Recent stories of note:
“Giotto’s ‘The Legend of St. Francis’: Assisi’s Devotional Frescoes”
Zachary Ginsberg, The Wall Street Journal
In his Lives of the Artists, Vasari credits Giotto as having no less than the status of nature itself: deserving to be imitated by painters everywhere. Giotto’s revolutionary fresco cycle in the Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi certainly fits that bill. As Zachary Ginsberg writes for The Wall Street Journal, in contrast to the precedent of depicting saints before heavenly fields of gold leaf, the Florentine painter gave viewers episodes from Francis’s life, from his conversion to his miracles, in painted frames as if through windows in the church wall. As visitors leave, a series of the saint’s good deeds are “a reminder of how to act upon returning to the outside world,” Ginsberg writes. It’s a work that inspires imitation—not only by painters but by everyone.
“Medieval Relics in a Democratic Age”
Michael Burger, Law & Liberty
What relationship ought a university to have to the world around it? In Law & Liberty, Michael Burger points to the university’s medieval origins to untangle this question. Universities began as just another kind of guild—an association of trade specialists, autonomous and not beholden to public authority, that determined the qualifications of its members. But now, Burger writes, though the notion of faculty governance remains, the arrangement is a little muddier: “Where ultimate authority lies is generally left decorously unstated.” Perhaps the university’s history can provide more than just regalia for ceremonies—looking back, Burger suggests, can help us understand these institutions’ place in a political landscape that looks very different from that of medieval Europe.
“Debate Rages over Whether Rediscovered Klimt Painting was ‘Smuggled’ out of Hungary”
Alex Greenberger, ARTnews
An 1897 portrait by Gustav Klimt of a West African prince bears a stamp from the Klimt estate and a signature in the artist’s distinctive, all-caps hand. But the painting was so dirty that gallerists at first assumed it couldn’t be authentic. Now the naturalistic, brown-and-gray portrait, which was recently on display at TEFAF Maastricht, has fallen under the shroud of another dispute: a Hungarian publication reported that the work was smuggled into Austria, while an Austrian paper wrote that the Viennese gallery who showed it at TEFAF had received the proper permit. Instead, the Austrians insinuated, perhaps the Hungarian officials simply didn’t understand they had an authentic Klimt on their hands.
