Late last week, the Yale University Art Gallery revealed a stunning development: It has found a Velazquez in its closet.

The painting, named The Education of the Virgin, at left, depicts the Virgin Mary learning to read — a fascinating image in its own right, and more so now that it is said to be Velazquez. It was executed in 1617, when he was only 18. It would certainly be among the earliest known works by him. 

According to the Yale Gallery’s press office, John Marciari, the former associate curator of early European art at the Yale Gallery, and now the curator of European art at the San Diego Museum of Art, found it in storage and has written about his discovery in Ars Magazine, published last week.

The work was given to Yale in 1925 by two brothers from New Haven, Ct. — Henry Hotchkiss Townshend and his brother, Raynham Townshend. 

But it was in poor condition, damaged by water, and relegated to storage, undisplayed. As Yale began to review its collection in preparation for a new display, Lawrence Kanter, the curator of European Art, and Marciari, also in the department, were struck by it. Marciari studied the work, knew within months that it was a Velazquez, and spent six years doing research, both technical and in provenance, to prove it. X-rays support his conclusion. Experts at the Prado, in Madrid, “have so far reserved judgment, though they are also in the process of examining the work,” an article in the Yale Daily News says.

Yale plans to restore the painting, and put it on display in 2012.

Bloomberg also has the story, with more details and interviews with Kanter and Marciari.

Photo Credit: Courtesy Yale University Art Gallery

 

Memories came flooding back last week when Rudolph Leopold, the zealous collector of Egon Schiele (in particular), died. As I’ve mentioned, I wrote the investigative article in The New York Times in late 1997 that brought to the attention of the family of Lea Bondi — and to the Manhattan D.A.’s office — that Portrait of Wally was hanging in the Museum of Modern Art. The family then said it had been take by the Nazis and claimed it; then the D.A. subpoenaed it, and the whole dispute is still tied up in the courts.

Except that yesterday, David D’Arcy reported for The Art Newspaper that a setttlement, reached before Leopold’s death, is imminent. It would, he wrote, give the Bondi family $20 million for the Schiele painting. The Leopold collection owns its counterpart — a self-portrait (right). They belong together. According to the article:

Wally was valued at some $1 million at the time of its seizure by New York State prosecutors in 1998. $20 million represents the high range of its current estimated value. The London Schiele dealer Richard Nagy put its value at $13 million-$15 million last week.

The compensation funds will be raised, insiders say, from sales of works from the Leopold Collection, which holds some 5400 objects, including 250 works by Schiele.

The final phase of the trial was set to begin this month.

Here’s a link to The Art Newspaper bulletin.

Photo Credit: Courtesy Leopold Museum (bottom)

Who says bloggers — and all journalists, for that matter — have no conscience?

After twice complaining here about the National Endowment for the Arts this week (and once about Albany), I was about to turn off the computer and get ready to leave for the weekend — in fact, by the time you read this I will have left for the weekend — when the press release that arrived in my mailbox this afternoon began to nag at me. Why? Because it’s about a good thing the NEA is doing. It’s only fair for me to give it a little publicity.

NEA chief Rocco Landesman is making good, I think, on his desire to get more arts funding from other agencies. I confess I haven’t gone into the details on this, but today he and HUD secretary Shaun Donovan invited arts groups to participate in a webinar next Wednesday to hear about “two new, innovative community development funding opportunities.”

Last week, HUD and the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) released two Notices of Funding Availability…$100 million in grants available through HUD’s Sustainable Communities Regional Planning Grant Program, and up to $75 million in grants available through a joint HUD and DOT Sustainable Communities Challenge Grant Program….[in both] arts organizations are eligible to partner with state and local governments, metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs), transit agencies, philanthropic and non-profit organizations and other eligible applicants to develop consortia grant proposals.

The webinar takes place at 3 p.m. on July 7, on the HUD website.

If, as the press release says, “This is the first time that HUD and the NEA have co-convened the arts and creative sector on a national level around funding opportunities,” then I give Landesman credit.

More details are here. Fingers crossed that red tape or other restrictions don’t bolix it for arts groups.

My Monday blog post, which questioned the monetary awards attached to the lifetime honors the National Endowment for the Arts gives in jazz, opera and heritage arts, has attracted a following — some supporting comments, emails, and now an opportunity to talk about it on the radio.

The Arts File, the WQXR feature aired every Friday at 8:30 a.m. on 105.9 FM, picked up on it, and I spoke today with WNYC/WQXR anchor Kerry Nolan — the taped and edited version will be aired tomorrow (i.e. Friday) morning.

Unfortunately, I won’t be near a computer tomorrow, or (probably) for the rest of the July 4th weekend, so I won’t be able to post the link to it (which goes up on the web about 9 a.m. Friday) until next week.

Nolan scrupulously said that, as the reporter/anchor, she wouldn’t share her opinions about my post, but she must have thought my idea — continuing the awards minus the money — has merit. (Why else feature it?)

Of course, we also talked about the NEA and Rocco Landesman’s tenure there in general.

On that, I think the jury’s still out — not only on his bull-in-a-China-shop approach, but also on whether he’s making any difference whatsoever. True, it’s early and his one initiative, “Our Town,” won’t start until it’s funded in the next fiscal year — assuming everyone goes along with his plan to redirect money from “American Masterpieces” to his new initiative, which would invest in arts districts, an attempt to use the arts as an economic engine.

Although I agree they can be, I don’t agree with that emphasis at the NEA — even though I realize that in the current economic environment, it may be (temporarily) the expedient thing to do.

And — although it may be cut — I was able to repeat my wish that President Obama would go to a couple of great art museums, setting a good example — for fun. I know, he goes to concerts, but he seems visual-arts challenged. Having the First Lady be the arts cheerleader doesn’t sit well with me. Arts are not just for the ladies, and that’s a notion the Obama administration hasn’t done much to dispel.

UPDATED, 7/5: Here’s the link to The Arts File.

Photo Credit: Courtesy WQXR

By tradition, when we think of the Revolutionary War and July 4, a couple of paintings spring to mind.

There’s George Washington Crossing the Delaware, by German-American artist Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze.

And there’s John Trumbull’s Declaration of Independence. 

 

And Grant Wood’s The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Picturing America,” an NEH program to teach history via the visual arts, cites the Leutze, the Wood, as well as John Singleton Copley’s Paul Revere (right) and Gilbert Stuart’s Lansdowne portrait of George Washington — which I won’t show here.

And there are too many others all around to display.

But I was not surprised, when I simply Googled images for “Fourth of July” and “Independence Day,” that none of these came up — at least in the first four or five pages.

Only when I did the same search for “Revolutionary War,” did the Leutze show up (along with a few other, lesser art works). And Google is unquestionably the way many people find illustrations of what they want to know about.

How much richer would our visual culture be if we restored these works of art and similar images into the visual vernacular?

Now that would be revolutionary.