14 Apr 2011
Is the Mona Lisa Leonardo’s male lover?
“Groundless” grumped Pietro Marani, a Leonardo authority, about a new theory offered from outside his field. He was responding as academics do to the report of an Italian researcher, Silvano Vinceti, on how several of Leonardo’s works, inc
14 Apr 2011
Beyond Face Fusion
“Face fusion” is not the only way an artist can insert his or her identity into the portrait of someone else. Courbet’s 1846 Portrait of H.J. van Wisselingh (above left) demonstrates another. An art historian, Rae Becker, has s
07 Apr 2011
Vinceti’s Bogus Claims
In my last entry here I criticized an Italian art historian’s recent conclusion that Salai, Leonardo da Vinci’s’s young assistant, was the model for several of Leonardo’s paintings, including two of St. John the Baptist.
18 Mar 2011
Face Fusion is Everywhere
For years I’ve been rattling on about face fusion to demonstrate that portraits by true artists are not what they seem. Many are not accurate depictions but a fusion of features from different faces, often the artist’s own. Salvador Dali, fo
25 Feb 2011
The Spell of Gossaert
The Jan Gossaert (c.1478-1532) exhibition that was on at the Met in New York last year has now moved in truncated form to London’s National Gallery. There are 37 of his 63 extant paintings in London. The Met had 50. Yet there i
21 Feb 2011
As Time Goes By
Irina Werning, an Argentine photographer, takes pictures of friends re-enacting photos from their youth and then depicts them side-by-side. I find them fascinating, in part because we all age in slow-motion, in part because the resemblances betw
13 Jan 2011
How Swords Become Paintbrushes
Even though artists across the ages have morphed swords into paintbrushes and spears into etching needles, few have ever been recognized. Indeed the use of weapons as visual metaphors for the tools of an artist is so widespread in art generally
18 Dec 2010
A Visit to the French Ambassador
I’ve just been to see Palazzo Farnese, the great French Embassy in Rome, partly designed by Michelangelo, which is rarely open to the public. They’ve arranged a wonderful exhibition with loans from Naples and Parma to celebrate the F
15 Dec 2010
Mona’s Eyes are Lettered
Last week we demonstrated how Nicolas Poussin’s Ordination includes the unseen face of Christ with Poussin’s own initial, N, painted over Christ’s eye. Christ, we explained, is the divine artist in Poussin’s own mind. Now news comes from
06 Dec 2010
How Mr. and Mrs. Robert Andrews are one and the Same Person
This painting, a British icon, is considered one of the National Gallery's most important masterpieces but, as we show in our most recent entry, it is largely misunderstood especially by the gallery itself. The Gallery and many critics think
03 Dec 2010
Giacometti in New York
If you are in Manhattan for the Christmas shopping season and need a few minutes' peace, pop on over to the Eykyn Maclean Gallery at East 67th Street where a small but magnificent collection of Giacometti drawings and sculptures are on displ
23 Nov 2010
Art and Eckhart
“Knowledge of Meister Eckhart’s work is indispensable to the understanding of medieval art, even though he has been almost totally neglected by those who like to call themselves ‘historians of art.’”
So wro
17 Nov 2010
Bronzino’s Mirror
I just discovered a self-portrait of Bronzino that I did not know. According to the catalogue for the current exhibition in Florence and earlier scholars too, Bronzino depicted himself in a religious painting as the poet-king David (above right)
05 Nov 2010
Dante Pops Up Again!
No art historian has yet commented, positively or otherwise, on how the presence of Dante’s profile in Michelangelo’s Last Judgement makes sense within the overall concept that Michelangelo himself pronounced: “every painter paints himself
05 Nov 2010
Manet as Tintoretto
A large number of Manet's early copies after other masters are either self-portraits or depictions of other artists. Art is often the apparent subject. One of his copies is Tintoretto's Self-Portrait (above), of which Carol Armstrong, a Manet sp
01 Nov 2010
Basquiat as Boone as Warhol
I just finished writing an entry on Jean-Michel Basquiat's strange portrait of Mary Boone when I realized I had missed something. It's an example of, no matter how much you see in truly poetic art, there is always something more. In this case, I
31 Oct 2010
Analyzing Freud and the Queen
Britain's press went nuts when Lucian Freud gave the Queen a tiny portrait of herself, just 9" x 6", and notably ugly at that. She had spent hours posing for him over 19 months. She could not have been amused. Now we reveal on the site, for
30 Oct 2010
The Frick’s Fiction
The Frick Collection's Portrait of Philip IV by Velazquez is described as one of the best portraits he ever painted. It is indeed magnificent and has just opened as a one-painting exhibition, accompanied by new explanations of what
27 Oct 2010 | 2 Comments
Van Gogh’s Nose
Noses are important in art history. Ovid's middle name was Nose, or naso in Italian, and his Metamorphoses were for centuries artistic fodder for painters and sculptors alike. Maybe that's why Michelangelo was so interested in his own nose, tell
27 Oct 2010 | 2 Comments
Van Gogh’s Eyes
Cruising along the Lungotevere on a Vespa I had time to admire the vast self-portrait of Vincent on the back of a Roman tour bus. The poster, promoting yet another one-man show of his work, had a glorious reproduction of the artist in which ever
09 Oct 2010
Rembrandt’s “Weakness”
Using short entries to explain art, we do not get much chance to quote the opinions of others striking the same chord. Hence this new segment called Quotations. Much of the time the quotes will point out a great master's "weakness", the type
05 Oct 2010
Painting Himself
I'm always on the look-out for contemporary artists who fit the mold and many do. Cindy Sherman, for instance, has made a career out of photographing herself as other people. Then along comes Liu Bolin. As you can see from the image above, h
30 Sep 2010
Mona Lisa’s Bad Hair Day
After breakfast this morning I read an article on Tudor coinage – God knows why –but what a lucky break! Who would ever have thought that England’s Bloody Mary and the Mona Lisa would have anything in common? But, first, some backgro
29 Sep 2010
Rubens’ Commander is Rubens
A Rubens was recently sold at Christies described as Portrait of a Commander, three-quarter-length, being dressed for battle though any keen user of this site would recognize the image as Portrait of Rubens as a Commander being painted by two of
26 Sep 2010
Face It! Anthea is Parmigianino
Fifteen years ago a computer scientist named Lillian Schwartz published her discovery that the proportions of the Mona Lisa’s face matched those of Leonardo in his famous Self-Portrait almost exactly, too exactly to be coincidence.1 Art hi
15 Sep 2010
Sense and Nonsense about Caravaggio
Every writer from Caravaggio's day to our own has spoken of the artist's astonishing realism. One critic wrote a century after his birth that Caravaggio:
"recognized no other master than the model, without selecting [as artists
12 Sep 2010
Putin’s Portraits
Recent news from Russia suggests that Vladimir Putin is not a regular user of this website. According to The Art Newspaper he has approved plans to create the first National Portrait Gallery. “Society has a huge interest in our national hi
07 Sep 2010
Fusion Confusion at The Wallace Collection
The Wallace Collection in London, an august institution, has a painting by Van Dyck of Paris, the mythological judge of beauty, posing by himself. A detail of his face is illustrated above (left). Whatever else one has to say about this pa
06 Sep 2010
Mauro Molinari
I turned up on the last day of an exhibition of Mauro Molinari’s work at the Carlo Bilotti Museum in Rome, a small but fascinating show by an artist I did not know. There was only one visitor present, a short, happy Italian man in hi
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