Month: April 2021

Wax bust of Flora definitely not by Leonardo

Modern(ish), Museums

A wax bust whose attribution to Leonardo da Vinci once caused art historians to threaten violence has been conclusively shown to be a modern work from the 18th century at the earliest.

The bust of Flora, goddess of flowers and springtime, now in the National Museums in Berlin was spotted by general director of the Royal Museum of Berlin Wilhelm von Bode in an antique store in London in 1907. Her downcast eyes, half-smile and finely-modeled features impressed Bode as a work by Leonardo da Vinci. German art historian Max Friedländer, assistant director of the Kaiser-Friedrich Museum under Bode, was convinced by its high quality and wear patterns that it was a Renaissance work. Bode bought it for a princely sum (185,000 Goldmark) in 1909 and announced with much fanfare that it was a work by no less a Renaissance luminary than Leonardo da Vinci, the only known wax sculpture surviving from the period.

Bode was held in high regard in Germany. He had been involved in the creation of a national collection for the royal museums since he was hired as assistant curator of sculpture in 1872 and his career would span the entire five decades of the second German Empire from Unification to Republic. Driven to make Berlin a capital of the arts on the same level with Paris, Vienna, London, St. Petersburg and Rome, he had often been in competition against his counterparts in developing the great public collections of Europe, including a long-standing bitter dispute with Giovanni Morelli, an eminent Italian scholar, parliamentarian and strong advocate against the sale of Italy’s cultural patrimony to deep-pocketed foreign museums, on attribution methodology.

The acquisition of Flora was seen as a huge coup for Germany’s cultural institutions. The bust had been snatched out from under Britain’s nose and now Germany had a unique work of the world’s most famous and least prolific Old Master. The braggadocio was immediately met with pushback. Within months, the Times published a story contesting the attribution and alleging Flora was in fact it was created by 19th century British sculptor and photographer Richard Cockle Lucas who had copied it in 1860 from a painting of Flora in the Hermitage once attributed to Leonardo but later determined to be the work of his student and right-hand-man Francesco Melzi. Lucas’ son Albert Dürer Lucas, then 80 years old, swore that his father had made it and that Albert had helped stuff old newspapers and wood chips into the hollow of the bust.

Even though newspapers and wood chips were indeed found inside, including an article from 1840, Bode dismissed out of hand the possibility that Lucas was the sculptor. Lucas, Bode contended, was simply not good enough to model so superlative a piece. Unlike Flora, Lucas’ known wax pieces were greyish in color, lacked any polychromy and still smelled of wax. Bode was sure that at most, Lucas had been employed to fill its empty core to reinforce the structure and had fashioned some arms to match.

In the next two years, more than 730 heated articles were written debating the attribution. There were debates on the floor of the Prussian parliament. Two scholars challenged each other to a duel. Bode died in 1929, still convinced that his attribution to Leonardo was correct. The debate got less aggressive over the decades, but never died down. Even modern technology hasn’t been able to settle the issue conclusively, because wax, as it happens, is a complicated medium to date.

Albert Dürer Lucas said his father made the bust by melting down a bunch of burned candle ends. Analysis of wax samples found it is composed almost entirely of spermaceti, a waxy substance produced in the head cavity of the sperm whale commonly used in 19th century candles, and a small amount of beeswax. The decay of C14 occurs in the atmosphere in a calculable way, but under water the C14 is absorbed much more slowly and is much older than the carbon absorbed on land. The Marine Reservoir Effect makes radiocarbon dating results difficult to calibrate because you would need to know that specific whale’s full biography — track it movements from equator to ice shelves — to produce any semblance of accurate results.

An attempt to radiocarbon date Flora in the 1980s was able to exclude the Renaissance period, but the results were not reliable as the marine calibration issue remained thorny. The new study utilized two calibration curves, marine and terrestrial, and applied them to samples of the wax from Flora as well as to another work by Lucas, an 1850 relief of Leda and the Swan. The result was a date range of between 1704 and 1950, admittedly wide, but it conclusively precludes that the bust was made by Leonardo or anyone else in the Renaissance.

The study has been published in the journal Scientific Reports and can be read here.

Unique Roman complex found in Scarborough

Ancient

A large Roman complex that is the first of its kind ever found in Britain and could well be unique in the entire empire has been unearthed in Scarborough, North Yorkshire. It was uncovered during an archaeological excavation at the site of a planned real estate development. A geophysical survey indicated the presence of something of interest under the surface, but archaeologists had no idea how remarkable that something would prove be.

The floorplan of the structures unearthed so far is about the size of two tennis courts. The layout of the complex is what makes it so unusual. There is a cylindrical central room/tower with four rectangular rooms leading off of it left, right, top and bottom, forming a rough cross shape. There is also a bathhouse and other structures. Archaeologists hypothesize that it was a luxurious elite villa or perhaps a religious sanctuary. It may have been both at different times.

Karl Battersby, corporate director, business and environmental services at North Yorkshire County Council, said: “This is a remarkable discovery, which adds to the story of Roman settlement in North Yorkshire.

“Work by North Yorkshire archaeologists has already established the buildings were designed by the highest-quality architects in Northern Europe in the era and constructed by the finest craftsmen.

“Because of the significance of this, it is excellent to see that the layout of the new housing has been redesigned so this important part of our history can be preserved.

“There will be further work on the finds and environmental samples to try to establish exactly what this enigmatic site was and why it was created so far from other Roman centres.”

The find is so significant that Historic England will recommend it be granted protected scheduled monument status. The developers have already gone back to the drawing board and redesigned the housing estate so that the archaeological remains will be part of a public greenspace that was originally going to be somewhere else on the property.

Off-duty Carabinieri spot looted Roman statue in Brussels shop

Ancient, Looting

A marble statue of a togate man that was stolen a decade ago has been returned to Italy after it was discovered in a Brussels antique store by off-duty officers from Italy’s Carabinieri Art Squad. They were in Brussels on a business trip and after work one day they went for a stroll through the Sablon neighborhood of the historic upper city which is known for its many antique shops. The headless Togatus statue in one of the stores caught their eyes. It bore the telltale damage of excavation tools, the kind of sloppy work done by looters eager to get their payday out of the ground quickly.

The officers didn’t enter the store, but did take a photograph from the street. When they got home, they looked up the statue in Leonardo, the Carabinieri’s database of stolen antiquities, their suspicions were confirmed. A statue matching their picture was on the list as having been stolen in November 2011 from the Villa Marini Dettina, an archaeological park outside of Rome.

The statue dates to the 1st century B.C. The toga has stylistic features typical of late Republican figures: it is ankle-length instead of floor-length, draped comparatively narrowly around the legs and has a short arm sling that positions the right hand at the chest. The right arm, bent at the elbow and confined in the draped sling with only the hand emerging is the uniform pose of Republican togate statues.

Togate statues and reliefs were widespread in the Imperial Rome, especially in funerary monuments. Only Roman citizens were allowed to wear the toga, and a boy’s first toga marked his entry into manhood, so they were a powerful iconographic representation of Roman identity, freedman status and manhood. Statues from the Republican era, togate or otherwise, are much more rare. This one, headless, significantly worn and with simple draping, is worth an estimated $120,000.

The Public Prosecutor’s Office of Rome alerted Belgian authorities, and the statue was seized as stolen property. The investigation has revealed what looks to be an antiquities trafficking operation, not just a single dirty deal made without asking any questions. An Italian businessman operating under a Spanish alias is alleged to have received the statue in Italy and arranged for its smuggling to Brussels. He has been referred for prosecution, charged with receiving stolen goods and illegal export.

The Togatus was repatriated to Italy in February and is back at the Villa Marini Dettina.

Giambologna strutting ostrich for sale

Renaissance

One of only three known examples of a finely chased bronze ostrich from the workshop of Renaissance master Giambologna will be sold auction next week. It was previously owned by writer, parliamentarian and avid collector Horace Walpole and has been owned by the same family since it was sold by his great-nephew along with the rest of his extraordinary collection of art and antiquities 180 years ago. The pre-sale estimate is £80,000-£120,000 ($110,000-$165,000).

Citing his impressionistically modelled bronze birds created for the grotto in the garden of the Medici Villa at Castello, near Florence, in 1567, historic scholarship has attributed the ostriches to Giambologna. Indeed, other bronze models of ostriches attributed to Giambologna include an example in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, and in the Hermitage, St Petersburg. While these examples demonstrate that the ostrich was a popular subject during the period and was clearly part of Giambologna’s oeuvre, the Austrian and Russian examples lack the drama, potency and spontaneity of movement demonstrated by the three models previously discussed. Although some sources still attribute the models to Giambologna, in recent years the scholarship has begun to diverge, with some experts now attributing the work to Giambologna’s student, and heir to his studio, Pietro Tacca (1577-1640). This pivot is in part due to the stylistic similarity observed in Tacca’s delineation of the tails of his bronze horses to the dynamic and vivacious rendering of the ostriches’ plumage.

Horace Walpole, who was as avid a documenter as he was a collector, noted in his journal that he had bought it in Paris in 1765 or 1766. It joined the rest of his vast collection at Strawberry Hill, his Gothic Revival villa in Twickenham, London. In the exhaustive 1774 inventory of Strawberry Hill, the bronze ostrich is recorded as being placed in a window between a bronze Ibis and a bronze replica of the Laocoön Group, one of dozens of fine works of art and antiquities in the first-floor Gallery. It kept company with portraits by Rubens, Van Dyck and Lely, landscapes, seascapes, busts of Roman emperors and empresses, altars, urns, antique Japanese commodes, porcelains, coins and much, much more. Walpole described it is “an ostrich, very spirited.”

His great-nephew reused the description in the catalogue of the Great Sale of Strawberry Hill in April 1842. It was listed as “a fine antique bronze of an Ostrich, very spirited in effect, on a bronze scroll stand.” It was acquired by wealthy landowner John Dunn-Gardner and his descendants are the current owners.

The other two known examples of this striding ostrich are now in the collections of the Louvre and the Fitzwilliam Museum. The Louvre’s is the earliest recorded example, first documented in 1689, and it also the most active and dynamic and because of this experts believe it was the latest of the three. The Fitzwilliam’s is believed to be the earliest, as it has a less pronounced S-curved neck and less dramatic plumage. The example up for auction is midway between the two in dynamism and movement, so is thought to be the middle ostrich child.

Roman gallery found under Topkapı courtyard

Ancient

Archaeologists have discovered a Roman-era gallery under the First Courtyard of Topkapı Palace in Istanbul. The gallery was discovered in the course of landscaping works in the lower gardens of the palace. These areas have long been closed to visitors and the Roman gallery was found during underground research as part of the landscape study.

The gallery, of which three sections are extant, begins under the Imperial Gate to the right. A Byzantine-era cistern was previously discovered right above the gallery, and it’s possible the Roman gallery was dedicated to the same purpose or was part of a network of subterranean passageways connected to a cistern that has yet to be found. Constantinople was absolutely bristling with underground cisterns. There were literally hundreds of them, so this could be another one of them, or it could have had another use entirely when first built only to be repurposed as part of a cistern network in the Byzantine era. It is a five-minute walk from the dramatically gorgeous century Basilica Cistern built by Emperor Justinian I in the 6th century.

Construction on Topkapı Palace began in 1459, only six years after the fall of the decrepit Eastern Roman Empire and the conquest of Constantinople by Sultan Mehmed II. Located on a promontory overlooking the Bosporus, it is one of the highest points on the Sea of Marmara and was the site of the ancient Greek city’s acropolis.

Research is ongoing as the landscaping project continues. While there are no immediate plans for an archaeological excavation of the gallery site, that is possible depending on what the current survey reveals. Ideally, the gallery would be open to the public when the landscaping is complete and the courtyards open, but it will have to be assessed for structural safety before becoming available for tours.