Displaying items by tag: french painter

A UK government export bar has been placed on a recently rediscovered and gloriously light-filled harbor scene by the 17th-century French painter Claude Lorrain. The painting, considered one of the finest examples of Claude’s seaport scenes, will leave the UK unless £5,066,500 can be raised following its purchase by an overseas buyer.

The export bar was ordered by the culture minister, Ed Vaizey, on the recommendation of the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest (RCEWA), which decides on whether art should be considered of national importance and worth trying to keep in the UK.

Mars and Venus was well-known to Nicolas Poussin scholars. But for more than a century, the oil on canvas was considered either a fake or a poor attempt by the French painter’s studio to imitate the style of the classicist master. It barely left the Louvre’s stock room.

Now new research led by Pierre Rosenberg, the director of the Louvre from 1994 to 2001, proves that Mars and Venus is indeed the real thing­–a discovery which makes it the 40^th Poussin in the institution’s collection. The Figaro reports that under the piece’s darkened varnish, the conservation team in charge of a recent analysis discovered that the top of the canvas had been cut off, and the removed strips used to enlarge the piece horizontally.