Caught a great segment on Here and Now, a nationally syndicated public radio program, this morning. John Marciari, a curator at the San Diego Museum of Art, was talking about his discovery of a painting in a basement of Yale that he — and a bunch of other international art minds — believe is a previously undiscovered Diego Velázquez painting. (I linked to his reflection in the Yale alumni magazine in our arts roundup last month.)
You can listen to Marciari talk with Here and Now about his discovery (scroll about halfway down):
The first time I saw it, although no lightning bolts went off that gave me a name to associate with it I thought that despite its damage, this was a painting worth spending some time with. This was a painting that was a work of great quality and that was, in the way curators put it, attributable. This was by someone.
Several art authorities have publicly supported Marciari’s conclusion that the painting was made by Velázquez. But not all art historians have signed off on the finding. This kind of reattribution process is tricky and often takes years, he said on the program.
Want to read more? Here’s the article Marciari published in a Spanish quarterly art journal this July that announced his finding. And here are stories from the Los Angeles Times and the Union-Tribune from this summer.
You can contact me directly at kelly.bennett@voiceofsandiego.org or 619.325.0531 and follow me on Twitter: @kellyrbennett.