940-1994) on Telemarket Spa, discovered he had a fake in his hands!!

When it could be estimated between € 350,000 and 500,000 as in last Christie’s auction.

Before you begin to look with suspicion at the portrait of a gentleman that you now exhibit in the room and to doubt the Fabergé egg that you keep in the cabinet, we inform you that there can be a happy ending, at least in litigations, as it has happened in this case.

However, the advice we will never tire of giving you, is to request a valid authentication and a complete diagnostic file before purchasing!

(Federica Fani)

vasari _bello_streep

A Vasari in the attic

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The picture  from private collection, “The temptations of St. Jerome“, attributed to Giorgio Vasari, a brilliant painter, architect, historian and biographer of the Italian Renaissance, was sold at auction at a world-record price for the artist of 800,000 euros.

A great satisfaction for the auction house, and a supposedly good time for ancient art, even one should consider that this selling price is still around 16% of, for example, the 5 million euros paid for “Black Ground (Deep Light)” by contemporary artist Julie Mehretu. (Don’t you know her?)

Vasari’s painting, on whose autography none appears to have doubts, is accompanied by a free circulation certificate, and therefore can be exported outside Italy. We therefore do not know if it will remain in the country.

The painting is identical in its subject and size to the one exhibited at the Galleria Palatina in Florence, that Art-Test studied in 2010, during its restoration.

Given the almost perfect overlap of the version at auction with that in the public collection, a comparative study would have been interesting, a reflectographic survey, for example, to establish which of the two versions was the first, and to investigate the adherence to the execution methods in which Vasari excelled.

Art-Test, in fact,  had the pleasure of investigating many paintings by this extraordinary artist, and admiring, in addition to his sublime inventions, the extraordinary technical ability of himself and of his atelier.

(AP)
chicago

As fake as it gets

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Trump will leave the White House and hopefully he is packing his lies and anti-scientific attitude.

How about his art? He loves fakes to bits.

He is known for having a phony Renoir in his apartment (formerly on his plane), and having raided the France’s ambassador residence taking a Benjamin Franklin bust, a Franklin portrait and a set of figurines of Greek mythical characters.

However, they were also fakes. The figurines date to the early 20th century and were made by Neapolitan artist Luigi Avolio, simulating a 16th or 17th centuries style.

After White House art curators examined the pieces, also the Franklin bust appeared to be a replica. The Franklin portrait snagged from Paris was also a copy of the one by Joseph Siffred Duplessis painted in France in 1785, which now hangs in the Oval.

Instead, he did not want to buy an original Andy Warhol, that the pop art artist made for the Trump tower: it did not match the colour scheme.

So we though it could be now the right moment to offer him this authentic masterpiece.

Go Kamala Go!

(AP)
Annotation 2020-11-06 224228

Ugly?

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Armine Harutyunyan was recently addressed as the “ugly” Gucci model and violently attacked.

This was certainly not the judgement that Laura Battiferri received five centuries ago.

The important nose did not frighten Bronzino when he wanted to portray her, and, evidently, she did not have a problem with it either.

The profile brought her, a poetess, closer to the great Dante. So did the book that she elegantly holds in her hands: it refers to Petrarch (and to her first name).

Laura Battiferri, in fact, the legitimate daughter of a noble prelate from Urbino, had received a humanistic education and, at the time of the portrait, was an esteemed literary woman, with access to the cultured circles of Renaissance.

Married for the first time and widowed, she remarried in 1550 with Bartolomeo Ammannati, an appreciated sculptor and architect. She regularly frequented Michelangiolo, Benvenuto Cellini, Benedetto Varchi, Annibal Caro and other Florentine intellectuals, and was in correspondence with other poetesses, such as Lucia Bertani from Bologna and Laura Terracina from Naples.

Laura never had children, but a very successful marriage.

She published her first volume with Giunti in 1560 and was admitted to the prestigious Accademia degli Intronati in Siena. Her fame crossed borders and she was known from Madrid to Prague.

Bronzino’s portrait of her is of poignant beauty, but it is not the only one. There is another one by Alessandro Allori in San Giovannino degli Scolopi in Florence.

While she was collecting all her verses for the third book Rime, Laura dieds, at almost 66 years of age. She was buried in the church of San Giovannino.

On the request of Bartolomeo, inn “Christ and the Canaanite” Allori represents l’Ammannati as Saint Bartholomew and, on the right side of the Canaanite woman, Laura is seen as an elderly matron, still with a book in her hands, but this time a religious volume.

Bronzino’s painting is kept in the Palazzo Vecchio Museum in Florence, where it is exhibited together with all the works of the Loeser donation (i.e. the bequest to the municipality of Florence by the American art historian Charles Loeser).

Stay tuned, more news soon!

(A.P.)
susanna

An Hard Glass Ceiling for Female Artists

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Have you ever wondered if art today is truly free, if it is truly democratic or if it makes distinction between sexes?

Making art is in all probability one of the oldest profession, and the presence of women in this area has been documented since a long time, certainly centuries. However, women artists have only recently been able to feel confident in signing their artworks. And only in the last few years they have they received some recognition, although still not commensurate with the real female presence and talent.

Why do women still have to work so hard to see their value recognized?

Discrimination is a real problem. How it is possible that, even today, in this society, there is still a strong gender discrimination?

What is certain is that investing in a woman is a gamble and the data speak for themselves: the female presence in the art market has discomforting  numbers, just glimpse through at “The French Culture” by Morineau: “women are taken into consideration by galleries much less than men. In the twentieth century, most of them did not have a gallery to represent it and, even today, the works that bear a female signature have a much lower value than those of men (between 16-30% less)” .

If you go to visit a museum, you will immediately realize that most of the works on display are by male authors: according to a 2019 study by the Public Library of Science, in the permanent collections of most important US museums only 13% of artworks are by female authors.

Moreover, data show that, in the primary market, female artists represent only 44% of the artists exhibited in galleries. It is frustrating, considering that the number of female graduates from art schools far exceeds that of males. As for the secondary market, the situation is even more disastrous; in 2019 the works of female artists sold at auction represented only 7% of the total and 6% of the total turnover.

Why is it so?

Numerous studies like, “Glass ceilings in the art market” (2018, Bocart, Gertsberg and Tilburg) highlight the enormous difficulties that women have to face in order to enter the secondary market. Top 0.03% of the art (which corresponds to 40% of the total value of sales) turns out to be completely inaccessible to women. Just to get an idea: in 2019, only 7% exceeds the figure of 1 million dollars and even lower than 5% is the percentage of works that exceeds 10 million dollars.

It is essential to reflect on how necessary it is to re-evaluate the role of women in the artistic world. The first step is to recognise that a gender issue is present.

But what are the reasons for this gap? Why is a man such much favoured over a woman in the market, especially the secondary one?

Educational initiatives for inclusion not only in the art market but in all areas need to take place, because in the end, as always, art is a mirror of society, and a society that discriminates against women cannot be called free or democratic, nor can the art that reflects it.

 

Chiara Martine Menchetti
Chiara Martine Menchetti
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Eyes Wide Shut

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The longstanding question regarding the authentication of artworks, both old master and modern ones, is always relevant. Even today, no shared scientific protocols have been established, so to start a correct discussion on this topic. Not later than last week, this problem became clear again at auction.

Two paintings declared “FOLLOWER OF SIR PETER PAUL RUBENS, about 1700”, had already been sold six months ago by the same gallery but with a different attribution: “CICLE OF SIR PETER PAUL RUBENS” were auctioned.
What has happened in the last six months that got the paintings from being a “workshop” to being a “copy” of the following century? Moreover, the same two artworks eleven years ago were offered by another large auction house for a double estimate. How can this happen? What information was added between one auction and another?

The Condition Reports  which are generally published –same here- report only the conservation conditions, observed rather superficially.
The provenance only rarely adds decisive information on the autograph. As indeed this is the case this time as well. We wonder why it is not explicitly stated in the catalogue if any type of analysis has been performed that has implied consequences for the attribution. One could think of analyses performed showing an anachronism in the materials used, or a C14 on the wooden support.
A Condition Report enriched with Radiography, Reflectography and colour analysis would have clarified many doubts.

Especially at a time like this, where auction houses only offer online sales, it would be appropriate to offer works with more detailed curricula, also enriched with elements that the human eye cannot perceive. This could offer complete transparency, a de-risking for the investment and therefore an incentive to buy. Who would buy with closed eyes?

Why not specialize in Crimes against Cultural Heritage?

Why not specialize in Crimes against Cultural Heritage?

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The 4th edition of the Master in Legal Archeology and Crimes against Cultural Heritage, based in Rome, will begin in March 2018.
This course, organized by the CSC, “Center for Criminological, Legal and Sociological Studies” of Viterbo, in collaboration with the “Osservatorio Internazionale Archeomafie”, aims to prepare professional profiles on the objectives, modus operandi, strategies and dynamics of criminal organizations dedicated to theft and illicit international trafficking of cultural heritage works. Since last year, Art–Test has the pleasure of being part of the teaching staff of the Master, which includes both training meetings, in the classroom and in the field, and individual work of distance learning and research.
From the 2nd edition, part of the teaching focuses on the scientific techniques of evaluation and recognition of works of art; here Art-Test brings its contribution to this course.
In January and November 2017 we spoke about the scientific techniques that can be used for the dating of artistic and architectural assets, and the use of instrumental analysis for the identification of origin and the recognition of fakes.
Art-Test presented several case studies, to demonstrate how these techniques are used in real situations. We have underlined the importance of a correct and careful interpretation of data, which requires both meticulous comparisons between the different types of analyses carried out and the knowledge of each scientific technique. Furthermore, it is essential to formulate a step-by-step diagnostic plan, carefully prepared according to each specific situation.

For more information on this interesting course:
http://www.criminologi.com/web/news.asp?id=1364&ic=ok
http://archeomafie.altervista.org/

Rape of the Sabines: a 4,10 m tall bozzetto!

Rape of the Sabines: a 4,10 m tall bozzetto!

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It is not, and it was not, a common practice to make full size models for statues. But apparently Giambologna (Jean de Boulogne), at the time of this commission for Piazza della Signoria in Florence, was best known for “small” things, and he wanted to immediately silence who did not trust his abilities to work with bigger dimensions.

So he proved himself in large statuary already at the time of presenting a model, et voilat: a giant sculpture 4 meters tall was produced. But how did he do? What techniques and what materials did he use?

In 2013 Art-Test Florence, along with other research organizations and companies specialized  in diagnostic applied to cultural heritage, was involved in the campaign designed to provide the complex analyses of the model of the Rape of the Sabine Women, now at the Galleria dell’ Accademia in Florence, with the objective to answer such questions. The model is in terra cruda, i.e. raw clay, having indeed the same size of the marble work, you can admire the Loggia dei Lanzi in Piazza della Signoria in Florence. However the model is not identical. Do you want to know more? It is now possible to access all the results of diagnostic tests performed and the history of its restoration. They are now all published by Syllables in the book “It ratto delle Sabine e il suo restauro “. Inside it there are notes on the history of the artwork and on the restoration performed. It is not easy to synthesize the amount of information contained in the volume so we invite you to read it and find out how a simple “bozzetto” is actually a work of refined technical inventiveness. Jean de Boulogne really knew his business.

http://www.sillabe.it/it/saggistica/627-il-ratto-delle-sabine-e-il-suo-restauro.html

http://www.accademia.org/it/esplora-il-museo/le-sale/sala-del-colosso/

copertina giambologna

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