Pontormo, Brexit and the National Gallery

by Noti Klagka and Barbara Pezzini The sale of Jacopo Pontormo’s Portrait of a Young Man in Black (illustrated here) has been recently made popular by the British press, which described it as a potentially lost national treasure and a victim of the consequences of Brexit. Its vicissitudes have also been narrated in a Burlington …

The Burlington Magazine and the National Gallery Cleaning Controversy (1947-1963)

Between 1940 and 1965 The Burlington Magazine published in its pages one of the most complex and long lasting controversies in its history. The controversy regarded the conservation of oil paintings, and especially the different methodologies, practical and theoretical, on how to approach the cleaning of pictures. The characters involved were of the highest calibre: …

Pan-Giorgionism: Herbert Frederick Cook (1868-1939) as art writer.

Even in a period of fluid professional boundaries and fast moving social change the life and work of Herbert Cook appear enormously productive, if somehow difficult to narrate in a linear manner. Cook is first and foremost, as Andrea Geddes Poole demonstrated, an excellent example of upward mobility in Britain in the early 20th century: …

At the periphery of art history: A. C. Sewter (1912-1983), editor of the Burlington Magazine in 1939 and 1940 [part two]

A. C. Sewter’s geographical location as a scholar in regional museums and universities outside the London art world is not the only reason why his reputation has failed to endure: the subject matter of his studies also contributed to place him at the periphery of art history. Sewter published in the Burlington some fifty pieces, …

The Resourceful Mr Holmes? The Life and Art of Charles Holmes (1868-1936)

Co-editor of the Burlington from January 1904 to September 1909, Charles Holmes was integral to the early success of the magazine. As Roger Fry admitted in 1911: ‘without the unusual combination of artistic sensitivity and business method which [Holmes] possesses it could not have met successfully the difficulties of the early years’.[1] The Burlington was, …