When to buy a Leonardo Da Vinci at Christie's (try 1776) by Imogen Robertson

Christie's Auction Room (From the original drawing by Rowlandson)

On 15th November 2017 Salvator Mundi, (very probably) by Leonardo Da Vinci sold at auction at Christie’s New York for $450.3 million. You may have read one of the reports about its rediscovery, restoration and controversial sale and resales - if not take a look at this article in the Guardian, it includes a nifty slider so you can see the effects of that restoration - you may also have picked up on the fact it was bought from an estate sale (pre-restoration) in 2005 for ten thousand dollars, and felt a deep twinge of sympathy for whoever sold it then.

Salvator Mundi - Leonardo Da Vinci (1500)

If that bothers you, my story today might break your heart. Robert Foulis (b.1707) and his brother Andrew were printers to the University of Glasgow and earned a reputation for the accuracy of their printing of Greek texts, and showed considerable critical and commercial sense in their choice of modern authors. In the 1750s they set up an Academy of Fine Art in Glasgow, and made their art collection available to the students who studied there, a collection enhanced with further large purchases of art in 1772. The Academy however seemed to be a terrible financial strain and closed its doors after Andrew died in 1775. 

Early the following year Robert went to London, apparently to sell the pictures. He was advised against doing so by none other than Mr James Christie who apparently told him that the market was glutted with similar paintings. According to the snappily entitled Robert & Andrew Foulis and the Glasgow Press : with some account of the Glasgow Academy of the Fine Arts by David Murray, after expenses Foulis returned to Glasgow with just fifteen shillings of profit and died very shortly afterwards (2 June 1776). 

James Christie
From a print by R. Dighton(in  Memorials of CHRISTIE’S: 
A Record of Art Sales from 1766 to 1896

By William Roberts)

Now if Foulis had been trying to sell just one Da Vinci, that would put the pain of the person who sold Salvator Mundi in 2005 into some sort of perspective, but Foulis wasn’t just selling one painting, oh no. The collection he took to London included (according to his three volume catalogue)  SIX works by Leonardo Da Vinci works, as well as numbers of works by Raphael, Titian and Rubens. 

Now it’s true he wasn’t the only one with a stack of Old Masters on hand in 1776. James Christie had in one sale sold pictures by all those artists the previous April, and did so again in March of 1776. In the same issue of the Public Advertiser in which Christie advertised the 1776 sale, Messers Langford in Covent Garden are alerting readers to their own auction which includes Rubens, Rembrandt, Carracci and Titian and Mr Walsh has a selection of Poussin and Corregio up for auction if you aren’t Old Mastered out.

Daily Advertiser (London, England), Monday, March 20, 1775 

Public Advertiser (London, England), Friday, March 1, 1776

Public Advertiser (London, England), Friday, March 1, 1776

Public Advertiser (London, England), Friday, March 1, 1776

But… As we all know only too well the closer you look into history the murkier it all gets. I’m pretty sure Foulis didn’t sell his pictures at all. 

Now, it may be that he intended to do so, and heeded Christie’s advice to wait, or it may be his original intention was to make money out of his collection in another way. Here is the advertisement Foulis ran (with minor variations) from 31 January to 26 May 1776. 

Morning Post and Daily Advertiser (London, England), Wednesday, January 31, 1776

There is no mention of any sale here. Instead he is quite explicitly exhibiting his pictures and charging a shilling a time, and also trying to sell his three volume catalogue of the collection. 

It’s true that auctioneers often exhibited works for a few days before a sale, but I can’t see any example where they did so for weeks. Langford charged people a shilling to come and see what he was selling from 1 March 1776, but he probably wouldn’t have had room to do so before then, giving he had two other old master sales in February. 

For anyone who has tried to tempt Londoners to an event, that fifteen shillings profit looks pretty reasonable now. There is no doubt that Foulis was devastated by the failure of his exhibition. His printer gives a rather harrowing description of him returning home to Glasgow, exhausted and deeply disappointed. 

But his paintings were sold in 1776, only it was in December almost six months after Robert died and by… yes, James Christie himself. Here is the notice:

Public Advertiser (London, England), Monday, December 2, 1776

So why were they sold at this point? The new season has begun, but it's only a couple of weeks old, so it's still early for the eighteenth century oligarchs to have gathered, I’d have thought. Possibly Robert’s death had made his family’s severe financial problems acute and they had to sell as quickly as they could. 

The sale realised £381 8s 6d. It’s tempting to insert a snarky remark about Christies having got a lot better at selling Da Vinci’s since then, but something else must have been going on too as Christie’s sale of M. Le Brun’s pictures in 1775 netted £2,142 and Sir George Colebroke’s collection sold for £4,385 17 shillings. 

Perhaps Christie knew the market was glutted, because he’d glutted it himself.

It is also possible that Foulis’ paintings were being looked at with a sceptical eye. Given that there are under twenty paintings universally accepted as by Leonardo known today, it does seem a little dubious that so many drifted through the London art market at this time. If anyone wants to take advantage of this link to the Foulis catalogue, and match his descriptions to a particular painting, I’d be fascinated to find learn more. I'd also love to know what happened to the pictures after the sale.

Looking at various calculators of relative value, that £381 from the sale could be worth anything between forty thousand pounds and four million today. Even if we take the latter figure, that’s still a hundredth of what someone just paid for one rather beaten up Da Vinci.

So next time you timeslip into the 18th century you know where to go for a bargain.

www.imogenrobertson.com 

Leonardo's Lady with an Ermine, by Carol Drinkwater

Many of my colleagues are writing glorious posts inspired by recent holidays. How envious I feel as I stay locked to my desk, moving inexorably towards my upcoming deadline. However, I did make a short trip to Krakow two weeks ago, for five days, taking all my work with me. I wrote all day in our lovely hotel room and then about 4pm I allowed myself out to revisit the city.

My husband, Michel, was on the jury for the Krakow Documentary Film Festival and I tagged along because it is a city I remember from two decades back. I first visited Poland months after the Berlin Wall had come down.

Of course, my first observation was how dramatically the city has changed. My first visit was, as all my trips have been, for work. I was filming there. In fact, I have been employed as an actress in Poland on several occasions. I have also taken the role of director of English dubbing on a couple of films, written the screenplay for a six-part film series partially shot in Poland, and, more recently, I have returned as an author on a book tour. Over the years, I have been a sporadic witness to its evolution.

When I first went to Poland it was, as I said, after the Wall had come down. Communism was still visible everywhere, of course. There were few foreigners except business folk. It was a time for enterprise, for overseas companies to step in and offer their wares or stake a claim in the opportunities for new business. It was grey. The streets were grey. The citizens, poor. There was little to buy in the shops. Many of their windows were bare with possibly one object on display. There was a subdued, vanquished, sense of national identity because the dominant identity was Communism. I observed certain overseas visitors treat the Poles badly, as the underdog but most were keen to express their enthusiasm at finally being offered the opportunity to collaborate, to create a mix of experience and skills.

Krzysztof Kieslowski 

In my sphere, I was exceedingly fortunate. I was given many opportunities to work with brilliant filmmakers. The Polish people have a marvellous history of cinema, and one of the finest film schools in the world is in Lodz. Roman Polanski, Krzysztof Kieslowski (there was a small retrospective in his honour at this year's doc festival because, incredibly, 2016 is the 20th anniversary of his death), Jerzy Skolomowski (who I worked with in 1976 on The Shout which was honoured at Cannes), Andrzej Wajda,  Krzysztof Zanussi, who was the president of the jury when I was part of the team at the Monaco TV festival some years ago, and a remarkable lady I have never met, Agnieszka Holland. These directors amongst many others have given Polish cinema a fine reputation internationally, and an exceptional body of work.

                                                                 Agnieszka Holland

I had little opportunity for sightseeing this time, revisiting places I had been to years ago. I did go to the castle again and to light candles for my recently-departed mother at the cathedral, and I did make a special trip to see Leonardo da Vinci's Lady With an Ermine, which I had not seen before. It is magnificent and I was humbled to stand before such a work. I felt profoundly grateful for the opportunity to be there in that room in the company of such a masterpiece even if I had to share the moment with many Asian and European tourists. I left the castle and wandered down into the old town where tourists were seated in every restaurant and every bar, none of which had existed a decade or two ago. There were the inevitable lager louts behaving badly, getting drunk loudly, sloshing pints everywhere, making the most of cheap beer, having flown in off the cheap flights. I sighed at the sight of them, and I then I remembered what my driver had said on the way into town from the airport. "Life is good for us now. We have every nationality visiting us here, enjoying our food, our culture, our way of life, our art. We can afford to eat better and we can travel too. For those of us who remember Communism, this is a real step forward, a liberation. And our children can travel anywhere throughout Europe, experience new horizons, learn languages. The world has expanded." 

His words seemed more poignant than ever at this time. Communism is Poland's past. Europe is its present and its future. Borders have been removed; diversity is celebrated; free trade and access to elsewhere is the norm now.

Since I wrote this post on Wednesday 22nd June, Great Britain has been to the polls.  52% of British voters, as the world knows, put their cross in the box 'Leave', to leave the European Union. I cannot describe the overwhelming sadness I felt when the outcome was announced. Britain is choosing a new, more independent, more isolated path and for the moment the decision has caused a financial free fall. I fear for the uncertainty that lies ahead, which will probably include the splintering of the United Kingdom.

This afternoon as I visited various shops and made stops here and there in the south of France where I live, while talking to traders, it became clear that 27 states are moving forward, shocked by the UK's vote. The European Union was built out of the rubble of two world wars. It has ensured peace across Europe for half a century. It has laid down the basis for humanitarian values. It has made a historical shift in how the individual entities, countries, perceive and interact with one another.
For all its faults, I believe in Europe, in working together; the exchange of ideas and cultures.  Immersion not estrangement.
The loss of the UK is  a sorrow for one and all. This was a united journey, sometimes bumpy, but one that contained a united vision. It still does, except tragically, Britain has gone.
We cannot yet see the full impact of this split. I pray that we who remain in Europe can work together to overcome the loss of such an important member and move forward as an entity, redoubling our efforts towards solidarity and open-mindedness. Now more than ever, with so many parts of the world in turmoil, we need unity not disparity.

www.caroldrinkwater.com

The Michelangelo Trail by Mary Hoffman

The History Girls blog began nearly four years ago, on 1st July 2011, and had its origin in a desire on my part to let the world know I had written a novel about Michelangelo's sculpture of David. The sitehas grown to be so much more than that but it is quite satisfying to come full circle and write about the new suite of educational materials, based on that novel, that I am going to write for an innovative new company called Time Traveler Tours & Tales.

Photo credit: Jorg Bittner Unner, Creative Commons

The book was a historical novelist's joy to write because it offered the perfect opportunity for fiction. So much was known about this famous figure: we have the contract the sculptor was given, the date he made the first chisel cut, the minutes of the committee meeting to decide where the sculpture was to be displayed (where Leonardo da Vinci was present).

And in the middle a great big hole. Who was the model for this, probably the most famous sculpture in the world? Or was there even a model at all? Maybe this David sprang from the imagination of the sculptor, who, it is worth remembering, was twenty-six years old when he asked the Operai del Duomo for the old block of Carrara marble that two previous artists had abandoned and which just lay about for forty years  in a building behind the Duomo in Florence for people to trip over.

My first visit to Florence was at the end of my first year at university, when I spent a month there. It was probably the most influential four weeks of my life, directing my interests and enthusiasms from then on. I already knew I preferred Michelangelo to Leonardo but this sojourn, in a pensione overlooking Piazza San Lorenzo, confirmed it.

In my new project I'll be devising an app to take readers on a tour of the city visiting "hotspots" connected with the sculpture and the sculptor. And it occurred to me that readers of the History Girls blog might like an expanded version of my list - a sort of "print out and keep" guide to which works of art by Michelangelo you can see in the city I have now visited so many times I have  lost count.

Bronze of Michelangelo's head by Daniele di Volterra

• Casa Buonarroti Michelangelo never lived here but it houses two early works: the bas reliefs of The Madonna of the Stairs and The Battle of the Centaurs and Lapiths.

• The area behind Brunelleschi’s Dome on the Duomo (now the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo). This is where the workshop was where Michelangelo made the David statue. On the day it was moved from there to the Piazza della Signoria the doorway had to be broken down to allow the giant statue to be trundled out. It took three days to move it to its final position.

• Santa Croce church. Michelangelo is buried there (under a hideous tomb by Vasari) and lived near there. His mother is also buried there.

• Brancacci Chapel in Santa Maria del Carmine (Oltr’arno). The frescoes by Masaccio (Big Tom). It was here that Michelangelo’s nose was broken by Pietro Torrigiani when they were both teenagers and protégés of Lorenzo de’ Medici and were sent there to sketch the frescoes. (You can see the broken nose quite clearly in Volterra's bronze above.)

• Piazza della Signoria The David statue was here for hundreds of years. Also this is where Savonarola had his Bonfires of the Vanities and where he was executed.Michelangelo and several of his brothers were followers of Savonarola.

• San Marco convent Michelangelo’s older brother Lionardo was a friar there, as was Savonarola. It houses great art by Fra Angelico, Ghirlandaio etc.

• The Bargello for Davids by Donatello and Verocchio (Leonardo’s teacher) and Michelangelo’s Pitti Tondo, Brutus, Bacchus etc.

Brutus

• Palazzo Medici Riccardi Where Michelangelo lived with Lorenzo de’ Medici.

 

• Santo Spirito, Oltr’arno. Where Michelangelo dissected bodies. His wooden crucifix (the earliest recorded work) is in the Sacristy.

• Piazza Santa Trinita Where Michelangelo had his very public argument with Leonardo. 

• The Medici Chapels behind San Lorenzo church. Michelangelo designed the tombs for two of the de' Medici family. His statues of them are flanked by Dawn and Dusk, Night and Day.

• The Laurentian Library at San Lorenzo. This and the magnificent staircase to it were designed by Michelangelo.

• The Uffizi houses the Sacred Family painting by Michelangelo.

• And of course. The Accademia where the original David now stands. But don't neglect to look at the slaves/prisoners and St. Matthew who line the gallery leading up to David.

Photo credit: Jorg Bittner Unner, Creative Commons

On my first visit to Florence, I and some other students, none of us studying Art, managed to blag our way into the Casa Buonarroti, which was in restauro at the time and saw the two reliefs and the very touching little wooden crucifix, now in Santo Spirito, which was waiting to be authenticated. None of us was in any doubt.

On my last visit, a year ago, Sarah Towle of Time Traveler Tours and Tales and I went to the Medici Chapels at San Lorenzo and looked through the door leading to the underground hiding place that the sculptor used on a visit to the city, long after he had made the David. It is not open to the public but the whitewashed walls are covered with his drawings.

Michelangelo's relationship with Florence was fraught. As a protegé of Lorenzo de' Medici (the "Magnificent"), he was loyal to the family, but after Lorenzo's death became a Republican. Florence itself had an on/off love affair with the powerful de' Medici family, expelling them and welcoming them back more than once.

My relationship with Florence and Michelangelo has undergone no such upheavals. I can't wait to work with Sarah Towle to bring this Renaissance sculpture to life for 21st century children and teenagers. You can read more about the project below.

But in the meantime, if you are going to Florence this summer, do follow the Michelangelo Trail. I'm only sorry I won't be doing it with you!


Time Traveler Tours & Tales Campaign

Looking for Leonardo da Vinci by Theresa Breslin

   

TAKE NOTE:

Our most beloved Architect and General Engineer, Leonardo da Vinci, who bears this pass, is charged with inspecting the palaces and fortresses of our states, so that we may maintain them according to their needs and on his advice.

It is our order and command that all will allow the said Leonardo da Vinci free passage, without subjecting him to any tax or toll, or other hindrance, either on himself or his companions.

All will welcome him with amity, and allow him to measure and examine any things he so chooses.

To this effect, we desire that delivered unto him should be any provisions, materials and men that he might require, and that he be given any aid, assistance and favour he requests.

Let no man act contrary to this decree unless he wishes to incur our wrath.

So wrote Prince Cesare Borgia, Il Valentino, illegitimate son of Pope Alexander VI, in the famous pass he issued to Leonardo da Vinci. And such was the reputation of Cesare Borgia that none would dare to obstruct the work that da Vinci undertook for him over a period of eighteen months as this ruthless Renaissance lord captured city after city across central Italy. 

It is another enigma of the great genius and polymath of the Middle Ages. Why did Leonardo da Vinci, who indicates strongly in his writings a love of nature and creation and an abhorrence of violence, spend almost two years of his life in the employ of the unscrupulous warmonger Cesare Borgia?

The pass was issued in August 1502. This was shortly after da Vinci had left Milan where he had lived and worked for approximately seventeen years. His patron there, the Duke of Milan, for whom he had painted The Last Supper, had been deposed by an invading French army. King Louis XII of France claimed sovereignty over the Duchy, and, although there were indications that the French court would have liked Leonardo to remain, at that point the soldiers ruled the city. The occupying forces were unruly and dangerous, so da Vinci moved around the north of Italy doing various commissions. But to survive an artist needed a patron (no helpful Arts Council dispensing awards) and it was only by accepting the patronage of Cesare Borgia that da Vinci secured a longer term of gainful employment to support his household. 

What is interesting about this period of da Vinci's life is the lack of information. The manuscripts of this man, a compulsive note-taker and sketcher, are scant for these months. It was a time of extraordinary activity in Renaissance Italy: coups and counter coups, scandalous liaisons, horrific acts of revenge, and barbaric instances of torture. Yet we find only a few fleeting glimpses of his life recorded; for example, a brief phrase in a page margin: Where is Il Valentino? Or a sketch of some architecture in Urbino, a city captured that year by Cesare Borgia. Curiously, it is Urbino that has a painting by Joos van Gent called ‘The Communion of the Apostles ‘which predates the da Vinci Last Supper by twenty years. In van Gent's depiction eleven of the Apostles are shown as older men with beards, and one is a youthful beardless figure with golden hair… 

As a writer these "lost years" of Leonardo da Vinci are a gift - the opportunity to build a story round the available historical facts. I trawled over all manner of materials, read da Vinci's own writings, his stories, riddles, jokes, puns, fables, studied his works and followed his journeys through Italy. At least, my editor observed with amusement, these research trips are warmer than those undertaken when doing Remembrance, a novel partly set in the trenches of World War I.

When I began to research, The Medici Seal, before the appearance of Mr Brown’s novel, there wasn’t such a brouhaha about everything da Vinci. Now one has to secure tickets months ahead to view ‘The Last Supper’ in Milan, where the tour guides are rapidly losing the will to live by being repeatedly asked "So, which one is Mary Magdalene then?' A guide in Ravenna told me that she is asked the same question when showing tourists the 6^th century mosaic of Christ at supper with his Apostles! However, it's these other versions of that scene that underlines the power of da Vinci's version, beginning with his unique choice of the most dramatic moment of that Gospel. Then there is his ingenious composition - the concealed geometry of the painting. It was in ‘The Last Supper ‘that da Vinci interpreted his findings in physics, mathematics, acoustics and proportion. Rather than a formal grouping, it is a painting charged with emotion; his figures the actual visible manifestation of force, displayed in sound, in time and in place. After studying the figure of the Apostle Matthew, I decided to name my main character, Matteo.

Like many people I have an ongoing fascination with Leonardo da Vinci. His paintings are stunning beautiful, his anatomical drawings absorbing, the minute detail engenders respect for his draughtsmanship yet touch the senses in a profound manner, as in the one showing the child curled in the womb. His engineering projects are startlingly modern. In addition to da Vinci's work there were the people he met on an every day basis: the Medici family who were great patrons of the Arts in Florence, and the Borgias, Cesare and his fascinating sister Lucrezia. All of it crying out to me: Write about this! Write about this! 

My travels took me to Senigallia. 

This town on the Adriatic is famous as the place where Cesare Borgia tricked his rebel Captains into meeting with him and then broke his truce and murdered them. It is recorded that he had two of his Captains garrotted back to back upon a bench. One of them, Vitellozzo, was a friend of da Vinci. It is this incident of the Borgia moving swiftly to eliminate his enemies efficiently and without mercy that Machiavelli wrote about later in his classic work The Prince. While in Senigallia doing location shots for the V&A presentation on my book I was reliably informed by the tourist office that Mary Magdalene's bones were brought ashore there from the Holy Land!

The main character in The Medici Seal, the boy Matteo, is rescued by the companions of da Vinci in the late summer of 1502. Matteo has his own story, a vengeful brigand on his trail seeking to recover a stolen item. The boy becomes an assistant to the Maestro, accompanies him on his trips to the morgue, watches his dissections, holds the Maestro's drawings during his conferences with Cesare Borgia, stands by his side at dinner. There is independent documentation that in the autumn of 1502 the city of Florence sent a diplomat to talk to Cesare Borgia. Their emissary, one Niccolo Machiavelli, met Cesare Borgia in the Castle of Imola. 

This was when Leonardo da Vinci was repairing the fortifications there.

Imagine what might happen with Leonardo da Vinci, Machiavelli, and Cesare Borgia, all together.

I did. 

Photographs  © SCARPA

  

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Leonardo, Cecilia and that "ermine"

Now that the hugely successful Leonardo exhibition at the National Gallery in London has sold out, it seems as if everyone has suddenly discovered this portrait. It adorns the front of the catalogues and graces thousands of carrier bags and leaflets.

On the day I went, less than a week after the exhibition opened, there was not a single postcard of it to be had. It seems the National Gallery had seriously underestimated the appeal of sixteen-year-old Cecilia Gallerani - if that is indeed who the sitter is.

It is frankly a bit annoying, like when everyone discovers the band or restaurant or city that you thought was a special find of yours and it's no longer your secret. I have known and loved this portrait for half a century; it has always been my favourite of Leonardo's paintings and now everyone else loves it too!

Still, it was very special thrill to be in the same room as Cecilia at last and she certainly lived up to expectations, although the painting is quite small (54.8 x 40.3cm) and was displayed behind glass. This picture was so famous that Bernardo Bellincioni wrote a poem about it not long after it was painted: "Cecilia, today so very beautiful, is she/whose lovely eyes make the sun seem dark shadow."  Funny he didn't mention that she is holding something like a ferret.

Leonardo had wriiten about ermines in his early period at the Milanese court: "the ermine out of moderation never eats but once a day; it will rather let itself be taken by the hunters than take refuge in a dirty lair, in order not to stain its purity."

Moderation and purity are odd virtues to associate with a teenage mistress yet this is what Cecilia Gallerani was: Ludovico Sforza's mistress, he who was Leonardo's master in Milan. She was a middle class girl, educated, with six brothers who took precedence over her and she lost her father when she was seven years old. It is highly likely that her liaison with Sforza began before she was quite fourteen but girls could marry at twelve or thirteen in the late fifteenth century. Indeed Cecilia was betrothed already to member of the Visconti family and had been since childhood - a betrothal that Ludovico dissolved.

But Ludovico Sforza was also a member of the Oder of the Ermine, a prestigious honour bestowed on him by the King of Naples in 1488. So in a sense, young Cecilia is caressing her lover.

In 1491 when Cecilia was still only eighteen and Ludovico had married Beatrice d'Este, she, the "lady with an ermine"  bore him a son. A few years later she was married to a Count, but hung on to the portrait until the imperious Isabella d'Este, Beatrice's sister, required it of her. She died in 1536, in her early sixties, a remarkable instance of survival.

That ermine is a northern variety of stoat, Mustela rminea, which would have had a white pelt in winter. Varnish has discoloured this to a brownish-grey. But it doesn't seem to have much fur at all! I had often wondered about this animal.

Mustela erminea

The exhibition makes all clear. In the same room as Cecilia are drawings Leonardo made - of a dog's feet, a bear's muzzle - that make it seem as if the animal might be a composite - a sort of fantasy ermine. Cecilia probably didn't have a pet mustelid after all. You can imagine the painter giving her a cushion and saying "pretend it's an ermine, if you would, my Lady."

And yet, and yet, look at her hands and the animal's paws. He is claiming her as she does him; I can't quite give up the idea that Leonardo painted them from life, even though the symbolism is everything.

More than Lisa Gherardini whose portrait known as Mona Lisa the painter kept with him till his death, more than Ginevra Benci or La Belle Ferronière (this last also in the National Gallery exhibition, the teenage Cecilia captivates and enchants the viewer, looking away to her left at something or someone out of the frame, as does the creature she hold so lightly and so securely. Maybe it was Ludovico himself, come to see what the Florentine was making of his young mistress. He can't have been disappointed.

Note: this information can be found in Massimiliano Capati Leonardo: a life through paintings (Mandragora 2009); Charles Nicholl Leonardo da Vinci: The Flights of his Mind (Allen Lane 2004) and Luke Syson with Larry Keith Leonardo: Painter at the Court of Milan (National Gallery 2011)