A faithful copy of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa dating from more than 400 years ago has sold for €210,000.
The painting spent some time in Artcurial auction house, Brussels, before being transported to Christie’s in Paris for an auction that took place yesterday.
Leonardo’s original, which French King Francois I bought from the painter in 1518, can be found in Paris’ Louvre museum and is not for sale.
But this version, dating from around 1600, is so similar to the original that experts say it is likely that the artist had close access to Leonardo’s version.
Original estimates guessed the copy would fetch €150,000-200,000.
The 1600 copy (left) presented at Artcurial in Brussels vs. Da Vinci’s real dealEAN-PIERRE MULLER, Kenzo TRIBOUILLARD / AFP
‘Everyone wants to own a high-quality version of Mona Lisa’
The copy exceeded maximum estimates by €10,000KENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP or licensors
This copy is widely known as Hekking’s Mona Lisa, after ex-owner Raymond Hekking, an antique dealer who died in 1977. He procured the work from an art dealer in nice during the 1950s.
«She is the perfect illustration of the fascination the Mona Lisa has always inspired and which she exerts more and more,» muses Pierre Etienne, International Director of Old Master Paintings at Christie’s.
«She is the dream of a man with a passion for art. She is his Ideal. Raymond Hekking was her staunch defender among art historians and the world’s media in the 1960s. She will be his Muse, he will be her Poet.”
Globe to be open to the public following November 24 lecture
By Times of Malta
The ostrich egg globe reportedly carved by Leonardo Da Vinci.
A replica of an ostrich egg globe which was reportedly carved by Leonardo Da Vinci will be coming to Malta later this month.
Dating back to 1504, the globe, which was carved on two separate halves of an ostrich egg, features one of the earliest depictions of North America or the ‘New World’.
Among the rugged blue lines carving out the Mediterranean, among a sea of islands, Malta is also depicted on the ostrich egg globe.
According to its owner, Stefaan J. Missinne, there is ample evidence to suggest Da Vinci is indeed the creator of the globe, according to data found through his own research.
Missinne argues that Da Vinci made preparatory drawings for the globe in 1503, which others believe to be a depiction of the surface of the moon, and the eggs were found to have been engraved by a left-handed person, which Da Vinci was.
The ostrich egg globe is considered to be a cast of the Hunt-Lenox globe, the third oldest-known terrestrial globe.
According to Missinne, a trace of red metal copper and arsenic were found on the ostrich egg globe. The recipe for this cast also points to Da Vinci, who in his Codex Atlanticus advises for arsenic to be added to copper in order to preserve the red hue and avoid a patina, or green discolouration due to oxidisation.The story is part of what makes it interesting
The ostrich egg globe will be open to the public following a lecture by Missinne, organised the Malta Map Society on November 24 at the Casino Maltese in Valletta.
Malta Map Society president Joseph Schiro told Times of Malta that while the veracity of whether Leonardo Da Vinci truly carved the globe are contested, the story is nonetheless part of the history of what is still an important historical and cartographic object.
“Part of the beauty of collecting is not just acquiring an object but the joy that comes from researching it,” he said.
“Some accumulate without knowing what they have but discovering about an object and writing about what you’ve discovered is part of the journey.”
“While its story might be contested, the story is part of what makes it interesting. I think there’s some very compelling scientific and historic evidence that backs it.”
There are about three hundred tapestries in the Vatican Collection – undisputed masterpieces, such as those intended for the Sistine Chapel using cartoons drawn by Raphael, or the precious cloth that portrays Da Vinci’s Last Supper given to the Pope by the King of France. These delicate, priceless works are preserved thanks to the care of expert restorers.
Enigma and mystery, that like a halo surround the person of Leonardo da Vinci, emerge from the interwoven strands of silk used to make the tapestries on exhibit in the Raphael Room in the Vatican Museums’ Pinacoteca.
The tapestry depicting Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper, on exhibit in the Vatican Pinacoteca
The King who wanted Leonardo in France
It’s a reproduction on cloth of the Last Supper painted on the wall of the convent dining room of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan by the Renaissance genius. King Louis XII fell in love with the painting so much that he proposed that it be dismantled and transported from Milan to Paris. That, however, would remain a dream for the French crown, until Francis I ascended the throne and decided to commission a transposition of the painting on fabric.
Detail of Christ on the tapestry depicting Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper on exhibit in the Vatican Pinacoteca
The two versions of the Last Supper
Although some doubts still remain regarding the client’s identification and the place and year it was produced, the tapestry can definitely be dated sometime between 1516 and 1524: the period of Leonardo’s stay in France. It cannot be excluded that the artist may have admired the precious cloth with his own eyes, but the hypothesis of his direct involvement in designing the cartoon seems unfounded. Differences between the painting and the tapestry catch the eye immediately. The minimalism and the almost metaphysic atmosphere of the Last Supper of Santa Maria delle Grazie fade away in the Vatican Museums’ woven work which portrays a Renaissance taste with a French flair: there are three arches in the background, an echo of Lombard architecture, beyond which a landscape dominated by ancient fortresses can be seen.
Threads used in the Vatican Museums’ Tapestry and Textiles Restoration Laboratory
Gold and silver threads
The refinement of the workmanship indicates Brussels as the place of production. All the threads, made of either gold- or silver-covered silk, trace the figures of the apostles, but also the salamanders and wings, evident references to Francis I and his mother, Louise of Savoy. Woven into the textile are initials, embedded in a sea of symbols, that allude to the King and his wife, Claudia who died in 1524. Intertwined knots stand out. On the one hand, bring Leonardo’s “knots” or “ties” to mind; but on the other hand, are allusions to the Savoy family or the Franciscan order.
A tapestry in the making
A gift for the Pope
In 1533, the monumental tapestry departed for Rome, becoming separated from the rich and outstanding collection of the King of France. Francis I himself gave it to Pope Clement VII as a gift on the occasion of the sumptuous marriage celebrated in Marseilles between Catherine de’ Medici (the Pope’s niece) and the king’s second-born son, Henry of Valois. The memorable wedding was described in great detail by the chroniclers of the day: after the Sack of Rome in 1527, this wedding sealed the alliance between France and the Papacy, an anti-Habsburg move. The Pope reciprocated the tribute of the tapestry with a cetacean horn gilded by the famous goldsmith Tobia da Camerino. This horn was presented as a “unicorn horn” which, according to an ancient tradition, was believed to be a potent antidote in protecting one against poisoned food.
Corpus Christi procession from Saint Peter’s Basilica. Painted by Vincenzo Marchi Morresi, 1865, Vatican Museums
Exhibited on grand occasions
Da Vinci’s Last Supper tapestry was conserved in the Vatican’s Floreria and used on special occasions during the liturgical year. During the Corpus Christi procession it was hung along the Scala Regia along the way leading from the Sistine Chapel to Saint Peter’s Basilica. On Holy Thursday, instead, it was displayed on the walls of the Sala Ducale while the evocative ritual of the washing of the feet was performed.
This textile masterpiece has remained in an excellent state of conservation down to our day. In the 1700s, Pope Pius VI had a copy of it made by the painter Bernardino Nocchi. It was transposed into a tapestry by Felice Cettomai, then Director of the Pontifical San Michele Manufactory. From that moment on, this copy was used during papal ceremonies, thus preserving the original from exposure to the atmospheric elements.
A restorer at work on a tapestry from the Vatican collection.
A giant to restore
The original Francis I tapestry has undergone several restorations, the last in 2019 when, prior to departing for an exhibit in France, the tapestry was lined with nylon tulle, dyed previously by the technicians in the Tapestry and Textiles Restoration Laboratory.
Measuring 4.9 meters high (16 feet) and 9 meters long (29.5 feet), the monumental and delicate Last Supper tapestry is not easy to move or “be moved”. The experience, dedication and professionalism of the Vatican restoration workers are, however, a guarantee, drawing on centuries of knowledge and tradition. The Papal tapestry collection, in fact, numbers almost three hundred pieces and dates back to the 1400s. From the beginning, the Popes, with farsighted vision and a pioneering approach to “cultural heritage” entrusted the ongoing care of these artifacts to a “conservator”.
A tapestry designed by Raphael.
Raphael and the Vatican collection
“The Vatican collection”, recalls Alessandra Rodolfo, Curator of the Department of Tapestries and Textiles, “exploded at the time in which Raphael designed the cartoons for what would later be considered an undisputed masterpiece of world-wide fame”: the series of ten tapestries depicting scenes from the Acts of the Apostles, commissioned by Pope Leo X (de’ Medici) and produced in the Flemish workshop of Pieter Van Aelst’s, who became the “Pope’s tapestry maker”.
“The tapestries”, she continues, “were destined to complete the iconographic plan of the Sistine Chapel on the lower part of the walls corresponding to the painted curtains – on the ceiling, episodes from Genesis, painted by Michelangelo; the middle register of walls covered by the stories of Moses and Christ completed by various 15th-century artists; the lower register would depict the account narrated in Acts of the spread of Christianity through the two princes of the Apostles, Peter and Paul, with the Universal Judgement, painted later by Michelangelo, completing this grand narrative”.
The Sistine tapestries revolutionize art
“Only by admiring them in the Sistine Chapel can you fully understand Raphael’s tapestries”. This is exactly what happened for a week in February 2020 when the ten masterpieces were once again mounted on their hooks in the Cappella Magna, thus renewing the competition between Michelangelo and Raphael Sanzio and their ability to capture beauty. “At the time in which these tapestries were created”, Alessandra Rodolfo continues, “they unhinged the canons of art”. The transfer of Raphael’s cartoons to Brussels profoundly impacted 16th- century European culture. It was an era in which the art of tapestry making was considered more refined and superior to that of painting. It in fact represented a status symbol, a vehicle for mobile iconography: it could be moved, rolled up, exhibited indoors or outdoors, allowing for a wider public – and on multiple occasions and celebrations – to admire the prestige of the reigning pontiffs.
Work bench of one of the Vatican Museum’s restorers.
Six times the cost of Michelangelo’s frescoes
Even the cost of a tapestries was far greater than that of a fresco. Raphael’s tapestries cost six times more than Michelangelo’s frescoes on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. “The Pope”, Alessandra Rodolfo explains, “had to invest a lot of money, paying large sums in advance, to the point that he went into debt. To pay off the huge debts that Pope Leo X left after his death, and to pay for the Pontiff’s funeral, Raphael’s tapestries were used as collateral with the famous German banking and entrepreneurial Fugger family”.
Manufacturing costs also drove the cost up – beginning with the dying of the threads with natural dyes. Some of these threads contained a silk core covered with gold or silver foils beaten by specialized craftsmen known as battilori .
A tapestry rolled up in the Vatican Museums’ Restoration Laboratory.
The original colors seen on the back
To have an idea of the original beauty and brilliance of the tapestries, they need to be observed from behind where the light has not faded the original color and brilliance over time. An expert tapestry makier could produce approximately one square meter per month. In addition, the work began with an artist tasked with designing the cartoons.
A tapestry is an extremely delicate work. Made to be hung, it endures the constant tension to which the fabric is subjected. Just as laborious and complex is the work needed to conserve it: from removing dust, to sponging, to being washed in large tubs with ionized water and detergents recommended by the Vatican Museum’s Cabinet of Scientific Research, to drying it out on a large grill, and finally to the point of repairing damaged places using colored threads obtained by consulting over one thousand recipes jealously guarded in the notebooks of the Vatican restoration workers.
A tapestry in the Vatican Museums’ tapestry warehouse.
Vatican warehouse
Elements such as light and temperature ideal for conservation must be carefully monitored. The tapestries are either kept in the Vatican storerooms on sliding frames, designed in the 1930s by the founder of the Vatican Restoration Laboratory, Biagio Biagetti, or they are rolled up and wrapped in white, breathable sheets. Restoring a tapestry requires considerables economic resources, in addition to a great deal of time and patience. Just think that the restoration of the ten Raphael tapestries began in 1981 and was completed only a couple of years ago.
One of the restorers working in the Vatican Museums’ Tapestry and Textiles Restoration Laboratory.
A team of women
Heir to the Pontifical Tapestry Factory founded by Pope Benedict XV in 1920, and the even older Roman Tapestry Manufactory of San Michele founded by Clement XI in 1711, the Tapestry and Textiles Restoration Laboratory, historically the first of the Museums’ restoration departments, is made up of seven professionals, three of whom are women religious – the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary to whom Pope Pius XI, in 1926, entrusted the care of these precious works of art. Spools of colored threads, antique looms bearing witness to the older Vatican tapestry school, teamwork, painstaking patience and enormous passion are woven together, like a piece of cloth, in the fascinating rooms in which tradition and innovative technology are engaged in a fruitful dialogue so as to guarantee the transmission of one of the world’s most precious, fragile and unique heritages to future generations.
The factors that have contributed to the multiple dematerialization of the corpus mecanicus of art are the trends of the rise of Conceptual Art, the appearance of Art Born Digital, the production of derivative works with digital and digitized works, reproduction, communication, digital distribution and its tokenization.
The greatest impact of this phenomenon occurs in the Visual Arts embodied in online multimedia formats and where visual language prevails, even for its exhibition in Museums, also affecting Access to Cultural Spaces.
The path permeated by idealism, which leads us from the sensations captured by the image to the mode of the Platonic cave myth to the idea, it seems that today it takes effect, where in addition, Form would have «triumphed» over Matter in a Kantian conception of Art as a formal purpose and agreement of the multiple in unity and as Schelling argued, that the spirit manifests itself through the sensitive world, only as meaning through words.
The access, enjoyment and valorization of Art navigate, circulate and do not find obstacles and limits in the sociological dimension nor in the normative order, it crosses the continents instantly, riding along the dimension of values that act as a binder and axis of convergence of technology, education and art, in a unity in the complexity of the corpus mysticum without object.
It transits and crosses public and private spaces and feeds the entire Art Ecosystem, a clear example of this has been George Floyd Case, as injustice as a demanding ideal entity triggered a resignification and restructuring of the monumentality and museology of Europe and the revaluation of Afro art, in several continents. Both worlds — the legal and Art ones — integrated in the complexity of culture.
La dematerialización múltiple del Arte y la Globalización Simbólica.
By Damián Marcelo Dellaqueva
Los factores que han contribuido a la dematerialización múltiple del corpus mecanicus del arte, son las tendencias del auge del Arte Conceptual, la realización del Born Digital Art , la producción de las obras derivadas con obras digitales y digitalizada , la reproducción, comunicación, distribución digital y su tokenización.
El mayor impacto de este fenómeno, se da en las Artes Visuales corporizadas en formatos multimedia on line y donde prevalece el lenguaje visual, incluso para su exhibición en Museos, incidiendo también en el Acceso a los Espacios culturales.
El camino perjeneado por el idealismo, que nos conduce desde de las sensaciones captadas por la imagen al modo del mito de las cavernas platónico, hasta la idea, pareciera que hoy cobra vigencia, donde además habría “triunfado “ la Forma, sobre la Materia, en una concepción del Arte al modo kantiano como finalidad formal y acuerdo de lo múltiple en la unidad y como sostenía Schelling, que el espíritu se manifiesta a través del mundo sensible, solo como el sentido a través de las palabras.
El acceso, la fruición y la valorización del Arte, navega, circula y no encuentra obstáculos y límites en dimensión sociológica, ni en el orden normativo, cruza los continentes instantáneamente, cabalgando por la dimensión de valores que actúa como aglutinante y eje de convergencia de la tecnología, la educación y el Arte, en una unidad en la complejidad del áurea del corpus mysticum sin objeto.
Transita y atraviesa transversalmente los espacios públicos y privados y alimenta todo el Ecosistema del Arte, un claro ejemplo de ello, ha sido el Caso George Floyd, como la injusticia como ente ideal exigente desencadenó una resignificación y reestructuración de la monumentalidad y museología de Europa y la revalorización del arte afro, en varios continentes. Ambos mundos el jurídico y del Arte integrados en la complejidad de la cultura.
D.M. Dellaqueva 