I've already told you that I visited the Bronze exhibition at the Royal Academy on my trip to London last fall, and loved it. I didn't mention at the time that one of my favorites, among many, was the Etruscan Chimera of Arezzo -- because I was hoping to write about it for the Masterpiece column in the Saturday Wall Street Journal. And now I have. In tomorrow's paper, you'll see it under the headline The Imaginary Turned Nearly Real. The Chimera is frightening on many levels, an impossible fusion of three animals that is more than 2,400 … [Read more...]

I like to look at books like An Intellectual's Visual Miscellany, by Daniel P. Murphy, Ph.D., which is subtitled An Illustrated Guide to Masterworks of Art, History, Literature and Science, because they are often accidental entry into the arts (or, in this case, those other disciplines). People might pick them up, see something, learn about it, and discover a deep like for something they never knew they had. Or at least enough interest to go look at, in person,what they've seen in a book. Besides, they can be fun. This one, by Murphy, the … [Read more...]

The San Diego Museum of Art is well-known, deservedly, for its collection of  Spanish art -- including work by such masters as El Greco, Zurbarán, Goya, and Sorolla. The other day, it announced an acquisition that complements those works: It's a Spanish baroque sculpture, a polychromed wood piece by Pedro de Mena (1628–1688). The museum calls Mena "among the greatest sculptors of the Spanish Baroque." This work depicts San Diego de Alcalá and was created around 1665. Nice touch, buying a saint whose name is on the … [Read more...]

Dear Reader, I am taking the next few days off to celebrate Christmas. Back shortly thereafter. Meantime, here's a beautiful nativity scene -- new to me and maybe to you. The Holy Family was painted by Francesco Zaganelli da Cotignola.   This painting was called to my attention by my colleague Paul Jeromack, who writes about Old Masters far more frequently than I do. He reports that it sold at Christies in Dec. 2011 -- fetching $1,584,414, against a $156,200 - $234,300 presale estimate. London dealer Danny Katz bought it for his own … [Read more...]