Six pillows… Friday, Dec 7 2007

… but not an etching. I wasn’t aware of this nice sketch by Albrecht Dürer before, so at first sight i thought: what a nice etching! But it’s indeed an ink drawing on paper he made in 1493 when he was 22 years old. This fine study is now in the The Metropolitan Museum of Art, new York.

In 2001, Andreas Friese translated these hatchings and cross-hatchings into a modern ASCII-Art version:

“I have been working on this for ages! It is by no means finished but I have to stop somewhere. Please note that you see here before your unbelieving eyes the Ascii representation of six pillows that were kicked and pushed into shape for a drawing more than 500 years ago.
Ah yes, and this is an “organic” product. Only myself, my Emacs and of course a book with the print of the original were used.”

Dürer used pillows in at least one other study: The “Studies of Self-Portrait, Hand and Pillow” from the same year.

Thanks to the “Your Daily Art Blog” for providing my first view ever of these six pillows…

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Thermal photography identifies watermarks in old prints Sunday, Oct 14 2007

When you hold an old print or drawing in front of a light source, you can often discern an image or pattern within the paper itself – a watermark. They play an important role in identifying fakes and dating old master prints. Sometimes the writing or drawing is so dense that it renders it difficult to identify the watermark under normal light. Now a scientific team in Germany has developed a new method for identifying even poorly discernible watermarks.

The physicist Peter Meinlschmidt at the Fraunhofer-Institute for Wood Research in Germany developed a quite simple, but effective thermographic method to make watermarks clearly visible. He uses the fact that printed ink is transparent under thermal radiation. A thermal source is placed behind the drawing or print; a digital camera which is sensitive to thermal radiation shows the watermark density differences in the paper. As an example, under “normal”, visible light, the watermark in the drawing by Jan Lieven is barely visible (left). A thermal infrared picture of the same drawing shows clearly a crown watermark (right).

Pictures from http://www.wki.fraunhofer.de/projekte/wki-pmt-2.html

Link:

Original oder Fälschung? (in German)

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Rembrandt etching bought by 13 years old at Art fair Friday, Jun 1 2007

“I spotted it and immediately knew that was the kind of thing I wanted: “The Agony in the Garden”. It was really a stunning piece. You could see the expression on Jesus’ face, how passionate it was. It’s above my bed.” Those are the words of Brahm Wachter, who bought this original Rembrandt etching at the 2003 Maastricht art fair (click on the thumbail to the left for a full size version of the etching). Now this alone probably wouldn’t be enough in order to be mentioned in todays art market news, weren’t there the fact that the collector was 13 years old at that time he bought it with his bar mitzvah money.

While market and investing oriented magazines like Forbes interpret this as the start to a successfull art investing career, I see it rather as the first steps of an art passionate, or an “art amateur” (from Latin amare, to love); despite the fact that Brahm is the son of George Wachter, worldwide head of the old masters department at Sotheby’s.

Link:

Curators From the Cradle: Marbles, Bugs and Warhols (The New York Times, May 13, 2004)

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Rembrandt etching (and an elephant) stolen in Chicago Thursday, May 24 2007

An etching by Rembrandt van Rijn, “Adam and Eve” (click on the left picture to see an enlarged version), has been stolen from an art gallery in Chicago. The suspected thieves are a couple who had briefly entered the gallery and left it, taken the etching with them. The etching dates from 1638 and is worth around 60′000 US$.

In some news articles the stolen print is labeled as “an engraving”, which is not correct. It is an etching. When you have a closer look at the full size version (click on the small picture above), you will discover a nice detail in the background: a small elephant. It is Hansken (1630-1655), an elephant which was shown across Europe in the 17th century.

Rembrandt van Rijn: Hansken (drawing, 1637)

An anonymous copper engraving from the 17th century shows Hansken’s manifold skills, which may also have impressed Rembrandt to include her (Hansken was a lady elephant) in a scene from the Bible.

Links:

Hilligoss Galleries in Chicago including a picture of the stolen item

Rembrandt stolen from Mag Mile gallery (Chicago Tribune) and followup.

17th Century Rembrandt Etching Stolen From Chicago Gallery (FoxNews)

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A mysterious inscription Friday, May 18 2007

On the reverse of the engraving and etching “Silence” by French engraver Laurent Cars (1699-1771) after the painting by Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725-1805), a handwritten inscription was found. The only thing I found out so far was that it is in French, and that it starts with “Cette epreuve…” (“This proof…”). If anybody is able to provide a transcription, I would very appreciate it.

Click on the picture below too see a full-sized version of the inscription.

Laurent Cars after Jean-Baptise Greuze: Silence!

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Highest auction price ever for an engraving Monday, May 14 2007

Spiraling prices for Old Master paintings and drawings are common in todays auction market. Take for example the over eight million British pounds paid for the study of The Risen Christ by Michelangelo Buonarotti (1475-1564), sold at Christie’s in 2000.

I was wondering what the highest price ever paid for an Old Master Print (engraving or etching) might be, and came across a news article from the New York Times edition of November, 1983:

A first state engraving (or etching, dry point and engraving, to be precise) of “St. Jerome Reading in an Italian Landscape” by Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was sold at Christie’s in 1983 for $181′500. This was the highest price for a print ever fetched at an auction, surpassing even the previous record held by Picasso’s “Minotauromachie”, sold in 1981 at Christie’s as well.The engraving was bought by David Tunick, a New York based art dealer specialising in Old Master and Modern Prints.

Now i’m wondering whether this still holds true. If not, who might be the new top selling Old Master etcher/engraver? I’d bet on Rembrandt, Dürer or Mantegna…

Links:

New York Times: Rembrandt Engraving Brings Record $181,500.-

“St. Jerome Reading in an Italian landscape” at the University of Michigan Art Museum

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La bonne mère – The “good” mother Thursday, Apr 26 2007

Note: This started as a reply to a comment of an earlier post ; since one can’t easily add formatting, pictures etc. in a comment, i decided to publish it in form of a post.

Nicolas (1739-1792) and his brother Robert (1754-1854) Delaunay (sometimes also referred to as De Launay) were both active as engravers/etchers in Paris. Nicolas, pupil of Louis-Simon Lempereur (1728-1808) and later entitled to Graveur du Roi (“Royal Engraver” of Louix XV), was one of the contributors of engravings to the 1773-83 edition of J. J. Rousseau’s Oeuvre Complètes (Complete Works) after designs of Jean Michel Moreau (also called Moreau le Jeune).

One of Nicolas Delaunays most popular compositions after Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806) is Les hasards heureux de l’escarpolette (“The Happy Accidents of a Child’s Swing“). Artheque cites also La bonne mère as one of his “big” compositions.

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Galileo Galilei’s forgotten lunar Sketches identified Friday, Mar 30 2007

Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) is generally credited to be the first scientist to use an optical telescope for astronomical purposes. In 1609, he made his first own “telescopium” and pointed it to the starry nocturnal sky. Thus, he not only discovered four Jupiter moons but also made an important discovery about our own lunar companion: the moon has a jagged surface and is not a smooth spehere. He presented his findings one year later in his famous book Sidereus Nuncius (“Starry Messenger”), illustrated with various copper engravings. Over 500 copies of the book were printed. It was assumed that the original watercolor paintings of the moon, which served as the original for the engravings, were those preserved in the National Library in Florence, Italy. When scientists from Berlin and Padova now compared these drawings with the engravings, it was clear that they differed in many details. They could not be the original drawings used for the engraved illustrations.

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The Crazy Sheep Project has come true Wednesday, Mar 14 2007

Two years ago, Michael Drout over at his Wormtalk and Slugspeak blog got all excited with the idea to extract DNA from old parchment. Nicknamed the “Crazy Sheep DNA Guy” at this time, his dream has now come true, at least to a certain extent.

Parchment is made of animal skin, mostly from goat and sheep, which has been dried and scraped under tension. It was the preferred writing support material for manuscripts and maps from around 200 BC until the 16th century, when it was replaced by paper. In the late Middle Ages, town parchment makers (“parchmenters”) had shops in the vicinity of artisans and trade groups. The picture to the left shows a German parchmenter around 1568 [1].

Parchment was much more expensive than paper, and as such still used later on for high-grade books and prints, notably by etchers in th 17th century (and here we have the link to Oldprints).

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The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco ImageBase Thursday, Oct 5 2006

Once in a while, we would like to point to some outstanding examples of online galleries, which consist of more than just some selected reproductions of famous prints, but which offer some added value

This time, it is the ImageBase of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Not only does it contain engravings and etchings of almost all the old masters, it also allows to browse through the extensive collection of 85′000 images (not only prints, to be honest). It is an example of a well considered and simple, but neatly designed presentation of the images.

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