User talk:Ham II/Archive 2011

Museum networks
Hi, Ham, if would, please chime in over at Template talk:Infobox museum. It looks like we could use a tweak to accommodate large and multiple networks such as ASTC and Smithsonian affiliates. Consider, for example USSRC which is both of those. My thought is that there could be a sub-template for a small network and perhaps another for a large network, and each of the individual networks could invoke the appropriate sub-template to get them to display properly in the infobox. Alas, my template skills aren't there yet, nor am I an admin who might edit Template:Infobox museum, so I ask your help. Thanks! -- ke4roh (talk) 04:13, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks for contacting me! I'll join the discussion on the template talk page. Ham 09:26, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

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Leonardo
Ham, I have carefully gone through the whole list and upgraded a number of them in the light of the current exhibition. The pictures that are in the "Disputed" category are all very closely associated with Leonardo. There is a very good case for the Dreyfus Madonna being entirely Leonardo. He almost certainly had a hand in the right-hand Madonna and child with the yarnwinder. That particular picture of the two Holy Children may well be his. The Bacchus is a painting with such extraordinary qualities that I cannot imagine how it has been discounted all these years. You must realise that whenever someone claims that a picture is or isn't by a famous painter, everyone jumps on the bandwaggon and says "I knew that too!" and by this means, bona fide artworks get discounted and some other works get the highly recommended certificate.

In the present exhibition, they have got La Belle Ferroniere from the Louvre, which for the last fifty years they have said what "definitely not!". My opinion, for what it's worth, is "definitely IS!"

The stuff in the "recent attributions" section are the works that definitely are not, and are completely consistent with the works of other painters. They do not show the hand of Leonardo, should never have been attributed to him, and ought not be muddled up with works that he possibly/probably had a hand in. Michael Kemp is much more cautious in his attributions than Carlo Pedretti, and so am I.

Please leave the list in the order it is now in. Amandajm (talk) 00:51, 15 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Hi Amanda, good work with the updating. I moved the "lost works" section back up as you then have two lists of works almost definitely by Leonardo, one extant and the other other lost. But I'm not too attached to that order, and had I checked the page history first and seen seen it was someone who knows what they're doing who made the move, I would probably have left it as it was.


 * You've said that dates are "just someone's speculation", but how would you feel about bringing the dates in line with the latest scholarship – I'm thinking of the NG exhibition catalogue (which I'll have at Christmas) and Martin Kemp's handy list at the back of his Leonardo, which in the latest edition includes the Salvator Mundi and La Bella Principessa? (Unfortunately it's only the 2004 edition that I've got.) Where there are differences of opinion we'd be upfront about it, so we'd have something that looks like this:


 * Portrait of Foo
 * 1500 (Syson 2011)
 * c. 1498 (Kemp 2011)


 * I could start with Kemp 2004 now, and when I get hold of a copy of the new edition I could update it. To take one example of a possible upset that could result from this, Kemp puts the Annunciation and Madonna of the Carnation earlier than Leo's contribution to the Baptism of Christ, which spoils Vasari's story about the Baptism being the painting with which he's "discovered" in Verrocchio's workshop, but it seems very likely to me due to the relative stiltedness of the first two. Ham 14:36, 15 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Very good idea. Sooner the better.
 * This page got 2,884 hits in the last week.
 * Your cosmetic changes look terrific! Even though the images are smaller, the extra space really helps them and it counteracts the discrepancy in sizing that makes the small vertical pics look big in reproduction and the Last Supper look tiny.
 * I think that Isabella is well placed there. Do you think that the beautiful drawing of hands that seem to belong to Ginevra ought to go under her portrait?
 * I also think that it would be a good idea to calve the codex section off and make a new page. And each codex could be illustrated by a significant picture.
 * Also, you might enjoy reading this, particularly if you are about to head off to the exhibition. Leonardo da Vinci and the Virgin of the Rocks
 * Cheers!  Amandajm (talk) 03:20, 16 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the kind words! I love the drawing of the hands but fine as it is I don't think it's quite the same as cartoons for never-executed paintings, which is what Isabella and the Burlington House cartoon are. If we include every beautiful drawing by Leonardo in the list of "major extant works" where do we (excuse the pun) draw the line? The codex section definitely needs expanding, whether on this page or branched off to a new one. And thanks for the tip with the website! Ham 15:18, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Hi Ham!
I've had a fiddle with the order again. Obviously Kemp and Syson don't agree entirely. So, in the light of their disagreement, we use our eyes.
 * The Annunciation is obviously strongly influenced by Verrocchio, and is said (I'll have to find the reference) to have been drafted by Verrocchio and painted by Leonardo. So it indisputably goes first.
 * The Baptism, by the wisdom of Vasari, is a very early work. I would entirely agree with him on this.  That angel, painted so sweetly by Leonardo, is a very Verrocchio bottega angel.  Leonardo has imitated Verrocchio's style there.  You will see the same rolled-back eyes in the Tobias and the Angel picture.  The landscape, beautiful as it is, is timid compared with what Leonardo was later to do.
 * Madonna of the Carnation is a huge leap forward from this. It surely post-dates the Baptism.  It has retained a Florentine sense about it.  It hasn't completely broken from the tradition of Madonnas established by Verrocchio, the Ghirlandaios and the rest,  but it is moving in a different direction.  We have that amazing rocky landscape suddenly appearing, fully fledged, in this painting.  It has to come after the Baptism, not before it, because it is too complex.
 * Ginevra is another leap forward. She is an unusual and challenging portrait.  She demonstrates Leonardo beginning to really do his own thing.   The similarity to the Benois Madonna is immediately apparent when the two are placed in proximity.  I cannot for the life of me believe that she predates the Baptism.   There is no way in the world.   The Baptism  angel is conservative.  Ginevra is radical.  Moreover, the lighting in this painting is leading us towards Leonardo's appreciation of natural light.

The changes that I have made don't completely ignore the wisdom of Syson and Kemp. They work within their parameters, and acknowledge their differences. Amandajm (talk) 00:37, 6 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Ginevra and Cecilia. I don't think that any scholar has questioned either of those two paintings for a quite a few years.  But I still feel a little hesitant about upgrading them from Generally accepted to Universally accepted.  Unfortunately Cecilia has been so badly handled that we are seeing a shadow of the real painting. And its a pity about Ginevra's hands.   There is something extraordinarily odd about Ginevra.  Her eyeballs appear to have been fiddled with at a later date.  Leonardo paints eyeballs as round lustrous three-dimensional objects.  Ginevra's are flat almond-shaped surfaces.   As far as I can tell, someone has come along at a later date and tried to make her eyes brighter by adding white to the whites.  This has made them flat and given her a very odd look.  I got a high res image and did a digital adjustment on the shadow of the eyeballs, darkening each corner and blurring inwards.  All of a sudden it was as if  the real Ginevra jumped out of the computer screen and almost spoke to me. She really is not as much of a snooty bitch as she looks.
 * Portrait of a Musician and La Belle Ferroniere seem to be gaining acceptance rapidly, which is good. I saw the Belle Ferroniere in the Louvre for the first tim in the 1970s and couldn't believe that anyone would discount it.  The problem is that she is such a sulky-faced little miss  that people who love Cecilia for her animation and vitality don't want to love her as well. In fact the handling of the paint is absolutely magnificent and I suspect more complex and subtle than it ever was on Cecilia.
 * The Baptism and Madonna of the Carnation.   Despite those curls, the Madonna of the Carnation is a  much richer display of what Leonardo can do.  Yes, he uses the formal hairstyle.  But he was to go on using that sort of hairstyle right up to the Leda painting which is well documented.  Angels typically had flowing hair. Italian Madonnas, at that date, typically had their hair "styled" or wore a veil, although this was changing.   The long flowing hair is a symbol of her youth and virginity.
 * The thing to look at here is the way that the braided hair is represented. It springs away from the parting with little fluffy tendrils escaping from the plait, just the way that very thick hair does. Those two plaits have been the subject of Leonardo's meticulous scrutiny.  The light and shade in the painting is streets ahead of the  angel, and of Verrocchio in general.  The hand is exquisite, not only for its form, but for the study of light.  The baby's body  has also been the subject of study.  That baby that he has used as a model was much fatter than it is now.  Having got to the sitting-up stage and become more active, the baby has lost some chubbiness, and while all the folds are still there, they have lost some of their pneumatic  appearance.  It is typical of the age of the baby.  He must weigh a ton to carry around.  Everything about that baby has been observed in the most meticulous detail.
 * Then there is the textiles. The silk muslin with its rippled, hand-rolled edge, the satin lining of the cloak, and the brown velvet cushion that the baby it sitting on.  We don't get any of this richness of observation in the details of the angel.  The angels robe is jolly good, but its a competent studio piece.
 * So the angel goes before the Madonna.
 * I can't go on my gut feeling here, because it's not well enough accepted, but I believe that the little Dreyfus Madonna is an early Leonardo, drawn before he had the opportunity to look hard at the anatomy of a baby.
 * Amandajm (talk) 23:28, 6 December 2011 (UTC)
 * OK! Having written this here, I think I'll transfer it to my Blog! Amandajm (talk) 23:31, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Christmas Greetings from Downunder
from Amandajm (talk) 13:27, 22 December 2011 (UTC)