Dietrich / AssortedDemonsOfConnoisseurship

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ANOTHER GLOSSARY

Assorted Demons of Connoisseurship. Another GLOSSARY

As we are approaching…:

…the year of 2015, we will be reminded that 35 earlier, in 1980, German art historian Hans Ost (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Ost) questioned the authenticity of the so-called Turin self-portrait (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portrait_of_a_man_in_red_chalk_%28Leonardo%29). No debate ever followed as to the numerous clues that Ost presented. And to say that Ost could be refuted on stylistic grounds is simply a joke. (Or are we only reminded here that the German language is not the lingua franca of art history anymore?)
Are further investigations on (or into) the drawing to be expected? I don’t think so, and be it only for the reason that people would not like Leonardo da Vinci to look like a German Professor (see: http://www.seybold.ch/Dietrich/EmilM%F6llerAndPaulM%FCller-Walde).

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Brown Spot:

See: http://www.nzz.ch/wissenschaft/uebersicht/dekonstruktion-einer-faelschung-1.18250928

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Chez Eric:

Another way of referring to the kitchen of Eric Hebborn (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Hebborn), as read in an NZZ article.

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Clue:

(I am repeating here the entry from my Mythologies of Small Things Glossary)

Like for example a Mexican hairless dog (also called Xoloitzcuintle), depicted in a painting in Nino Filastò’s 1990 crime fiction novel Incubo di signora, a painting that is taken as being by Boltraffio, who died in 1516, when yet there were (probably) no or only very few Mexican hairless dogs to be found in Europe (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Hairless_Dog and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_conquest_of_the_Aztec_Empire).
The fake is not being found out until the transvestite Bice, who is also rendered in that picture, is being murdered.

»Clues« is, moreover, the (short) English title of an epoch-making essay by historian Carlo Ginzburg (see: http://www.princeton.edu/~ereading/Ginzburg%20Clues.pdf and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_Ginzburg).

PS: The above reads also as a clue that connoisseurship is deeply intertwined with historical knowledge (it was Columbus, who apparently noted the presence of strange hairless dogs on his First journey), another clue that it is not about the mere looking (and one may call this the ›Mexican hairless dog-fallacy‹).

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Donna Laura Minghetti-Leonardo, the:

See here.

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Fake:

As in the song Doll Parts by Courtney Love/Hole: »I love him so much, it just turns to hate / I fake it so real, I am beyond fake.«

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Fallacy:

ever forthcoming

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Golden Helmet:

Rembrandt connoisseurship has something of a constant shipwreck. And we see a Golden Helmet glittering in the sun. Is it deposited on a raft? Since it strikes me as not wanting to go down. And one may think of composing, reciting or singing a saga of the rise and downfall of a Golden Helmet. What is the role of the Rembrandt Research Project in all this? Alas, to answer that question one is forced to read German, and be it only to read expert’s explanations, given in remote interviews (see now the documentation to the saga here: http://www.seybold.ch/Dietrich/TheManWithTheGoldenHelmetADocumentation).

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Lies:

Are, according to Pop Icon Michael Jackson (see the quote here: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Jackson), running only short ranges (while the truth – see also below – is running marathon distances).

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Lupa Capitolina:

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Pilot-fishes:

In art history (unlike zoology) the big fishes, Leonardo, Rembrandt, Van Gogh, surrounded by swarms of small fishes (and, alas, object of every fantasy imaginable).

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Riverbank:

10th century (›Attributed to Dong Yuan‹, as the Metropolitan Museum has it) or 20th century fake/pastiche (by Zhang Daqian)? (For the latter, for his meeting with Picasso, see also here).

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Swarm:

A group of small fishes surrounding the big fishes of art history. Usually, alas, less studied.

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To be destroyed:

Sword of Damocles judgment hanging over a fake Chagall in France that was in discussion in BBC One’s Fake or Fortune? programme (see for example: http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-26000331) and brought, within the respective episode, to France where laws as to fakes are apparently draconian. How will the sentence be carried out (if it is going to be carried out)? From what I heard by burning. Why not, as the owner suggested, a seal that could not be removed?

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Truth, the:

Is, according to Pop Icon Michael Jackson (see the quote here: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Jackson), running marathon distances (while lies are only running short ranges).

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Vermeer’s Daughter:

Or ›Goya’s son‹ (see for example: http://hyperallergic.com/71516/did-vermeers-daughter-paint-20-of-his-works and/or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Paintings) refer to recently highlighted (alternative) artistic personalities (see also under ›Pilot Fishes‹, above) that stem either, in a literal sense, from artist’s families or, in the more demonic case, are born from the head of art historians (we spare the entry on Berenson’s ›Amico di Sandro‹).

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Views from the Night Side of Connoisseurship:

See here.

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