The Painted Word

It looks like a new Van Gogh may have been discovered by a South Korean man:

He discovered he owned what he thinks is a real Van Gogh after looking at an art book and seeing a version of a similar painting.

Sur Byung-soo said, “My father got it from a foreigner, and he told me to take good care of it. That was all he said to me.”

Sur claim that this is the real painting and that the version in the Pushkin Museum in Russia would be a reproduction.

If this is indeed true, it wouldn’t be the first time a museum has displayed a reproduction of a painting that was thought to be the original.

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• The name the painting is most recognized by is Mona Lisa but that only came about because of a spelling error! The original name of the painting was Monna Lisa. Monna, in Italian, was a common Italian shortening of Madonna, meaning “my lady.”

• Most people know that Leonardo da Vinci is the artist, but many believe that the woman’s identity is unknown. Some even think that it’s him - Leonardo da Vinci himself in the female form. The most commonly believed theory is that the woman is Lisa Gherardini, born in 1479. She was 24 years old and the mother of two sons when she posed for the painting. Why he chose her is still a mystery.

• It took da Vinci almost four years to complete the painting. He began in early 1503 and finished in late 1506. That dates the painting at over 500 years old.

• The painting actually has a recent imperfection. In 1956, a man named Ugo Ungaza threw a rock at the painting, which resulted in a small patch of damaged paint next to her left elbow.

• The unrivaled fame of this work is partially because it was stolen from the Louvre Museum in Paris in broad daylight by an employee in 1911. It was quickly recovered two years later.

• The painting is considered priceless and cannot be insured.

• The painting resides in its own room in the Louvre Museum in Paris and is protected in a climate controlled environment and encased in bullet proof glass. This room was built especially for the painting and cost the museum over seven million dollars.

• Leonardo never signed or dated the painting. The dimensions of the painting are 30″ high and 20 7/8″ in width. The “canvas” she is painted on is made from a wood called poplar. The type of paint he chose to use was oil based.

• It is rumored that the reason she has no eyebrows in the painting is because during one of the first times they were trying to clean and restore the painting an error was made and the eyebrows were accidentally removed. Other thoughts are that Leonardo, who was the consummate perfectionist, never finished the painting, as most of his paintings were left unfinished.

• Recent extensive studies show that there are three different versions painted under the presently viewed version. One version has her hands clutching the arms of the chair instead of in front of her.

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In a new book by German author Klaus Schröer, he looks through all the inconsistencies noted in the Ghent Alterpiece over the years by art historians and after 10 years of research concludes that the composition of the center panels was meant to possibly be the ground plan for the church La Vera Cruz in Segovia Spain. Van Eyck was known to have visited Spain before creating the Ghent Altarpiece

“First believing in a great coincidence, he found additional links to this church in van Eyck´s artwork. For example, van Eyck placed the True Cross very close to the lamb. Usually it is only shown in the context of Jesus in pain as in the Isenheim Altarpiece. The Spanish name of the True Cross is “La Vera Cruz“.”

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“Looking at these “Rembrandt” prints a few years later, Picasso dryly commented to his mistress Françoise Gilot that “every painter takes himself for Rembrandt.” He was right. No artist in the Western canon, not Raphael, not Michelangelo, not even Goya, has been so compulsively co-opted as heroic alter ego as Rembrandt. Painters like Turner, Delacroix, and van Gogh, who self-consciously saw themselves as Rembrandt’s apostles, believed that he, more than any other artist, had modeled forms with light and color rather than with line.”

You can find the New Yorker Article here

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Unknown Monet

The Evening Standard reviews a new Book and Exhibition on Monet entitled “The Unknown Monet: Pastels and Drawings.”

He doesn’t seem to be a big fan of either:
“How unknown is unknown? Would not unfamiliar have been the far more honest word to use? And even that I am inclined to doubt; perhaps the best description is so insignificant as to have slipped out of mind.”

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One of Pablo Picasso’s most recognizable pieces is “Three Musicians.” Geometric shapes filled with vivid solid colors create an image that seem as though it should be protruding off the paper. Although not literally having depth, the three musicians appear to be due to their contrast with the dull brown monochrome background. This style of Cubism is just an illusion, and the three musicians are completely flat. The sharp-edged patches of colors and shapes are what help to express an unstable or rapid rhythm from the musicians’ un-evident instruments. The extreme simplification and lack of detail featured throughout the instruments and the cafe setting is typical of any Picasso collage.

The actual three musicians are labeled as a Harlequin, Pierrot and a Monk. These characters reoccurred often throughout Picasso’s artistic career. The Harlequin which is a clown was considered as Picasso’s “alter-ego.”

Picasso repeatedly depicted himself as the Harlequin throughout his work. He identified with the Harlequin as an individual who lived away from the mainstream of society, and someone who saw himself as an entertainer and performer of magic tricks. The Harlequin’s ability to transform whatever he touched with his magic wand was a metaphor for artistic creation with the painter’s brush. The Pierrot and Monk were said to be poet friends of Picasso’s.

Thanks to the colors, consisting of red, yellow, blue and orange, and the over scene setting, “Three Musicians” gives off a “good-time” vibe. The dog, barely visible beneath the musician contributes to this.

Whether it’s hanging in your living room or in the Museum of Modern Art, this feeling can be experienced wherever you’re viewing this revolutionary painting.

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This an interesting website detailing Leonardo’s notebooks, their history and where they can be found today.
“Already in 1630, the Barnabite Antonio Mazenta speaks of the dispersal of the Leonardo manuscripts, and singles out Pompeo Leoni, a sculptor at the court of the King of Spain, as one of those chiefly responsible not only for losing part of the collection, but even worse, for rearranging the order of its contents. Indeed, in an effort to sort the artistic drawings from the technical ones, and to put together the scientific notes, he split up the original manuscripts, cut and pasted pages and created two separate collections.”

That’s really a shame.

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While doing some research for the site, I came across this story of Van Gogh’s Portrait of Dr. Gachet. It details the story of the painting’s sale in 1990 and its prompt disappearance there after.

“No one was laughing, however, after his death in 1996. It wasn’t clear who owned Gachet–Saito’s heirs, his company, or his creditors–or even where it was. Museum curators and auction houses tried to locate it. But while representatives of Saito’s company assured the world that it was still around, a veil of secrecy shrouded all future transactions. Gachet simply seemed to vanish into the murky waters of the international art market.”

While the article was written 6 years ago, it’s fair to say not much more information has been discovered. It would be a shame if this painting didn’t surface again soon.

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According to the Associated Press, researchers think they might have found a lost Leonardo work hidden within the walls of the Palazzo Vecchio in Rome. If true, this painting has been in hiding for more than 4 centuries. The work, the Battle of Anghiari, was considered Leonardo’s greatest masterpiece in it’s time.

The artice says it will take at least a year and a half to find the painting, without destroying the landmark, so we’re going to have to wait until it’s found.

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How Do I Find These Things?

A Lego version of Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry Night

Wow is all I can say…

Only 10,000 bricks?

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