A battle painted on a wall, whose fate is mysterious and unresolved?
This great battle painting, which rightly has a room to itself in the National Maritime Museum, has some strange things about it.
Estimates range from $100 for a set of filigree fireplace tools to $40,000 for a naval battle painting that Caroline and William Astor bought as newlyweds in the 1850s.
A colour may even "mean" something; for example, the white of a white flag that a person depicted in a battle painting is holding up as a sign of surrender.
Reports on Seracini's art quest regularly cite his claim that a banner in Vasari's painting, saying "Seek and you will find", refers to the lost battle painting.
It seemed an unlikely picture that Dr. Borukhova, an internist charged with hiring a relative to kill her estranged husband after a fierce custody battle, painted as she took the witness stand — a surprise move — in her own defense.
Sotheby's eases into its second day of sales on March 23 with a private collection of Chinese ceramics from the Song dynasty; a more general sale of Chinese ceramics and works of art, including a spectacular battle painting from the Qing dynasty, "Siege of Pingyu," fills out the day, after which the house will switch its focus to Indian and Southeast Asian art.
An epic battle painting by Melchior Feselen presents legions of massing soldiers, each one a distinct and individual personality.
Certainly the presence of collaborators is obvious in two cycles: the eight scenes of the Gonzaga Cycle, with vivid scenes of battles, painted between 1579 and 1580, and the many paintings for the halls of the Scrutinio and of the Maggior Consiglio in the Doges' Palace, which the Republic wanted to adorn with new canvases after the fire of 1577.
