Displaying items by tag: panel

A painting catalogued simply as “Oil on Board, Triple Portrait with Lady Fainting” sold today, 22 September for $870,000 at Nye & Company Auctions in Bloomfield, New Jersey, against an estimate of $500-$800. The sleeper hit (lot 216), is believed to be a long-lost panel by a teenaged Rembrandt.

The 12.5in x 10in panel was described by the auction house as “Continental School, 19thC, appears unsigned”, and potential buyers were advised that the condition included “paint loss, some restoration to paint, wood cracks.”

A rare medieval panel by Italian artist Giovanni de Rimini has been saved for the nation thanks to a donation from a US businessman and philanthropist.

Scenes From the Lives of the Virgin and Other Saints, painted around 1300-1305, was in the Duke of Northumberland's Alnwick Castle collection until 2014.

It was then sold at auction and a temporary export bar was put in place.

The Lady Lever Art Gallery’s world renowned Wedgwood collection has gone on display in Moscow, attracting more than 10,000 visitors in just four weeks. It is the first time that the unrivalled collection has ever traveled abroad, with 140 items traveling to the Russian capital. The collection is on show at the All-Russian Museum of Decorative, Applied and Folk Art as part of the UK-Russia Year of Culture 2014.

Objects from the world’s finest group of Wedgwood jasperware are on display, including a rare copy of the celebrated Portland Vase and the largest jasperware panel ever produced. Two rare enamel plaques painted by artist George Stubbs also feature.

The Museo del Prado, the main Spanish national art museum located in Madrid, received the largest private donation in decades on Tuesday, January 29, 2013. Prado officials announced that the museum was the recipient of 12 medieval and Renaissance works by Spanish artists.

Barcelona-based businessman and engineer Jose Luis Varez donated the collection to the institution during a ceremony, which counted the Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy among its guests. Jose Pedro Perez Llorca, president of the Prado’s board of trustees, said, “These aren’t times of lavish state spending, so this donation is generous and tremendously timely.” Spain’s dire economic standing has led to severe spending cuts in an attempt to meet public deficit targets.    

The recently acquired paintings and sculptures include the central panel of an altarpiece from a church in northeastern Spain titled The Virgin Tobed (1359). The Catalan Italo-Gothic painting is believed to be by 14^th century artist Jaume Serra (died after 1405). The works will join the Prado’s exemplary collection, which includes paintings by Spanish masters such as El Greco (1541-1614), Diego Velázquez (1599-1660), and Francisco de Goya (1746-1828).

To thank Varez for his generous donation, the Prado will name a room in the museum in his honor.

A division of the Italian police department that specializes in art thefts has located a 400-year-old copy of a lost Leonardo da Vinci fresco. Depicting the Battle of Anghiari, the masterpiece was never finished.

The copy, widely known as the Tavola Doria, once adorned a wall of Florence’s city hall, the Palazzo Vecchio, and illustrates a historic battle between Florence and Milan that took place in 1440. It is believed that da Vinci experimented with various fresco-painting techniques before he started work on the battle scene in 1503. Despite his efforts, the paints began to drip and da Vinci was never able to finish the fresco. Over the next few years, the piece deteriorated and the Italian painter, Giorgio Vasari, was commissioned to paint over what was left of the incomplete fresco.

Since the unfinished da Vinci painting no longer exists, copies of the lost artwork are extremely important to art historians and scholars. This particular copy, painted on a small wooden panel, was last seen in public 73 years ago at a Leonardo da Vinci exhibition held in Milan on the eve of World War II. After the exhibition, the work disappeared.

Experts have since determined that the panel was stolen from its owners in Naples and ended up in the hands of a Swiss art dealer. The work was sent to Germany for restoration in the 1960s, made a brief appearance in the 1970s at an art gallery in New York, and by the 1990s was the property of a wealthy Japanese art collector.

Finally back in Italy, the Tavola Doria will be on view at Florence’s Uffizi Gallery during 2013. The work will then spend four years in Japan as part of a loan agreement worked out with the Fuji Art Museum in Tokyo, where it was last exhibited.