Personalities

Albrecht Dürer was born in Nuremburg in 1471, the third child of a goldsmith who had trained in the Netherlands with the “great masters.”  As a young man, Dürer was trained in his father’s shop.  It is essential to understand the importance of the skill that he acquired at a young age with the goldsmith’s tools, for it was in the workshops of craftsmen who incised decorations on objects of precious metal that some of the most interesting early engravings were produced.  Thus, the foundation of his achievements as an engraver must be credited to his father.

Hogarth, part of Random House publishers, has announced an ambitious international project to mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death.Hogarth, the Random House transatlantic fiction imprint, has today announced an international project that aims to bring Shakespeare to a wider contemporary audience. The project, titled The Hogarth Shakespeare, will ask bestselling novelists throughout the world to retell his work in a more accessible prose form.

One of the owners of a lost painting by Leonardo da Vinci has confirmed its discovery and authentication

A painting by Leonardo da Vinci that was lost for centuries has been authenticated by distinguished scholars in the United States and Europe and will be exhibited at London’s National Gallery as part of a Leonardo show that opens November 9, ARTnewshas learned.

Full-scale bronze replicas of Michelangelo’s The Night, The Day, Dusk and Dawn, all produced in the bronze foundry Fonderia d’Arte Massimo Del Chiaro in Pietrasanta are the centerpiece of “Michelangelo in Cina” a major exhibition of the Renaissance master’s works. – Six sets of the four statues by “one of the greatest artist of all time” … 24 in all, will travel the four corners of the Land of the Dragon. Sponsored by the Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Shanghai and the Heng Yuan Xiang Museum, the bronze sculptures are based on some rare Renaissance plaster models which were lent for this project by Fondazione Accademia di Belle Arti “Pietro Vannucci” of Perugia.

The bronzes are replicas of sculptures in the Sagrestia Nuova of the Basilica of San Lorenzo, where they crown the sarcofagi of the Dead Medicis Giuliano and Lorenzo (Duke of Urbino).

“Prometheus” (Prométhée), a head cast in bronze by Constantin Brancusi in 1911, sold yesterday evening for 12,682,000 USD New York, in an auction of impressionist and modern art organized by Sotheby’s, Mediafax reports. Brancusi’s sculpture, a 17.7 cm leaning head to one side cast in four similar bronzes in 1911, comes from an “important private collection in Europe”, according to the Sotheby’s catalogue. The auction started out at USD 4.75 M and within minutes jumped in excess of USD 10 M to reach the final sale price of 11.25 M, way over organizers’ original estimate of USD 6 to 8 M. The New York auction also set an all-time high sales record, with Munch’s “The Scream” fetching USD 119.9 M. Brancusi’s less-valued “The Distaff” (Quenouille 1923), a wood sculpture – went on the auction.

The famous artist Vincent Van Gogh did not kill himself, according to the authors of his new biography. Rather, Van Gogh was shot dead two young men with whom he loved to drink Dutch postimpressionist, BBC reported. Contrary to popular myth, long ago the suicide of the artist, his biographers say that teens accidentally shot Van Gogh as he wrote in the study. One of the young people have been faulty gun, with which friends often played cowboys.