The National Museum of Capodimonte

Some pictures from the National Museum of Capodimonte in Naples, Italy.

Kid's playing soccer in front of the Capodimonte Museum.

New Process Finds Masterworks in Florence Chapel

This article was first published by Technorati on 9 March 2010.

Exactly when the Renaissance started is still an open debate. But when it comes to the art of painting, most agree Giotto di Bondone started it around 1300 BCE.

Some of Giotto's work in its original form was lost to humanity until a restoration project underway inside Florence's Santa Croce Basilica made a startling discovery.

Using ultraviolet light, a team of researchers from the Opificio delle Pietre Dure (literally "Factory of Hard Stones"), a renowned Florentine art restoration firm, saw details of Giotto paintings in the Peruzzi Chapel, which had been severely damaged by whitewashing centuries ago.

Combining Sex Club with Art a Bad Joke?

A version of this article was originally published at Technorati.

This reminds me of the line from "Back to School" with Rodney Dangerfield. "You're wife's just been showing us her Klimt. . . . She's very proud of it." And Rodney says, "I'm proud of mine too. I don't go waving it around at parties, though."

The famed Secession Hall in Vienna plans to bring Rodney's joke to life by staging an exhibition of some of Klimt's masterpieces in conjunction with a mockup of an actual Viennese sex club called "Element 6." The exhibitionistic exhibition is the brainchild of a Swiss artist named Christoph Buechel.

Who said we would never need those SAT analogies in the real world? "Gustav Klimt's 1902 painting "Beethoven Frieze" [pictured] is to Viennese fin de siecle mores, as modern-day sex clubs are to . . .

The answer is (c), modern-day mores. Did you get that one right? Buechel's object lesson (for us C-students) appears to be that Klimt's masterpieces were as shocking in their day as sex clubs are in ours.

Every of-age patron of the museum is treated to mood lighting, low-slung couches and erotic non-masterpieces in route to the collection.

The exhibition ends April 18th.

See Van Gogh's Latest Painting

A version of this article was published by Technorati on 24 February 2010.

A small museum in a small town in The Netherlands 70 miles east of Amsterdam is home to Vincent Van Gogh's latest creation--officially recognized as such, that is.

Museum de Fundatie in the town of Zwolle began showing "Le Blute-Fin Mill" today (pictured).

The painting and its former owner will remain forever linked by a checkered past.

"Le Blute-Fin Mill" was previously owned by an art collector and curator named Dirk Hannema, who bought it in 1975 from an unsuspecting Paris art dealer for the equivalent of $2,700. Hannema later insured the painting for around $43,000.

Upon his death in 1984, the entirety of Hannema's collection became the nucleus for the Museum de Fundatie.

Hennema's claim of Van Gogh authorship went unsubstantiated for so long because of his poor reputation in the art world. His career showed great promise early on. At the age of 26, he was director of Rotterdam's famed Boijmans Museum.

In 1937, however, his reputation suffered decline when he purchased a Vermeer that was later confirmed to be a forgery.

During World War II, the Nazis saw fit to put Hennema in charge of all the museums in Holland. After the war, he was arrested as a collaborator and stood trial, but was not convicted.

Hennema was known as one who was always trying to hit a home run, always looking for that undetected gem from one of the great masters.

Some 26 years after his death, experts have finally confirmed, he connected on one ball that actually cleared the fence.

Not only is the painting original, but according to Louis van Tilborgh, curator of research at Amsterdam's Van Gogh Museum, "Le Blute-Fin Mill" is an unusual addition to the artist's opus due to the comparatively large size of the human figures in the scene.

It will remain on display through July 4th.