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EnolaGaia Joined: 19 Jul 2004 Total posts: 1305 Location: USA Gender: Male |
 Posted: 08-10-2012 19:11 Post subject: The 'Earlier ('Isleworth' / 'Young(er)') Mona Lisa" |
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I can't find any mention of the 'Earlier Mona Lisa' in the FTMB archives, so here goes ...
More info about this painting can be reviewed at the Mona Lisa Foundation website:
http://monalisa.org
| Quote: |
Lost diaries help solve "young Mona Lisa" mystery
By Robert Evans | Reuters
GENEVA (Reuters) - A package of diaries said to have been posted to the United States from Britain in the 1960s could provide a vital clue to the origin of a controversial portrait presented in Geneva last month as Leonardo da Vinci's original "Mona Lisa."
But in a twist typical of the intrigue-prone world of art, the diaries -- notes by early 20th century British connoisseur and collector Hugh Blaker -- disappeared and the Washington address they were sent to seems never to have existed.
"Those papers could well provide the key to pushing back the provenance of this version of the 'Mona Lisa' by at least 150 years," Robert Meyrick, an academic and expert on the largely forgotten Blaker, told Reuters.
And, of course, to helping establish if the so-called "Isleworth" variant of the world's most famous painting in the Paris Louvre could indeed be an earlier -- and priceless -- portrayal by Leonardo of the enigmatic, smiling lady.
Blaker, an unsuccessful painter who as a museum curator and dealer had a reputation for recognising lost Old Masters, found and bought the "younger Mona Lisa" in 1913 -- in, he later said, a nobleman's country house in Somerset in western England.
Sure it was a real Leonardo, he kept it at his home in the London suburb of Isleworth -- giving it its informal identity tag -- until it passed to his sister Jane on his death in 1936.
But Blaker told no one the name of the country house or of the seller. Meyrick, who was invited to the Geneva presentation to talk about the bachelor connoisseur, is keen to solve that mystery for a biography he plans to write.
"I think he must have put the details in his diaries," he said in an e-mail message this month from Aberystwyth University in Wales where he is Head of the School of Art.
"But the very brief published extracts we have give no clue. If we have that knowledge, we should be able to trace how it came into the Somerset family's possession, and where."
GRAND TOUR PURCHASE?
Meyrick theorises that it could have been picked up by an 18th century member of the family during one of the Grand Tours across Europe undertaken by young English nobles. Many great works of European art came to Britain that way.
After Jane Blaker died in 1947, the painting was eventually purchased by an international art dealer and then lay for nearly 40 years in Swiss bank vaults until last month's Geneva presentation by a Zurich-based "Mona Lisa Foundation."
At that session, Italian Leonardo specialist Alessandro Vezzosi praised its quality but held back from endorsing the foundation's claim that it is the work of Leonardo, who died in 1519. For that, much more work was needed, said Vezzosi.
Some experts who were not present like British professor Martin Kemp of Oxford University, scoffed at it as a poor copy -- although, as foundation member Stanley Feldman noted, Kemp had never actually seen the portrait.
"The controversy underlines the importance of the diaries," says Meyrick.
With other papers and an unpublished novel, they passed after the death of Blaker -- whose keen eye had brought the scorned Italian artist Amadeo Modigliani to the British art public in the 1920s -- to his painter friend Murray Urquhart.
Before he died in 1972 Urquhart, whose son Brian was a key figure in the United Nations in the 1970s and 80s, said he had sent Blaker's notes from before 1931 to a researcher named Charles Woods who had written asking to see them.
According to Urquhart's account, he posted them to Woods at 116 1/2 (Eds: correct) Maryland Drive, Washington DC -- but heard nothing more. "All I can establish is that there is no such address, and probably never was," says Meyrick.
There is also no trace of Woods.
But in 2010, in response to a standing appeal on his website (www.robertmeyrick.co.uk), Meyrick was sent Blaker's diaries for the last five years of his life by a family who found them years before in a junk shop in Gravesend, east of London.
"Did all the papers end up as junk, or did the earlier diaries really go to Washington?" asks Meyrick, who has written widely on British 20th century art.
"Perhaps we will never know, but I plan to keep looking."
SOURCE: http://news.yahoo.com/lost-diaries-help-solve-young-mona-lisa-mystery-170002693.html
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| JamesWhitehead Piffle Prospector Joined: 02 Aug 2001 Total posts: 5779 Location: Manchester, UK Gender: Male |
| Posted: 08-10-2012 19:33 Post subject: |
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The incentive to fake things does not end with the canvas or wood panel!
I understand the experts are divided about this one. It seems this odd paper-trail would lead back to a provenance of sorts but there seems to be a dearth of detail about its early life. A dealer might well wait many years, hoping that a painting thought derivative might be shown to be original, if only the right documents showed up or could be arranged.
The quality of the painting will remain the same but it may be seen differently when dollar signs light up the eyes of beholders!
I don't think I'll risk it myself!  |
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| EnolaGaia Joined: 19 Jul 2004 Total posts: 1305 Location: USA Gender: Male |
| Posted: 08-10-2012 20:26 Post subject: |
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I generally agree ...
There are multiple references to Leonardo's having started two 'Mona Lisa' paintings, of which the 'famous one' was the later.
Whether or not this specimen can be demonstrated to be the earlier alleged one is, of course, an entirely different matter.
If anything, the precision of the matches among facial features / positions between the two paintings (cf. the illustrations on the Mona Lisa Foundation website) is just as easily indicative of the new candidate having been painted in response to the 'famous one' (as opposed to the 'famous one' being a strikingly identical successor or derivative of the 'earlier one'). |
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| PeniG Proud children's writer Joined: 31 Dec 2003 Total posts: 2920 Location: San Antonio, Texas Age: 52 Gender: Female |
| Posted: 09-10-2012 05:23 Post subject: |
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| Nor should we forget that copying famous art works was a standard part of art training until very recently. A copy is not necessarily a forgery. |
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| JamesWhitehead Piffle Prospector Joined: 02 Aug 2001 Total posts: 5779 Location: Manchester, UK Gender: Male |
| Posted: 04-10-2013 22:41 Post subject: |
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The younger Mona Lisa again?
It certainly looks to be derived from the cartoon but the extent to which these finished paintings were completed by their nominal masters is often debated. Scroll down the comments for a more sceptical view. |
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| rjmrjmrjm Professional Surrealist
Constipated-Philosopher Joined: 25 Feb 2004 Total posts: 1465 Location: Behind your eyes... Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 08-10-2013 23:54 Post subject: |
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I've been part of an amateur team that has recently proven (well to our satisfaction) that many of Joseph Wright of Derby's last paintings were actually finished by his pupil, William Tate.
Despite having two original distinct sources (one we've discovered ourselves) we're still having trouble getting this established amongst the 'academic' art world. |
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