Van Gogh or not? It’s a simple question that requires a sophisticated answer. October’s Burlington Magazine features the latest research by the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, on how it assesses works that have been submitted to it for analysis. Are they by the painter or innocent copies or fakes intended to deceive? Teio Meedendorp, Louis van Tilborgh and Saskia van Oudheusden consider three examples which prompt different, nuanced conclusions.
Long familiarity with a subject can lead to profound insights in other ways. This is undoubtedly the case with the very important scholarly re-assessment Susie Nash brings to bear this month on the extraordinary late medieval masterwork, Claus Sluter’s so-called ‘Well of Moses’ (Dijon, 1395-1404). Close looking and reading of sources lead to the conclusion that Philip the Bold’s commission can be intimately connected with the crusades and seen as a highly personal memorial to the losses they entailed.
Later French royal commissions are scrutinised by Samantha Happé in her article on the jewelled miniatures used as diplomatic gifts during the reign of Louis XIV. The first probable owner in the 1670s of an especially fine example in the Musée du Louvre, Paris, is identified. The later history of the miniature is also of interest as the museum acquired it from the estate of Yves Saint Laurent.
In a particularly richly mixed Magazine we also publish James Cahill’s assessment of an Ed Ruscha exhibition in Los Angeles and Colin Thom’s review of the new survey of British architecture by Steven Brindle published by the Paul Mellon Centre. It is seen as a worthy successor to John Summerson’s magisterial survey of the subject, which was first published in 1953.
Finally, Alexander Collins reviews the André Charles Boulle exhibition in the grands appartements of the princes of Condé at the château de Chantilly, which is somewhat surprisingly the first exhibition in France to explore the outstanding ancien régime ébéniste’s work.
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