MICROSTORY OF ART ONLINE JOURNAL FOR ART, CONNOISSEURSHIP AND CULTURAL JOURNALISM The Book of Expertises (Pictures: DS)

What kind of wishing tree is this? Well, of every and each of the great connoisseurs of art we wished to have an expertise.
Why expertise, if expertise is nothing but a certificate?
Exactly, but this is not what we mean by saying expertise. With expertise we mean: a five-pages explanation for ascribing a work of art to a certain author. A revealing of the reasons for an attribution, and a revealing of the multiple identifiers all the great art connoisseurs used to work with.
Because there is a big misunderstanding that art connoisseurship is only about the intuitive ascribing of works of art to certain authors. It is not and was never exclusively about that, and from a perspective of scientific connoisseurship (the perspective that we find should be endorsed in science) it simply cannot be about that only.
Intuition might mean ›knowing without thinking‹, but science expects to ask if we really do know. And to check that, we in fact need something to check: the revealt reasons for believeing to know. The five-pages expertise. That allows us to see with someone else’s eye.
And this is what we are interested here, and this is why we are putting a Book of Expertises, a bunch of expertises together. Because we would like to know how the most famous (and also some less famous) connoisseurs of art looked at things. To learn from them, to learn about seeing, and perhaps, in case we have learned, to develop other, our own way of seeing, be it scientific or not.
These expertises are usually not all too easy to find, since most of the great connoisseurs of art tended to keep their secret knowledge about identifiers rather to themselves, but this is another misunderstanding: that they were allowed to do that, if at the same time their opinions are regarded to be relevant in a context of science.
And this is also why you may find expertises here. Because we have found them, extracted them from letters or other sources. With another overall goal: to make art connoisseurship more transparent. And again: To learn from it in many ways.

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THE BOOK OF EXPERTISES

INDEX BY EXPERTS

EXPERTS

Bayersdorfer, Adolph
(Read more: http://www.seybold.ch/Dietrich/AnExpertiseByBayersdorfer)
Berenson, Bernard
(Read more: http://www.seybold.ch/Dietrich/AnExpertiseByBerenson)
Bode, Wilhelm von
(Read more: http://www.seybold.ch/Dietrich/CabinetIII)
Crowe & Cavalcaselle
(Joseph Archer Crowe/Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle)
(Read more: http://www.seybold.ch/Dietrich/AnExpertiseByCroweAndCavalcaselle)
Friedländer, Max J.
(Read more: http://www.seybold.ch/Dietrich/AnExpertiseByFriedländer)
Hofstede de Groot, Cornelis
(Read more: http://www.seybold.ch/Dietrich/AnExpertiseByHofstedeDeGroot)
Kelch, Jan
(Read more: http://www.seybold.ch/Dietrich/TheManWithTheGoldenHelmetADocumentation)
Longhi, Roberto
(Read more: http://www.seybold.ch/Dietrich/AnExpertiseByRobertoLonghi)
Meyer zur Capellen, Jürg
(Read more: http://www.seybold.ch/Dietrich/ARaphaelExpertise)
Morelli, Giovanni
(Read more: http://www.seybold.ch/Dietrich/CabinetIII)
Perrig, Alexander
(Read more: http://www.seybold.ch/Dietrich/AlexanderPerrig)
Richter, Jean Paul
(Read more: http://www.seybold.ch/Dietrich/TheMysteriousDonnaLauraMinghetti-Leonardo)
Turner, Nicholas
(Read more: http://www.seybold.ch/Dietrich/HandlingTheLeft-handedHatchingsArgument)
Voss, Hermann
(Read more: http://www.seybold.ch/Dietrich/AnExpertiseByHermannVoss)
Zeri, Federico
(Read more: http://www.seybold.ch/Dietrich/AnExpertiseByFedericoZeri)

An Album of Expertises
(Read more: http://www.seybold.ch/Dietrich/AnAlbumOfExpertises)

Ethnography of the Expertise
(Read more: http://www.seybold.ch/Dietrich/EthnographyOfTheExpertise)

FURTHER RESOURCES (LINKS TO EXPERTISES ON OTHER SITES AND TO FURTHER MATERIALS)

Berggruen, Heinz
(a text entitled Anmerkungen zu Cézanne und zu Expertisen is to be found in Heinz Berggruen, Die Kunst und das Leben. Erinnerungen, Portraits, Schnurren, Berlin 2008, pp. 28-31)
Bredius, Abraham
(the notorious expertise by which Abraham Bredius authenticated a Han van Meegeren forgery of Vermeer can be found quoted on p. 100f. (German issue) in Lord Kilbracken’s book on the Van Meegeren case)
Brown, David Alan
(Read more: http://blogs.artinfo.com/modernartnotes/2009/08/the-100-year-mystery-of-a-vene)
Butterwick, James
(See the more lengthy presentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qhExsA6bdk)
Cahill, James
(And another expert on Youtube, here on the famous and controversial Riverbank painting of the Met: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Plxsqb4vYlo)
Conference Report as to Expertise. Das Kunsturteil zwischen Geschichte, Technologie und Markt:
(See http://www.hsozkult.de/conferencereport/id/tagungsberichte-4983)
Hauser, Prof. Dr. Kaspar (Tucholsky, Kurt)
(To ridicule expertising the German writer Kurt Tucholsky wrote this: http://www.textlog.de/tucholsky-expertise-gogh.html)
Leon, Christoph
(In Der Spiegel No. 6 (31 January 2015), pp. 98-101 (not available online) antique dealer Christoph Leon did give a remarkably frank interview as to the (dubious) practices of the antique trade, including some improvised expertises on supposed recent forgeries)
Marías, Javier
(Spanish novelist Javier Marías, in one of his short stories (Unfinished Figures, originally published in 1992, but also part of the 1996/2002 When I was Mortal-collection of short stories), has a Goya forger/copyist, working after photographs, but also working after an expertise concerning a particular painting he has to copy)
Sonnabend, Martin
(See curator Dr. Martin Sonnabend commenting on drawings by Michelangelo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5TRfKU-POQ)
Zöllner, Frank
(In the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of 12 November 2013 German art historian and Leonardo expert Frank Zöllner criticizes a minority of experts which, beyond the mere taking of a fixed fee for authenticating of pictures, are benefitting directly from the sale of pictures authenticated by them)

ANOTHER EXPERTISE BY MORELLI



»Apropos, Sie [Jean Paul Richter] fragen mich in Ihrem letzten Brief,
was ich von der hl. Familie von Fra Bartolommeo denke, von der Robinson
mir eine [Photographie] zusandte. Nun, ich kann Ihnen nur beiläufig
dasselbe wiederholen, was ich dem glücklichen Besitzer des Bildes selbst
darüber geschrieben habe, nämlich, dass, so weit es eben möglich ist, ein
altes Bild nach einer Photographie zu beurteilen, mir diese hl. Familie
(von der in der städtischen Galerie von Brescia eine gleichzeitige Kopie
sich befindet) echt und auch ziemlich wohl konserviert erscheint.
Der einzige Meister, mit dem nicht ganz sattelfeste Kenner den Fra Bartolommeo
verwechseln, ist Mariotto Albertinelli, sein Arbeits- und Studiengenosse;
dies geschah z. B. hier in der Poldisammlung, dies geschah im Louvre
und anderswo noch, allein die Formen des Putto auf dem Robinsonschen Bild,
der Typus des hl. Josephs, die Modellierung der Hände der Madonna,
sowie der eigentümliche Baumschlag sprechen klar und deutlich für die Echtheit
des Bildes – selbst die architektonische Ruine im Mittelgrund ist charakteristisch
für den Meister.«

(Source: M/R [Irma Richter/Gisela Richter (eds.), Italienische Malerei der Renaissance im Briefwechsel von Giovanni Morelli
und Jean Paul Richter 1876-1891, Baden Baden 1960], p. 417; picture: bbc.co.uk)

John Charles Robinson (1824-1913) (picture: npg.org.uk)


By Mariotto Albertinelli


The Brescia copy (picture: quellidelmuseodisanmarco.com)

MICROSTORY OF ART ONLINE JOURNAL FOR ART, CONNOISSEURSHIP AND CULTURAL JOURNALISM The Book of Expertises (Pictures: DS)

Recent documentations provided by the Museum of Art Expertise in cooperation with Microstory of Art The Man with the Golden Helmet; Le Jardin de Daubigny; The Left-handed Hatchings Argument; Alexander Perrig

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