Restored Renaissance Masterpiece on View in New Installation at Metropolitan Museum

Filippino Lippi (Italian, Prato 1457?–1504 Florence), Madonna and Child, Ca. 1485. Tempera, oil, and gold on wood, 32 x 23 1/2 in. (81.3 x 59.7 cm) The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Jules Bache Collection, 1949 49.7.10.

NEW YORK, NY.- Filippino Lippi (1457-1504) is one of the great artists of 15th-century Florence. Among his principal patrons was the wealthy banker Filippo Strozzi (1428–1491), who in 1487 contracted the artist to decorate his funerary chapel in Santa Maria Novella with an outstanding cycle of frescoes. Around the same time, Strozzi also commissioned a Madonna and Child for his villa at Santuccio, west of the city. This work was acquired from the Duveen firm in 1928 by Jules Bache and was bequeathed to the Metropolitan Museum in 1949.

In preparation for an exhibition on the artist that will be held in Rome next year, the picture was taken to conservation for examination this fall. A test cleaning revealed that beneath a thick, discolored varnish there was a beautifully preserved, richly colored painting. It emerged that the varnish had been artificially toned to create an almost monochromatic appearance—an amber-colored uniformity that conformed to the idea of how an Old Master should appear. So striking is the transformation that the picture seems a new acquisition.

To celebrate this restoration, The Metropolitan Museum of Art is mounting A Renaissance Masterpiece Revealed: Filippino Lippi’s Madonna and Child, a focused exhibition, beginning January 15, 2011, that will include the picture and a number of objects in the Museum’s permanent collection that can be associated with the Strozzi by their coat of arms, which has three crescent moons.

The objects include a textile, a wooden chair, a cassone, and a column capital from the Palazzo Strozzi—the grandest of all 15th-century palaces in Florence. Filippo Strozzi belonged to one of the great patrician families of the city and played an important role there as an art patron. Although his father was exiled by the Medici in 1434, in 1466 Filippo was able to return to the city of his forebears, having made his fortune in the Strozzi bank in Naples. He set about rehabilitating the family’s prestige, in part by commissioning outstanding works of art such as Madonna and Child by Filippino Lippi. - Reprinted from artdaily.org

Unseen Egon Schiele Work to be Unveiled at the New Richard Nagy Gallery in UK

Egon Schiele, Kneeling Nude in Coloured Dress, 1911. Gouache, watercolour, and pencil on paper, 56 x 38.4 cm (22 x 15 1/8 in). Private Collection, Courtesy of Richard Nagy Ltd, London.

LONDON.- More than forty-five extraordinary works by Austrian artist Egon Schiele, previously unseen in the UK, will be unveiled at Richard Nagy’s new gallery on Old Bond Street from 07 February – 04 March 2011. Much of the four thousand works Schiele produced during his short lifetime can only be seen in Vienna; at the Belvedere, the Albertina and the Leopold Museum, or New York, primarily at the Neue Galerie.

While Schiele is recognised as one of the greatest draftsmen of the 20th Century, with watercolours making over $11 million at auction, his work is absent from museum collections in the United Kingdom and has been given little public attention in the past twenty years. In 1989, the Royal Academy of Arts staged the first and last museum exhibition in the country, Egon Schiele and his Time. Since then Schiele’s work has only made fleeting appearances in group shows, to which Nagy has loaned pieces. Focusing exclusively on women, this exhibition provides a rare opportunity to discover museum-quality drawings and watercolours from the artist’s most creative ‘Mature Period’ (1910-1918).

Egon Schiele was born in 1890 in the Austrian town Tulln, just outside of Vienna. After his father’s death in 1905, Schiele began studying painting and drawing at the Kunstgewerbeschule (School of Arts & Crafts), where Austrian painter Gustav Klimt was once a student, as well as the Akademie der Bildenden Künste (Academy of Fine Arts), both in Vienna. However finding these institutions too conservative, he left in 1907 to seek out Klimt, the leading contemporary artist of the day, becoming the painter’s protégé and friend. In some instances Schiele’s unsettling erotic work gained him unwelcome attention.

He was arrested in 1912 and charged with carnal knowledge and distributing immoral material, for which he was cleared, though he served 24 days in prison. That same year Schiele began a very public affair with Klimt’s model Wally Neuzil, who he later dropped to marry the bourgeois Edith Harms in 1915. Schiele produced little in the two years directly following his marriage as he was called to serve in the army. In 1917 following his participation in the war, Schiele began to exhibit successfully across Europe with shows in Vienna, Zurich, Prague, and Dresden. When Klimt died in 1918, Schiele became Austria’s leading artist, though he died of Spanish influenza at the age of 28, only months after Klimt and three days after his young pregnant wife.

Throughout Schiele’s life, women fascinated him. As the only son in a household of women, his earliest drawings are of his mother and sisters. His closeness to his younger sister Gertrude has raised many metaphorical eyebrows – exemplified by naked drawings of her and in some instances rather provocatively so. It is evident in his early nudes of street girls, that he had a young man’s curiosity for the erotic. Schiele has an unerring genius for scrutinising the human qualities in the women he draws. This interest in women matured with his years and circumstances, and was with him until his death.

Nagy’s exhibition shows the diversity in Schiele’s depiction of women, from the tension and anxiety demonstrated in his 1910-1911 works, to his calmer, softer style of 1917-1918 when he was becoming comfortable and successful as an artist. Schiele, for so long a hidden genius known only to a few, is now one of the acknowledged luminaries of 20th Century art history. Masterpieces on display include Dark Haired Girl (1910), Woman with Infant (1910), Nude in Orange Stockings (1914), and Girl in Underclothes (1917), amongst others. - Reprinted from artdaily.org

A Rear-End View!

MEXICO CITY.- View of a Volkswagen Beetle vehicle that two families of Mexican natives from Huichol ethnic group transformed into a work of art, Mexico City, Mexico, on 09 December 2010 . Named Vochol, a combination of the popular Vocho used in Mexico to name the Beetle model and the word Huichol. The car was unveiled at the Museum of Popular Art in Mexico City, initiator of the project. EPA/Sashenka Gutierrez.

The Side View!

MEXICO CITY.- A Huichol Indigenous man poses inside a Volkswagen Beetle vehicle, that two families of Mexican natives from this ethnic group transformed into a work of art, Mexico City, Mexico, on 09 December 2010 . Named Vochol, a combination of the popular Vocho used in Mexico to name the Beetle model and the word Huichol. The car was unveiled at the Museum of Popular Art in Mexico City, initiator of the project. EPA/Sashenka Gutierrez.

A Unique Creation! This spans several posts

MEXICO CITY.- Vochol® represents a first in the history of popular arts in Mexico and the world, in which two Huichol families from the States of Nayarit and Jalisco, took the car´s structure as a canvas to paint an original design. The Society of Friends of the Museo de Arte Popular along with the Governments of the States of Nayarit and Jalisco as well as prívate and public institutions have worked on this project for more than a year. Photo: Alejandro Piedra Buena.

Expert Says Michelangelo Drew Inspiration from Brothels to Paint Frescoes in Sistine Chapel

The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican City. AP Photo.

ROME.- The Renaissance genius artist Michelangelo Buonarroti drew inspiration from various Italian brothels to paint some of the figures that form part of the frescoed panels of the Sistine Chapel, assured specialist Elena Lazzarini in an article published today in “Corriere della Sera”.

One of the frescoed panels of the Sistine Chapel was inspired by brothels according to the expert. Italian renaissance artists frequently went to what’s called “stufa”, public bathrooms similar to a brothel where prostitution was practiced often, to study models that would later be represented in their work.

One fountain of inspiration present in the production of many artists of this era, from Leonardo to Bronzino, down to Michelangelo. According to Lazzarini, Many of the blessed and condemned that make up part of the frescoed panels of the Sistine Chapel are shown in obscene situations.

A condemned is dragged to hell by the testicles
“A condemned, for example, is dragged to hell by the testicles and between the blessed they would produce ambiguous hugs and kisses, clearly of homosexual nature”, explains the specialist.

Lazzarini adds “The male bodies, very virile, that make up the painting of the Final Judgment corresponds to the physical appearance of farmers and carriers shown during labor, with tense muscles, tiredness and effort reflected on their faces.”

The impotent scene of the Final Judgment, measuring 3.7 by 12.2 meters, was painted by Michelangelo between 1536 and 1541 to decorate the wall that was located near the Chapel altar.

According to the Italian specialist, it was in the public bathrooms in the Italian capital where Michelangelo was inspired to decorate the Vatican jewels.

Promiscuous Places
There were many places during the XVI century in Italy and particularly in Rome, Lazzarini explains, and in them, besides doing beauty treatments and hydrotherapy, “there were stations with more separation, places of promiscuity and male and female prostitution.” References found in other work of renaissance artist like Leonardo or Bronzino, according to the specialist. “It was a very common opinion at that era to consider that physiognomy corresponded to an emotional and physical ideal. And these models weren’t just Michelangelo´s, we found they started from Leonardo in various works and they are also present in the work of Bronzino”, added Lazzarini. - Reprinted from ArtDaily.org

Staggering Picasso trove turns up in France

This photo provided Monday Nov.29, 2010 by the Succession Picasso shows an artwork 'Papier colle pipe et bouteille' (Copy paste pipe and bottle) by Picasso. A retired French electrician and his wife have come forward with 271 undocumented, never-before-seen works by Pablo Picasso estimated to be worth at least euro 60 million ($79.35 million), an administrator of the artist's estate said Monday.(AP Photo/Succession Picasso) NO SALES - EDITORIAL USE ONLY - MANDATORY CREDIT: SUCCESSION PICASSO

By JAMEY KEATEN, Associated Press – Mon Nov 29, 6:20 pm ET = PARIS – Pablo Picasso almost never stopped creating, leaving thousands of drawings, paintings and sculptures that lure crowds to museums and mansions worldwide. Now, a retired electrician says that 271 of the master's creations have been sitting for decades in his garage. Picasso's heirs are claiming theft, the art world is savoring what appears to be an authentic find, and the workman, who installed burglar alarms for Picasso, is defending what he calls a gift from the most renowned artist of the 20th century. Picasso's son and other heirs say they were approached by electrician Pierre Le Guennec in September to authenticate the undocumented art from Picasso's signature Cubist period. Instead, they filed a suit for illegal possession of the works — all but alleging theft by a man not known to be among the artist's friends. Police raided the electrician's French Riviera home last month, questioned him and his wife and confiscated the disputed artworks. Le Guennec and his wife say Picasso's second wife gave them a trunk full of art that they kept virtually untouched until they decided to put their affairs in order for their children. The Picasso estate describes that account as ridiculous. "When Picasso made just a little drawing on a metro ticket, he would keep it," said Jean-Jacques Neuer, a lawyer for Picasso's estate. "To think he could have given 271 works of art to somebody who isn't even known among his friends is of course absurd." The pieces, which include lithographs, portraits, a watercolor and sketches, were created between 1900 and 1932, an intensely creative period for Picasso after he moved from Barcelona to Paris. Among them are a richly colored hand study; a sketch of his first wife, Russian ballerina Olga Khokhlova, resting an elbow in a seated pose; and a collage of a pipe and bottle. The collage and eight others in the stash are worth 40 million euros on their own, Picasso's estate says. All of the art is now held by the French agency charged with battling illegal traffic in cultural items. Le Guennec, 71, claims to have worked at three of Picasso's properties in southern France: a Cannes villa, a chateau in Vauvenarges, and a farmhouse in Mougins, the town where Picasso died in 1973. The French daily Liberation, which broke the story Monday, said Le Guennec had installed a security alarm system for Picasso at the farmhouse.