Ancient Resource image.MONTROSE, Calif. – March 1 at 10 AM PST marks the date and time that Ancient Resource Auctions will hold its premier winter event. A stunning collection of more than 450 lots of ancient art, spanning 4,000 years of culture, will be offered in what is anticipated to be a 5-hour sale. Internet live bidding will be available through LiveAuctioneers.
Highlighting this sale is a Roman marble portrait of the Emperor Hadrian. Carved during his time as Emperor (117-138 AD) and of a pure white marble, the slightly oversize head retains all of the strength and power that were the traits of Hadrian.
Among the magnificent selections of Ancient Egyptian art is an exceptionally rare complete set of Late Period Canopic Jars. This limestone set features highly detailed carvings of the four sons of Horus, each designed to protect a different organ. In the Late Period, the organs were returned to the body, so as such, these jars have only lightly carved openings. Complete sets are rarely if ever seen outside of museums.
Pre-dynastic Egypt is represented by an extremely rare red burnished 11.25-inch jar. This beautifully surfaced jar not only exhibits a fine mottled red surface, it also features an incised “centipede” design. These vessels are extremely rare with any kind of personal markings.
The Greek influence in art is exemplified by anintricately detailed marble head of an Etruscan/Greek Kore figure, circa 6th to 5th century BC, featuring the enigmatic smile so characteristic of the Kore and wearing a diadem, the hair in tight waves around the face running behind the ears with ringlets to each side of the neck. Its heigh is 8 inches (20.3 cm). Well-preserved and a sea find, it has a few areas that display calcified encrustation and mineral deposits within the recesses. While originating in Greece, the form of the Kore was adopted by the Etruscans and other ancient peoples. This piece was purchased in Egypt in the 1930s from the well-respected dealer, Deouky H. Ibrahim, at Mena House Hotel (original receipt included).
Near Eastern art is led by a very unusual bronze libation vessel in the form of an animal, circa 9th to 7th century BC. The globular body has a long channeled, animal-form face and spout, the top rim having incised crisscrossing decoration. Twenty domed rivets form a decorative design above the footed base, and another nine domed rivets surround the highly detailed breast of the beast.
The robust Pre-Columbian section features a large and magnificent Mayan cylinder vase, circa 400 to 800 AD. This massive vessel is decorated with two deeply carved panels of complex Underworld motifs, the broad rim decorated with glyphs and date symbols. The intricate artistic detailing is highly stylized, nicely burnished and highlighted with cinnabar.
For information on any item in the auction, tel. 818-425-9633. Email: ancientresourceauctions@yahoo.com.
View the fully illustrated catalog and sign up to bid absentee or live via the Internet at www.LiveAuctioneers.com.
Andrew Carnegie Mansion, home of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York City. Image by Matt Flynn, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. NEW YORK (AP) – The Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum has received a $10 million gift toward the renovation of its Carnegie mansion.
It said Thursday the gift from the Morton and Barbara Mandel Family Foundation is the largest gift in the history of the New York City museum.
An expansive new gallery will be named after the couple.
The money will support new interactive displays and digital access to the 217,000-object collection.
The renovation is part of an $89 million capital campaign that includes redesign of Cooper-Hewitt’s Arthur Ross Terrace and Garden.
When the museum reopens in the fall it will have 60 percent more gallery space.
Barbara Mandel has served on the museum’s board for 17 years. Her husband co-founded the Cleveland-based Premier Industrial Corp., which merged with Farnell Electronics in 1996.
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Andrew Carnegie Mansion, home of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York City. Image by Matt Flynn, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
DETROIT – A significant painting by 17th-century Spanish artist Bartolomé Esteban Murillo is on view at the Detroit Institute of Arts beginning Feb. 6. Infant Saint John the Baptist in the Wilderness, painted around 1670, was rediscovered at Meadow Brook Hall, a historic house museum, by a DIA curator and will be on loan to the museum for five years. This is the first time the painting will be exhibited at a U.S. art museum.
Salvador Salort-Pons, DIA executive director of Collection Strategies and Information and curator of European paintings, was at Meadow Brook last year when the painting caught his eye, and he identified it as an outstanding example by the Spanish Golden Age master.
“Murillo produced this masterpiece when he was at the height of his powers,” said Salort-Pons. “He was the first internationally known Spanish artist, and this Infant Saint John is one of the first Murillos to arrive in the U.S.”
In the 1600s the painting belonged to Italian merchant Giovanni Bielato, who donated it to Capuchin Convent of Genova. During the 1800s, it was sold to the family of the Duke of Westminster in London and in 1926 entered the collection of Alfred G. and Matilda Wilson, who kept it in their home, Meadow Brook Hall. This Murillo was exhibited in the Royal Academy in London in 1883.
“The collaboration has been especially significant—and truly unique— for the three parties’ educational missions,” said Geoffrey Upward, executive director of Meadow Brook Hall. “The project allows students and faculty at Oakland University, which was founded by the Wilsons, to observe firsthand the complexity and impact of conservation work, and to expose them to conservation as a potential profession. And, of course, the DIA can better educate its audiences about how a critical work of art helps us learn about our past and how vital the institute is to that pursuit.”
Salort-Pons said the DIA owns two other painting by Murillo, The Flight into Egypt and the Immaculate Conception, which will be displayed together with Meadow Brook’s The Infant Saint John in the museum’s main European Paintings gallery.
As part of the collaboration between the DIA and Meadow Brook Hall, an auxiliary of Oakland University, a series of visits by undergraduate art history and studio art, history, communications and chemistry students was built in so they could observe the scientific analysis and conservation that DIA specialists undertook on both the painting and its frame. The students had the rare opportunity to see DIA scientists and conservators at work and to have access to information produced only in the world’s top museums.
“At the DIA we have the expertise and equipment to study works of art and to gain extraordinary insight about them,” said Salort-Pons. “It is a fascinating process with remarkable results, and it has been a pleasure sharing our working methods and scholarly approach with OU students. This experience is an example of the learning opportunities the DIA can provide, the great resource the museum is for our region and the sorts of collaborations we seek with Michigan institutions.”
About Meadow Brook Hall
A National Historic Landmark, Meadow Brook Hall is the historic home built by one of the automotive aristocracy’s most remarkable women, Matilda Dodge Wilson, widow of auto pioneer John Dodge, and her second husband, Alfred Wilson. Constructed between 1926 and 1929, Meadow Brook Hall represents one of the finest examples of Tudor-revival architecture in America, and is especially renowned for its superb craftsmanship, architectural detailing and grand scale of 88,000 square-feet. It was the center of a country estate that included 1,500 acres, numerous farm buildings, recreational facilities, several residences and formal gardens.
Tarbosaurus bataar skeleton, which was returned by the United States to the government of Mongolia last year. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. DENVER (AP) – A lawsuit in Denver’s U.S. District Court names a “fossilized Tyrannosaurus bataar skull” as the defendant.
The legal maneuver essentially repatriates the skull, 67 million years after the dinosaur’s demise, as if it were a living, breathing Mongolian citizen. The giant oval skull with long razor teeth will soon join a worldwide migration of dinosaur bones to a museum in the Mongolian capital city of Ulan Bator.
U.S. judges began ordering the return of dinosaur bones to Mongolia after U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials and Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj, the president of Mongolia, came to an understanding about how to redress fossil smuggling two years ago, said Houston attorney Robert Painter, who represents Elbegdorj in his quest to repatriate Mongolian dinosaur bones.
The lawsuit against the skull of a T. bataar, a dinosaur cousin of T. rex, came on the heels of a guilty plea in a criminal case against 69-year-old Eagle dinosaur vendor Rick Rolater in federal court. Rolater sells rare gems, petrified wood tables and mammoth tusks in his pricy Jackson Hole and Beaver Creek shops, By Nature Gallery.
Over the past 20 years, dinosaur bones stolen from the Gobi Desert’s Nemegt Basin, sometimes in midnight smuggling raids, eventually found their way to buyers. Wealthy private collectors were willing to pay up to $1 million for a full T. rex skeleton.
Another debate is raging over another T. bataar fossil, one bought by National Treasure actor Nicolas Cage for $267,000 after he outbid actor Leonardo DiCaprio at a Beverly Hills auction house in 2007.
Rolater, reached while attending the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show, where museum curators can find dinosaur fossils from around the world for sale, said he could not comment.
His Cheyenne attorney, Pat Crank, said Rolater got caught up in the whirlwind of criminal investigations initiated by federal agents two years ago against dinosaur fossil dealer Eric Prokopi, currently on probation in Florida after smuggling a T. bataar skull from Mongolia. Only then did Rolater realize his fossils may have been smuggled illegally, Crank said.
Crank said before Prokopi’s arrest, Rolater displayed a giant T. bataar skull in the front window of his Jackson Hole gallery.
Thieves will smash a T. rex skull just to extract the valuable teeth, said Dr. Mark Norell, paleontology curator at New York City’s American Museum of Natural History.
Federal agents received a tip in 2012 that Rolater’s Jackson Hole gallery was selling a T. bataar skull for $320,000, which was placed in a residential home after Prokopi’s arrest the same year. Another T. bataar skull was found in a crawl space in Rolater’s home in Eagle as well as foot bones of an ostrich-like dinosaur called Gallimimus. Rolater told agents he had sold six of the skulls the past six years.
The civil suit filed against Rolater’s T. bataar skull says a 2010 customs declaration in Japan misstated that the fossil’s shipping country was Japan and that the crate it was in contained “archaeological, historic pieces” rather than fossils.
Rolater has a plea agreement in which he relinquished dinosaur bones valued at $2.5 million including those from four raptors, three T. bataar skulls and 10 dinosaur eggs. In exchange, the government is recommending he be placed on probation for two years and pay a $25,000 fine, Rolater’s attorney said.
“He’s a convicted felon for the rest of his life,” Crank said. “Mr. Rolater wants to get on with his life.”
Neuschwanstein Castle, Bavaria. Image by Thomas Wolf. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Germany license. DALLAS (AP) – From a fairy tale-inspiring castle in the Bavarian Alps to a serene sculpture of Mary and Jesus by Michelangelo tucked away in a Belgian church, sites and works of art across Europe can give travelers a glimpse of the heroic work done by the group depicted in the new movie The Monuments Men.
The group’s mission was to save cultural treasures during World War II. And just like the group’s previously unsung accomplishments, many of the places and objects they saved have been “hidden in plain sight” for decades, said Robert Edsel, the Dallas-based author of the book The Monuments Men, which inspired the movie starring George Clooney, Matt Damon and others.
Edsel talked about a few of the many places and artworks in Europe tied to the work of the 350 men and women from Allied countries, most of them already established as architects, artists, curators and museum directors when they reported for duty. Eventually, they returned more than five million cultural items stolen by the Nazis as part of a systematic looting operation.
Works of Art in Belgium and the Austrian Salt Mine Where They Were Hidden
Visitors to the canal-lined, storybook town of Bruges, Belgium, may look in in awe at Michelangelo’s marble sculpture Madonna and Child in the Church of Our Lady, but few know of its harrowing wartime journey. Taken from the church by German officers in 1944, the sculpture was eventually discovered by Monuments Men on a dirty mattress in a salt mine near Altaussee in Austria.
In the town of Ghent, not far from Bruges, visitors at Saint Bavo Cathedral can gaze at another work that was discovered by Monuments Men at the Altaussee mine: the Ghent Altarpiece. Made of panels painted by Jan van Eyck in 1432, the famous work of art was taken by the Belgians to France in 1940 for safekeeping. But in 1942 it was taken by the Germans.
Tourists can also visit the Altaussee salt mine where those works – along with 6,600 paintings, 140 sculptures and other pieces – filled more than 100 tunnels. The works stored in the Austrian mine about 45 minutes from Salzburg housed treasures Adolf Hitler wanted to one day fill his planned museum in Linz, Austria.
A Parisian Museum and a Famous Vermeer
When the Nazis took over the Jeu de Paume museum in Paris, making it the headquarters of their looting operation, French art expert Rose Valland was allowed to stay. But Valland, who unbeknownst to the Nazis spoke German, managed to keep track of where the artworks – most stolen from Jewish families in France – were being sent. She passed that information along to Monuments Man James Rorimer after the liberation of Paris, directing him to Germany’s Neuschwanstein Castle. Today, a small plaque on the southwest corner of the Jeu de Paume, located near the Place de la Concorde, recognizes her bravery.
To see a work of art with a history that encapsulates the Nazi looting machine, Edsel says, gaze upon Jan Vermeer’s painting The Astronomer at the Louvre. “If we could take it off the wall it would have a Nazi inventory code on the back,” he said.
“That one picture is stolen from the Rothschilds, goes to the Jeu de Paume. It’s selected for (Adolf) Hitler’s museum. … It ends up in the salt mine at Altaussee, found by the Monuments officers, returned with all these other things to France, returned to the Rothschilds, donated to the Louvre,” he said.
Germany’s Fairytale Castle, Ceiling Fresco by a Master
Visitors flock to tour “Mad” King Ludwig’s Neuschwanstein Castle, nestled in Germany’s soaring Bavarian Alps with dramatic turrets rising into the sky. But during the war, the castle was the Nazi’s hideaway for about 21,000 items stolen from French collectors and records of the looting.
Monuments Man John Davis Skilton arrived in the German town of Wurzburg in hopes of saving the Giovanni Battista Tiepolo’s ceiling fresco Allegory of the Planets and Continents. The fresco in the Residenz palace dating back to the 1750s was in peril: The roof above the fresco ceiling burned off during Allied bombings, leaving it exposed to the elements.
Edsel said Skilton set to figuring out how to get a roof built over the fresco as soon as possible. “He sees how precarious it is, so he finds lumber, which was no easy feat,” said Edsel.
“When you go walk through the palace Residenz, in the last room that you’re in, there’s a small shrine to John Skilton,” he said.
Florence’s Bridges, Pisa’s Camposanto
In Italy, Florence’s bridges today offer a look at cultural treasures that didn’t survive the war. Except for the Ponte Vecchio – the city’s famous covered bridge – other bridges over the Arno were destroyed by the Nazis as they made their retreat out of Italy in 1944. Pictures from the war show people walking across the rubble that was once the bridges. Edsel says the now rebuilt bridges are “part of the altered legacy that we live with today.”
Monuments Man Deane Keller’s work to restore the heavily damaged Camposanto building in Pisa meant so much to him that he was buried there after his 1992 death. During the war, frescos in the ancient cemetery located near the city’s Leaning Tower were damaged from a fire during a fight for the city. Keller worked with a team to salvage and save what they could.
The former Coast Guard Station at the Presidio, with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background. Image by Will Elder, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – A day after rejecting a museum proposal by George Lucas, the stewards of national park land at the base of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge have offered the Star Wars creator a new location.
The San Francisco Chronicle reports the Presidio Trust is offering Lucas a site next to his Letterman Digital Arts Center to house his collection of Americana art and Hollywood memorabilia.
The spot is just west of the old Letterman Hospital building, which now houses Lucasfilm’s special-effects and game units as well as its corporate offices.
A spokesman for Lucas says the director will look at the new location but is also entertaining offers from other cities.
On Monday the trust’s seven-member board voted unanimously against Lucas’ plan for an 8-acre site overlooking San Francisco Bay.
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_officials_return_a_Tarbosaurus_bataar_skeleton_to_the_government_of_Mongolia_during_a_repatriation_ceremony_May_6,_2013,_at_a_Manhattan_hotel_in_New_York_lead.jpg "Tarbosaurus bataar skeleton, which was returned by the United States to the government of Mongolia last year. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.")
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