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Study says Mona Lisa
was 83 percent happy
 Scientists from the Univ. of
Amsterdam have issued a study that says the Mona Lisa was 83 percent happy.
Using software developed by the Univ. of Illinois, researchers scanned a
reproduction of the da Vinci masterpiece and subjected it to a cutting-edge,
"emotion recognition" program. The software said Mona Lisa was 83 percent happy,
9 percent disgusted, 6 percent fearful and 2 percent angry. Da Vinci painted the
Mona Lisa is the early 1500s. It hangs in the Louvre Museum.
The study wasn't
meant to be taken seriously. It was done as a fun demonstration of technology.
Researchers knew the software couldn't register subtle emotions or detect any
hint of sexual suggestion or disdain, as registered in the famous subject's
eyes. Mona Lisa, arguably the world's most famous painting, is also called "La
Gioconda" and is believed to portray the wife of Francesco del Giocondo. The
title is a play on her husband's name and means "the jolly lady" in Italian.
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Lichtenstein painting
slashed at museum
 A painting by the late pop artist
Roy Lichtenstein, titled "Nudes in Mirror," was slashed by a knife-wielding
woman at an exhibition in Austria. The painting (insured for $6 million) was
damaged but not destroyed. Police said a 35-year-old woman from Munich, Germany,
pulled a knife from her bag and slashed the painting four times. She was stopped
by visitors and staff at the Kunsthaus Bregenz museum and faces charges of
causing grave property damage. She could serve jail time.
The woman's bag
also contained a can of red spray paint and a screwdriver, but neither was used
in the incident. Later, when she was interrogated by police, the woman said she
slashed the painting because she believed it was a forgery. The museum's curator
denied the charge. Roy Lichtenstein, an American, was at the forefront of the
1960s pop art movement along with Andy Warhol which brought popular culture
into fine art. The Austria show featured 41 of his works.
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Works of Fra Angelico on display at the Met
 An exhibition of the
Renaissance painter Fra Angelico is on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in
New York through Jan. 29. It shows off the artist's ability to depict heavenly
visions of figures with halos and wings, which he did with divine guidance. Fra
Angelico was a genius of the flat, pure tones of tempera on wood. Many of the
works come from disassembled altarpieces and reliquaries. The art is seen as it
was painted, up close, one extraordinary concentrated panel at a time.
Fra
Angelico was born in the mid-1300s. He came of age during the glory years of the
Italian Renaissance and is credited with combining the best of both worlds: he
used the innovations of the Renaissance to bring Gothic art to perfection. He
did this more in tempera than in fresco. And in doing so, he brought a new
visual intensity to painting. He made every bit of surface communicate at full
strength. But it was all done within a carefully constructed whole - a
Renaissance unity.
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16th century Italian fresco restored, will be exhibited
 An Italian fresco done around 1599 but painted over more than 150 years ago,
has been restored to its original appearance. The work, titled "The Separation
of Night and Day," was painted by Guido Reni. It suffered considerable damage at
the time of its detachment from the ceiling of the Palazzo Zani in 1841.
Consequently, it had to be entirely repainted in oil paint. Restorers had to
remove oil paint that had been put over the original work when it was taken from
its original home.
The restored work will go on display this spring at the National Trust's
Kingston Lacy mansion, in Dorset, England. Alan Bush, of the Bush & Berry
Conservation Studio, said repainting the fresco was a drastic but necessary
measure. "The adverse effect (of the damage), apart from obliterating Reni's
original work, was to have also masked the uniquely special quality of the
fresco technique. It was with great relief that we successfully revealed the
complete and original composition." |
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Show offers a rare look
at van Gogh's drawings
 Vincent van Gogh was, of
course, a brilliant painter, but he was equally brilliant in his drawings. That
point is forcefully driven home in a show titled "Vincent van Gogh: The
Drawings," which just concluded in New York. More than 100 pieces were assembled
from collections all over the world, including 40 from the Van Gogh Museum in
Amsterdam, Holland. The show presents the viewer with a unique opportunity to
look at material that is rarely displayed, because it is so frail.
Colta
Ives, the curator of the show (at the Met), said the drawings "are of a scale
and importance that puts them right beside van Gogh's paintings." She added,
"They were certainly in his mind important." From the beginning, drawing was an
important part of van Gogh's development as an artist. Before he began painting
the canvases for which he would be best remembered, van Gogh started out by
drawing, buying books on perspective and learning the craft. He died in
1890.
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'Lost Painting' goes in
search of a Caravaggio
 A new book by Jonathan Harr
titled "The Lost Painting: The Search for a Caravaggio Masterpiece" chronicles
the discovery, in 1992, of a lost work by the 16th-century baroque master and
artistic bad boy, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, "The Taking of the Christ."
Caravaggio enjoyed some fame in his day but had almost slipped into obscurity in
recent times. But the discovery of the lost work stirred up a frenzy in academic
circles and made his star shine once more.
The narrative is told from the
perspective of Sir Denis Mahon, a 91-year-old Caravaggio scholar, and Francesca
Cappelletti, an enterprising graduate student at the University of Rome. Both
are researching the disappearance of the painting. The mystery concludes with
Sergio Benedetti, a restorer at the National Gallery of Ireland, who discovers
the lost, filth-covered masterpiece in a house owned by Jesuit priests. The book
is a follow-up to Harr's 1997 debut novel, "A Civil Action."
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© 2006 McElreath Printing & Publishing, Inc. - All rights reserved. No portion of the Art & Frame Review may be
reprinted or reproduced without express permission of the publisher.
Updated 03-06
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