Renaissance Gothfather Giorgio Vasari's Book

Every few year we get new translation of Lives of the Most Eminent Painters. It is a piece of work that resists four century's and a half, and is still one of ground work from field of fine art. IT is one of most important historical document, containing most of information of Italian renaissance. As well Vasari is a man that not only discovered the term Renaissance, he actually started with History of Art.

Giorgio Vasari(1511-1574) was born in Arezzy, Italy, in city that belong to Florentine Republic at that time. His father send him as Giorgio was still a boy to Florence, to study as painter, and as Vasari says for him self he was studying at Michelangelo, but some historians doubt in that, and later he studied at Adndrea Del Sart and Baccio Bandinelli. He studied together with members of Medicci family and so he got strongly related to this important family. Later on he studied under gardiance of Medicci in Rome and he was able to admire works of Michalangelo and Rafaello. Slowly he build his reputation as as an artist as he was working in different Italian cities, so he meanwhile got familiar with masterpieces of great Italian artist. He got his idea for Book about famous painters at dinner 1546, and the idea was provided to him by cardinal Farnese. first book with original title Le vite de'piu eccellenti pittori, scultori, e architetiori was printed in Florence in 1550 and was grabbed of as it was released, so Vasari became preparing him self for second edition, and meanwhile he did some amazing architect projects in Toscany. He modeled the palace Uffizi and long hall that is it connecting to Palace Pitty. He also redo the palace Cavaliero in Pisa. He was one of first members and establisher of Florence Academie del Disegno and he cooperated in renovation of Santa Maria Novella and Santa Croce churches in Florence. From his painter work is well known his wall painting in Pallazio Vecchio in Florence. No matter of importance of his painting and architect works he is famous for his book Lives of the Most Eminent Painters.
We must not forget that his book is not encyclopedia, but is deep thought study of development of different manner in Italian art till middle of 16. century. The book starts with Givanni Cimabue, and he ends with Tizian, the period of 250 years is covered in his book. Some of Vasari stories are relative short and stubborn, others are long for whole book and with very precise and detailed anecdotes talks about life and art of artist. Case like this is Michaelangelo's and Rafaell, Vasari was deeply admiring those two artis and he is building them piedistall in that book.
He started with the project in way that he organised the artist depending on quality and style, evolution of Italian Renaissance he explained with theory of organic development> this three staged development begun with Cimabuel and Giotto, because they started with innovative and stylistic exploring. In second faze are artist as is Brunelleschi, for which is more recognized sophisticated techniques of modeling and perspective, as well as he was combinating his development in many years in perfection of artist as Leonardo, Raffaelo and mostly with Michelangelo. Important is , that Vasari in his final decisions mostly right; artist that he is writing about in his book are still registered in their canon , and the ones he is critical over are mostly forgot these days. He talks about Renaissance in sense of of again rebirth of old Roman artistic and cultural value after the darkness middle age. VAsari's book became famus as well because of the style that is written.
sometime sthe translator translate just parts of in original extremely long lectures, which is pity, even if the lectures are extremely carefully sorted and in style of Vasari and pondered with opinion of art historians.

MIracles from Museum of Cathedral in Orvieto

Some great news for those , who wanted to visit and see with your own eyes inside of museum Duomo in Orvieto. This cathedral is in all global anthologies of western art strongly present with one of most important and in same time most strange, unusual late middle age architectural design in Italy with famous Last Judgment of Luca Signorelli. And when we came to this cathedral and put our hand on door knob there was no reaction.
Museum, one of central in Umbria Region, it is constantly closed for almost two decades , most important works are now collected and exhibited in near by Papal palaceand in church of S. Agostino. They addressed the exhibition "Hall of miracles; from Simone Martinni to Francesco Mocchi" and it will be open till first of July, 2008. Beginning of selection of all miracles is dated hundred years before Martini, that is 13. century. Upper limit is Baroque 17. century, most focused artist in that period are Coppo di Marcovaldo, Arnolfo di Cambio, Lippo Vanni, and Signorelli, who is represented with table painting Mary Magdalen, and Giambologna. They put to view works of many other authors, also from field of useful arts, from which they output paravans knitted after cartons of Sandro Botticelli and other authors, all couplet represents introduction act to what supose to be once in far future revenue museum. It is pitty for all those works to wait in deposits for such long time, you are not even able
to se reproductions on line, but you can get further info in link.

renaissance art ( something new )

The word 'Renaissance' is a French term first coined in the 19th century to describe the intellectual and artistic revival, inspired by a renewed study of Classical literature and art, which began in Italy in the early 14th century and reached its culmination in the early 16th century, having spread in the meantime to other parts of Europe. The equivalent Italian term is Rinascimento. The concept enshrined in the word 'Renaissance' is actually one of rebirth rather than revival and carries with it the loaded, and absolutely discredited, argument that the Middle Ages was a dead period intellectually and artistically. Such a view effectively renders Byzantine, Romanesque and Gothic art as being without aesthetic value. Though this position is untenable, the term 'Renaissance' is useful in so far as it denotes a view that was held by contemporary, especially Italian, thinkers and because the period covered by the term, in the leading artistic centres of Italy, exhibits a growing preoccupation with a coherent set of values based on antique Classical models.

It was Petrarch (1304-74) who first evoked the complementary images of the prevailing darkness of the Middle Ages, when the intellectual achievements of the Classical world had been forgotten, and the subsequent illumination of his own period following their rediscovery by scholars such as himself. Thus, the renewal of interest in the antique was first and foremost an intellectual and literary revival. The importance of Classical texts to the development of the visual arts was their inherent view of a world with man at the centre. Also, references to the arts in the antique world revealed that artists were valued for their ability to represent nature with great fidelity and that, furthermore, they enjoyed a higher status than their medieval counterparts. Thus, the beginnings of Renaissance art in Italy should be recognizable by seeking out not only those artists who adopted motifs or borrowed models from antiquity, but also those who sought to represent the human figure and the material world more naturalistically than had their predecessors.

Until the 20th century the generally accepted model for the development of the artistic Renaissance was that constructed by Vasari, writing in 1550. He gave to Giotto the credit for the rebirth of art after centuries of barbarism and structured his chronological model like the ages of man, with Giotto and his immediate heirs as representing the infancy of art; Masaccio, Brunelleschi, Donatello and Ghiberti as the experimental youth; and Leonardo, Raphael and Michelangelo as the perfected maturity. Although notions of rebirth (and the previous death the term implies) and artistic progress are now rejected, and although it is recognized that Vasari was above all a Florentine writer structuring history in Florentine terms in order to set the scene for his friend and idol, the Florentine all-round artist, Michelangelo, Vasari's account is useful in that it does reflect what is a perceptible movement away from an art based on conventionalized representations of a supernatural reality towards an increasing technical expertise (in which Florence mostly led the way) in the representation of a visually convincing and rationally ordered natural world. The subject matter was still preponderantly sacred, but Christ and the saints were now conceived with more corporeality, and increasingly not in an ethereal Heaven, but at the centre of the physical world.

If we accept Vasari's implication that Giotto was a Renaissance artist we should also be aware that he was in fact preceded by a non-Florentine, the sculptor, Nicola Pisano. Both artists imbue the human figure with a new power, dignity and gravity; and, furthermore, Pisano quotes directly from antique Roman sarcophagi, thus fulfilling the second requirement for a true Renaissance artist. Unfortunately, the following century does not present an ordered development from the achievements of these two figures and it is more usual today to agree with Alberti (writing in 1435) that the artistic Renaissance of Italy actually began in Florence in the early 15th century. The strength of this model is that what follows in Florence and in all those centres affected by Florentine art, presents a largely coherent artistic development throughout the century.

Brunelleschi, placed by Alberti in the vanguard of the new art, was the first architect to go beyond the arbitrary usage of the vocabulary (i.e. the recognizable motifs) of Classical buildings towards a perception of the underlying grammar (the order and harmony created by the rational proportional relationships of part to part and part to whole). Brunelleschi also seems to have made the earliest experiments in single point linear perspective and may have advised Masaccio in its possibilities for constructing a rationally ordered picture space. Certainly the fictive architecture in Masaccio's Trinity (c. 1428, Florence, Sta Maria Novella) is Brunelleschian. The earliest surviving use of linear perspective, however, is in Donatello's St. George and the Dragon relief (c. 1417, Florence, Or San Michele). Of the sculptors that looked towards Classical models, Donatello, like Brunelleschi with his architecture, was the one that most clearly understood the underlying spirit of Classicism. Throughout the 15th century (today usually designated the 'Early Renaissance'), Florentine artists were at the forefront of investigations into the representation of the natural world. To some, one particular area of investigation or another might take precedence: to Uccello it was the underlying geometry of form and the organizational possibilities of perspective and to Antonio Pollaiuolo, anatomy. Another hallmark of the Renaissance is that although the overwhelming majority of commissions were still sacred there was also, as the century progressed, a growth in lay patronage requiring portraits and other secular images, particularly those dealing with themes from Classical mythology.

The first quarter of the 16th century is generally termed the 'High Renaissance'. It is the period when the leading artists had sufficient technical expertise to achieve virtually any naturalistic effect they wished, coupled with a controlling, Classically-based intelligence which imposed visual harmony and compositional balance while eliminating gratuitous detail. Although most of the leading protagonists were Florentine - Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael - the centre of production had shifted to Rome (where these three men worked) and to Venice, where Bellini, Giorgione and Titian were creating their own High Renaissance style. The most important architect of the High Renaissance, whose buildings were the first to be considered as having fully recaptured the grandeur of ancient Rome, was Bramante.

It was not until this period that Italian Renaissance ideals began to spread in a significant way north of the Alps, Durer being the first northern artist to fully assimilate the ideals of the Renaissance into his work. Increasingly, from the 16th century onwards, northern artists would finish their artistic education by visiting Italy. Foreign rulers and states also sought to buy in Italian artists, but from the 1520s Mannerism had supplanted the High Renaissance style and thus in France, for example, direct Italian influence in the 16th century is essentially Mannerist (e.g. Francis I's School of Fontainebleau). Nevertheless, Mannerist art is inconceivable without the Classical ideals of the Renaissance (whether to flout deliberately or to exaggerate) and those ideals continued to exert a powerful influence on artists, alongside the art of Classical antiquity, as the supreme exemplar up until the second half of the 19th century and the advent of Realism and Impressionism.

New age in understanding and living

About 1450, European scholars became more interested in studying the world around them. Their art became more true to life. They began to explore new lands. The new age in Europe was eventually called “the Renaissance.” Renaissance is a French word that means “rebirth.” Historians consider the Renaissance to be the beginning of modern history.

The Renaissance began in northern Italy and then spread through Europe. Italian cities such as Naples, Genoa, and Venice became centers of trade between Europe and the Middle East. Arab scholars preserved the writings of the ancient Greeks in their libraries. When the Italian cities traded with the Arabs, ideas were exchanged along with goods. These ideas, preserved from the ancient past, served as the basis of the Renaissance. When the Byzantine empire fell to Muslim Turks in 1453, many Christian scholars left Greece for Italy.

The Renaissance was much more than simply studying the work of ancient scholars. It influenced painting, sculpture, and architecture. Paintings became more realistic and focused less often on religious topics. Rich families became patrons and commissioned great art. Artists advanced the Renaissance style of showing nature and depicting the feelings of people. In Britain, there was a flowering in literature and drama that included the plays of William Shakespeare.

Paris's Louvre Museum warned that the wood...

Paris's Louvre Museum warned that the wood on which the Mona Lisa was painted is bending.

Her unknown identity has plagued art historians for centuries. Her enigmatic smile has seduced millions of art lovers. Now the mystery of the Mona Lisa is deepening.

Earlier this week the Louvre Museum in Paris, where the Renaissance masterpiece by Leonardo da Vinci is housed, warned that "the thin panel of poplar wood, on which this mythical image is painted, is more warped than it was previously." Its deterioration, they said, has aroused "some worry."

Repairing the world's most famous artwork is no easy task, especially since da Vinci has an uncanny way of making life difficult for conservationists. Experts are unsure of the materials the Italian artist used and their current chemical state.

"Basically nobody wants to touch it, because nobody wants to mess it up," said Henri Zerner, a French art history professor at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachussetts. "What if you—oops!—lost the ear of the Mona Lisa?"

Sfumato

Da Vinci painted the portrait in Italy over a long period beginning in 1505. The painting was immediately celebrated as a great work of art, and da Vinci himself loved it so much that he always carried it with him, until it was eventually sold to France's King François I.

The identity of the subject has long been fiercely debated. The most likely candidate is Lisa Gherardini, the wife of a Florentine silk merchant, Francesco del Giocondo.

Another, many say outlandish, theory—revisited in novelist Dan Brown's hugely popular bestseller The Da Vinci Code—is that the painting was an androgynous self-portrait. Some see similarities between the facial features of the Mona Lisa and those of a da Vinci self-portrait painted years later.

Da Vinci used a technique known as sfumato—the blurring of sharp edges by blending colors—to leave the corners of the eyes and the mouth in shadow.

"It's an extraordinarily rich portrait. That is what portraiture is about: an effort to stop time," said David Rosand, an art history professor at Columbia University in New York. "The beauty of that face will last forever, but in life it will not."

Mocking Quality

According to Margaret Livingstone, a professor of neurobiology at Harvard University, the Mona Lisa's smile is so elusive that it disappears when looked at directly.
That's because direct vision is excellent at picking up detail, but less suited to picking up shadows. Peripheral vision, on the other hand, picks up low spatial frequencies like the blurry smile of the Mona Lisa.

"She has a mocking quality," said Livingstone, who is the author of the book Vision and Art. "When you're not looking at her, she seems to be smiling behind your back, and then you look at her and she stops."

The turbulent history of the Mona Lisa has added to its universal fame. In 1911 the painting was stolen from the Louvre by a former employee who believed it belonged in Italy. The thief walked out of the gallery with the picture under his painter's smock. He was apprehended in Florence, Italy, two years later, and the painting was safely returned.

Since then, the Mona Lisa has been frequently caricatured, dissected by psychologists like Sigmund Freud, and portrayed as a femme fatale in advertising campaigns.

"The story around the Mona Lisa [is] more famous than the painting itself," Zerner said.

Bending Wood

To preserve the fragile work, curators many years ago enclosed the Mona Lisa behind a thick pane of glass. The barrier guards against climatic changes and camera flashes from the six million people who visit the Louvre every year.

But experts say the true Mona Lisa is difficult to see, because it has been buried under thick layers of various varnishes. Over the years, the painting has gained a dull brown-and-yellow tint from chemical changes in the varnish.

Now the wood on which it's painted is also changing.

Wood is particularly difficult to repair, because it easily absorbs and releases water, changing its dimensions and shape. There is always a chance of doing more harm than good.

To make matters worse, the experts don't really know what materials da Vinci worked with.

The Center for Research and Restoration of Museums of France will now conduct a technical study to determine what materials the painting is made of and evaluate its vulnerability to temperature changes.

Said Rosand: "I would be surprised if that painting wasn't in fairly desperate need of some sort of help."

Mona Lisa smile secrets revealed

The smile on the face of the Mona Lisa is so enigmatic that it disappears when it is looked at directly, says a US scientist. Professor Margaret Livingstone of Harvard University said the smile only became apparent when the viewer looked at other parts of the painting.
The Mona Lisa, painted by Leonardo da Vinci in the 1500s, has intrigued art lovers for five centuries because of its subject's mysterious smile.
The theory has been presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Science's (AAAS) annual meeting in Denver, Colorado, this week.
The smile disappeared when it was looked at because of the way the human eye processes visual information, said Prof Livingstone.

The eye uses two types of vision, foveal and peripheral.
Foveal, or direct vision, is excellent at picking up detail but is less suited to picking up shadows.
"The elusive quality of the Mona Lisa's smile can be explained by the fact that her smile is almost entirely in low spatial frequencies, and so is seen best by your peripheral vision," Prof Livingstone said.
The more a person stares fixedly ahead, the less useful is their peripheral vision.
Prof Livingstone said the best example of this effect was if someone was to stare at a letter on a page of print.
Concentrating on one letter made it difficult to pick out other letters even a short distance away, Prof Livingstone said.
She said the same principle was used by da Vinci on the painting. The smile only became apparent if a viewer looked at her eyes or elsewhere on her face.
'Fundamental truths'
Da Vinci's painting, possibly the most famous portrait of all time, is housed at the Louvre in Paris.
Prof Livingstone also used French painter Monet's Impression: Sunrise, which features a dazzling orange sun in a blue sky, to show how artists had understood human sight.
"I'm demystifying the procedures that some artists have known about for years, but not debunking their art in any way," she said.
"These artists - the Impressionists, Da Vinci, Chuck Close, and Robert Silvers, for example-discovered fundamental truths that scientists are only now unravelling.

Copy of the Mona Lisa

"In 1983, a Japanese artist made a copy of the Mona Lisa completely out of toast." This curious fact and many more like it may be found on the "Fun Facts" World-Wide-Web page put out by the Northville Michigan Arts Commission (http://tln.lib.mi.us/~nort/yourpge4.html LINK DEAD 4/02), characterized on their web page as "a highly dedicated group of volunteers chartered to encourage, develop, and promote activities in all of the Arts." This identical piece of trivia is quoted word for word in no less than fifty other locations on the World Wide Web, where it is classified under a variety of demeaning and deprecating titles and rubrics such as "Amusing irrelevant facts," or "Useless (and unsubstantiated) facts," or "Totally useless facts." The list, in each of its iterations, is repeated item by item, with little variation, so that not infrequently, this seeming factoid about a toasted Mona Lisa directly follows the one about the child Albert Einstein who could not speak, or the one about the fellow who found a tooth growing out of his toe.

[Note: What may be the largest of these lists may be the one at the following URL: http://edisto.awod.com/gallery/rwav/wadem/dunno.html LINK DEAD 11/04. Here, the "facts" are presented "To help you through this absurd, twisted and some times silly world." In addition to the report of the Mona Lisa made of Toast, this list includes a notice reporting that Leonardo spent twelve years painting Mona Lisa's smile. This "fact" is repeated no less than 18 times on the Internet as of October 1998 under such titles at "Useless Trivia," or "Stuff No One Should Really Know. The following links to related trivia lists were supplied 10/04 by Carol Selkin:
Reports and illustrations of strange occurrences, prodigious events, wonders and other shocking truths have a long history in Western culture -- dating back (if we ignore Homeric and other ancient legends), certainly to medieval travel-books and tall tales about far-away places and the people who inhabit them. Fixed in place among so many bizarre rumors and curiosities, the report of a toasted Mona may seem to be just another one of those pseudo-facts (or factoids) to be read indiscriminately as "strange, but true," or "strange and not true" -- as you prefer. One thing is certain, however; in the lists of oddities, the story of a Mona Lisa in toast is robbed of context and offered to the public as something thoroughly meaningless and useless, an example of the worthless excesses of man in general and of modern artists in particular. Damned by association, vilified to insignificance, cited without the name of a maker, there is no way in such a context of contempt and derision to rescue the work (should it exist) and to demonstrate any meaning, substance or significance it may or may not have.

The work, in fact, is real, and is the product of artist Tadahiko Ogawa of Kyoto. The Mona as Toast does not always bend to the forces of ridicule, however. In an on-line edition of the Japan Times dated 1997, it is reported that a "Mona Lisa" whose image is burnt into slices of toast is Tadahiko Ogawa. Mona as Toast, ca. 1984displayed in an exhibit on "food as art" that was put up by the Tempozan Contemporary Museum. The above notwithstanding, it is not surprising, therefore that the permanent home of this work is the Orlando Florida exhibition hall of Ripley's "Believe it or not!" -- a collection of museums not known for their dedication to making sense of the world, but famous for showing its non-sense. Indeed, on the web-page of the Orlando Museum, the Mona as toast is cited as one example of work done by people "with too much time on their hands." What is the difference, we may ask, in accepting such an object as a serious or valid work of art and exposing it as a "useless" curiosity? Depending upon one's point of view, this is either a product of wasted time or one of certain ingenuity and verifiable industry. One thing is certain, this kind of criticism reveals more about the author than it does about the maker of the object. In this age when it is so easy to admit that cuisine can be aesthetic and hard to comprehend how art can be eaten, nobody seems to have noticed that the "Mona as Toast" looks surprisingly like a typical Leonardo brown ink drawing, squared off for transfer.

[Note: Japan Times: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/list/museums/1997/museumk6.html (Exhibit: "Delicious Art.")] LINK DEAD 4/02

[Note: From the Ripley's Orlando web page: "Then, there are exhibits which seem to scream 'some people have way too much time on their hands!' - a 1907 Rolls Royce Silver Ghost car made to two-thirds scale from more than a million match sticks, a family portrait made from dryer lint and the Mona Lisa from inch-square pieces of white toast, to name a few." (http://www.iloveorlando.com/ilo_ripleys.htm LINK DEAD 4/02). A telephone call to the Orlando museum provided the name of the artist, the date of acquisition (1984), and the fact that it was made of 1426 slices (or pieces?) of toasted white bread. But note Walter Benjamin's apt rejoinder to this materialistic assumption: "the fruits of idleness are more precious than the fruits of labor," (as quoted in Michael Kimmerman, "Museums in a Quandary: Where Are the Ideals?" The New York Times, August 26, 2001.)]

The "lists" do not tell us that Toast is in Orlando. It could easily be viewed as a fabrication of urban legend. It may be seen, illustrated, in an article from an unidentified magazine, where we are told that it is composed of 1,426 slices, and where, in the tradition of the lists, it is likened to other bizarre curiosities from the Orlando Ripley's: to a portrait of a Chinese emperor made from a laundry shirt and a reproduction of a Van Gogh self-portrait made from 3,000 postcards of the artist's paintings (also in Orlando). The caption begins: "From the ridiculous..." and only gets "to the sublime" when it mentions the Van Gogh. It is difficult to imagine why a Van Gogh made of 3,000 postcards is more sublime than a Mona Lisa made of 1500 slices of toast. Ostensibly, in the hierarchy of applied values at work here, postcards carry more weight than toast, or 3000 is more divine than 1500. These are not aesthetic criteria, of course, these works are being judged materialistically.

Is this the finale of one of the Western world's most revered works of art: to be ridiculed, commercialized, trivialized, and made ripe for any sort of exploitation? Do these stories indicate how far reverence for Leonardo's masterpiece has fallen since the 19th century, when it came to stand as a hallmark and embodiment of Renaissance beauty and accomplishment -- as the quintessential document expressing the relationship between the artist and his subject? Is the Mona Lisa toast (to borrow modern parlance)? Does this fall from the Renaissance tradition signify a re-death of the classical/naturalistic hold on representation? Or are these manifestations indicative of something else -- of a process by which modern society re-invents itself and comes to terms with its own past while it defines the path that lies ahead?

mona lisa stolen

Most of pictures from this blog are taken from nice studio site .On Monday, August 21, 1911, the world's most famous work of art--Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa--was stolen from the Louvre museum in Paris. That morning, many museum employees noticed that the painting was not hanging in its usual place. But, they assumed the painting was taken off the wall by the official museum photographer who was shooting pictures of it up in his studio. By Tuesday morning, when the painting hadn't been returned and it was not in the photographer's studio, museum officials were notified. The painting was gone! The police were contacted immediately and they set up headquarters in the museum curator's office. The entire museum was searched from top to bottom. This took a week because of the size of the Lourve: it's a 49-acre building which runs along the Seine river for 2,200 feet. The only thing a detective found was the heavy frame that once held the Mona Lisa. It was discovered in a staircase leading to a cloakroom. Once the news became public, French newspapers made several claims as to the nature of the theft. One newspaper proclaimed that an American collector stole the work and would have an exact copy made which would be returned to the museum. This "collector" would then keep the original. Another newspaper said that the entire incident was a hoax to show how easy it was to steal from the Louvre. Many people were questioned about the theft--from museum employees to people who worked or lived nearby. Perhaps somebody might have seen someone acting "suspiciously?" The police even questioned Pablo Picasso. Picasso had previously bought two stone sculptures from a friend named Pieret. Pieret had actually stolen these pieces from the Louvre months before the Mona Lisa was stolen. Picasso thought that perhaps his friend might have also stolen the Mona Lisa. Fearful of the implications and bad publicity, Picasso had the sculptures given to a local newspaper in order for their return to the museum. Picasso wished to remain anonymous, but someone gave his name to the police. After an interrogation, the police concluded that Picasso knew nothing about the theft of the Mona Lisa. Luckily, the painting was recovered 27 months after it was stolen. An Italian man named Vincenzo Perugia tried to sell the work to the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy for $100,000. Perugia claimed he stole the work out of patriotism. He didn't think such a work by a famous Italian should be kept in France. What Perugia didn't realize was that while the Mona Lisa was probably painted in Italy, Leonardo took it with him to France and sold it to King Francis I for 4,000 gold coins. How did Perugia steal the Mona Lisa? He had spent Sunday night in the Louvre, hiding in an obscure little room. Monday morning, while the museum was closed, he entered the room where the painting was kept and unhooked from the wall. In a staircase, he cut the painting from it's frame. While trying to leave the building, he came to a looked door. He unscrewed the doorknob and put it in his pocket. He then walked out of the Louvre and into the pages of history. Interestingly enough, ten months before the painting was stolen, the Louvre decided to have all masterpieces put under glass. Perugia was one of four men assigned to the job. Police questioned Perugia after the theft, but his easy-going, calm demeanor settled any doubts of his involvement. The source of this story on the Mona Lisa theft is The Art Stealers by Milton Esterow, New York: Macmillan Company, 1966. pp 100-152.

Renaissance Thinking

In Spain, as in other European countries, sixteenth-century painting is characterized by eclecticism, or rather by the synthesis of a number of different trends: national tendencies, the influence of the great Italian masters, and certain elements of the art of Northern and Central Europe. In the early years of the century, the formula was thoroughly Quattrocento, but the use of oils and a growing interest in naturalistic representation and the manipulation of space nullified or progressively diluted the surviving Gothic characteristics. With the passage of time gold backgrounds became increasingly rare, and landscapes gained in breadth and luminosity. Many Spanish artists visited Italy, attracted by the fame of the Italian schools. While there, some underwent a technical and aesthetic transformation, and, on returning to Spain, contributed decisively to the growth of the Renaissance spirit, spreading their version of the great lessons to be learned from the art of Leonardo, Raphael, and Michelangelo. These influences remained dominant until the middle of the century, though, as we have mentioned, not without interference from Flanders, Germany, and Holland.

The most important characteristic distinguishing the Renaissance painting of Spain from that of Italy, France, and Germany relates more to subject matter than to style. It is the Spanish rejection of mythological themes and the cult of the nude. The Spanish artist of the sixteenth century·shared the spirituality of hís Gothic forebears; in general, he worked for the churches and monasteries, or for nobles with similar religious preoccupations. Many of the better paintings of this period are imbued with the mysticism of the ascetic, and are remote not only from thc sensualism associated with paganistic themes, but also from the cult of art for art's sake and sheer aestheticism. The foreigners who came to work in Spain during this period, which, it must be remembered, coincided with the peak of Spanish imperial power, were quickly assimilated. Far from resisting the established tradition in Spain, they sometimes became among its most passionate interpreters.

Challenge: The weight of history. Leonardo da Vinci first designed a bridge to cross the Bosporus strait at Istanbul in 1502, but the sultan to whom he presented the project didn't believe that the bifurcated, tapered stone arch span could be built.

Solution: Vebjørn Sand, a Norwegian artist, came across the bare-bones design at an exhibition of da Vinci's engineering work and persuaded Norwegian transportation officials to give it a shot. But stone is out; 500 years later, glu-lam - glue-laminated wood - brings the concept to life.

The influence of Leonardo

Spanish painting was given a new and more determined thrust in the direction of the Renaissance by two artists trained in Italy: Fernando Yáñez de la Almedina and Fernando Llanos. In 1507 they were jointly commissioned to paint the great retable still in Valencia cathedral. The styles of both masters are distinguished by clarity of composition, a taste for static poses and attitudes, and an appreciation of architecture, less for the sake of the prolific ornamental detail, of which other painters of the period were so fond, than for the balance of masses. In the scenes of this retable, taken from the life of the Virgin, their debt to Leonardo is very obvious. Although the styles of the two painters have much in common, Yáñez's manner is distinguished by the greater monumentality of his figures. Llanos appears to be more addicted to the emotional gesture and the troubled expression. After 1513, the two artists worked independently, Yáñez producing the notable St Catherine in the Prado, the Epiphany and Pieta of Cuenca cathedral, painted in 1531, and the Last Judgment in the March collection in Mallorca. Together, Yáñez and Llanos exerted a widespread influence on the schools of Murcia and Valencia.

Unlike fifteenth-century art, Catalan painting of this period, that is, of the first quarter of the sixteenth century, did not revolve about a group of exceptional personalities. Individual masters, mostly foreigners, produced work of some interest in different centers throughout the province, particularly in Gerona, Tarragona, and Barcelona. The most eminent of these artists was Ayne Bru, a painter of German origin, to whom we owe the magnificent Martyrdom of St. Cucufate, preserved in the Museum of Catalan Art. This painting is remarkable for the sensuous opulence of the modeling, which is rich in tactile qualities and suggestive of the style of Leonardo. Gerona was the home of a very gifted painter known as Juan de Borgoña (of Burgundy). His work also appears in Valencia, and his art, with its wealth of forms and colours, was known along the entire Mediterranean coast of Spain.

Eclecticism

About the year 1500 a number of talented painters were at work in the principal cities of southern and central Spain. Their art is often eclectic, comprising both Northern and Italian elements, with the balance weighted somewhat in favor of the latter. In Toledo, the first third of the sixteenth century is dominated by the personality of Juan de Borgoña. In 1495 he worked in Toledo cathedral, together with Pedro Berruguete. His painting is remarkable for its exquisite sensitivity, its balance, and a warm lyricism intolerant of all excess. There is evidence of early exposure to Florentine influences, together with hints of the Gothic, especially strong in the fall of the draperies. Luminous colours and the subtle organization of space are the distinguishing features of Juan de Borgoña's magnificent decorations in the chapter house of Toledo cathedral (1509-11), in which the landscape plays such an important part. In addition to executing several retables in Toledo, the artist also completed the retable of the Cathedral of Avila, begun by Pedro Berruguete, which includes an exquisite Annunciation. In his studio work, which is rather voluminous, some of the more valuable qualities of the master tend to be neutralized. During this same period some outstanding paintings were being produced in Seville by Alejo Fernández. In 1496 he is reported in Cordova, but soon afterward he moved to Seville, where he continued to live until his death in 1545. Strong in composition, Fernández was particularly skillful in handling his figures, which are distributed with imagination and judgment and modeled with unusual grace, as may be seen in his Epiphany in Seville cathedral. The cities of Sevilla and Saragossa possess important examples of his work, in particular the Virgin of the Navigators from the Alcázar of Seville, in which the sober and balanced composition and the nobility of form foreshadow Zurbarán.

During the second third of the sixteenth century, a number of Spanish painters fell heavily under the influence of Raphael. Typical in this respect, in Valencia, are the members of the Masip family: Vicente Masip and his son, Juan de Juanes. The work of the latter, mostly later than 1550, is distinguished by a certain formalistic elaboration of the directions taken by his father, and is by no means lacking in grace or skill. Juan de Juanes was the creator of a group of models of Spanish piety. His work is harmonious, rhythmically transparent, and well designed. These characteristics are particularly evident in his more popular compositions, such as the Holy Family in the Academy of San Fernando, the Redeemer in the Valencia Museum, and the Last Supper in the Prado Museum. His father's most important achievement is the retable in Segorbe cathedral, painted about 1530.

In Seville, the second third of the sixteenth century also witnessed the introduction of a style of painting that reflected the ascendancy of Raphael. In this center, the most important artist of the period were undoubtedly of Northern origin: the Dutchman Fernando Esturmio (Storm), and the Fleming Pedro de Campaña (Kempener). The latter, the more gifted of the two, was born in Brussels in 1503. He was trained in Italy, but in 1537 he is known to have been employed in the Cathedral of Seville. Shortly before 1563 he returned to his native country. The style of this master includes elements derived from Michelangelo, but these are offset by original plastic qualities and a sense of drama. One of Campaña's key works is the Descent from the Cross (1547) in Seville cathedral, a painting that anticipates the Baroque of Rubens and was much admired by other Spanish artists, particularly Murillo. Campaña had a more amiable and genuinely Raphaelesque side, evident in the altarpiece of the Marshal's Chapel in Seville cathedral, which he was commissioned to paint in 1555. His progress toward the Baroque and his interest in the rendering of light are revealed in his admirable Adoration of the Magi, which was painted in 1557 (church of Santa Ana, Seville).

There is no space to mention all the numerous artists working in Spain at this time, but we must refer, however briefly, to the paintings of that sculptor of genius, Alonso Berruguete, in particular to his Nativity in the Valladolid Museum, and to the work of Pedro Machuca, an extraordinary architect.

Luis de Morales (called El Divino), born in 1510, was a distinctly original personality. The distinctive features of his style - a painstaking technique inherited from the Flemish masters, and elongated forms that foreshadow the art of El Greco - are especially evident in the works of his final period. Morales painted numerous versions of the Virgin and Child, sometimes with the infant St.John, and touching visions inspired by the theme Ecce Homo, which are among his most popular works. Sensitivity to content and concentration on the sacred drama are the chief characteristics of this typical representative of Spanish asceticism.

The third quarter of the sixteenth century brought a strong desire for innovation. This coincided with the infiltration of Mannerism, openly introduced by the Italian painters who decorated the Escorial, and a renewed interest in the Venetians, particularly in their colours. The painter who best represents these tendencies is Juan Fernández Navarrete, called "the Mute" because of the affliction from which he had suffered since boyhood. After a "short" stay in Italy, where he had contact with Titian's studio, he started work in the Escorial in about 1568. Thanks to the forcefulness of the image, his realistic and merciless version of the Martyrdom of St. James (1571) is one of his best known works, but his Adoration of the Magi (1575), also in the Escorial, better reveals his painterly preoccupation with light, chiaroscuro, and colour. Navarrete died in Toledo in 1579.

Portrait Painting

The art of the second half of the sixteenth century was by no means exclusively religious. Portrait painting also flourished. The Dutch portraitist Anthonis Mor (1519?-1576) was followed by his pupil Alonso Sánchez Coello (1531/32-1588), who gave a decided impetus to this genre with work of the caliber of his portraits of Philip II and the royal children Don Carlos and Isabella Clara Eugenia (Prado Museum). This artist has rightly been praised for his humanity, which, in its intimate relationship to plastic values, makes him the direct precursor of Velázquez portraits. The preoccupation with tactile qualities and the convincing representation of materials, characteristic of Sánchez Coello, is even more noticeable in the work of his pupil and successor, Juan Pantoja de la Cruz (1551-1609). In his somewhat hieratic portraits, the character of the subject is of less interest than the verisimilitude of jewels, lace, silks, brocades, and nielloed armor. Pantoja, like Sánchez Coello, painted religious subjects as well as portraits, and in this genre he worked with greater freedom, achieving a more truly pictorial effect. He was also absorbed in the problems of dark and light, as revealed in his Resurrection (1605), now in the Hospital of Valladolid.

The last quarter of the sixteenth century produced a variety of painters who, for all their interest, are typical transitional figures, associated with a period of fluidity that was soon to crystallize in a new conception of painting. Prominent among these artists were Pablo de Céspedes in Cordova, and, in Seville, Vasco de Pereira and Francisco Pacheco, the teacher and father-in-law of Velázquez, who in his latter years (1649) published an interesting treatise, Art of Painting.

El Greco's Painting

The great revolution that burst on the mediocrity of late sixteenth-century Spanish painting turned largely upon the genius of El Greco, Italian-trained under Venetian masters, yet a supreme individualist and the possessor of a technique as advanced and effective as any in Europe. There is something miraculous about the outcome of a career so full of internal contradictions and exposed to so many apparently conflicting influences. Born on the island of Crete in 1541, Domenicos Theotokopoulos must have begun to paint in the Byzantine icon tradition, which is discernible in much of his later work. Later, under the spell of Venice, he determined upon a very different course. In 1570 Giulio Clovio noted an encounter in Rome with "a young native of Candia, a pupil of Titian, who in my judgment seems to have a rare gift for painting." In fact, El Greco did develop his singular talents under Titian and Tintoretto and produced work of astonishing power even during these youthful years in Italy. Venetian influence is apparent in the Portrait of a Man (National Gallery, Copenhagen), in the Healing of the Blind Man in the Dresden Pinakothek, and in other paintings. In Rome, in spite of his diatribes against him, El Greco learned much from Michelangelo, acknowledging, in particular, the grandeur of his conception of the human body, stressed by tensions that reveal a supernatural world.

News of the building of the Escorial, and the example of the Italian painters who went to Spain to work on its decoration, may have influenced El Greco's decision to seek new goals. His mysticism must have enabled him to identify himself with the Spanish ideals of the Golden Century more completely than with the sensuousness and literary themes of Italian art. In 1577 he was engaged in painting the great retable of Santo Domingo el Antiguo in Toledo, dominated by two great panels, The Trinity and The Assumption, now in museums in Madrid and Chicago. The El Greco of this period is still very restrained, concerned with closed forms, and able to invest his sacred themes with a sense of monumentality, while finding a means of self expression in the tumultuous life of his colours.

El Greco's work is distinguished by a marked interest in human types, to which his success as a portrait painter must certainly be attributed. At the same time, this success is founded less on objectivity than on a talent for selecting models sympathetic to a conception of the world exalted by religious feeling. The culmination of his art is to be found in the paintings based on the Gospels and other sacred themes, such as the famous Espolio, painted in 1577-1579 (sacristy of Toledo cathedral). El Greco used the folds of robes and draperies to establish a rhythmical movement suggestive of the medieval style, but handled with the freedom of the Baroque. The reflections and textures of the fabrics are rendered with marvelous skill. In 1580-1582 he painted his striking version of the Martyrdom of St Maurice (Escorial), a carefully studied composition with an original colour scale of cold blues, yellows, greens, and violets. This work, commissioned by Philip II, failed to please the monarch and was refused.

Thereafter El Greco turned from a course that, if pursued, would have brought him greater wealth and honours. In 1586-1588 he executed one of his masterpieces, preserved in the church of Santo Tomé in Toledo, for which it was painted. This is the Burial of Count of Orgaz, a magnificent composition, based on a fourteenth-century legend, in which the artist expresses his disdain for externals and his interest in the "interior light" and the human form. In this picture the figures of knights and monks form a frieze beneath which two saints support the body of the count. The splendors of the heavenly realm are blazoned across the distant sky. The ascent to Heaven was a favorite subject of El Greco, a theme reiterated in his rhythms, chiaroscuro, and colour. In these paintings the mystical element is counterbalanced by a profoundly human interest in the earthly model. In this connection it is enough to note the portrait of Cardinal Fernando Nino de Guevara in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the impressive St Ildefonso preserved in Washington.

El Greco was interested in landscape less for the sake of its anecdotal value and natural beauty than for its spiritual qualities and the atmosphere. This is the mood of his masterly View of Toledo (1597 to 1599), also in the Metropolitan Museum. The artist also had to satisfy a steady demand for pictures of the saints. He was therefore obliged to resort to the expedient of painting them in series, sometimes with the aid of assistants. In this way he produced numerous versions, closely similar or with certain variations, of his conception of St Francis of Assisi, the repentant St Peter, St Jerome, Mary Magdalene, and so on. In his maturity he allowed freer rein to a personal tendency to distort and elongate his figures, as in the Resurrection in the Prado (1607) and in the Opening of the Fifth Seal in the Metropolitan Museum. During his final period, this tendency was exaggerated and combined with a process of simplification and elimination of detail and a frequcnt indulgence in contortion. These qualities he brilliantly combined with the most sumptuous palette, as may be seen in the Laocoön in the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.

It seems probable that the artist accepted the assistance of collaborators in some of the series he painted in the final years of his life, but it is no less certain that he preserved until the very end that absolute mastery over his art so conspicuous in the superb Twelve Apostles in the Casa del Greco. Francisco Preboste and the painter's son, Jorge Manuel, were probably his principal collaborators, while Luis Tristán was the best of his pupils.

Descartes, Bacon and Newton, giant's of science

Rene Descartes wrote his Discourse on Method 50 years before Issac Newton published his Principia. The Principia stunned the world and quickly established Newton as the leading intellectual of his age. Everyone recognized it as epoch making. But the Principia and the ideas it contained were built against a backdrop of feverish excitement that began well over a century before with Copernicus who had literally torn the cosmos from its foundations and hurled it into space. Aristotle's universe, Ptolemy's universe, had been overthrown. It took some time to sink in. But when it did, there began a concerted and feverish process of rebuilding the world on a newfooting. The century and a half of reconstruction culminating in Newton's magnificent achievement."The book of nature, Newton's nature was seen in poetic termsas a divine romance -- a book written in disconnectedcorpuscular characters scattered throughout an infinite and empty void following the syntax of motion and the rule of attraction."
This Newtonian cosmos was radically different from Aristotle's.Aristotle's cosmos had been closed, finite,
and differentiated. This universe was open, infinite, and undifferentiated. It was mathematical, knowable, material and
predictable. It ran like a clock with such incredible precision that witnessed for most evidence enough of a divine clockmaker who took an active and omnipresent interest in the affairs of men. Newton did not require God as a first principle in his grand synthesis--but the product of his endeavors was evidence enough that God was. The optimism that this awareness inspired fueled the spirit of Newton's Age, the Age of enlightenment.But Newton's achievements, catalyzed in the first instance by Copernicus, were produced through his fusing and synthesis of many others who took on the challenge of rebuilding the cosmos. These must have been exciting and nervous times. Tradition and authority were dead--but what would take their place? There were many actors in the drama that culminated in Newton's triumph, but three men in particular stood out: Galileo, Francis Bacon, and Rene Descartes: Italian, English and French. Before looking at the distinctions amongst these three it is important to recognize, that in the grand scheme of the age in which they worked, and that although their strategies differed,they had much in common. They would have made a grand teaching team. All three were optimistic. All three were individualistic and egalitarian. All three were anti-traditionalist and actively about the business of getting on with the business of forging a new cosmos. All three held views that ignorance came from error. The synthesis that Newton produced could be represented as a line drawn from Galileo to Newton with Descartes and Bacon standing on either side. Bacon is the proponent of a method of empiricism, induction, experiment and observation--a gatherer of particulars. Descartes is seen as the champion of deduction, the rational thinker. Newton, is seen as the harmonizer of these two contrasting approaches, claiming, correctly, that induction and particulars are primary, but, in fact, relying heavily on a system of grand intellectual constructions--space and time especially - which are very much from the tradition of Descartes. Notice that while the "language of Newton" is very much Baconian in tone and intent: RULE IV In experimental philosophy we are to look upon propositions inferred by general induction from phenomena as accurately or very nearly true, notwithstanding any contrary hypotheses that may be imagined, till such time as other phenomena occur by which they may be made more accurate or liable to exception. (Rules of reasoning). ...that it was Descartes who had the greatest influence on Newton's method through his "Analytic Geometry," which was Descartes' crowning intellectual achievement.

Renaissance Art in Italy

Two 15th Century Italian Paintings on Fine-Weave Supports
and their Relationship to Netherlandish Canvas Painting
Abstract
In the 15th century and earlier, artists used canvas supports more often than the material evidence that has
come down to us might indicate. In order to paint on canvas, artists used several different techniques. One
of these bears the historical name of Tüchlein. This technique was widely used in the Low Countries and
to a lesser extent in other regions in Europe. With the help of technical analyses, the author examined the
two Italian paintings from the Fogg Art Museum collection -one attributed to Giovanni Canavesio and the
other to the Studio of Sandro Botticelli-, to determine how closely their structure and materials are to the
Tüchlein technique.
1. Introduction
This short communication is the result of a research project conducted at the Straus Center or
Conservation at the Harvard University Art Museums from September 2004 through June 2005. The goal
of the project was to study the technique and materials of two Italian paintings on fine-weave supports in
order to compare them with Northern paintings made using the Tüchlein technique.
The paintings examined are both from the Fogg Art Museum collection (Harvard University Art
Museums): ‘Salvator Mundi’ (c. 1490-1499, 57.15 x 34.93cm; 1930.2) by the Studio of Sandro Botticelli
(Fig.1), and ‘Saint Roche’ (1475-1500, 114.4 x 48.3cm; 1942.271), attributed to Giovanni Canavesio
(Fig.2).
2. Etymology of the Word Tüchlein
To avoid misunderstandings and to set up a frame of reference, it is important to examine the historical
usage of the term Tüchlein, as well as to give the precise definition that is being used for this research
project. The term ‘Tüchlein’ derives from a quotation in Albrecht Dürer’s diary (Dubois 1997). He made
this entry during his travels to the Low Countries in 1520-1521: In these quotations he mentions the word
Tüchlein [tuch meaning ‘cloth’ and lein meaning ‘small’] three times:
Devolder, ANAGPIC 2005 Paper 2
“[…] I have sold a ‘Madonna’ picture painted on small canvas”/ “I have got 4 florins, 5 stivers for three
small canvases ”/ “I have given the little Portuguese factor, Signor Francisco, my small canvas with the
small child […]”1(Fry 1913).
Modern scholars have linked this term to Vasari’s technical description of a self-portrait by Dürer2, which
Dürer gave to Raphael. This description mentions a guazzo as the medium that strictly translated means
gouache [painting with opaque pigments ground in water, and mixed with gum and honey (Onions
1934)]. Dubois et al. (1997) interprets it as ‘distemper’ [glutinous substance soluble in water; e.g. animal
glue, plant gum and egg]. In addition the description mentions painting on a linen canvas in transparent
Figure 1: (Top left) Studio of Sandro Botticelli, Salvator Mundi
c. 1490-1499
57.15 x 34.93cm., actual
Fogg Art Museum, Friends of the Fogg Art Museum Fund, 1930.2
Figure 2: (Top right) Giovanni Canavesio, Saint Roch
1475-1500
114.4 cm. x 48.3 cm., actual
Fogg Art Museum, Gift of Edward W. Forbes, 1942.271
Devolder, ANAGPIC 2005 Paper 3
colors without white, the image equally visible on both sides and the highlights obtained by using the
color of the, (possibly bleached), canvas (Dubois et al. 1997).
From that point on, for the majority of modern scholars, the word Tüchlein came to represent a specific
technique, although the term was probably used by Dürer to identify only his supports. Unfortunately the
term has been used indiscriminately by art historians to describe canvas paintings made before, during
and after Dürer’s life and painted using many different types of procedures and materials. Scholars such
as Marijnissen (1987), Wolfthal (1989), Dubois & Klaassen (2000) have argued for a distinction between
the different materials and procedures used to make early Netherlandish canvas paintings.
Taking the above in consideration, the proper definition of the Tüchlein technique is:
1. - finely woven linen support with glue size layer and unprimed;
2. - aqueous binding medium (gum/glue);
3. - no varnish.
3. Comparison Between Italy and the Low Countries
Descriptions of 15th–century canvas paintings have been made which emphasize the differences in
materials and procedures used north and South of the Alps. It has been generally assumed that canvas
paintings from South of the Alps tend to have an egg binding medium, a gesso preparation layer, and
often a final varnish layer. These three differences change the paintings’ visual properties and give them a
very different appearance from canvas paintings from the North (Villers 2000).
Andrea Mantegna (c.1431-1506), and to a lesser extent Giovanni Bellini (c.1430-1516), are generally
assumed to be the only Italian artists who painted both in the Tüchlein technique and in the Italian
technique (Villers 1995). Dunkerton (1993) mentions that it is possible that Mantegna saw the Bouts
triptych3, (painted in the Tüchlein technique), in Venice. Such an encounter could have inspired
Mantegna to experiment with a similar technique. It is important to note that the Bouts triptych is only
one of many examples mentioned in written sources listing Netherlandish canvas paintings in 15th century
Italian collections (Nuttal 2004).
Artists in the Low Countries were well aware of the fact that their art was ‘fashionable’ in Italy and they
therefore made many paintings for export. In addition to panel paintings, they exported canvas paintings,
rolled on dowels and shipped in crates (Dunkerton 1993). In order to allow the paintings to be rolled they
used the Tüchlein technique [a gesso priming layer tends to crack during rolling]. Beside the well-known
Devolder, ANAGPIC 2005 Paper 4
fact that Italian artists came into contact with Netherlandish paintings, they also met artists travelling from
the Low Countries (for example: Dürer in Venice, 1506) (Nuttal 2004). Italian painters also travelled to
the Low Countries to study Netherlandish painting procedures, though most documented study trips were
to study oil painting techniques (Nuttal 2004).
With regard to the two paintings examined for this study, we know that Botticelli painted on canvas in an
Italian technique (e.g. ‘The Birth of Venus’ c.1485, tempera on canvas; 172.5 x 278.5 cm, Galleria degli
Uffizi, Florence) but so far we are not aware of any Tüchleins. From Giovanni Canavesio, as far as the
author knows, no paintings on canvas –of any kind- are known to exist.
4. Technical Examination
In order to determine if the paintings from the Fogg Art Museum collection are painted in the Tüchlein
technique, the canvases were studied layer by layer, looking at the support, the presence or absence of a
priming or glue size layer, the medium used and the presence or absence of a varnish4.
4.1. ‘Salvator Mundi’, Studio of Sandro Botticelli
The ‘Salvator Mundi’ painting attributed to the ‘Studio of Sandro Botticelli’ (Fig.1) entered the Fogg Art
Museum collection in 1930 as a Botticelli. Over the years the attribution has changed to ‘copy of
Botticelli’, then to ‘School of Botticelli’ and now to ‘Studio of Botticelli’. Two similar paintings by
Botticelli, painted in egg tempera on panel, are known: one in Detroit and one in Carrara5 (Kanter, et al.
1997).
As mentioned earlier, it is known from inventories that the Italian nobility collected Netherlandish
artwork. For example, the inventories of the Medici family and Tomasso Portinari mention Flemish linen
canvas paintings (Nuttal 2004). The Italian nobility were attracted by the different way of representing
themes, both sacred and profane, as well as by the painting style and technique. The Netherlandish type of
the ‘Head of Christ’, with its realistic representation of blood and wounds became a very popular
devotional object in Italy (Nuttal 2004). In order to meet the demand for these images Italian painters
started to make paintings inspired by examples from the Low Countries. In her book ‘From Flanders to
Florence’, Nuttal mentions the Fogg collections `Salvator Mundi` painting:
‘[…] Although possibly not executed in a strictly Netherlandish technique, [it] might be seen as
alluding generically to Netherlandish panni dipinti […]’ and also ‘The choice of a cloth support
was perhaps intended to enhance its ‘Netherlandish’ character’ (Nuttal 2004)
Devolder, ANAGPIC 2005 Paper 5
4.1.1. Support
The support of the painting is a canvas with a fine plain weave of 18 threads per cm. A prominent flaw in
the weave runs through the center of the canvas. The canvas texture plays an important role in the
appearance of the painting.
Two fiber samples were taken and studied with transmitted light microscopy in order to identify the type
of fiber (Fig.3). The fibers do not
twist and they show nodes -a clear
indication of linen (Gettens & Stout
1963). The fibers are Z-spun. It is
important to mention that the painting
has no less than four lining canvasses,
which could affect the analytical
analysis. There appears to be no
ground on the painting and crosssections
give further evidence that no
ground exists. Examination of the
samples under ultra violet light made
the glue size layer applied on the canvas surface visible as a highly fluorescent layer.
4.1.2. Paint Layers & Pigments
In order to examine the paint layers and pigments, x-ray fluorescence (XRF) was first conducted on the
painting. All of the identified pigments corresponded to the palette used in 15th century Italy. Later eight
pigment samples were taken. These samples were mounted in resin blocks and studied using polarized
light microscopy (PLM), under both visible and ultra violet light. Fourier transform infrared spectrometry
(FT-IR) was also conducted on a several paint samples.
Staining tests were carried out to get an indication of the nature of the binding medium: Sudan Black B
for the presence of lipids and Amido Black AB2 for the presence of proteins6. To get more precise data,
samples were taken to undergo GC-MS analysis but at the time of publication these were not completed.
Figure 4 shows a detail of the blue background of the painting. The figure shows an area where the
gilding has fallen off, showing a lighter azurite layer under a darker azurite layer.
Figure 3: Linen fiber sample, Salvator Mundi
Transmitted light microscopy, X 40
Devolder, ANAGPIC 2005 Paper 6
The cross-section taken from this area made this
double azurite layer more evident. Staining with
Amido Black 2 gave positive results for proteins in the
top layer with the fine pigment particles. The FT-IR
analyses identified both animal glue and gum
throughout the whole sample.
It is possible that this is an example of the use of blau
von feldung, a technique recently identified by Heydenreich,
used to decorate monochrome blue passages,
not only on paintings, but also on heraldic shields,
doors, sculptures and walls (Heydenreich 2002). As is
the case here, he found an azurite layer with large
particles in an aqueous, proteinaceous medium. The
specific choice of particle size and medium gives it a
velvety and tactile appearance that contrasts with the
smooth and shiny look of the gold leaf.
Another possible example of this blau von feldung was noted on the small canvas painting in the
Brooklyn Museum (Netherlandish, ‘Madonna and Child’; Brooklyn Museum, NY. 26.5 x 21cm), during
my brief survey of collections looking for other Tüchlein paintings in the U.S.
The green of the Christ’s collar was identified by the use of polarized light microscopy (PLM) as a copper
based green. FT-IR identified the green pigment as atacamite, a basic copper chloride. This basic copper
chloride pigment has been found occasionally on
German and Netherlandish paintings. It is often found
in Asian art. Theophilius describes in his treatise how
to manufacture viride salsum. According to Scott this
is probably principally atacamite (Scott 2002).
Experiments were carried out following Theopilius’
recipe in order to attempt to reproduce the pigment.
Three copper plates were covered with honey (Figs. 5-
6). Sea salt was sprinkled on top of the honey (Fig.7)
Figure 4: Detail of Salvator Mundi, Studio of
Sandro Botticelli
Blue background (blau von feldung?)
Figure 5: Copperplates with buffed up surface
Devolder, ANAGPIC 2005 Paper 7
and the copperplates were suspended in a glass jar. Warm red wine vinegar was poured over them (Fig.8).
The first results were visible after just a few minutes (Fig. 9), but the pigment samples were collected
after four weeks (Fig.10). The pigment obtained was analyzed with the use of a Kaiser Hololab 5000R
Raman Spectrometer with Raman Microprobe attachment with coherent CW Argon/ion and TI/S lasers at
785nm and 514.5nm. Three out of five samples turned out to be atacamite, the other two verdigris. Scott
also stated that the vessel should be closed airtight; otherwise verdigris is obtained (Scott 2002). It is very
possible that the glass jars were not sealed airtight (Fig.11).
Figure 6: Copperplates covered with honey Figure 7: Copperplates sprinkled with sea-salt
Figure 8: (Above left) Pouring of warm red wine vinegar on the suspended copperplates
Figure 9: (Above right) Results after a few minutes (slight green residue)
Devolder, ANAGPIC 2005 Paper 8
4.1.3. Gilding
The gold leaf of Christ’s halo was laid on a yellow mordant layer. FT-IR analyses of this yellowish
mordant indicated the presence of animal glue, gum and raw sienna. XRF analysis from the same area
suggests the presence of azurite, lead-white, ochre, calcium, gold and silver.
4.1.4. Binding Medium
The results for the staining tests on the cross-sections were positive for proteins. FT-IR shows the
possible presence of animal skin glue and possible traces of gum Arabic. The mixture is mentioned in
Jehan Le Begue’s compilation manuscript from 1431, in the section on S. Audemar`s ‘De Coloribus
Faciendis’. This section mentions a recipe that mixes animal skin glue with gum Arabic so it will last
longer (Merrifield 1999).
4.1.5. Coating
There is no evidence of a varnish layer in the cross-sections even though the statutes of the Venetian Arte
dei Pittori -registered in 1278- contain a regulation forbidding the sale of unvarnished painted objects
(Dunkerton 1993). Ceninni mentions varnishing paintings on canvas in his Il libro dell Arte (Cennini) and
Figure 10: (Above left) The copper plates out of the jar
(notice the difference in color between the plates suspended
closer to the vinegar; the lighter green is atacamite and the
others mostly verdigris)
Figure 11: (Right) Showing the glass jar and the not 100%
airtight lid
Devolder, ANAGPIC 2005 Paper 9
Mantegna mentions a varnish from Venice with regard to his canvas paintings for the Studiolo of Isabella
d’Este (Dunkerton 1993). It seems most likely that these references all deal with canvas paintings made in
the Italian technique.
4.2. ‘Saint Roch’ Attributed to Giovanni Canavesio
The ‘Saint Roch’ painting is attributed to Giovanni Canavesio (Fig.2). The curatorial file notes that the
painting was first attributed to Borgognone when it entered the Fogg Art Museum collection in 1942.
Until this study the painting was catalogued as a ‘transfer from panel to canvas’.
Digital Infra Red photography was used to study the painting7. This made several compositional elements
more evident (Figs.12-13). On the left side of the figure the retreating boot and a piece of clothing from a
second figure can be seen. The fragmentary image and the horizontal seam running through the painting
support the hypothesis that the existing painting is a fragment from a larger composition.
4.2.1. Support
The support of the painting is a canvas with a fine plain weave with 22 threads per cm. A horizontal seam
runs through the painting. As mentioned above, this could indicate that the painting is a fragment. In the
15th century the width that could be woven was relatively narrow due to the size of the looms. On the
other hand the length of the textile had no significant restrictions, the use of a horizontal seam would be
of no use if the actual width were the original width, unless the painter used two smaller pieces that he
had in his studio.
Figure 12: (Above left) Detail of Saint Roch, Giovanni Canavesio
Figure 13: (Above right) Detail of Saint Roch taken with Digital Infrared photography, Giovanni Canavesio
Devolder, ANAGPIC 2005 Paper 10
Two fibres samples were studied in
transmitted light with the use of a microscope
(Fig.14). The Z-spun fibers show the characteristics
of linen with nodes and no twists.
(Gettens/Stout 1963). The absence of a
preparation layer is evident in areas with paint
loss. A cross-section from the saint’s left boot
shows clearly that there is no ground present.
By looking at the same sample under ultra
violet light the presence of a glue size layer is
detectable due to its clear fluorescence.
4.2.2. Paint Layers & Pigments
Ten paint samples were taken in order to analyze the paint layers. Additional staining tests and FT-IR was
also done. All of the identified pigments corresponded to those used in 15th century Italy.
The Saint’s mantle is in poor condition and shows the bare canvas, but some pigment particles were
found in the interstices of the canvas. The reason for its bad state of preservation is not clear, but it is
probably due to the materials and procedures used to make this type of painting and poor environmental
conditions. FT-IR data showed a clear match for azurite and possible traces of a red insect lake, which
may have been used to make the mantle look more purple.
4.2.3. Gilding
By studying the saint’s halo under the
microscope some small areas gilded with
gold leaf were found. A sample from this
area was studied under ultraviolet light and
revealed five different layers (Fig.15). The
first is probably the glue size layer. Layers
two and three have similar components (the
more reddish fluorescent layer is possibly
caused by the presence of madder, a red lake
and the white fluorescent layer probably by a
resin). The fourth layer, which looks similar
Figure 14: Linen fiber sample, Saint Roch
Transmitted light microscopy, X 40
Figure 15: (Top) Cross-section from Saint Roch`s golden halo
X 40, photographed under Visible light
Figure 16: (Bottom) Cross-section from Saint Roch`s golden
halo; X 40, photographed under Ultraviolet light
Devolder, ANAGPIC 2005 Paper 11
to the first layer, possibly indicating a glue layer used as an adhesive for the gold leaf. The top layer lies
on top of the gold leaf. Its function is rather unclear; it could be an original paint glaze or later overpaint
that covers the gilding.
FT-IR analysis conducted on this area showed traces of ground gypsum, an animal glue and red earth.
XRF noted the presence of gold, lead white, ochre, calcite and traces of copper. FT-IR analysis on
samples from other areas with gilding (columns) indicated traces of saffron. Saffron was used, probably
as a colorant, in different mordants, according to several treatises in Merrifield’s compilation (Merrifield
1994).
4.2.4. Binding Medium
The cross-sections were stained with Amido Black AB2, and gave a clear positive stain for the presence
of proteins. Afterwards the same cross-sections were stained with Sudan Black B. Some of the samples
turned slightly bluish, indicating the minor presence of oils.
4.2.5. Coating
The painting has a dry matte appearance and appears not to have been varnished. Cross-sections show no
evidence of any coating.
5. Conclusion
As mentioned in the introduction, the author defines Tüchlein as: A painting painted with an aqueous
medium, (gum/glue) on a finely woven linen support, which is glue sized and unprimed and left
unvarnished after the painting was finished. Taking all the above results into account it is possible to
formulate an answer to the question: `Can these two paintings be considered similar to the canvas
paintings from the North made in the Tüchlein technique? `.
Before answering the question it is important to state that there is no such thing as the Tüchlein technique,
since the word was originally intended to describe a type of support rather than a technique. However, the
author’s definition serves to define one set of tools, materials, and procedures used historically to produce
canvas paintings. Strict use of this category of paintings might help in reorganising existing information,
thus facilitating future research.
Within the definition of Tüchlein used in this article, we can conclude that both paintings are very close to
the Northern Tüchleins. The staining tests and FT-IR analysis are not the most precise methods of
identifying the nature of binding media. Both made it clear that the binding media for both paintings are
protinacious and the FT-IR analysis indicated a gum and animal glue. Only the GC-MS results can give
more certainty over the binding media used.
Out of all the above we can conclude that it is likely that there were more Italian painters than just
Mantegna and Bellini who followed more Northern procedures than previously thought.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Teri Hensick, Kate Olivier and Kate Smith for their advice and editing.
Thanks also to the analytical lab from the Straus Center for Conservation, Narayan Khandekar (Senior
Conservation Scientist at Harvard University Art Museums, Katherine Eremin (Conservation Scientist at
Harvard University Art Museum) and Jens Stenger. (Andrew W. Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow in Conservation
Science at Harvard University Art Museums). Many thanks to Gunnar Heydenreich, Carolyn
Tomkiewicz, Jill Dunkerton. And a special thank-you note to Paul Himmelstein and William Whitney.
Endnotes
1. Original text from Dürers diary from Dubois, H., H. Khanjian, M. Schilling, and A. Wallert. 1997. A
Late Fifteenth Century Italian Tüchlein. Zeitschrift fûr Kunsttechnologie und Konservierung 11: 229.
“[…] hab ich zu kauffen geben auf ein Tüchlein ein-gemahlt Marien Bild”
“Ich hab 4 gulden 5 stüber auß 3 Tüchlein gelöst”
“Ich hab dem klein factor von Portugal, signor Francisco, mein Tüchlein mit dem kindlein
geschenckt […]”
2. Original description of Vasari from idem: 229, 230.
“condotta da lui a guazzo su una tela bisso, che da ogni banda mostrava parimente e senza
biacca i lumi trasparenti, se non che con acquerelli di colori era tinta e machiata e de’ lumi del
panno aveva campato i chiari, la quale cosa maravigliosa a Raffaello.”
3. The triptych got divided over different museums: `Annunciation`, 1450-55, distemper on linen, 90.2 x
74cm in. J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu/ `Resurrection`, 1450-60, tempera on canvas, 89 x 72.5 cm, Norton
Simon Museum of Art, Pasadena / `The Entombment`, c.1450, distemper on flax canvas, 90.2 x 74.3
cm, National Gallery, London/ scholars dispute the painting from Brussels being part of the same triptych:
`Crucifixion`, 1450-60?, tempera op doek, 181.5 x 153.5cm Musees Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels
4. The XRF analyses were conducted by Kathy Eremin (Conservation Scientist), the fibre and paint samples
from the Salvator Mundi painting were taken by Jens Stenger (Andrew W. Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow in
Conservation Science. Together they also did the pigment identifications with the Raman Spectrometer. The
FT-IR analyses were conducted by Narayan Khandekar (Senior Conservation Scientist); all three work at the
Straus Center for Conservation at the Harvard University Art Museums.
5. ‘The Resurrected Christ’, c. 1480, Sandro Botticelli; 44.5 x 29cm, Tempera on panel; Detroit Institute of
Arts, Detroit, ‘Man of Sorrows’, c. 1500, Sandro Botticelli; 47.6 x 32.3cm, Tempera on panel; Accademia
Carrara, Bergamo.
6. The used reactive dyes for the staining test: a.) Sudan Black B (SBB): saturated solution SBB in a mixture
of 30ml ethanol and 20 ml distilled water. b.) Amido Black AB2 (AB): 2.70225ml of N acetic acid (glacial
99.99%) in 45 ml of distilled water. 0.61236g of 0.1M sodium acetate in 45 ml of distilled water. 10ml of
glycerine (glycerol 99+%). 0.1g Amido Black 10B
7. The digital photography was conducted with a Phase One digital back on a Hasselblad camera body. The
digital back has a silicon CCD and the manufacturer has removed its IR filter. The Phase One detector is
sensitive up to 1.1 microns into the IR spectrum.