If it is in fact a Leonardo, skeptics say, it went unrecognized by experts at the auction house, as well as the specialized dealers who attended the sale, including the one who bought it. Christie’s said in a statement that it “cannot comment on this particular work until it has been the subject of comprehensive and conclusive academic and scientific analysis. The story of how a Swiss collector bought a pretty portrait in January 2007 and ended up with a work that might be by a Renaissance master is a “rags-to-riches story, except that the owner is not exactly in rags,” said Peter Silverman, a Canadian collector who is a friend of the owner. Silverman said, the Swiss collector showed the portrait to him, and he was the first to suspect that his friend might have made an amazing investment. Cotte carried out a series of tests on the work for nearly four weeks, he said, it did not take him long to come up with a name. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, saw the work last December and was struck by the left-handed shading — Leonardo was left-handed — as well as the physiognomy and the details.
The “Universal Couple,” a five-foot tall metal sculpture of a man and a woman in embrace, highlighted in iron and copper, is a stunning piece of work by Expedito Mwebe Kibbula. Giving a sculpture or a drawing too explicit a title takes away part of that mystery so that the onlooker moves on to the next object, making no effort to ponder the meaning of what he has just seen. The five-foot-tall metal sculpture of the two figurines representing the Universal Couple was meant to grace the Murumbi Memorial Garden together with the “The Bird of Peace Emerging from the Stone of Despair” sculpted by Prof Elkana Ongesa, which echoes a line from a Martin Luther King speech. Prof Ongesa’s sculptures adorn the entry of the United Nations Building in New York; the front of the Unesco headquarters in Paris; the Coca-Cola headquarters in Atlanta and Caltex headquarters in Houston, Texas.
The Louvre Museum was shut down on the same day as the screening to hold the press conference with Toshiaki Karasawa ( Casshern ’s Brayking Boss) and Takako Tokiwa ( Brave Story ’s Cutts) in front of the Mona Lisa . While discussing the film, Tokiwa said that director Yukihiko Tsutsumi ( Trick , Ikebukuro West Gate Park ) asked her to assume the exact same poses that her character had in the manga version. The Mona Lisa is arguably Louvre’s most well-known piece, and it has the highest inflation-adjusted, appraised price of any painting in the world. This collection of supplemental bits scattered across the length and breadth of the series is meant primarily for devoted fans of the TV series or manga. Alas, the series is unlikely to repeat that success in the United States, if only because it will get lost in a flood of competing manga. The plot development is too purely random and the artistic approach too simplistic for Cowa to be anything more than children’s fare, but it’s children’s fare with a sweet center that never grows saccharine.
The paved square — or “campo” — around the Church of Santa Maria Formosa, affectionately known as La Serenissima, the serene one, is one of dozens hidden among the tangled streets of Venice. During the debauched 18th century, the sisters wore pearls and entertained gentlemen, as depicted in “The Nuns’ Parlor at San Zaccaria” (1750), by Francesco Guardi on display at the Ca’ Rezzonico Museum on the Grand Canal. The walls of the nave and choir chapel of San Zaccaria are covered with paintings, mostly by 16th- and 17th-century masters, including Giovanni Bellini’s “Virgin and Child With Saints and Angel Musicians” (1506), taken to Paris as booty during the Napoleonic wars, but returned to Venice in 1816. Guidebooks pay scant attention to Campo San Barnaba, on the western side of the Grand Canal, because the 18th-century church of the same name is somewhat forlorn.
