Correctly identifying the subjects of familiar portraits transforms our perception of them. We publish here research by Gregory Martin and Anna Orlando on the famous Anthony van Dyck portrait of the so-called Balbi Children in the National Gallery, London, which shows that the artist’s beguiling subjects are in fact members of another Genoese family.
This month’s articles also include the rediscovery in the Czech Republic of the largest known seventeenth-century reverse-glass painting; it is connected with the Lichtenstein collections and replicates an etching to evoke a lost Rembrandt. The July issue in addition features new technical and art-historical research on the work of the celebrated animal painter Paulus Potter, undertaken as a collaborative project by the Mauritshuis, The Hague, and the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin.
Caroline Elam reviews the inspiring Michelangelo exhibition at the British Museum, London; her article includes a fascinating analysis of the subject of Michelangelo’s ‘Epifania’ cartoon in the British Museum and the related painting from the Casa Buonarroti, Florence. The two works are published side by side for the first time after their recent conservation.
Other reviews include: Desmond Shawe-Taylor assessing Van Dyck in the Musée du Louvre, Paris; Kathryn Lloyd on the 60th Venice Biennale; Elena Marchetti analysing Théodore Rousseau; Charles Saumarez Smith discussing the Kunstsilo, Kristiansand; and James W.P. Campbell on J.Pierpont Morgan’s Library, New York.
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