Attributing old master paintings is one of the most demanding tasks of the art historian. The stakes can be high, especially when the work in question might indeed be the hand of a great master. The difference in price between an authentic work and one 'in the manner of' a well-known artist can add up to several million dollars. In addition to the fi nancial consequences, a revised attribution can also have dramatic consequences for our understanding of art history. In her fascinating account of connoisseurship in action, Tummers highlights issues regarding the attribution of seventheenth-century Dutch and Flemish art.
“Lifting the veil on the shadowy world of art insiders, Costamagna delivers an entertaining reflection on the dealers, devotees, and decision makers.” —Town & Country Magazine It’s a rare and secret profession, comprising a few dozen people around the world equipped with a mysterious mixture of knowledge and innate sensibility. Summoned to Swiss bank vaults, Fifth Avenue apartments and Tokyo storerooms, they are entrusted by collectors, dealers and museums to decide if a coveted picture is real or fake and to determine if it was painted by Leonardo da Vinci or Raphael. The Eye brings to light the rarified world of connoisseurs devoted to the authentication and discovery of Old Master art works. This is an art adventure story and a memoir all in one, written by a leading expert on the Renaissance whose métier is a high-stakes detective game involving massive amounts of money and frenetic activity in the service of the art market and scholarship alike. It’s also an eloquent argument for the enduring value of visual creativity, told with passion, brilliance and surprising candor. “[A] rollicking and erudite tour of the art world . . . Costamagna’s candor and well-earned hubris make for an entertaining foray into the high-stakes art world.” —Publishers Weekly “As thrilling as a police novel.” —La Croix “An insider’s look at the dramatic world of attributing and dating art . . . This art world Sherlock Holmes travels the globe . . . Delightful.” —Introspective Magazine “One comes away feeling somewhat re-sensitized to beauty and somewhat nostalgic for an era when museums weren’t the selfie-stick madhouses they are today.” —The Washington Post
In 1919 a returning World War I veteran named Harry Hahn and his French bride attempted to sell what they thought was a painting by Leonardo Da Vinci in New York. Renowned art dealer Sir Joseph Duveen declared the picture-La Belle Ferronnière-a fake without ever seeing the canvas. The Hahns sued Duveen for slander, setting off a legal battle that would last for decades. In The American Leonardo, John Brewer traces the twisting path of the Hahn La Belle-a painting of famously uncertain origin--as he illuminates the workings of the twentieth-century art market, exploring such larger questions about the art world such as how attributions are made, how they affect both the status and value of artworks, and how the entire system of art dealers, curators, and connoisseurs authenticates works of art. In the early twentieth century new methods of scientific analysis developed, which meant that for the first time, the critical eye of the connoisseur had to contend with an emerging array of scientific and forensic tests that (however crude at their inception) promised a degree of objectivity and reliability unattainable before. Brewer shows how the tension between the two methods of attribution lay at the heart of the Hahn La Belle dispute, which continues to this day. The painting currently languishes in an Omaha storage vault awaiting the resolution of the most recent lawsuit. For artists and art-lovers, collectors and curators--and for anyone who's ever stood in front of a painting and wondered about its story--The American Leonardo offers a discerning and entertaining view into the art world.
From sumptuous steaks and prime cuts to braises and savory stews, this guide is a carnivore’s delight. Gourmets will appreciate the book’s accurate and comprehensive information about when, where, and how to buy meat; how to tell if it’s fresh, and how to prepare, cook, carve, and serve meat to best advantage. From store to kitchen to table, this compendium fills in all the blanks about how to obtain fresh meat from humane and sustainable sources, identify cuts, and fillet and carve them, while offering up a rich trove of reliable recipes. A visual directory that showcases each cut and comments on flavor, preparation, and cost rounds out this indispensable culinary reference.
Now available from TC Press with a new foreword by Nel Noddings and a new prologue by P. Bruce Uhrmacher and Christy McConnell Moroye, this classic text on qualitative research is ideal for both novice and established researchers. Eisner’s seminal work on mind, education, and research explores the ways in which the methods, content, and assumptions in the arts, humanities, and social sciences can help us better understand our schools and classrooms. The Enlightened Eye expands how we think about inquiry in education and broadens our views about what it means to “know” with the goal of positively influencing the educational experience of those who live and work in our schools. The text includes examples depicting this type of research and how it can be used to evaluate teaching, learning, and the school environment. Book Features: Provides researchers with ethical frameworks promoting diversity and inclusivity.Establishes connections between qualitative inquiry in our daily lives and its functions in the practice and study of education.Broadens understanding of how we come to know the world. “With enhanced perception, reflection, and imagination, researchers and practitioners are better positioned to work collaboratively toward richer forms of education.” —From the Foreword by Nel Noddings, professor emerita, Stanford University “Elliot Eisner was the most important art educator of his generation, and a true heir to John Dewey. In this splendid synthesis of his original work in the areas of art, curriculum, and education, Eisner presents a carefully reasoned, candid, and eloquent brief on behalf of qualitative forms of educational inquiry.” —Howard Gardner, Harvard University
From Jennifer Scott—author of the New York Times bestselling Madame Chic series and founder of the Daily Connoisseur blog—comes this playful take on manners and being a good global citizen. Parents and younger children work together to read about a wide range of topics: communication, table manners, tidiness, thinking of others, grooming, and health. Activities, learning games, fill-in-the-blanks, letter-writing exercises, recipes (for food and for slime!), and some fun songs and rhymes help kids learn concepts and practice good behaviors. Featuring charming illustrations and go-to advice from a trusted source, this is a timely guide for raising well-mannered, neat, and gracious children for parents, grandparents, and children of reading age.
Celebrated connoisseur, drawings collector, print dealer, book publisher and authority on the art of antiquity, Pierre-Jean Mariette (1694-1774) was a pivotal figure in the eighteenth-century European art world. Focusing on the trajectory of Mariette?s career, this book examines the material practices and social networks through which connoisseurs forged the idea of art as an object of empirical and historical analysis. Drawing on significant unpublished archival material as well as on histories of science, publishing, collecting and display, this book shows how Mariette and his colleagues? practices of classification and interpretation of the graphic arts gave rise to new conceptions of artistic authorship and to a history of art that transcended the biographies of individual artists. To follow Mariette?s career through the eighteenth century is to see that art was consolidated as a specialized category of intellectual inquiry-and that style emerged as its structuring analytic device-in the overlapping spaces of the collector?s cabinet, the connoisseur?s portfolio and the dealer?s shop.
This is an important accessible introduction to pre-Columbian art fraud of Central Americafor archaeologists, art historians, and museum professionals alike.
Rather than focusing on German philosophy or the French avant-gardes, as many books on the history of aesthetics do, Teukolsky takes up British responses to modern art controversies, thus providing a unique view on the development of artistic forms and art history. She considers the canonical writing of authors like John Ruskin, Walter Pater, and Oscar Wilde alongside texts belonging to the rich field of Victorian print culture--gallery reviews, scientific treatises, satirical cartoons, advertisements, and early photography monographs among them. Spanning the years 1840 to 1910, her argument also adds substance to our understanding of the transition from Victorianism to modernism, a period of especially lively exchange between artists and intellectuals, here narrated with careful attention given to the historical particularities and real events that stamped their imprint on such interactions.
