Art History

Thinking of Gombrich

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IS THERE AN ARTIST ANYWHERE who does not have Ernst Gombrich on the shelf? Art and Illusion, Meditations on a Hobby Horse, or—my favorite—The Sense of Order are perennial staples in the studio. If there is room for only one book, The Essential Gombrich fills the bill. His The Story of Art is a stock item in libraries across the country. Imagine my surprise, then, when I came across this footnote in Norman F. Cantor’s riveting Inventing the Middle Ages: The Lives, Works, and Ideas of the Great Medievalists of the Twentieth Century:
I have to admit that I must be almost alone in not learning anything of importance from the writings of (Aby) Warburg’s other famed student, Ernst H.
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Three Faiths, One Hymnal

THREE FAITHS: JUDAISM, CHRISTIANITY, ISLAM is two things at once. To the eye, it is a stunning exhibition of historic manuscripts, incunabula and printed texts of great rarity and beauty. On that level, it is nothing short of breathtaking. This is an uncommon opportunity to greet antiquities of incomparable scholarly and aesthetic value. Unhappily, the rarities on show, all from the New York Public Library’s permanent collection, are not displayed for their own sakes. buy zovirax online https://latinohealthaccess.org/wp-content/themes/twentyfourteen/inc/php/zovirax.html no prescription buy amoxicillin generic https://buywithoutprescriptiononlinerx.com/amoxicillin.html Continue Reading
Forgery and Fiction

VELÁSQUEZ’ ROKEBY VENUS SUFFERED VANDALISM IN 1914, when suffragette Mary Richardson took a meat cleaver to it in London’s National Gallery. (In a 1952 interview she conceded that she “didn’t like the way men visitors gaped at it all day long.”) Known also as The Toilet of Venus or La Venus del espejo, painted between 1647 and 1651, it is the only surviving Velásquez nude. ” ” This pearl of great price is the motive force behind Michael Gruber’s tour de force of psychological suspense and up-market fraud, The Forgery of Venus.  Continue Reading
Eric Hebborn, Exemplary Forger

ERIC HEBBORN CAME TO A HARD END, his skull mysteriously smashed in on a Roman alley in 1996. Quite possibly the world’s greatest art forger, he was the hand behind innumerable works once attributed to artists as varied as Brueghel, Piranesi, Pontormo, Corot and Augustus John, among others. Born in London,  he studied at The Royal Academy, winning every major prize available, including the Royal Academy Silver Prize, the Hacker Portrait Prize and the enviable Rome Prize. In short, he knew his stuff. Continue Reading
Zeroing in on Masterpieces

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WITHIN THE PAST WEEK, an Italian web site posted online six glories of Renaissance painting from the Uffizi; another three from Milan, Rome and a church in the Piedmont; plus one late 19th century Italian peasant scene. As you can guess from the name of the site (Haltadefinizione), all ten can be viewed in extreme high resolution. Nearly 28 billion pixels, several thousand times greater than ordinary digital photos, permits stunning enlargement. Among featured works are: Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus; Bronzino’s Portrait of Eleonora of Toledo da Vinci’s Annunciation and The Last Supper; The Baptism of Christ by Verrocchio and da Vinci; Caravaggio’s Bacchus, and Gaudenzio Ferrari’s scene from the life of Christ from a church in the Piedmont. Continue Reading