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April 26, 2005
Oh, my - tales of storage room finds!
Here's a story about a painting at the Cathedral in Seattle. So, 50 years ago someone found a painting packed away in a storage room in the Cathedral and set it up in a chapel. It's not clear from the article they knew exactly what it was until they sent it for conservation and learned that it's a 15th century Italian painting by Neri di Bicci. So after conservation it was paraded through the streets of Seattle from the Museum to the Cathedral.
Here's a Flickr stream of the actual reinstallation process, procession and all! The giant puppet is St. James, my patron saint and the patron of the cathedral, wearing his cockleshell. You can watch it as a slideshow! Coolness!
But since I have no idea how long this Flickr stream will stay up and since there's no picture with the story, here's a link to another work by Neri de Bicci. I don't understand why so few stories on webversions of newspapers aren't illustrated!
Lessons: Never throw away old art in churches without consulting experts. Sometimes that ugly, dark painting on the stairwell is a Caravaggio. More often it's not, but it never hurts to ask.
from my friend at Mirabilis.ca
Posted by CrankyProfessor at April 26, 2005 8:00 AM