Doing Justice to Forgotten Connoisseurs

Doing Justice to Forgotten Connoisseurs – a List

Here we present a gallery of less known figures, who nonetheless, in our opinion, deserve to appear within our future Visual History of Connoisseurship…

New: Marcel Boudin
The best connoisseur of Picasso was, according to the book of Françoise Gilot and Carlton Lake on Picasso, Picasso’s chauffeur Marcel (Marcel Boudin): »›You see?‹, Picasso used to say, if Marcel had passed a sentence, of which he did agree. ›My own dealer is mistaken. Everyone is mistaken. Only Marcel is right all the time. At least he understands my pictures. Here is the prove: He is the only one who recognizes them. Maybe he can’t explain this with the whole eloquence of the gentlemen Kahnweiler or Zervos or Rosenberg, but at least he does recognize them, if seeing them.‹«
(p. 309; translation from the German edition is mine; picture: picassomio.com)

Anonymus 1:
a museum’s guard at Munich, who spotted a sixth finger in a child’s hand rendering by Holbein (as recalled by Adolph Bayersdorfer)

Ludwig Scheibler (1848-1921):
in his times compared with Giovanni Morelli; did research on the school of Cologne; left connoisseurship for musicology

Cosmo Monkhouse

Cosmo Monkhouse (1840-1901):
author of limericks, art books, but also of one of the most insightful reviews of Morelli (and respected by the latter)

Adolph Bayersdorfer (1842-1901):
attacked by Morelli but one of the most sensitive and interesting figures of late 19th century connoisseurship; curator, but also interested in chess problems (see the fine biography by Siegfried Käss)

Sherlock Holmes:
poses ironically as a connoisseur in The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902 as a book), pointing to facial features (but – it might be disappointing for Morelli worshippers – not using Morelli’s argument, but just the opposite – it is about portrait- and therefore about signs of family-likeness and not about the inner notions a painter has of anatomy and externalizes in painting; this was – horribile dictu – Wilhelm von Bode’s argument against Morelli)

Luigi Cavenaghi (1844-1918):
restorer and according to Berenson someone with X-rays in (i.e. probably: coming from) his eyes; worked on Leonardo’s Last Supper

Thomas Murchison:
American collector and amateur connoisseur who gets murdered in Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley Under Ground (1970) for being perceptive and truthful

(Picture: topofart.com)

(Picture: pictify.com)

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