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  • rosso dopo

    under disguise

    A supposed Mary Magdalen turned out, thanks to diagnostics and restoration, to be the portrait of a young noble woman After the restoration When thinking about the works of Giovanni di Battista di Iacopo, known as Rosso Fiorentino, you think of grotesque figures, occasionally having an almost demonic appearance. Figures completely deprived of those refined […]

  • DSC05346

    Vasari in Bosco Marengo

    In the mid-sixteenth century, when he was still a cardinal, the future Pope Pius V decided to found a Dominican convent in his native town, Bosco Marengo, a small town near Alessandria, hitherto poor and absolutely unknown. Not only that, a few months after his ascent to the papal throne, in the summer of 1566, […]

  • DSC05415

    Seven Acts of Mercy by Caravaggio: a superb experience

    Caravaggio escapes from Rome on 28 May, with the accusation of having killed Ranuccio Tommasoni and arrives on 6 October 1606 in Naples, where he immediately receives prestigious commissions, including the painting depicting the “Seven Works of Mercy” for the church of the then new brotherhood of the Pio Monte della Misericordia, where it is […]

  • el greco sm

    El Greco: new attribution at the Uffizi

    When the painting “St. John the Evangelist and St. Francis of Assisi” entered the Uffizi collection as part of a donation,  it was assumed to be a copy executed by the workshop or by disciples of El Greco. Indeed only a few people had seen it before and scholars had not even examined it, so […]

  • Giambologna’s Rape of the Sabines

    Giambologna’s Rape of the Sabines

    The diagnostics performed on the ‘Ratto delle Sabine’ by Giambologna, at the Galleria dell’Accademia, in Florence, required many skills, since, among others, Xray, UltraSound and Geo-Radar methodologies were employed (with the help of S.T. Art-Test). The results led to unveil and understand some crucial information which was essential to plan and perform the restorative intervention which […]

  • DSC00637

    Caravaggio: a copy? Multilayer shows it’s original!

    The painting, which is owned by a private collector, was originally thought to be a copy of Caravaggio’s St. Jerome Writing (composed between 1607 and 1608), which is in the Oratory of St. John’s Co-Cathedral in Valletta, Malta. Prof. Keith Sciberras of the University of Malta says that the painting does not evince Caravaggio’s “vigor” […]

HIGHLIGHTS

intero

Man or Woman?

A painting by the genius Leonardo da Vinci unexpectedly provides us with an interesting reflection on the notion of “gender identity”, never as much debated as in recent times. What distinguishes and separates being a woman from being a man? Where is the borderline? We premise that the panel with the Head of Christ now […]

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An original without copies or Caravaggio’s zigzag

From how they all got on the bandwagon (“I discovered it!” “No, I discovered it first!”) there would seem to be no doubts that the painting at auction in Madrid is the real “Ecce Homo” made by Caravaggio as result of a competition between painters arranged by Monsignor Massimi, as documented in old biographies. About […]

OPINIONS

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Who decides if it is a Caravaggio?

Tomorrow is Caravaggio’s 450th birthday. There will not be celebrations, except for something almost improvised. Nothing to do with what had been organized for the 400 years since his death.  In that occasion, Art-Test analysed several paintings of undisputed autography, including the Bacchus of the Uffizi, the 7 works of mercy of Naples, the Resurrection […]

innocenti

Under the Tuscan Sun

Perhaps you have wondered what was the first Renaissance building in the world? It is not a church, or a palace, but it is the “Spedale degli Innocenti” in Florence, designed by the genius Brunelleschi (his first public commission), and also the first orphanage in the world. The work was financed by a secular institution, […]

DISCOVERIES

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Unkown Origin

Often, to authenticate a work of art, its “provenance” is used, or the succession of the various owners, to try and trace the purchase contracts till the first, with the author’s signature on it.But “provenance” data are not at all easy to verify. On the contrary, it is a very treacherous terrain, because even these […]

a frame of the video on the virtual reconstruction of San Pier Maggiore

Where do churches go to die?

Following the collapse of a column, not even a main one, which took place on 2 September 1783, the Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo di Lorena had the church of San Pier Maggiore demolished. Although it was one of the oldest churches in Florence, documented since as early as 1067 aC. The church was full of […]

EXHIBITIONS

AUCTIONS

CONSERVATION

buchakjian4

Never again

The Lebanese art historian Gregory Buckhakjian is convinced that the artworks recovered were created by the hand of Artemisia Gentileschi. And Buckhakjian knows very well the history of the Sursock Palace collection, the building where the paintings were located – and which was heavily damaged during the attack -, as in 1993, he discussed his […]

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See you in New York

In silence in front of Her Our work is made up of many silences, those due to the concentration while we work and those due to the beauty of an artwork and the reflectographic image that we see while our scanner acquires the necessary data. This is the thought we dedicate to Bronzino’s portrait of […]

intero

Man or Woman?

A painting by the genius Leonardo da Vinci unexpectedly provides us with an interesting reflection on the notion of “gender identity”, never as much debated as in recent times. What distinguishes and separates being a woman from being a man? Where is the borderline? We premise that the panel with the Head of Christ now […]