Posts Tagged ‘Salvator Mundi’
“These are the forgeries of jealousy”*…
Is it authentic? Attorney and AI practitioner Steven J. Frank, working with his wife, art historian and curator Andrea Frank (together, Art Eye-D Associates), brings machine learning to bear…
The sound must have been deafening—all those champagne corks popping at Christie’s, the British auction house, on 15 November 2017. A portrait of Jesus, known as Salvator Mundi (Latin for “savior of the world”), had just sold at Christie’s in New York for US $450.3 million, making it by far the most expensive painting ever to change hands.
But even as the gavel fell, a persistent chorus of doubters voiced skepticism. Was it really painted by Leonardo da Vinci, the towering Renaissance master, as a panel of experts had determined six years earlier? A little over 50 years before that, a Louisiana man had purchased the painting in London for a mere £45. And prior to the rediscovery of Salvator Mundi, no Leonardo painting had been uncovered since 1909.
Some of the doubting experts questioned the work’s provenance—the historical record of sales and transfers—and noted that the heavily damaged painting had undergone extensive restoration. Others saw the hand of one of Leonardo’s many protégés rather than the work of the master himself.
Is it possible to establish the authenticity of a work of art amid conflicting expert opinions and incomplete evidence? Scientific measurements can establish a painting’s age and reveal subsurface detail, but they can’t directly identify its creator. That reLeonardo da quires subtle judgments of style and technique, which, it might seem, only art experts could provide. In fact, this task is well suited to computer analysis, particularly by neural networks—computer algorithms that excel at examining patterns. Convolutional neural networks (CNNs), designed to analyze images, have been used to good advantage in a wide range of applications, including recognizing faces and helping to pilot self-driving cars. Why not also use them to authenticate art?
That’s what I asked my wife, Andrea M. Frank, a professional curator of art images, in 2018. Although I have spent most of my career working as an intellectual-property attorney, my addiction to online education had recently culminated in a graduate certificate in artificial intelligence from Columbia University. Andrea was contemplating retirement. So together we took on this new challenge…
With millions at stake, deep learning enters the art world. The fascinating story: “This AI Can Spot an Art Forgery,” @ArtAEye in @IEEESpectrum.
* Shakespeare (Titania, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act II, Scene 1)
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As we honor authenticity, we might spare a thought for a champion of authenticity in a different sense, Joris Hoefnagel; he died on this date in 1601. A Flemish painter, printmaker, miniaturist, draftsman, and merchant, he is noted for his illustrations of natural history subjects, topographical views, illuminations (he was one of the last manuscript illuminators), and mythological works.
Hoefnagel made a major contribution to the development of topographical drawing. But perhaps more impactfully, his manuscript illuminations and ornamental designs played an important role in the emergence of floral still-life painting as an independent genre in northern Europe at the end of the 16th century. The almost scientific naturalism of his botanical and animal drawings served as a model for a later generation of Netherlandish artists. Through these nature studies he also contributed to the development of natural history and he was thus a founder of proto-scientific inquiry.
“Making money is art”*…
In 2005, an unusual painting appeared on the website of the New Orleans Auction Gallery, a small operation headquartered on the banks of the Mississippi River. Twenty-six inches tall and 18 and a half inches wide, the painting depicted Christ in Renaissance-era robes, one hand raised in benediction, the other cupping a diaphanous sphere. “After Leonardo da Vinci (Italian 1452–1519),” read the description. “Christ Salvator Mundi. Oil on cradled panel.”
Among the people to click on the listing for Lot 664 was a Rockland County art speculator named Alexander Parish. Parish has spent his entire career in the art world, first as an assistant, later as an adviser to a major European gallery, and now as what’s known as a picker — a dealer who purchases art from minor auction houses and antiques sales and resells it to wealthy clients at a profit. “A major part of what I do,” Parish told me, “is educated gambling. You get a good feeling about a piece of art, and you place a bet that you know more about it than the auctioneer does.”
Parish felt very good about Lot 664. In fact, although he had only a few postage-stamp-size JPEGS to work with, he thought he might be looking at a piece by a student of Leonardo’s — perhaps the Milanese painter Bernardino Luini. That same afternoon, he sent a link to his friend Robert Simon, the owner of an old-master gallery on the Upper East Side, who has a doctorate in art history from Columbia University with a specialty in the art of the Renaissance.
“My first reaction was that it was a very intriguing painting,” Simon recalled. As he knew, the original Salvator Mundi, painted by Leonardo around 1500, possibly for the French king Louis XII, had been one of da Vinci’s most copied works — dozens of replicas hang in museums around the world, but the original had been lost to history. It seemed possible that another period copy dating to the Renaissance would exist. Simon and Parish agreed to invest in the painting together, with a bid ceiling of $10,000; Parish would handle the bidding via phone. “My memory of the auction is that I just sat there waiting for the price to go up,” Parish said. “But it became apparent that no one else was interested.” His winning bid came in at $1,000.
Today, of course, the contents of Lot 664 are worth far more than that: The picture has since sold once for $127.5 million and again, in a record-setting auction at Christie’s, for close to half a billion dollars…
Find out how to turn a $1,000 art-auction pickup into a $450 million masterpiece: “The Invention of the ‘Salvator Mundi’.”
* Andy Warhol
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As we appreciate appreciation, we might recall that it was on this date in 1934 that a team of FBI agents went toe to toe with John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson, and their gang. The lawmen tried to capture the outlaws at their temporary hide-out, the Little Bohemia Lodge (in northern Wisconsin)
As the agents approached the lodge, the owner’s dogs began to bark. Since the dogs barked incessantly, their warning was ignored by the gang. A few minutes later, a car approached the agents. Thinking that the gangsters were inside, they opened fire in an attempt to shoot out the tires. Shooting high, which often happens when firing on full auto, they hit all of the occupants of the car, and killed one of them. To make matters worse, they had the wrong guys. Dillinger and his crew were still inside the lodge.
Barking dogs you can ignore, but submachine-gun fire will get your attention every time. Dillinger and the boys heard the shots and knew that the heat was on. They opened fire on the agents from the lodge. After throwing some hot lead at the G-men, the gang bolted for the door. Dillinger and two of his guys turned one way and made a clean getaway. Nelson turned the other way, and wound up at a nearby house in a car with the owner of the lodge and a neighbor.
A car containing two of the FBI agents and a local constable approached Nelson. Nelson pointed his gun at them, and ordered them out of the car. When they complied, Nelson shot all three of them. Agent W. Carter Baum was killed; Agent J. C. Newman and local constable Carl Christensen were injured.
The final tally: two dead (one lawman and one innocent bystander), four injured (two lawmen and two bystanders), no gangsters in custody. [source]
Little Bohemia Lodge
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