Bank of America Merrill Lynch art conservation project helps restore 20 works of art across globe

LONDON.- At an event at London’s Courtauld Gallery last night (31 January), Bank of America Merrill Lynch announced this year’s conservation funding recipients through its unique Art Conservation Project. This year, participating institutions span the globe from Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), to Asia, Australia, Latin America and the United States. The Art Conservation Project will see the restoration of 20 art works and artifacts with important cultural and historical value from 19 countries. The 2012 award selections for EMEA include [...]

Earliest known copy of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa found at Spain’s Prado Museum

MADRID (AP).- A “Mona Lisa” copy owned by Spain’s Prado Museum was almost certainly painted by one of Leonardo da Vinci’s apprentices alongside the master himself as he did the original, museum officials said Wednesday. The stunning find of what the Prado now says is probably the earliest known copy of La Gioconda will give art lovers and experts an idea of what the Mona Lisa looked like back in the 16th century, said Gabriele Finaldi, the museum’s deputy director collections. [...]

Louvre museum drew in record 8.8 million visitors

PARIS (AP).- Russians and Chinese came in far greater numbers, but Americans remained the most numerous visitors as the Louvre Museum in Paris racked up record tourist traffic in 2011. Managers at the fabled castle-turned-cultural mecca say the museum drew more than 8.8 million visitors last year — a 5 percent increase from a year earlier despite hard economic times in much of the West. New external lighting was inaugurated at the Louvre, the world’s most popular art museum, at the [...]

Leonardo da Vinci exhibition at National Gallery in London coming to world movie screens

NEW YORK (REUTERS).- Leonardo’s latest is coming to a multiplex near you — but that’s da Vinci, not DiCaprio. In the latest example of high-brow culture being beamed into movie theaters, “Leonardo Live,” an HD presentation of the sold out “Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan” exhibition at London’s National Gallery will play limited engagements at U.S. movie theaters and throughout the world. Billed as the first-ever tour of a fine art exhibition created for movie theater audiences, [...]

London’s National Gallery crackdown on re-sale of Leonardo da Vinci exhibition tickets

LONDON (REUTERS).- London’s National Gallery said on Wednesday it would crack down on the re-sale of tickets to its blockbuster show of Leonardo da Vinci paintings which are being offered online at up to 300 pounds each ($470). The normal price of a ticket to “Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan,” billed as the most complete collection of Leonardo’s few surviving paintings ever staged, is 16 pounds $25). “We are obviously very disappointed at the resale of these [...]

Renaissance artist Leonardo Da Vinci gets celebrity billing with National Gallery show

LONDON (REUTERS).- Move over George Clooney. Lady Gaga? So yesterday. The new celebrity in town is Renaissance artist Leonardo Da Vinci, subject of a major exhibition at London’s National Gallery that has generated the hype of a Hollywood blockbuster. Critics have fallen over themselves to find superlatives to describe “Leonardo Da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan,” which gathers nine of only 15 or 16 paintings of the master’s paintings known to exist. Missing are arguably the most famous of all — [...]

Major exhibition on the genesis of the Italian portrait opens at the Bode Museum in Berlin

BERLIN.- The Gemäldegalerie— National Museums in Berlin and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, have joined forces in organizing a major exhibition on the genesis of the Italian portrait. For Berlin, the Bode Museum presents itself as the ideal location to hold such an exhibition: on its opening in 1904, it was conceived by its founder, Wilhelm von Bode, as a ‘Renaissance Museum’ on the Museum Island. The Bode Museum will host the first stage of the exhibition, running from 25 [...]

Historic Collaboration Between the National Gallery, London, and the Louvre

LONDON.- The National Gallery and the Louvre announce a unique collaboration which brings both versions of the ‘Virgin of the Rocks’ together for the very first time. The two pictures will be shown at The National Gallery’s exhibition, Leonardo da Vinci: Painter of the Court of Milan from 9 November 2011 – 5 February 2012 in London. Just a few months later, but this time at the Louvre in the exhibition, ‘Leonardo da Vinci’s St Anne’, Leonardo’s newly cleaned and restored ‘The [...]

Company Organizes Murder-Mystery Scavenger Hunt at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

NEW YORK (AP).- An assistant museum curator who questioned the authenticity of a Leonardo da Vinci has been murdered — but before he died he left a code in his appointment calendar and a cryptic trail of clues connected to secrets in works of art that point to the killer. Now, would-be gumshoes must figure out what drove one of four suspects to kill him. Was it greed? Fame? Lust? Or revenge? That’s the plot of Murder at the Met, a [...]

London National Gallery Says It will Show Lost Leonardo

NEW YORK (AP).- An oil painting recently authenticated as the work of Leonardo da Vinci will be on display at the National Gallery in the fall as part of a larger exhibition on the Renaissance artist, the London museum said Monday. “Salvator Mundi,” which dates to around 1500, depicts a half-length figure of Christ with one hand raised in blessing and the other holding an orb. The National Gallery said in a statement Monday that the work was shown to its [...]

Da Vinci Discovered: Painting Gains Attribution After Careful Scholarship and Conservation

NEW YORK, NY.- A lost painting by Leonardo da Vinci has been identified in an American collection and will be exhibited for the first time this November. Titled Salvator Mundi (Savior of the World) and dating around 1500, the newly discovered masterpiece depicts a half-length figure of Christ facing frontally, holding a crystal orb in his left hand as he raises his right in blessing. One of some 15 surviving Leonardo oil paintings, the work will be included in “Leonardo da [...]

Art Historian Silvano Vinceti Claims Male Model Behind Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa

ROME (AP).- A male apprentice, longtime companion and possible lover of Leonardo da Vinci was the main influence and a model for the “Mona Lisa” painting, an Italian researcher said Wednesday. But the researcher, Silvano Vinceti, said the portrait represents a synthesis of Leonardo’s scientific, artistic and philosophical beliefs. Because the artist worked at it at various intervals for many years, he was subjected to different influences and sources of inspiration, and the canvas is full of hidden symbolic meanings. [...]

Christopher Stone’s Adam and Eve and Christmas Musings

What do Leonardo da Vinci, Picasso, Jackson Pollock, Rodin, Andy Warhol, Chuck Close, and Robert Rauschenberg all have in common ? except being great artist’s, they all suffer, or suffered from some form of Dyslexia. Barry Flanaganonce told me that he’d seen boys beaten in school for Dyslexia, he did however go on to say that its good for artistic endeavors, something about the brains left side, Talking of Barry Flanagan, I remember one time near Christmas a few years [...]

Research by Italians Confirms that Raphael’s ‘Madonna dell Granduca’ was Amended

FLORENCE.- An X-ray analysis has shown that the dark background that appears in one of the most famous paintings by Raphael, the Madonna dell Granduca, is not original, but was added by a painter, who is still unknown. It was until the seventeenth century, that the painting, which is housed at the Pitti Palace in Florence, that in the background of the painting architectural structures and a landscape were seen, according to research done by the Opificio delle Pietre Dure [...]

High Hosts Second Annual Collectors’ Evening to Help Build the Museum’s Collection

ATLANTA, GA.- The High Museum of Art will host the second annual Collectors’ Evening on Friday, January 28. The event, instituted in 2010 to build and improve the Museum’s permanent collection, invites guests to take an active role in choosing the next work of art to join the collection. During the evening, each of the High’s current curators will present a work of art as a potential new acquisition for their collection. Guests will then cast their votes and the [...]

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