Talk:Saint Praxedis (painting)

IRSA website
I've removed the following citation, as it leads to the homepage of the IRSA rather than any material about Vermeer. If anyone can provide a link to the page on the website about the painting, please do. The link is: www.irsa.com.pl/?lang=En IRSA Publishing HouseJimi 66 (talk) 18:16, 12 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Planning to add material about the arguments for and against the Vermeer attribution later in the week; the sources I've already cited seem to be give a fairly balanced picture.Jimi 66 (talk) 19:25, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Anonymous material added 2013
I've added here a paragraph of anonymous material added recently. Most of it is unsourced, and some of it looks unsourcable, but I've moved it here as it does contain some interesting and relevant recollections. I've kept just one piece of information in the article - about the two signatures - as it is sourced. If anyone can find sources for any of this, and can add it back into the article in encyclopaedic style, great! Jimi 66 (talk) 22:49, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

during my tenure as writer and researcher for spencer samuels and co in the 1970's and 1980's, during which time the firm owned and sold the painting to barbara johnson, the file on this painting included the report of the famous art conservation lab at the doerner instiute in munich. that report, as memory serves me, and as is recorded in my catalogue entry on this painting for specter samuels exhibition, stated its findings that both signaures were integral to the original paint surface, and typical of the pigments used in the painting. it is also my memory that wheelock of the national gallery, washington, did not come to the gallery seeking out this painting, but that when at the gallery storage unit to be shown one or more other works of art, he noticed this painting in the racks, or had it pointed out to him. i assisted in this visit to the warehouse, but kept no notes on such meetings for the gallery. it was wheelock who took up a new chapter on attributing this painting to vermeer. he asked the painting be sent down to the national gallery for further examination, and he called up the gallery a few weeks later to announce that he was convinced it was an early vermeer. subsequent to being offered for sale to barbara johnson the painting was offered to the national gallery for a fraction of its later selling price. the gallery then under the direction of chief curator sydney freedberg, whose specialty was italian renaissance painting, turned down purchase of the painting. an article published in the late 1950's or so, had already proposed that this painting should be recognized as an early work by vermeer.