Discoveries in Art

Massey's Portrait in The National Gallery London

Lewis is on the road visiting and buying at the fall Brimfield Mass. Antique Show.  He just purchased three grotesque paintings of heads.  Each one is both curious and unique. Spurred on by his recent purchase, I decided to do a little investigation into paintings of the Grotesque on my own.  I was interested in two of the images that came up on my web search.  One was a drawing by Leonardo da Vinci, and the other a portrait by Massey of a grotesque Duchess, that is in the National Gallery in London.  They bear a resemblance to each other and although both are hard to look at they seem to be of real people.  There was no plastic surgery and people had to deal with life as it was dealt.

Leonardo da Vinci's Drawing of a Grotesque

While visiting the National Gallery, London, website I was intrigued by another more tranquil portrait of a refined somewhat modest lady.  The video played on and a discovery was revealed showing changes that had been unvieled as the painting was cleaned.  The modest lady was revealed to be somewhat of a harlot.  You need to visit the site to see this for your selves.

http://article.wn.com/view/2012/07/12/The_National_Gallery_In_London_Is_Hosting_A_Peeping_Tom_Exhi/

My dad and brother had a similar experience while cleaning a portrait of an 18th century lady.  She also was very demure, but as they cleaned the painting for a customer they found that she had three arms.  two of which lay in her lap and the third was raised and the fingers of this hand were nestled in her cleavage. What to do.  They called the client who had brought the painting in for cleaning and asked them to come into the gallery to decide which arm to keep.  The over painting had changed a famous courtesan into a proper lady.  The clients rightfully decided to go back to the original painting and had quite a conversation piece to hang in their home.  One can only imagine how many risque paintings were changed during the Victorian era.