Displaying items by tag: gothic

The collector, scholar and legendary gossip Horace Walpole woke one morning in June 1764 in the extraordinary fantasy home he had created near the Thames, west of London.

Strawberry Hill had – and now has again after years of careful restoration – roof, battlement and mantelpieces bristling with spires and gargoyles, stairs and bookcases copied from the tombs of medieval kings. Its passageways and library ceilings were embellished with imagined ancestors, and windows glitter with stained glass collected by the crate load from across Europe.

It doesn’t look like much yet — a chain-link fence around the perimeter of the historic Sarasota High School building, an inconspicuous construction trailer tucked next to the north wall of the building — but work is underway to convert the 1926 Collegiate Gothic building into the Sarasota Museum of Art.

After nearly a decade of fundraising reached (and surpassed) its goal of $22 million in May, structural preservationists conducted a thorough investigation of “every nook and cranny” of the building’s interior, said Wendy Surkis, SMOA president. Now, work begins on the exterior, to ensure the integrity of the building’s “envelope” and to add a glass atrium to the east side of the three-story structure. Interior renovations will follow, with work to be completed in early 2016.

The famous Cranach Altar (1555) which is located the Weimarer Stadtkirche, Germany has finally been restored to its former glory. The altar is considered a masterpiece of German Reformation-era art and will be unveiled on October 31st; Reformation Day - in a televized church service, Die Welt reports.

The Altar is to be found in Stadtkirche, a Gothic Church which is UNESCO-listed; the altar is regarded as the premier Reformation-era piece from the studio of Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553). Two years after his father's death; the altar was completed by Lucas Cranach the Younger (1515-1586).

The Badische Landesmuseum in Karlsruhe, Germany has announced that it has identified seven Nazi looted artworks within its collection. The discovery follows a four-year-long audit of the museum's entire collection, specifically looking for Nazi looted artworks, reported Die Welt.

The six paintings and one late Gothic sculpture had been kept in one of the museum's warehouses for over 70 years. The provenance researcher at the museum, Katharina Siefert, established that the works belonged to a Mannheim-based Jewish family.

For the first time in over a century, Francesco Guardi’s “Venice, the Bacino di San Marco with the Piazzetta and the Doge’s Palace” will be offered at auction. The painting, which was created during the height of Guardi’s career, will be sold during Christie’s Old Master & British Paintings Evening Sale in London on July 8, 2014. The work carries a presale estimate of $13 million to $16.5 million.

Guardi, who was born into a family of Venetian painters, is best known for his views of the city, which were especially popular with British tourists visiting Italy. “Venice, the Bacino di San Marco with the Piazzetta and the Doge’s Palace” highlights the Doge’s Palace, one of the city’s most notable landmarks. Built during the 14th century, the Venetian Gothic palace was the residence of the Doge of Venice, the city’s supreme authority.

“Venice, the Bacino di San Marco with the Piazzetta and the Doge’s Palace” was once part of the collection of The Earls of Shaftesbury and was later acquired by France’s Baron James-Edouard de Rothschild. The painting was then passed down to Rothschild’s daughter, Jeanne-Sophie-Henriette, Baronne Leonino, and then to her brother, Baron Henri-James-Charles-Nathan de Rothschild, who passed the work down to its present owners.

Prior to the sale, “Venice, the Bacino di San Marco with the Piazzetta and the Doge’s Palace,” which has not been seen in public since 1954, will embark on a global tour. The painting will go on view at Christie’s in Paris (March 3-4, 2014) and will continue on to Moscow (April 12-13, 2014), New York (May 2-6, 2014), Hong Kong (May 22-26, 2014), and then back to London where it will be exhibited from July 5, 2014 through July 8, 2014.

A 500-year-old sculpture looted by the Nazis for Adolf Hitler's planned “Fuehrermuseum” in the Austrian city of Linz was today returned to heirs of the original owner by Dresden’s state art collections.

The wooden sculpture of St. Peter was one of about 560 artworks seized from Jewish collectors for Hitler’s museum. The Germany-based family to whom the sculpture has been restituted does not wish to be identified by name and plans to keep the artwork, according to Gilbert Lupfer, the head of provenance research for Dresden’s public art collections.