The
real identity of the Mona Lisa has been revealed, a group of German
academics says. Experts at the Heidelberg University library found
notes scribbled in the margins of a book, dated October 1503, that they
say confirm what many art historians have long thought to be true: Lisa
Gherardini, the wife of the wealthy Florentine merchant Francesco del
Giocondo, was the model for Leonardo da Vinci’s legendary portrait,
Reuters reports. According to the experts, Agostino Vespucci, a
Florentine official and an acquaintance of Leonardo, wrote the
comments, which mention that the artist was working on three paintings
at the time, one of them Lisa del Giocondo’s portrait. Art historians
are hailing the discovery as a breakthrough. "There is no reason for
any lingering doubts that this is another woman," Leipzig University
art historian Frank Zoellner told German radio. "One could even say
that books written about all this in the past few years were
unnecessary, had we known." (
Artinfo, January 15, 2008)
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Consider
the case of Jan Lievens and Rembrandt van Rijn, two young Dutch
painters and rivals in Leiden at the start of their careers, circa
1630. One produced work that astonished his colleagues and promised
greatness, while the other was considered an able follower who had some
catching up to do. It‘s a small miracle that Rembrandt wasn’t
completely overshadowed by his brilliant friend.
Of course, posterity has a rather different opinion, and for centuries,
Rembrandt has been the one rightly considered among the geniuses of
painting, while Lievens (1607–1674) has generally been placed with the
good artists in the loosely defined Rembrandt school. But the dramatic
Lievens revival of the past few years will be capped in October when
the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., debuts its
retrospective of the artist’s work, featuring 45 paintings. (Artinfo, January 15, 2008)
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