![]() ![]() ![]() The right-hand section showing Atalanta and Meleager was thought to have been painted in 1620, and the left, with additional figures and horseman, in about 1640. According to many art historians, the finished picture for which we believed the painting in the Swansea Museum was a study, a large depiction of Meleager and Atalanta in the Prado Museum in Madrid, was painted in two stages, some 20 years apart. Happily, Simon was able to safely remove the overpaint, revealing a painting made in Jordaens’ characteristic technique, with numerous ‘pentimenti’, or alterations, showing how the artist evolved his creative ideas.Ī far harder challenge came in the form of received wisdom on Jordaens’ working technique. The original light blue, overcast sky had been turned into the sort of sky you’d find in a Club Med brochure the horses’ manes had been trimmed in garish pink and Atalanta’s white dress had been made red. #Possible lost masterpiece found series#After initial analysis with our series restorer, Simon Gillespie, we could see that the Swansea painting had been overpainted largely for cosmetic reasons. In most cases, overpaint, even if badly applied, is there to cover up damage to the original painting.īut we were lucky. But it was far from clear when we first examined the painting that this would be possible. This ‘restoration’ – some of the worse I have ever seen – obscured large swathes of original paint, and in order to prove the attribution to Jordaens we would have to remove it. The painting had been comprehensively over-painted by a previous restorer, probably in the 1960s or 1970s. Jacob Jordaens (1593–1678) Swansea Museumįinding the picture was, in this case, only the beginning of the story. Meleager Presenting the Boar's Head to Atalanta The subject is the Greek classical myth of Meleager and Atalanta, which Jordaens explored a number of times throughout his career. It was catalogued as a work by an unknown artist, but has now been proved to be a rare and highly important preparatory study by Jacob Jordaens. The first programme in the series examines a painting that we discovered in Swansea Museum, via Art UK. And fortunately, hundreds of hours searching through Art UK have thrown up some intriguing mysteries. When the BBC commissioned Jacky Klein and I to make a new series, 'Britain’s Lost Masterpieces', we knew that in the Art UK website we had the perfect tool with which to begin our voyage of discovery. But statistically this suggests there must be scores of lost masterpieces waiting to be found. The fact that over 80% of Britain’s public collection is in storage at any one time never ceases to amaze me. Ever since Art UK began photographing every publicly owned oil painting in Britain, I’ve been keeping a careful eye out for potential discoveries lurking in the forgotten corners of our national collection. ![]()
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