Although the title La Gioconda appears on the Salai inventory and was later used at Fontainebleau, the case for accepting Vasari's claim that the painting is a portrait of Mona Lisa del Giocondo is not as strong as recent studies suggest. Critics who used the title before 1642 did not think that it referred to the surname of the sitter. A review of the evidence casts doubts on Vasari's credibility, but illuminates the unusual purpose of Leonardo's painting.
This article presents a catalogue of 144 paintings by Alberto Carlieri (1672 - c.1720), a painter of architectural caprices whose paintings have frequently been misidentified as early works by Giovanni Paolo Panini (1691-1765). Carlieri emerged from the workshop of Andrea Pozzo in the 1590s, and was apparently active in Rome until about 1720. Carlieri's sources in Pozzo are explored, and the architectural forms and compositions that form the primary subject of his pictures are subjected to a systematic 'transformational analysis' (to borrow a term from Hubert Damisch).
Jackson Pollock painted his She-Wolf in 1943 on the eve of his first major exhibition in Peggy Guggenheim's Art of This Century gallery. Coming at a critical moment in his career, both in terms of his own stylistic development and in terms of his recognition, the painting was purchased very soon thereafter by the Museum of Modern Art. But, despite its familiarity, it has continued to elude satisfactory explanation of his meaning. This article serves as a further step to understanding the painting's content and Pollock's working process by revealing new figures within the picture, by associating drawings from the same time period with the painting, and by suggesting new sources for its imagery.
Giovanni Bastianini is best known for works that have been considered forgeries, skillful evocations as they are of Renaissance busts and reliefs. Yet the earliest notices regarding the sculptor are completely lacking in any allegation or even hint of fraud on the sculptor's part. Several decades later the word "forgery" is first attached to his name. This paper will examine the early sources and documentary information regarding a series of sculptures known to be by Bastianini, and to evaluate the more recent and almost uniformly accusatory scholarly allegations. It will become evident that the latter are based on spurious assertions, speculation, and misinterpretations of the sources. For, once it was suggested that he was a forger, the notion gathered momentum and, as in a game of "telephone", all sight was lost of the earliest evidence.
Jean Pillement (1728-1808) after an extended stay in England during which he proved his creative talents as a young man in a variety of media, accepted in 1763 the invitation of the Austrian Court of Maria Theresa and Francis I to come to Vienna and work on a number of projects. In the short period of two years, he produced there a prodigious quantity of works including monochrome blue pastel decorative landscapes and seascapes for the Blue Palace of Laxenburg, chinoiserie frescoes for the Palace of Niederweiden, theatrical costumes, landscape drawings and important oils, altogether a typical Pillement mixture full of exuberance, charm, colour and originality.