Last week was rich of positive events concerning the world of art, which brought about smiles and a renewed optimism on investigation systems for works of art. Indeed, some interesting works were brought to light and could contribute to enriching the artistic and cultural heritage, and some stolen treasures were retrieved.
The propitious week started with the news, spread worldwide on printed paper, regarding the discovery of a painting depicting the famous writer William Shakespeare, considered at the moment the only portrait of the painter when he was still alive. The picture had already been for three years in the countryside residence of the noble Cobbe family in Surrey, but the owners were not aware of the identity of the person portrayed, only hypothetically identified as Sir Walter Raleigh, a poet from the same period of Shakespeare. However, the year of realisation of the painting was already known, 1610, when Shakespeare would have posed at the age of forty-six, six years before he died. The discovery was made thanks to a member of the Cobbe family, Alec Cobbe, professional art restorer, who visiting the exhibition “Searching Shakespeare”, organised in 2006 at the National Portrait Gallery in London, found a noticeable resemblance between his painting and the one on view at the exhibition. Among various portraits displayed (some of which then judged to be false because realised with techniques which were far from Shakespeare’s period or for errors of attribution) the Janssen Portrait, a hardly known portrait realised by a Flemish artist who worked in England in the first half of the seventeenth century, struck Alec Cobbe. Afterwards, a series of comparisons between the two works, carried out by the National Gallery, tests of various nature and the opinion of professor Stanley Wells, the greatest expert of Shakespeare in the world and professor at Birmingham University, confirmed this theory revealing, after centuries of uncertainty, the real face of the English playwright and poet.
A few days ago contemporary archaeologists revealed a secret of Maya art, as they accidentally discovered a frieze in El Mirador, Guatemala.
The group of archaeologists led by American Richard Hasen, following the route of some channels used at the time to gather water due to the lack of rivers and ground waters, found a wall that was four metres long and three metres high framed by a frieze dating from around 300 B.C. According to a first analysis the subject of the frieze, in limestone and plaster, relates to the mythology of the “Vuh Population”: monsters, divinities and snakes created by the Maya culture on panels are taken from the most ancient representation of the myth of the creation for the Maya population, proving how this ancient civilization was evolved at the time and giving new light to its treasures and its culture.
If experts, restorers and archaeologists have given their contribution to culture, focalising the interest of people who are passionate and who study art on precious unknown or forgotten pieces, even the police forces, in Holland and Norway, have had an important role. The Dutch police retrieved 8 masterpieces 22 years after their disappearance. The precious paintings, dated between the seventeenth and the nineteenth century, had disappeared in 1987 in Maastricht, from the gallery of Robert Noortman, one of the leading art dealers and collectors in Europe. In December, an alleged intermediary got in touch from Dubai to resell the canvases to an insurance company through a private investigator, who had initially been engaged to investigate on the disappearance of the above-mentioned paintings. Detective, Ben Zuidema, claimed that he had been contacted by a man who intended to sell the paintings to the insurers for 5 million euros, which already included 1 million euros for him to facilitate the transaction. Immediately the detective passed the information over to the inquirers and thanks to a thoroughly organised blitz three people were arrested in Valkenburg and Walem: a forty-five-year-old German man living in Dubai, his sixty-two-year-old mother in Belgium and a sixty-six-year-old man in Walem. This operation led to the retrieval of works by David Teniers, Willem van de Velde, Jan Brueghel il Giovane, Eva Gonzales, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro and Paul-Desiré Trouillebert, two of which have been seriously damaged after being folded. The destiny of a ninth missing piece, belonging to the same collection, is still unknown and according to the hypothesis put forward by detective Zuidema it would have been destroyed by Noortman himself – who died two years ago – whose involvement had always stirred suspects. Apparently an insurance premium had been paid to Mr Noortman, who had bought the works and insured them for their whole market value not long before they disappeared. However, against these accusations, which still have to be proven, many voices were raised in favour of Noortman, who was also the benefactor of the National Gallery of London where his Dutch masterpieces are hosted, in a room dedicated to him (the Noortman Room).
An event with a happy ending also in Norway, where the police found within a few days a Renaissance painting, taken away from a church in Larvik, to the south of Oslo. It is a painting realised by Lucas Cranach the Old (1472-1553) around 1540, hung in the Norwegian church since 1677, which seems to be worth 3.86 million euros. A middle-aged man is in custody as the main suspect for the theft of the painting, which was found in a van and is now object of study by a team of experts.
|
Loading ...