Eternity Gallery, who don't seem to have a website, are selling through Invaluable a presumed portrait of Girolamo dai Libri, Italian painter from the first half of the 16th century. Great, but the painting is not really good to put it mildly, and the sitter interesting but not a major figure; so why the estimation of $100,000 to $200,000? Even stranger, why estimate it so high and then put it on Ebay as well with a $80,000 "buy-it-now"? If you don't believe in your own estimate, why should we? This one should be estimated at a few thousand dollars, nothing more.
I also find it hard to believe that the experts who viewed the picture (or at least photos of it) didn't know what the "...tribu Veronese" could mean. "Attribu" seems to be quite logical (attributed, attribué, attribuito, ...) Not that the painting has come close to Veronese in any part of its life.
I'll not start on their portrait of Leopold I of Belgium, 1815, which has a Belgian flag on it (in 1815? strange...) and the name of a different sitter. It's a strange one, but they radically choose the most optimistic option and estimation for it. Not really very convincing... Much more likely that someone took a painting of the named English sitter, and tried to make it look like Leopold I (who looks similar) to make it more interesting or saleable.
No comments:
Post a Comment