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MICROSTORY OF ART ONLINE JOURNAL FOR ART, CONNOISSEURSHIP AND CULTURAL JOURNALISM A Salvator Mundi Chronicle

(8.12.2022) The Art Newspaper has published a Salvator Mundi timeline, which seems to be a work in progress (since also an Italian version has appeared which was updated). Here are some comments on that timeline which is presented as charting »(almost) every major development on the painting in the past 120 years«.

1) It is striking that The Art Newspaper simply ignores everything a rival website has contributed to that case, not my website (which, of course, is also being ignored), but Artwatch.org.uk. Which contributed – as many scholars, including myself, would concede, much to that story (especially as to enlightening the restoration process of the painting in question). Since also substantial contributions by Jacques Franck have appeared on that website, I consider this omission as an obvious flaw, probably due to self-serving interests. I am ready to concede that a tone of aggressive bitterness is characteristic to some of the contributions by the website’s director, Michael Daley, but I am ready to consider this a matter of style (no matter if some bitterness is justified or not), as long as there is also important substance in content that any serious scholar would have to respect and to take seriously.

2) It is a relatively new phenomenon that scholars propose their hypotheses via the media, without having discussed them in scholarly circles before. Scholars as myself do not particularly like to face colleagues, speaking to them via the media, since a) usually detailed informations, necessary to assess the substance of claims or the meaningfulness of hypotheses, are lacking; and b) since it is not that easy to react on that level of media communication. Certainly, the times have changed, scholarship has become faster, it does no longer suffice – as in earlier times – to make a move every 17 years, and it is positive that scholarship is no longer made difficult by incompetent gatekeepers, by peer-reviewers for example, who might sabotage what a competent scholar might have to contribute. But it is still rather bad style to confront a scientific community with the fact, that someone is able to use a ›it’s me who is important megaphone‹ for his or her solo show, as an instrument which usually does not function for other capable scholars as well, but rather, and again, as an instrument of self-serving interests, interests that might have something to do with the domestic politics of scholarship.
Matthew Landrus signs as one of the authors of the timeline, so one has to raise some other questions, since at least myself, I am considering his hypotheses as to the authorship or contributions of Luini as virtually falsified (due to the discovery of a drawing that, beyond reasonable doubt, links the painting in question with the workshop of Leonardo or Melzi (I am considering this, as many of my contributions, a major development, and certainly as more important as many as the trivial facts we are being presented with); and since Landrus now dates the painting even after 1519, the date of Leonardo’s death (as The Art Newspaper has recently reported), one does wonder how this might be compatible with earlier claims that Leonardo contributed at least some percentage to the painting himself as an author. We have not been presented with a convincing narrative so far, but with hypotheses that do not show an awareness of the timeless and long-known problems of attribution. We do not see a discussion of alternative hypotheses (or with the claims of other scholars), or an explanation why long-known problems (such as intermediary versions, misinterpretations of likenesses as causal relations on so on). And in fact there is no historical information at all as to Luini, having directly cooperated with Leonardo ever. And still we are told that, during the past 120 years, it was a major development that Matthew Landrus, one of the authors of the timeline, challenged the painting’s attribution in the Guardian and The Art Newspaper.

3) Since none of my contributions to the case do appear in the timeline, I am simply stating here that in 2021 I have contributed a freely available book called A New Salvator Mundi History to that case, which offers a solution to the case in 32 chapters, and focusses not only on one notorious Salvator Mundi version, but on all of them, and takes everything we know so far into consideration. I am considering the narrative represented by Martin Kemp as virtually falsified, and I am considering the main argument for Leonardo’s authorship – the pentimento argument – as falsified not once, but actually twice. I am not willing to take serious anymore any scholarship or journalism that does further ignore my finds, my reasonings, or my competence as a scholar, since scholarship is about reasonings that build a narrative (as I have shown), and not a ›big-fish-authority eats all small-fishes‹ matter. The future will show that my narrative will stand, while the claims of most other scholars are not even based on actual reasonings, nor do they present a narrative (although a problem of attribution is a historical problem, a problem that has to be faced with historical awareness). Which is a further flaw of the timeline, since scholarship does start with having opinions perhaps, this is called to propose hypotheses, but serious scholarship has to present more than that. And after having done that, one might step back behind one’s work to have other scholars assess it. All simple principles of scholarship that all have been neglected or even forgotten in the context of the Salvator Mundi controversy.

4) Hypotheses that have a half-life period of a few days I am not considering as major developments in the case. The hypothesis proposed by Martin Clayton, and published by The Art Newspaper, was at best a re-discovery, and was obsolete within days. A new version has come up again, about which the paper made a fuss about again (obviously forgetting about what was reported a few days or weeks before, but asking if there was something like a Salvator Mundi ›cult‹). One does wonder, if such developments will figure in that timeline in the future, just as ›discoveries‹ based on artificial intelligence tools (which would not figure in such timeline, if The Art Newspaper would understand the fundamental problems of AI tools, which do not avoid bias, but reproduce the bias of those people curating the learning process of such tools). And if AI are not even able to distinguish between restoration, original work or follower’s work – what is the use of such tools, which not even are presented by its authors as being reliable?

5) In 1964 the German art historian Ludwig Heydenreich published a basic, but little read or understood reference text. And there would be much more to know and to say about Heydenreich, his activity as an author of expertises, as well as of such work done by other Leonardo scholars such as Carlo Pedretti. But nothing of that we find in that timeline. Only a reference to Heydenreich’s article that quotes him for something that seems to be in accordance with the interests of the authors of the timeline. Why not quoting Heydenreich for ignoring any political iconography, for example? It would be as relevant. But just like in any Salvator Mundi article on Wikipedia, we find the same undifferenciated mix of relevant and irrelevant informations, due to a fundamental lack of discernment. Some of it might be useful, on the whole it is not.

The Art Newspaper, in 2022, is confusing noise with relevance, and academic standing with substance.

[addition (16.3.2023): speaking of artwatch.org.uk it has to be mentioned that it was Dr. Martin Pracher who observed that the picture’s appearance (draperies) changed after it had been presented to the world in 2011]

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