Jesus Christ Jesus Christ. - Leonardos holy child : the discovery of a Leonardo da Vinci masterpiece : a connoisseurs search for lost art in America : a memoir of discovery

LEONARDOS
HOLY CHILD

The Discovery of a Leonardo da Vinci Masterpiece: A Connoisseurs Search for Lost Art in America

A MEMOIR OF DISCOVERY BY

FRED R. KLINE

In memory

Jann Arbogust Kline (19452011)

Long lost

Long found

Love by my side

Connoisseurship, in the technical sense of identifying the authors of works of art, is not exactly a science, in the sense of being a rational system of inference from verifiable data, nor is it exactly an art. It stands somewhere between the two and it calls for a particular combination of qualities of mind, some more scientific than artistic, and others more artistic than scientific: [1] a visual memory for compositions and details of compositions, [2] exhaustive knowledge of the school or period in question, [3] an awareness of all the possible answers, [4] a sense of artistic quality, [5] a capacity for assessing evidence, and [6] a power of empathy with the creative processes of each individual artist and a positive conception of him as an individual artistic personality.

[Appended by Brigstocke and Osborne] Connoisseurs have no quarrel with those who prefer to study art in terms of social context, iconography, or the history of taste. However, their respect for the artist and the identification of his work is fundamental to the discipline of art history and to the informed appreciation of works of art.

John Gere (19211995), British art historian, curator, connoisseur of Old Master drawings: as quoted in the essay Connoisseur, Connoisseurship by Hugh Brigstocke, with Harold Osborne/ The Oxford Companion to Western Art , Hugh Brigstocke, Editor (2001)

I believe in intuition and inspiration. Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research.

Albert Einstein (18791955, German-American theoretical physicist and philosopher)

Where observation is concerned, chance favors only the prepared mind.

Louis Pasteur (18221895, French chemist and microbiologist)

I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

Sir Isaac Newton (16421727, English physicist), Memoirs of Newton

For me, a picture is neither an end nor an achievement but rather a lucky chance, an art experience. I try to represent what I have found, not what I am seeking. I do not seek... I find.

Pablo Picasso (18811973, Spanish artist)

Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought... a discovery is said to be an accident meeting a prepared mind.

Albert von Szent-Gyorgyi (Hungarian-American scientist, 18931986)

Three classes: Those who see, Those who see when shown, Those who do not see.

Leonardo da Vinci (Florentine artist, scientist, and thinker, 14521519)

Leonardo da Vinci, Holy Child . Copyright 2016, Kline Art Research Library

T he child appeared, not like the drawing it was, but like a living thing, the head of a baby so delicately rendered as if blown onto the paper by the wind, or by an artist with magical powers.

The child looked spellbound by something outside of the picture. And there I was, spellbound, looking at him for the first time.

The drawing as presented in black and white in Christies East catalogue, attributed to Annibale Carracci, The head of a child looking down: Red chalk on paper, 5 x 4 inches

By chance, since I was not a subscriber, the Christies East auction catalogue had come in the mail to my gallery in Santa Fe. A small black-and-white image in the catalogue (in reality it was drawn in red chalk) had spoken instantly of genius and beauty.

Recognition came like a shock, as nothing less than an epiphany, a bolt from the blue. Leonardo da Vinci! Could it possibly be?

As it was attributed to Annibale Carracci (15601609), one of the great Italian Old Masters, the specialist at Christies had apparently agreed and confirmed the age of the drawing, and even its quality, and given it Old Master status. The cataloguer had also confirmed the Carracci idea, which was vaguely suggested by the boldly written antique inscription on the drawing which I could not see clearly in the catalogue at first glance. But Christies was wrong about the artist. I knew Carraccis drawings, and owned a beautiful one myself. I quickly rejected the idea of his authorship. It was an old attribution, always a problematical clue that warranted a second guess, written in by a collector to establish his opinion or by a long-gone dealer to facilitate a sale.

I recalled images from many past studies of Leonardos complete works and remembered a child standing out in several large photographs of paintings in a book I had recently bought about Leonardos early years. It was uncanny. I found the book in my library and looked for the blown-up images of the paintings representing Infant Jesus. Then I made a quick comparative study with the catalogue image. I was right. The drawing seemed to have a clear relationship to Leonardos two earliest paintings of the Madonna and Child from the 1470s, specifically to the head of Infant Jesus. None of Leonardos other drawings were suggesting themselves the way that drawing in the catalogue did. I put the book away and resisted looking at the paintings again. I had to settle down.

From what I could see in the small catalogue photograph, this drawing had a very high quality, particularly in the unusual sensitivity of the face. I wanted to call Christies for more information, to supply a larger color image or at least offer a word about its history and condition. I could see it was in amazingly good condition, but you never know about old repairs and added makeovers. But I decided not to alert Christies to my interest. I felt the best strategy was to run with what I had been given.

I have been studying, buying and selling, and enjoying as a collector Old Master drawings for over thirty years. Even as a black-and-white reproduction, just the direct intuitive feel of this drawing suggested that it could be from the Italian Renaissance, and even more directly suggested the Florentine style of portraiture of the 14501550 period. I could count on its not being a print placed by mistake in a drawings sale or a copy of a famous drawing, which I would have remembered. No other artist but Leonardo was talking to me. I stretched my visual memory and raced through my books into the 15th, 16th, 17th centuries, and no other artists style came readily to mind or asserted itself in other drawings the more I looked at his tiny face. I really needed to settle down! A drawing by Leonardo da Vinci was the holy grail of lost art by any reckoningthe wildest dream! Leonardos drawings just dont turn up, and even a scrap with sketched ideas would bring millions of dollars at auction. An unknown lost drawing floating around at a major auction house in New York City, a beautiful drawing of the highest quality which I actually thought could be Leonardo da Vinci had to be a daydream, my imagination riding a runaway horse.