Displaying items by tag: rediscovered

Two Francis Bacon self-portraits are going on public display for the first time after resurfacing in a private collection.

Descendants of the original collector have decided to sell the paintings, which are expected to fetch £15m each at auction.

Experts knew of the works’ existence, but had no idea who had bought them soon after they were completed about 40 years ago.

The paintings will go on show at Sotheby’s in London and New York before going under the hammer in July.

Opening today, on what would have been Leonardo da Vinci's 563rd birthday, the exhibition "Leonardo da Vinci and the Idea of Beauty" at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The show will feature a recently rediscovered self-portrait of the artist and a suite of masterpieces by Leonardo including the long-admired "Head of a Young Woman (Study for the Angel in the 'Virgin of the Rocks')," a metalpoint drawing from the 1480s, widely renowned for its naturalism, and which art historian Kenneth Clark called the “most beautiful . . . in the world."

The exhibition marks a rare opportunity to see "Head of a Young Woman," in the US. The work, which Bernard Berenson believed was “one of the finest achievements of all draughtsmanship," belongs to the Biblioteca Reale in Turin, Italy.

In 1964, Cincinnati’s Swedenborgian Church of the New Jerusalem was razed for the construction of a highway. The spiritual home to followers of the 18th-century Swedish scientist and theologian Emanuel Swedenborg, the church was built in 1902, at which time it received the gift of seven stained-glass windows produced by Tiffany Studios, the pre-eminent American producer of stained and art glass, under the direction of the firm’s founder and head, Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848-1933). Unlike many Tiffany windows that perished when their buildings faced the wrecking ball, these were preserved. For decades they sat in crates, hidden away in basements and garages of parishioners, and eventually a barn in Pennsylvania. Only when the barn began to leak in 2001 did a newly appointed minister open the crates. To her astonishment, that which was lost was found again—and even covered with decades of grime, the unique Tiffany beauty of all seven windows, each emblazoned with a life-size stained-glass angel, made a powerful impression.

After being hidden away for 80 years and known only in a black-and-white photograph, Artemisia Gentileschi’s “Mary Magdalene In Ecstasy” has been uncovered in a collection in the south of France and will be up for grabs at Sotheby’s Paris on June 26. The painting is estimated at €200,000 to 300,000 (approx. $278,400 to 417,600). Best known for her monumental work “Judith Slaying Holofernes,” the badass Baroque artist managed to make a name for herself in early 17th century Rome despite her gender.