Medieval and Renaissance Art News
Sunday January 21, 2007
Restoration Dramas: Canterbury, Ghiberti, Leonardo and More
By Stan Parchin
As recently reported in The Times of London, England's Canterbury Cathedral has unfortunately fallen into disrepair. This magnificent monument, suffering from the effects of time and pollution, needs £50 million (UK) for preservation. The British government does not subsidize the 900-year-old structure. The church's roof leaks. And the separate panels of its stained-glass windows have to be removed, restored and replaced, a technological feat. Improvements to the cathedral's organ and choir are part of the building's proposed overall rehabilitation programme.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art recently confirmed that a traveling special exhibition on Italian Renaissance goldsmith, sculptor, architect and writer Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378-1455) and his doors for the Baptistery of Florence will indeed come to the New York institution later this year. The Gates of Paradise: Lorenzo Ghiberti's Renaissance Masterpiece will present three of the doors' restored reliefs and four sculptures (two prophets and two heads set in roundels). After the show's appearance at Atlanta, Georgia's High Museum of Art (April 28-July 15, 2007), the exhibition will travel to the Art Institute of Chicago (July 28-October 13, 2007) and finally to The Metropolitan Museum of Art (October 30, 2007-January 14, 2008).
His Excellency Francesco Rutelli, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Culture of the Italian Republic, and Florentine officials announced the week of January 8, 2007 that the 30-year-old search for the Battle of Anghiari (begun 1505), an unfinished fresco painted on one wall of the Tuscan city's Palazzo Vecchio by Italian Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), will resume soon pending approval of details. The palazzo's Hall of the 500 was the seat of Renaissance Florence's government. Non-invasive scientific methods will be employed over an 18-month period to determine if a cavity between an existing mural, painted by Italian Mannerist artist and author Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574), and the wall where Leonardo's lost masterpiece is believed to exist, preserved the master's painting.
The Associated Press reported on January 11, 2007 that Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, the building where Elizabethan playwright and poet William Shakespeare (1564-1616) was baptized and subsequently interred with the remains of his wife, Anne Hathaway, is another British ecclesiastical landmark in serious need of repair. The structure is located 120 miles northwest of London. Its administration requires some $6.3 million (US) to fix the 800-year-old church's chancel, tower, spire, north and south aisles and severely weathered transepts. Some of its stained-glass windows are deteriorating, a number of the clerestory ones leak and eroding bricks need to be replaced. For further information, go to www.shakespeareschurch.org.
The last day to see the remarkable Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione (1514-1515) by Italian Renaissance artist Raphael (1483-1520), part of the High Museum of Art's Kings as Collectors special exhibition from Paris' Musée du Louvre, is Sunday, January 28, 2007. Raphael's painting will be replaced by Et in Arcadia Ego (1637-1639) by French Baroque painter Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665) until the show closes on September 2, 2007. Also closing the same day is The King's Drawings, a selection of Old Master works on paper collected by French monarchs Louis XIV, Louis XV and Louis XVI during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries.
Finally, The Art Newspaper reported on January 18, 2007 that Spanish art historians and curators at Madrid's Museo del Prado have renamed Venetian Mannerist painter Tintoretto (1519-1594) based upon archival evidence. The museum's upcoming special exhibition, conveniently titled Jacopo Tintoretto despite the startling news, runs from January 29 through May 13, 2007 and is not scheduled to travel. The show's catalogue reveals that the artist's family name was Comin (associated with the spice cumin). Tintoretto, whose father was a recognized cloth dyer, is now identified as Jacopo Comin from Brescia, Italy and not from Lucca as previously thought. The Madrid exhibition will feature some 60 paintings and drawings by the artist, a masterful painter and draftsman of light and devotional subjects during his lifetime.
Image credits:
Lorenzo Ghiberti (Italian, 1378-1455)
Idealized Statue, 1425-52
East Doors, Baptistery of San Giovanni,
Florence, Italy
Gilt bronze
H. 90.2 cm (35 1/2 in.),
W. 14.7 cm (5 13/16 in.)
© Opificio delle Pietre Dure, Florence
Jacopo Comin, alias Robusti, alias Tintoretto
(Italian, 1519-1594)
The Origin of the Milky Way, ca. 1575
Oil on canvas
149.4 x 168 cm (58 13/16 x 66 1/8 in.)
© The National Gallery, London
Buy a reproduction
By Stan Parchin
As recently reported in The Times of London, England's Canterbury Cathedral has unfortunately fallen into disrepair. This magnificent monument, suffering from the effects of time and pollution, needs £50 million (UK) for preservation. The British government does not subsidize the 900-year-old structure. The church's roof leaks. And the separate panels of its stained-glass windows have to be removed, restored and replaced, a technological feat. Improvements to the cathedral's organ and choir are part of the building's proposed overall rehabilitation programme.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art recently confirmed that a traveling special exhibition on Italian Renaissance goldsmith, sculptor, architect and writer Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378-1455) and his doors for the Baptistery of Florence will indeed come to the New York institution later this year. The Gates of Paradise: Lorenzo Ghiberti's Renaissance Masterpiece will present three of the doors' restored reliefs and four sculptures (two prophets and two heads set in roundels). After the show's appearance at Atlanta, Georgia's High Museum of Art (April 28-July 15, 2007), the exhibition will travel to the Art Institute of Chicago (July 28-October 13, 2007) and finally to The Metropolitan Museum of Art (October 30, 2007-January 14, 2008).
His Excellency Francesco Rutelli, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Culture of the Italian Republic, and Florentine officials announced the week of January 8, 2007 that the 30-year-old search for the Battle of Anghiari (begun 1505), an unfinished fresco painted on one wall of the Tuscan city's Palazzo Vecchio by Italian Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), will resume soon pending approval of details. The palazzo's Hall of the 500 was the seat of Renaissance Florence's government. Non-invasive scientific methods will be employed over an 18-month period to determine if a cavity between an existing mural, painted by Italian Mannerist artist and author Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574), and the wall where Leonardo's lost masterpiece is believed to exist, preserved the master's painting.
The Associated Press reported on January 11, 2007 that Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, the building where Elizabethan playwright and poet William Shakespeare (1564-1616) was baptized and subsequently interred with the remains of his wife, Anne Hathaway, is another British ecclesiastical landmark in serious need of repair. The structure is located 120 miles northwest of London. Its administration requires some $6.3 million (US) to fix the 800-year-old church's chancel, tower, spire, north and south aisles and severely weathered transepts. Some of its stained-glass windows are deteriorating, a number of the clerestory ones leak and eroding bricks need to be replaced. For further information, go to www.shakespeareschurch.org.
The last day to see the remarkable Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione (1514-1515) by Italian Renaissance artist Raphael (1483-1520), part of the High Museum of Art's Kings as Collectors special exhibition from Paris' Musée du Louvre, is Sunday, January 28, 2007. Raphael's painting will be replaced by Et in Arcadia Ego (1637-1639) by French Baroque painter Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665) until the show closes on September 2, 2007. Also closing the same day is The King's Drawings, a selection of Old Master works on paper collected by French monarchs Louis XIV, Louis XV and Louis XVI during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries.
Finally, The Art Newspaper reported on January 18, 2007 that Spanish art historians and curators at Madrid's Museo del Prado have renamed Venetian Mannerist painter Tintoretto (1519-1594) based upon archival evidence. The museum's upcoming special exhibition, conveniently titled Jacopo Tintoretto despite the startling news, runs from January 29 through May 13, 2007 and is not scheduled to travel. The show's catalogue reveals that the artist's family name was Comin (associated with the spice cumin). Tintoretto, whose father was a recognized cloth dyer, is now identified as Jacopo Comin from Brescia, Italy and not from Lucca as previously thought. The Madrid exhibition will feature some 60 paintings and drawings by the artist, a masterful painter and draftsman of light and devotional subjects during his lifetime.
Image credits:
Lorenzo Ghiberti (Italian, 1378-1455)
Idealized Statue, 1425-52
East Doors, Baptistery of San Giovanni,
Florence, Italy
Gilt bronze
H. 90.2 cm (35 1/2 in.),
W. 14.7 cm (5 13/16 in.)
© Opificio delle Pietre Dure, Florence
Jacopo Comin, alias Robusti, alias Tintoretto
(Italian, 1519-1594)
The Origin of the Milky Way, ca. 1575
Oil on canvas
149.4 x 168 cm (58 13/16 x 66 1/8 in.)
© The National Gallery, London
Buy a reproduction
Comments
The fact that the British Government can sponsor a worthless excursion into Iraq and ignore the magnificence of its cultural heritage, such as Canterbury Cathedral, tells volumes about the myth of Blair’s Labour.
The Blairite Labour government has a long history of ‘ignoring’ Britain’s cultural heritage and properties and this attitude was indicative of things to come as soon as Labour took power in 1997. This unfortunate attitude predates the War in Iraq and the continued apathy shown by the government towards Britain’s cultural heritage has more to do with politically correct attitudes held by the Labour party that Britain’s cultural heritage is a sad reflection of the countries colonial and imperial past.
Furthermore, the Labour government fears that their support of the countries heritage and museum sectors could be perceived as racist by ethnic minorities and potential Labour voters. Which is why the party goes to behemoth lengths to distance the party from English cultural heritage through salary freeze, redundancies, budget cuts, bare minimal funding of heritage sites and museums or placing performance targets for future budgets based upon social inclusion programmes. What do you expect from a government whose motto is “Forward not back.”