Leonardo Battle

Much kerfuffling about the announcement from Florence about the discovery of pigments on a layer of wall underneath Vasari's  Battle of Marciano fresco. At one point my 2 'phones at home and my mobile were ringing simultaneously with press queries. The questions continue to come, including one set from Chile.  The search is important. It has been underway, on and off, since the late 1970s. It needs to be resolved one way or the other. Maurizio Seracini, who is leading the investigation, has the skills to pursue it. If the unfinished Battle of Anghiari - the central knot of fighting horsemen - is discovered in legible condition, it will be one of the greatest art finds of any era - much like the unearthing of Laocoon.  The timing and handling of the announcement is, however, unfortunate, and is clearly driven by political, media and, I guess, financial imperatives. The mayor is pressed by critics, and Maurizio presumably needs funding to be sustained. The timing is also related to screening of the National Geographic TV programme on the search. The whole project over the years has been dogged by premature ejaculations via the press. This, as I know from the story of the portrait in vellum, is precisely how not to secure scholarly assent. I have been fed bits of somewhat garbled information by the media.

It is said that there is "proof" that Leonardo's lost Battle has been discovered. My reactions are:
1) the published data about Vasari having built a wall specifically to protect Leonardo's painting is inconclusive;
2) I have seen no evidence that the layers behind Vasari's fresco feature a continuous, flat, primed and painted surface;
3) the "manganese" pigment that has been identified in the core sample taken by the small bores is said to match that in the Mona Lisa. Manganese is a standard component in umber or burnt umber, and cannot be taken specifically to signal Leonardo;
4) the "red lacquer" in the press reports is presumably a red lake pigment - based on an organic dye. The best red lakes were expensive but were used in tempera and oil painting. They could also be used on walls with a binder;
5) it is claimed that there was no other painting in the Council Hall from its construction in 1494 until Vasari's intervention. The idea that the hugely important Council Hall would have been left with bare plaster walls during the almost 20 years of the Republic is untenable. The precise location of Leonardo's horsemen is not certain, and the pigments could well be traces of other decorations in the hall, such as heraldic shields;
6) if Vasari did wall up Leonardo's painting, what might remain? The long-term adhesion of oil paint on a wall in such circumstances is hugely questionable. We might well have only a micro-jigsaw puzzle of fragments fallen off the surface.

Let's wait until something really definite is found, and let's get the technical material in the public domain at the same time as the press stories. This is what we attempted to do with the new evidence about the origins of the vellum portrait in the Sforziad in Warsaw. The internet facilitates such simultaneous publishing. It would be wonderful to recover Leonardo's painting, but we are a long way from that. Let's hold our horses.

out of the train window

On the train to Manchester, passing Banbury, Leamington...
A million miracles of life in the sweep of an eye. Tender green shoots of early spring grass, urgent cellular buds on the  dry twigs of mighty oaks and sycamores. Fitted into the cycle of life, death, decay, new lives, over the millennia, ravaged by gradual and savage change in ages past but always gravitating towards critical states of balance. The old farms the same. Nature transformed into cropped fields and mapped hedges, but they live in intimate collaboration with each new state of balance to preserve the viability of the harvests.
Along the flat, dark tarmac of the sharp roads scuttle our enamelled armadillos. They consume, consume, excrete, excrete, converting noxious substance into noxious substance. They know no cycle, no renewal. They are metaphors for what WE are doing to the earth.
I drive fast cars. Not good.

Shell oil spill

On the news it was announced that Shell had settled private damage claims for the disastrous Gulf of Mexico oil spill. The news said it was "a" leak not "the" leak.  How long does it take for a news item to become about "a" rather than "the"? Not long it seems.

Titian and the National Galleries

So the two National Galleries (Scotland and England) have jointly purchased the second of the great Diana paintings by Titian, having bought the Action painting a few years ago.  This seems about the best that can be done in the circumstances. But the circumstances are not good. Let me give some background.
When I was a trustee of the National Galleries of Scotland in the 1980s, the Sutherland Trustees decided they needed to raise money and approached Sotheby's (not the National Galleries, where the Sutherland paintings had been held for many years). Sotheby's said they thought they "should test the market with a Titian". When the Nat Gall got word of this they contacted the Sutherland estate, and opened negotiations to secure a good deal with the available tax concessions. "We" secured a Tintoretto (which cleaned up a treat), a somewhat damaged Lotto and a Steen and the estate got the sum it wanted.  Sotheby's of course acted as agents for the sale to the nation and advertised their public-spirited role.
There 3 bad circumstances at work here:
1) the auctioneers have a prime interest in getting a work into their salerooms not into public collections. They should be disqualified from acting as agents for the sale to the nation because they have no interest in giving their clients the best advice;
2) the National Galleries have held the paintings for many years, conserving them, protecting them, researching them, facilitating public access. They would be within their rights billing the Sutherland trustees for the services they have rendered, accepting of course that the Galleries have benefitted from their presence;
3) the Sutherland Trustees seem to operate a bottomless pit. How long before the auctioneers want to "test the Market" with the Raphael?

Marius Neset

I went with a friend to the Spin Jazz Club in Oxford. The obligatory semi-slum, dark paint peeling off distressed walls, banks of unused spots amongst which a brass chandelier hangs impotently, and an overworked bar selling concoctions whose names promise paralysis. A surprisingly wide age range - more so that in the classical concerts.
The star of the show, the 25-year old Dane, Marius Neset, was simply astonishing. He moves like a rag doll high on speed, and plays with a passionate virtuosity, drawing sounds from the saxophone that ranged from singing voices to growling animals, from deep echoes to birds tweeting.  Somehow, he played  duets with himself in a kind of counterpoint. The quartet kept up with him!
I felt as I did when I heard Andreas Scholl, the German counter-tenor, sing for the first time.  Walking on like a gawky schoolboy, he promised little. But the first notes were those of an angel.
It takes only a few moments to know that someone special has arrived.

Greece

I have 2 former students working (or in one case being thrown out of work) and one art historian friend in Greece. The situation is dire, and we should not feel superior for not being part of it - at this stage.  It seems bizarre the the old monetarist programme of austerity should be automatically applied to an economy that has no capacity to cope with it. A starving patient is being put on a diet to loose weight. This is a symptom of the bankruptcy of thinking in the worlds of government and finance. Where are the creative alternative analyses that do not predicate growth on a sinking raft of debt?

the latest fantasy

A reply to M Domoretsky .

This search for mystic geometry is totally misguided, as, in general, is the search for "codes". None of the huge body of evidence about the design of Renaissance paintings (Leonardo's included) provides the slightest encouragement for the imposing of detailed surface geometry (using thick lines on small reproductions) on paintings in this way. The most there may be is an adherence to certain canons of bodily proportion, but none of his drawings for specific works of art contain even this. Renaissance paintings contain allegories and symbolism, but there are no "codes".  The nature of a code is that it's meaning is as unlike surface appearance as possible. Allegory and symbolism convey deeper meanings that are consistent with the immediate content of the image.
"Da Vinci" is not his name - that's an ugly Americanism. It's like calling me "from Woodstock". It was not a surname.