Displaying items by tag: bust

A marble bust of the Roman goddess Diana that was looted by the Nazis has returned to Poland after 75 years.

The 18th-Century statue was taken in 1940, but its whereabouts remained unknown until it emerged in a Vienna auction house earlier this year.

The Dallas Museum of Art acquired a marble head of Herakles, the Greek hero the Romans called Hercules, at a Sotheby’s, New York auction of Egyptian, Classical, and Western Asiatic Antiquities in June. The marble head is from the late 1st century A.D. and is set upon an unrelated bust from the mid-2nd century A.D. This ensemble was composed by the 18th-century French sculptor Lambert-Sigisbert Adam (1700–59), who created sculptures for King Louis XV of France and Frederick the Great of Prussia.

The acquisition is a gift of David T. Owsley through the Alvin and Lucy Owsley Foundation, and strengthens the Museum’s collection of ancient art of the Mediterranean, of which a selection is on view in the Museum’s Level 2 Classical galleries.

When the J. Paul Getty Museum announced in June the purchase of a 17th century bust by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, it was heralded as a major acquisition -- the first sculpture attributed solely to the Italian Baroque genius in the museum's collection.

But now a criminal complaint has been filed in Slovakia in connection with the sale of the sculpture, in which the country's cultural minister claims improprieties in the piece's rather convoluted journey.

The J. Paul Getty Museum has just acquired an important early sculpture by the Baroque master Bernini: a marble bust of Pope Paul V that many art historians did not believe still existed.

Originally commissioned by Cardinal Scipione Borghese, the nephew of Pope Paul V, in 1621, the sculpture was the 23-year-old artist’s first documented portrait of a pope — a subject that would define his career.

In November 2015, Chicago’s Field Museum will debut ‘The Greeks,’ a major exhibition of Greek antiquities organized in collaboration with the National Hellenistic Museum, the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and the Canadian Museum of Civilization. Over 500 artifacts will travel to Chicago from 22 Greek museums making the show the most comprehensive exhibition about Ancient Greece to visit North America in nearly 10 years.

Works on view will include a celebrated bust of Alexander the Great, statues of Archaic-period Kouroi, and jewelry from famous tombs. ‘The Greeks’ will go on view in Ontario before traveling to Chicago and then moving to the National Geographic Museum in Washington, D.C.

The Minneapolis Museum of Arts acquired a rare Renaissance bust of St. John the Baptist yesterday, May 8, 2013. Created by the Italian sculptor Benedetto da Rovezzano (1474-1554), the terracotta bust was one of the works handpicked by Hitler to appear in his Führermuseum, which never came to fruition. The institution was expected to house a massive collection of the most important works of Western Art in the historical canon.

Rovezzano’s bust was bought from Theresia Willi Lanz by Hitler’s special representative, Hans Posse, who was in charge of traveling across Europe seizing important works from Jewish art collectors and buying them from non-Jewish collectors. After the Führermuseum was never realized, the bust was hidden along with a number of important works by Leonardo da Vinci (1542-1519), Vermeer (1632-1675), and Michelangelo (1475-1564) in a salt mine in Austria. As it became clear that the Nazis would not win World War II, Hitler’s officials called for the destruction of the mine. However, the miners from the Austrian town wished to keep their livelihood intact and worked to save the mines and the art inside by removing inactivated Nazi bombs and setting them off through controlled explosions within the tunnels of the mines, saving the salt and the art but making them inaccessible. The bust was ultimately returned to the Netherlands.

Rovezanno was one of the most prominent sculptors during the high Renaissance and his bust of St. John the Baptist is well known among Renaissance experts. Created in Florence during the time when Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael (1483-1520) were working there, the bust is the earliest Renaissance sculpture in the Minneapolis Institute’s collection. The bust of St. John the Baptist will go on view in the Minneapolis Institute of the Arts permanent galleries alongside other renowned Renaissance busts by Agostino Zoppo (circa 1520-1572) and Giovanni Battista Caccini (1556-1613).

Police in Lower Merion, Pennsylvania have made meager progress in the search for a portrait bust of Benjamin Franklin that was stolen from a home in nearby Bryn Mawr. Also missing is an autographed picture of the German-American composer Victor Herbert, mounted in a shadowbox along with one of his batons and sheet music, valued at $80,000. Though a warrant has been issued for Andrea Lawton, a 44-year-old house-cleaner who was dismissed from her job at a housekeeping service contracted by the sculpture's owners, repeated visits to Lawton's current address have proven ineffectual.