Those rich reds adorning paintings in Pompeii were originally ochre – Italian researchers say they now think that sensuous Pompeian red is the result of an accident. Researchers at the national science council (CNR) say the original signature color at the ill-fated city of Pompeii was probably yellow - ochre to be specific. Before Mount [...]
This is just about as cheap a thrill as they get: by pledging even just a dollar, you can help fund a project to find a lost Leonardo Da Vinci fresco in Florence, Italy. Photographer Dave Yoder has been working on for a number of years on a quest funded by the National Geographic Society [...]
Experts digging around a former convent in Florence have unearthed a big toe that might belong to Lisa Gherardini, the subject of Leonardo Da Vinci’s famed Mona Lisa painting. Little is known about the real life of the noblewoman said to have posed for Da Vinci, but she is thought to have died in the [...]
Hoping to solve the mystery behind Leonardo Da Vinci’s masterpiece Mona Lisa, scientists in Florence are looking for the bones of his presumed model, Lisa Gherardini. Working on the project are two of Italy’s famed art super sleuths, Francesco Mallegni, the anthropologist/detective who famously brought to light Dante’s Cannibal Count and Silvano Vinceti who found [...]
I’ve been following the story of Italian research team delving deep into Leonardo Da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa.” La Gioconda, as the painting is called in Italian, has always been a mystery. Still, I’m not so sure this find really sheds any new light on the 500-year-old masterpiece. Silvano Vinceti and team claim to have spied [...]
Last fall, a group of specialists worked late into the night, perched on scaffolding in a Roman church, trying to copy Caravaggio’s “Inspiration of St. Matthew,” rendering the image true right down to the subject’s dirty feet. Every night for two weeks, they set up a scanner to photograph the Contarelli Chapel paintings, part of [...]
If you’ve ever stared at a painting and wanted to reach out and squeeze that adorable little putto, you’ll soon have a chance to do it without getting arrested. Florence’s Uffizi Gallery, one of the largest treasure troves of Renaissance art, is developing a touch-screen device that allows art lovers to zoom in for a [...]
Sicilian mafia turncoat Gaspare Mutulo, recently in the headlines for revealing a kidnapping plan aimed at Silvio Berlusconi, used his time in jail to paint. His lawyer Silvio Nistico’ has put 20 of his artworks, which all portray a slightly naif if always sunny and calm Sicily, on display in an online gallery. The views [...]
If you’ve ever wondered what’s inside Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks, you’ve got six years to take a look. Milan, where the original Renaissance man worked for years, has brought the largest collection of his drawings and writings, the 1,000-plus-page Codex Atlanticus, to the masses. The Codex is normally housed in the city’s Biblioteca Ambrosiana, where [...]
Caravaggio’s 1609 masterpiece “Adoration of the Sheperds” is getting touched up in public — here’s how to book the free visits. Like a lot of things worth doing in Italy, it won’t be particularly easy. Groups of 10/15 people will be allowed to watch restorers at work in Rome’s lower chamber of parliament until it [...]
