After a week or so off, a few links/announcements to run down:
First, a site update: “Why Collect Old Masters?” has been added to the page section below, in the left hand column. This page discusses the collecting advantages of the Old Master market; .pdf and .doc formats will be available for download shortly.
In other news:
A debate has been heating up recently over the reattribution over what is allegedly to be a vellum drawing by Leonardo, that sold for $21,850 at a Christie’s auction in 1998, and was recently sold by a dealer to a private collector. Its authenticity has drawn mixed reactions: many experts concur on the drawing’s quality as being indicative of Leonardo’s hand, and various tests, including a multispectral digital analysis support the claim. There have been detractors, however, including dealers like Kate Ganz, who previously owned the drawing (her thoughts are listed in the last link below), and connoisseurs like Hugh Chapman, assistant keeper at the department of prints and drawings at the British Museum, who pointed out that amidst a room of experts at auction, the previous sale of the drawing at Christie’s would have been an “amazing miss.”
A Portrait by Leonardo? Scholars and Skeptics Differ [Elisabetta Povoledo, NY Times]
Unknown Leonardo kept in drawer [John Follain, The Australian]
Dealer Who Sold Portrait Joins Leonardo Debate [Elisabetta Povoledo, NY Times]
Settling on Old Masters: A Collector Winnows and Sharpens [More Intelligent Life via Economist.com]
The Economist continues its series of collector profiles with Jeffrey Horvitz, a long time buyer of French and Italian drawings, whose recent sale of a large portion of his collection in January nearly doubled its high estimate, at $9.2 million.
OMNP runs down a few items from the Summer edition of Apollo Magazine:
Jeff Koons buys a medieval sculpture
OMNP is not the biggest fan of Koons’ work, but has plenty of respect for his collecting taste/art historical perspective.