Displaying items by tag: art objects

A painting of the French king Henri III (1551-89) that disappeared from the Louvre during the Second World War turned up at a Paris auction last week. The work was found by a curator at the Château de Blois thanks to an internet search alert, and will soon return to the Louvre.

The small portrait depicting Henri III at prayer, estimated at €400-€600, was due to be sold on Friday, 17 October, in an auction of antique paintings, furniture and art objects held by Ader-Nordmann at the Hôtel Drouot.

French lawyer Pierre Servan-Schreiber may have been unable to stop the sale of artifacts belonging to Arizona’s Hopi tribe, but he did gift one object back to the indigenous group. Servan-Schreiber worked pro bono to halt an auction of 70 Hopi masks at Paris’ Neret-Minet Tessier & Sarrou auction house but was ultimately unsuccessful. The auction garnered $1.2 million despite the legal feud and opposition from people such as Robert Redford.

Amidst allegations of misconduct, the French auction house maintained that the artifacts had been acquired legally from a French collector. However, the Hopis asserted that the masks were ritual and spiritual objects, not meant for selling as art objects.

Servan-Schreiber bought an object known as a “Katsinam” for $9,000. He told the New York Times that, “It is my way of telling the Hopi that we only lost a battle and not the war.” Relatives of the French singer Jules Dassin also acquired a Katsinam at the auction and plan to return it to the Hopis later this year.

Baltimore’s Walters Art Museum, which houses a vast collection of paintings, sculptures, art objects, and artifacts from around the world and throughout the ages, has joined forces with Stanford University Libraries to digitize its medieval manuscript collection. The Walters plans to make the works available online and has reached an agreement with Stanford Libraries to give over 100,000 high-resolution images of its manuscripts to the University’s Digital Repository.

While the original manuscripts will remain at the Walters Museum, the high-resolution images will be accessible to scholars around the world so that they can analyze the works and compare them with manuscripts in other locations.

The Walters Art Museum currently has 850 medieval illuminated manuscripts and 150 single leaves, which range in date from the 9th to the 19^th century; it is one of the most significant collections of medieval manuscripts in North America.