Art
Belief
Context

From Vincent van Gogh we have over 900 paintings as well as over 1000 drawings.

He made nearly all of them during the final five years of his life. 365 times 5 would be just over 1800 days for those 900 paintings. Let’s call it a painting every other day for half a decade.

How many did the aspiring artist with connections to the art market sell? None.

Comes now the news that beneath a quickly executed “Patch of Grass” reminiscent only in the most generic way of Dürer’s Great Piece of Turf, some helpful particle-accelerated synchrotronic X-rays have revealed what was known to be there (thanks to infrared reflectography), but had previously not been seen: an early portrait, from Vincent’s days as an evangelist among the coal miners.

This won’t change our conception of the artist much, unless it be with regard to his second thoughts, but it’s nice to see further confirmation of his early stylistic tropes.

From Patrick at Popehat comes news of a blockbuster art theft. Someone with no intention of selling the thing, and every intention of savoring it (or perhaps eliciting ransom for it), has contracted a crack team of pane-removing window climbers to cut from its frame a priceless Caravaggio:

The interesting detail here is that the person who commissioned the black bag operation is no connoisseur. The painting by Caravaggio, commissioned by Ciriaco Mattei, created around 1602, and documented within that generation, is most assuredly the one safely hanging in Dublin.

The stolen painting is a copy.

The very good copy in Odessa, closer to the original than any of the other half dozen seventeenth century copies, is probably not an autograph replica. Instead it may well be the copy Asdrubale Mattei commissioned from the otherwise unknown artist Giovanni di Attili.

Or is it?

For the gritty details from the pen of the fellow who cleaned and authenticated the Dublin piece, see Sergio Benedetti, “Caravaggio’s ‘Taking of Christ’, a Masterpiece Rediscovered”, The Burlington Magazine #135:1088 (Nov. 1993), pp. 731-741.

For a contrary view, and to gain a sense of how diplomacy and collegial relationships taint connoisseurship, see Peter Conrad, “In search of the real Caravaggio“.

Once in a while, the world sees the discovery of an ancient artifact in good condition that isn’t a forgery.  In this case, excavators near Skopje have unearthed a relatively awesome late Roman Venus pudica:

All too often, things like this turn up and prove to be clever forgeries, sometimes to the amplified embarrassment of those who underwrote relevant purchases.

Truths and legends about the forgery of old sculptures offer a lot of fun.  The most interesting recent example is, of course, the notorious Getty Kouros.

More pop-culturally amusing at the moment is the fact that several of the Aztec crystal skulls in prominent collections — artifacts that inspired the focus of the latest Indiana Jones flick — have been proven to be forgeries.

In related news, the inevitability of revising the Etruscan section of all those art history survey books is finally upon us.  They’ve long noted that the suckling Romulus and Remus were additions from the Renaissance, but many had held out hope that the lactating she-wolf would turn out to be pre-Roman.  Alas, she’s from the high Middle Ages.