Blog
Art-Test and SpeakART to join forces and offer additional services to collectors
Digitise, preserve, share A software that revolutionizes the art and collectibles sector, simplifying the management processes of the life cycle of an asset and offering effective support for every event and for every need. SpeakART is the ideal platform for a simple...
The Icon of the Blessed Virgin of St Luke of Bologna
Legend, history, art and diagnostics A volume has just been published by Pendragon that traces the history of the Bolognese icon known as the Virgin of Saint Luke, which dominates the city from Monte della Guardia where it is kept. The volume traces back the sources...
A new Rembrandt attribution, thanks to scientific testing
For years considered a sketch by a minor follower, a painting in Dutch museum turns out to be a masterpiece For years they have been saying ‘no’, that it was not and could not be a Rembrandt. For years, attributions to the Dutch painter were a monopoly of the...
Almost right
How does one evaluate whether it is a replica or a copy? It can happen to find paintings in auction catalogs or at antiques fairs that remind us of other works, by famous artists. This is, for example, the case of a small painting that arrived at our workshop, and...
An heritage trap
1922 saw, in the month of September, the death in Florence of the Stefano Bardini, an exceptional character of whom we tried to sketch a portrait in a previous article , given that this year is the centenary of his passing. This time we focus on the compelling story...
MIRIAM FIOCCA
How did you become a restorer? What was your training path? This profession has always fascinated me and after high school my road was already marked: the Institute for art and restoration of Palazzo Spinelli, in Florence, where I graduated in painting restoration....
Success insured!
This year on the occasion of the BIAF 2022 Art-Test hosted a meeting with ARTE Generali , with their agents and guests, collectors, brokers and art experts, present at the Antiques Biennale of which they were among the main sponsors. We talked about how diagnostic...
Fakes, copies and originals. A wider outlook
The “VERO-FALSO” (TRUE-FALSE) conference, organized by Art & Dossier for Giunti, and Treccani, as part of TourismA, on one of the most recently debated topics, was an extraordinary success, enriched by the presence of high-profile speakers. It opened with a...
Francesca Lotti
How did you become a restorer? What was your training path? I've always had the passion to fix, restore, preserve. In addition, it is in my family tradition: I ate milk and chalk as a child! I studied art, then enrolled in the magnificent school for Painting...
The great beauty will not leave Florence
The richness of the Florence Biennale of Antiques this year enchanted us. In Florence we are used to being surrounded by beauty, but the comparison with other antiques fairs that have been held around the world and especially in Europe, this year is stunning. The...
Talking about Conservation: what is that is needed?
Heritage protection and restoration were the main topics of the workshop “ Integrated services for Restoration. Companies and professionals supporting the restoration and conservation of cultural heritage "organized by CNA Florence in the Salone dei Duecento of...
The shape of water. How do we date paper?
Paper has played a very important role in all cultures, ever since it was "invented", because it is not just a support, but it has been (and continues to be) the greatest multiplier of culture and history. Each "sheet" brings with it technological history and...
King of rubble
Precisely in these days, in which Florence has celebrated antiques at their highest level in the Biennale hosted at Palazzo Corsini, we like to remember that just 100 years ago, on 12 September 1922, in Florence died Stefano Bardini (1836-1922), who can rightly be...
Authentic letters, fake ones: this is how you can change history
The reason why Galileo Galilei, the famous Italian mathematician and astronomer, was condemned by the Church was a book, not the telescope. But even before the book, it was a letter to Benedetto Castelli, his pupil and close friend, to get him into trouble. A...
New devices,new studies, connecting science and art at Florence Heri-Tech
What are the latest findings for an optimal removal of black crusts on stone surfaces? What new technique can be used to analyze plastic materials? How to investigate in a non-destructive and safe way the inside of a structure? How to deal with the study and...
Who is the man in the portrait discovered under the Van Gogh painting?
When discoveries concern Vincent Van Gogh’s, news go fast around the world. And this time it was no exception. The painting unveiled thanks to the radiographic campaign carried out on “Peasant’s Head”, preserved in the National Galleries of Scotland, is further...
Social media Revolution for the museums
It was inevitable that the acceleration of digital communication, social sharing, virtual presence, legacy of the pandemic, would shift the focus on the online activities of museums, be them large, medium or small (the classification is exclusively related the...
Anna Bronzoni Catellani
How did you become a restorer? What was your education/training path? My training journey began with the Institute for Art and Restoration Palazzo Spinelli-Nicolini, in Florence many years ago and precisely in 1983, and then continued with the Faculty of Art History...
Armed robbery at TEFAF, our reconstruction and latest developments
At least four men entered undisturbed around 11:30h am on Tuesday 28th June, the third opening day, into the largest art and antiques fair in Europe, where billions of euros worth of items are on sale. The booth before and after the robbery The four, bare-faced, beret...
What is the future of restoration fairs?
We all know well how the last two years went and we are aware that returning to meeting in person, however hoped for, still brought some fears with it. But it was worthed it. In fact meetings and interactions among participants were the best part of the fair. The...
The daring story of a change of dress that had to remain secret
The exhibition that Piacenza dedicated to the father of the Viennese Secession with the title Klimt, the man, the artist, his world, will close on next 24 July. The reason for the choice of topic is easily said: one of the only three masterpieces by the Viennese...
4 fairs in 4 days
After a couple of years of hesitation and postponements, 4 of the most important art & antiques fairs decided to open in the same period. Art Basel was held from June 16th to 19th, then BRAFA in Brussels from June 19th to 26th, TEFAF is running in Maastricht (NL)...
Silvia Fiaschi
Silvia, how did you become a restorer? What was your training path? Since primary school I have shown a certain predisposition to drawing and manual skills that my family has always supported by enrolling me in private painting courses. Attending the Martenot Art...
Green gold
How "natural" is the countryside? How has it changed over the centuries and why? To answer these questions, paintings are also useful, as they are sort of snapshots of the past. At the beginning of the fifteenth century, Luca del Sera, a partner of Francesco di Marco...
The (superiority) complex of Pius V
We are almost there. 450 years after the death of Pope Pius V, i.e. from 7 July, the complex of Santa Croce in Bosco Marengo will be reborn, with its majestic Vasari paintings. The monumental complex of Bosco Marengo was in fact ranked second in the 2016 edition of...
Do not miss Florence Heritech
After an “online only” last edition and with the goal to create synergy between Cultural Heritage and New Technologies, the conference Florence Heritech will take place in Florence from 16 to 18 May 2022, in same place and at the same time as the Florence Biennial Art...
Russian fakes, anyone?
Crypto currency, NFT and a (fake?) Kandinsky for sale on a Russian website “to help the soldiers of Donbass” The Terricon Project, Art for Victory, selling art, is being advertised online apparently “to help those in need” because of the war, i.e.. Russians, trying to...
What happens to revolutionaries?
Scientific analyzes reveal how David composed the famous painting "The Death of Marat" and how he hid it during his exile in Brussels In these times of war, the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels dedicates an exhibition to David‘s canvas which stages the murder of...
A table becomes a Cross
Dialogues at the Salone Monday 16 May from 5.15 pm to 6.30 pm - Sala Brambilla Two years ago, just in these days, we were given the opportunity, timidly but finally, to resume our work. Florence was silent and lonely Now, after months of virtual meetings, the time has...
When diagnostics calls the certainties of art into question. Picasso’s works of the Blue Period
The results of scientific investigations on 3 important Picasso paintings are on display in Washington: a real wealth of information that confirms how analyzes can change the course of art historyUntil 12 June 2022, the Phillips Collection in Washington DC hosts the...
