Have You Seen This Painting?

The only van Gogh painting in Egypt has been stolen...again. An 1886 still-life of poppies and viscaria (F324a, JH1137 for those keeping score in the catalogues raisonnés) disappeared yesterday from the Mohammed Mahmoud Khalil Museum in Cairo and contrary to early published reports, has NOT yet been recovered. (Note to CNN on tv: update your crawler.) This particular painting, valued at about $50 million, was purloined in 1978 but recovered in Kuwait a decade later; nine different paintings were taken from this same museum last year, so something is clearly amiss with security. Easy to see what: reports this morning are that only seven of the museum's 43 security cameras were working, and that none of the individual alarms on the museum's paintings worked, either. The museum's records show only ten visitors to the museum yesterday. Police tracked and arrested two of them, a young Italian couple, at the Cairo airport yesterday afternoon...but the painting is still at large. If you see it, call the cops immediately! (Wild speculation: could it be an inside job, with the Italian couple used as a diversion à la "The Thomas Crown Affair"? Someone who knew the alarms and cameras were not working? Hmm...)

I've noticed a couple of the news stories have illustrated the wrong painting with their reports: the one pictured here is the correct canvas. It is one of a series of floral still lifes produced by Vincent while he was living in Paris and thought to date from summer 1886 (some of the stories have the wrong date, too). They are 'practice pieces' -- studies Vincent did to explore his ideas about color theory. Friends and obliging local florists provided him with blooms to paint.

Caravaggio Update

News from Caravaggio's world...the painting an art historian from the Vatican thought might be a Caravaggio, announced in L'Osservatore Romano last week? Um, not so much. The Vatican's chief art historian, Antonio Paolucci, admits in the latest L'Osservatore that the painting is likely a copy of an original by a follower of Caravaggio, although he was careful not to disparage his colleague who had suggested otherwise.

In other news, attendance figures have been released for the Caravaggio show at the Scuderie del Quirinale this spring...try 600,000 visitors. For a show that featured only about 25 paintings, that is downright amazing. Vincent draws that many at some venues (often more, granted). But Caravaggio? Told you he was HOT. As for the all-night opening of the Galleria Borghese and Caravaggio-owning churches in Rome last week, an estimated 20,000 visitors followed the trail. WOW!!

Run, Pheidippides, Run!

I'm going to put on my classicist hat for blogging today and say that I can't BELIEVE I haven't realized next week is the 2500th anniversary of the Battle of Marathon (490 B.C.)! I'm serious, I can't. Today Reuters has a news story about two Greek long-distance runners who plan to recreate one version of the Marathon legend: that Pheidippides ran from Marathon to Sparta (where he couldn't get help), back to Marathon, and *then* from Marathon to Athens. (The modern marathon race was inspired by the Marathon-Athens leg of Pheidippides' trek. p.s. He died.) Maria Polyzou and Panayiotis Skoulis will run the 325 miles from Athens to Sparta to Marathon in six days' time, from July 26th to August 1st. The route begins at the Akropolis and ends at the Tomb of the Marathonomachoi (Athenian dead at Marathon, who received hero-cult in the Classical period). Polyzou has not only run marathons for 23 years, she's also director of the Marathon Museum and trumpets the historical significance of the anniversary. Apparently this run will be like a double marathon every day for a week, and apparently Skoulis has done it before (!!). Celebrations in Greece will continue and will culminate in the Athens Marathon on October 31st, which is expected to have about 20,000 participants this year.

Shout-out to my sister and brother-in-law, themselves marathon runners, who plan to take on the Disney Marathon (again) in January 2011. Being closer to a library cat than a cheetah, I won't be joining them. But I may have to re-read Aischylos' Persians next week for the anniversary...

Chasing Caravaggio

It's the 400th anniversary of his death this year -- this week, in fact -- and Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (aka my second favorite painter) is hot hot hot. Record-attendance exhibition in Rome at the Scuderie del Quirinale, other exhibitions in Florence and elsewhere...check. Stolen Caravaggio recently recovered...check. A group of scientists announcing they've found Caravaggio's bones and are installing them with honors in Pont'Ercole, where he died...check (although on this one I'm tempted to say, Isn't that conveeeeenient?). And now this morning, none other than Vatican officials are speculating whether they've "discovered" a new Caravaggio. What would Caravaggio himself think of all this fuss? Well, unlike my friend Vincent, who I believe would be embarrassed and bewildered over the modern attention paid to him, I suspect Caravaggio would guzzle it like a good Chianti. Caravaggio was anything but shy!

I went to Rome earlier this summer (for the fourth time) and followed my own Caravaggio trail. The Scuderie exhibition was *amazing,* to say the least. By the time of my visit, about four of the paintings had already gone home or on to other shows, but the twenty or so that remained -- all securely attributed paintings by the master -- were knockouts. Even with massive crowds, Caravaggio's work has the power to smack you around and call you chump. The Scourging of Christ (from a Vienna museum) was the one that affected me the most, not having seen it before in person. The Taking of Christ (in Dublin) was another powerful piece. A special treat was seeing the first version of The Conversion of Saul (or The Conversion of Saint Paul): that version was rejected by its patrons, and Caravaggio's second version is the one hanging in Santa Maria del Popolo today. The first version is in a private collection and is seldom displayed in public. (Mille grazie, by the way, to the nice guard who pitied short little me and led me to the front of the pack for a good look-see!) In Florence, before coming to Rome, I had just missed by three days (THREE DAYS?!) a big show on Caravaggio and the Caravaggisti, which means I also missed the Uffizi's Bacchus and their works by Artemisia Gentileschi. Caravaggio's Medusa, though, was on view all by itself in a spotlit room, watched over by a bored guard filing his fingernails. Three trips to the Uffizi, and I'd never seen the Medusa. She's fabulous.

Other stops on my Caravaggio trail in Rome: the churches of Santa Maria del Popolo (Conversion of Saint Paul, Crucifixion of Saint Peter), San Luigi dei Francesi (the three Saint Matthew paintings), and Sant'Agostino (Madonna of the Loreto). Also paid a visit to the Chiesa Nuova to see the original site of the Entombment, although the painting now hangs in the Pinacoteca of the Vatican Museums. The Galleria Borghese to see their paintings they hadn't lent to the Scuderie. The Galleria Doria Pamphilj (Mary Magdalene). And just for pure atmosphere, a swing through the creepy little backstreet the Vicolo del Divino Amore, where himself lived during his last and most turbulent months in Rome. I didn't see any plaque commemorating Caravaggio's time there, but once I entered the almost-alley, I didn't exactly stick around!

Last night, to commemorate the anniversary of Caravaggio's death, the Galleria Borghese and the above-mentioned churches stayed open all night -- with free admission -- for his devotees to pay their respects. I bet there were a lot of them. The first time I walked 'the trail' in 1996, I had the churches to myself. Now you jostle with hordes of admiring fans. Oh he's hot, all right. And somewhere he's smiling.

Go(gh) Netherlands!

You know the World Cup Final is serious business when a city's museums post huge banners in support of the national team. This photo comes from the Van Gogh Museum's Twitter page; apparently the Rijksmuseum has a banner too. The Museumplein will be hopping on Sunday!

Tiffany in Florida

This weekend I was in Orlando for the inaugural University of Central Florida Book Festival (a big thank-you to the organizers for the invitation and the hospitality), and I took advantage of the proximity to the town of Winter Park to visit the Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art, which I've wanted to visit since I moved here nearly nine years ago and somehow just never made it. Boy, have I been missing out! The Morse is an absolutely delightful museum, specializing in late nineteenth-early twentieth century American art, and in particular on the art of Louis Comfort Tiffany. The museum claims to have the most comprehensive collection of Tiffany in the world, and it certainly seems to be true: from famous household items like the Wisteria Lamp (pictured) to stained glass windows, glass vases, pottery, mosaics, jewelry, even architectural elements. The museum's founders, Hugh and Jeannette McKean, were ardent collectors of Tiffany artworks and other American decorative arts and paintings; indeed, it was the McKeans who rescued elements of Tiffany's Long Island estate, Laurelton Hall, from certain ruin after a devastating fire in the 1950s. (They donated or loaned some of their collection to the Metropolitan Museum in New York, so we can thank the McKeans for some of the Tiffany artwork there, too.) At the Morse Museum you can see the famous Tiffany Chapel, conserved and reconstructed in its own gallery, and room after room of beautifully displayed Tiffany glass. A selection of the museum's painting and print collection is also on view, featuring work by Sargent, Henri, Mucha, and Parrish, as well as furniture and decorative arts from the European and American Art Nouveau and Arts and Crafts Movements. What a treat! Construction is underway on a new wing set to open in fall 2011, dedicated solely to Laurelton Hall; here, guests will enjoy among other things the reconstructed Daffodil Terrace. (Visitors to the Metropolitan Museum's Tiffany & Laurelton Hall exhibition in late 2006-early 2007 will remember the restored Daffodil Terrace -- well, it belongs to the Morse and soon will be in Winter Park for good. I happened to see that show and remember gasping at the Terrace's beauty. I also remember seeing Tim Gunn from Project Runway there!)

Visitors to the Morse will learn about some of the new research surrounding Tiffany and Art Nouveau. For instance, due credit is given here to Clara Driscoll, one of the Tiffany Studios designers who actually designed some of the most famous Tiffany lamps, including the Wisteria Lamp, the Dragonfly, and the Pond Lily lamp, all of which won international design awards. In spring 2011, Susan Vreeland's new novel, "Clara and Mr. Tiffany," will be published, which explores the career of Clara Driscoll and brings this artist even further into the spotlight.

Renovating "The Bedroom"

Visitors to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam between now and August will be looking in vain for one of the VGM's most beloved paintings, "Vincent's Bedroom in Arles" from October 1888 (click image to enlarge). That's because "The Bedroom" is receiving much-needed conservation work, the last major campaign of restoration on the painting having taken place in the 1930s. But leave it to the very plugged-in Van Gogh Museum to bring virtual visitors into the process: the museum has launched a blog wittily titled Bedroom Secrets, in which head of conservation Ella Hendriks will post week-by-week progress on the project. Presumably the team will not only be restoring the "The Bedroom" but doing some research on its pigments, canvas, etc., continuing ongoing study of Vincent's painting materials.

Some of the damage to "The Bedroom" that the current conservation will seek to stabilize dates back to Vincent's own day. In a letter to Theo before leaving for the hospital of Saint-Rémy in spring 1889, Vincent explains that during his most recent stay in the hospital at Arles, flooding from the Rhône River and the spring rains had created a damp atmosphere in his house and "The Bedroom" was particularly affected. "There's one which is flaking onto which I've stuck newspapers," he says, and at another point tells Theo he believes "The Bedroom" will need to be relined or recanvassed completely. Vincent must have been distressed at the damage to this painting, for his letters to both Theo and Paul Gauguin from mid-October show he was very proud of it. "Looking at the picture ought to rest the brain, or rather the imagination," he says in a letter to his brother and crows about the effect of simplicity he had sought to attain. After Vincent's initial breakdown in late 1888 and his first return to his house, he wrote to Theo (January 1889): "When I saw my canvases again after my illness, the one that seemed the best to me was my bedroom." Once Theo received the painting in Paris in May 1889, he was concerned enough himself about the damage that he sent it back to Vincent in Saint-Rémy to copy (this copy is today in the Art Institute of Chicago and dates from Sept 1889). Still proud of "The Bedroom," Vincent of his own accord made a second, smaller copy as a gift for his mother and sister; this version hangs today in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.

Vincent created the Amsterdam version of "The Bedroom" during a period of hard work, when he says to Theo he had been exhausted and in need of deep rest. For him, the bedroom scene evoked calm and tranquillity; he also used the composition as an opportunity to explore complementary color pairs and a flatness of tone that he felt was Japanese influenced. It is interesting to note in all three versions the peculiar shape of the room: it would be easy to think Vincent was "off" in his perspective or that the distortion was somehow due to his mental state (yes, this has been claimed)...except that his room really was shaped that way. The so-called yellow house no longer exists, having been damaged by Allied bombing in World War II and later torn down, but surviving ground plans make the trapezoidal shape of the bedroom very clear. Some have also noted the dual chairs and dual pillows in the room, as if Vincent imagined a second occupant (i.e. the wife he always wanted); however, he does not explain that detail in his letters. There is no doubt that "The Bedroom" and the pride Vincent felt in this painting echo the love and pride he felt for his little yellow house. He had moved all his possessions into the house in September, and judging from the detailed letters he sent his brother, put much thought, care, and money into the house's decoration and upkeep. Even though rented, the yellow house was the first home Vincent had that was completely his--it was his refuge, the locus for all his hopes and dreams. It's no surprise he immortalized one of its rooms on canvas.