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What if the Warrior of Capestrano, the symbol of Abruzzo, is a fake?
New Research Casts Doubts on the Authenticity of the Statue Was it truly by pure chance that the statue of the Warrior was discovered by an Abruzzese farmer in the locality of “Cinericcio,” just a few kilometers from Capestrano? It was 1934, and according to the...
Who is afraid of culture?
It is never nominated by Draghi in the European Competitiveness Report, and in the new European Commission, it is assigned to the weakest ministry. Why? Let’s start with the facts. The cultural and creative sector represents about 4.4% of the European Union's GDP and...
A “scandalous” restoration is shaking the artworld
One of the most renowned Flemish masterpieces is being damaged by aggressive conservation treatments, according to esteemed scholars who present scientific evidence, utilizing before-and-after images from: “closertovaneyck.kikirpa.be. The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb...
Sustainability in restoration, myth or reality? The exemplary case of the monumental site of the Baptistery of Florence
We are used to evaluating the results of a diagnostic campaign but we rarely dwell on the process, on all the work from the first inspection to the moment before pressing "start" and initiating data acquisition. It is a crucial time, as much as the time in which the...
Art World
Will AI take over restoration?
While debates raged over whether artificial intelligence could replace connoisseurs and diagnosticians in the authentication of artworks, we didn’t see this coming. But AI has just entered the field of art restoration. Just a few days ago, Nature published an article...
Italy Slashes Art VAT to 5%—Turning Tax Reform into Cultural Power Play
Taxation rarely sparks applause—but in Italy, it just did. A rare wave of enthusiasm greeted the Italian Culture Minister’s recent announcement: a new reduced VAT rate from former 22% to 5% on cultural goods, the lowest in the European Union, responding to the request...
TEFAF 2025: A Glimpse into the World’s Premier Art and Antiques Fair
While it is still in progress, we are sharing some reflections and images from TEFAF—the largest and most prestigious art and antiques fair in the world. Annunciation tryptic by Galileo Chini, at the Bacarelli stand As usual, the fair does not disappoint, featuring...
The Chicago Art Institute Expands Its Collection with a Major Donation of French Masterpieces
Chicago's most prestigious museum, the Art Institute, renowned for its masterpieces from all over the world and spanning different eras, is enriching its collection with a significant new addition: the most prestigious private collection of paintings, drawings, and...
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Discoveries and attributions
Museum Qualities
The European Fine Art Foundation (TEFAF) once again, on March 12 to 19, presented its unmissable event , reaffirming itself as a must-attend gathering for collectors, critics, museum curators, and art lovers from around the world. With 276 dealers and galleries from...
Scientifically dating cavases
Not only C14, a new method can help uncovering when and where a painting on canvas was produced Forget about counting threads through a mini magnifying glass or describing canvases using subjective classifications. In the technical laboratories of Museo Nacional del...
Rembrandt or not Rembrandt?
Diagnostics helps Next week at auction, respectively at Christie’s and Sotheby’s, two paintings connected to Rembrandt will be offered: the first, at Christie’s, was recently downgraded to “Follower of Rembrandt” (Christie’s); the second, at Sotheby’s, has had its...
Art thieves are (almost) all men
A man suspected of being the fourth member of the Louvre theft gang was arrested — along with his brother, sister, and a friend: two men, two women. Unusual in a world where art crime is overwhelmingly male. Pop culture loves glamorous female thieves: Catwoman, Carmen Sandiego, Marvel’s Black Cat, or movie heroines stealing masterpieces with charm and skill. Reality is different: Interpol and Europol show women rarely commit art theft, and when they do, it’s usually in supporting roles. One extraordinary exception is Rose Dugdale, who in 1974 led an armed raid on Russborough House, Ireland, stealing nineteen Old Master paintings to leverage IRA demands.
An original fake!
Our Study of a Corpus of Forged Drawings at the IG-IIC Conference “Paper, Pen, and Ink: Diagnostics and Restoration of Writing Materials” Writing materials are not among the most studied, yet scientific analysis techniques can naturally be applied to them as well,...
Primitive? To Whom?
A conference at the National Museum of Medieval and Modern Art of Arezzo revealed the extraordinary refinement of the techniques used by Margarito and his contemporaries A major international project has brought together many of the most prestigious European and...
Art-Test in action
Small Museum, Great Beauty
A new Sacred Art section of the Ghelli Museum, a little gem, was inaugurated in San Casciano Val di Pesa. The succession of speeches, from the Mayor to Dr. Anna Floridia, representative of the territory for the Superintendent, then to Father Antonio Lari, director of...
“Authentication and dating of cultural assets” at the Biennial School of Advanced Training in Judicial Archaeology® and Crimes against Cultural Heritage
Just about every day, we hear about crimes against archaeological heritage. And we're not just talking about stolen archaeological artifacts, but also unwitting buyers who find themselves in possession of objects that are subject to very specific regulations. But who,...
CNA Florence Art-Test Partnership: Enhancing Restoration Projects with Scientific Analysis
Art-Test has joined CNA Florence, an association representing artisans and their small to medium-sized enterprises in the province of Florence. The fFlorentine seat of the association specifically dedicates a section to restoration and the promotion of this...
Do you want to know more: Florence Heri-Tech
The progress of the science for cultural heritage is a fascinating journey. Every day it brings new discoveries, case studies, and data that expand our understanding of works of art, revealing their origins and enabling us to grasp when they were created. It also...
To preserve is to know, to know is to preserve
For some time, the topic of heritage preservation as a means of educating society has been approached in various ways. Invited by the president of the Rotary Club of the island of Procida, along with Dr. Salvatore Di Liello, professor of History of Architecture at the...
Cardinal Baronio
This painting was identified as a possible Caravaggio among the long series of portraits of the Gioviana series placed high up along the cornice of the central corridor of the Uffizi Gallery. The series takes this name because it was created taking as a model the...