Can you help discover who painted the Linder Gallery?

Much evidence has been uncovered about the origins of the Linder Gallery over the past fifteen years. We now know with reasonable certainty that the painting was commissioned by German merchant Peter Linder and that it involved significant intellectual input from Urbino mathematician Mutio Oddi. It appears to have been painted between 1622 and 1629; and it seems that intellectual exchanges between artists in Antwerp and scientists and intellectuals in Milan played a key role in its creation. Linder resided in Milan during this period and it is likely that he previously traveled to Antwerp where his likeness appears (along with those of Peter Paul Rubens and, possibly, Anthony van Dyck) in the study drawing for the painting. We know where the painting was in the mid-17^th Century and from the mid-19^th Century to the present. However, we are still far from certain of the identity of the artist (or artists) responsible.

A 10,000 euro prize, the Linder Gallery Prize (the “Award”), has been established for the discovery of documentary evidence which leads to the certain attribution of the painter of the Linder Gallery.

The jury which will decide the winner or shared winners of the Award will be composed of Ronald H. Cordover (private collector, New York, New York), Michael John Gorman (Director, Science Gallery, Dublin, Ireland), and Alexander Marr (University Lecturer in the History of Art, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, England). Its decision on granting all or part of the Award shall be considered final and not subject to dispute, and by participating each person or persons submitting information shall confirm this element of the Award process.

The prize has been created to further appreciate the commerce in ideas during the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century and the roles played by artists and scientists in the wider dispersal of these ideas; to better understand the mechanisms for the exchange of information between Antwerp and Milan at the beginning of the 17^th Century; and to discover additional provenance for the Linder Gallery Interior from c.1640 in the Linder family to c.1850 when it appears in the collection of Baron Anselm von Rothschild. We believe that research leading to the certain attribution of the Linder Gallery painting will aid in better understanding these matters.

As those of you who are familiar with this site know, clear evidence suggests that the Linder Gallery Interior painting was commenced after 1622 and completed between 1627 and 1629. The latter date is determined by a 1629 letter written to Mutio Oddi in which the author describes seeing the painting in the home of Peter Linder in Milan. A partial translation of the letter is available on the website. The earlier date is suggested by the beginning of the relationship between the conceptual father of the painting’s allegory, Mutio Oddi, and Linder its patron. In addition, from the study drawing for the painting in which Linder seems to appear with Peter Paul Rubens and his apprentice Anthony van Dyck, there is a reasonable likelihood that Linder traveled to Antwerp around 1618.

Eligibility: The Award shall be open to all, but shall exclude the jurors or their family members.

Term of the Award: The Award will remain open for submissions until year end 2013. However, if a winner is not selected by that time, depending on the progress of submissions, the jury may decide to extend the deadline.

Selection: The prize will be awarded to the first person (according to the timestamp on the web submission) to submit evidence establishing reasonably certain attribution, as determined by the jury in its sole and final judgment

Confidentiality: All submissions will be treated confidentially unless specifically permitted to be released by their author or authors.

Background information/publications: For background information and relevant publications to assist in your research see: Resources

Making your submission: Please forward your submission including relevant documentary references, or any queries, by clicking on the Contact menu at the top of the home page.

We will publish relevant information in a timely manner on this website.

Ronald H. Cordover

July 5, 2012

Who are the  three conversing figures shown in the Windsor Drawing, almost certainly a preparatory drawing for the Linder Gallery? The excerpt below from  A Mysterious Masterpiece: The World of the Linder Gallery proposes a hypothesis: Read more…

WESCHLER: Taking it one step further, I would also argue that this is the moment when art starts being art as opposed to being science. For all of your claims that the old man and the woman should be read principally iconographically — that they represent this or they represent that and so forth — there are times when a cigar is only a cigar, and there is something quite moving about that girl asleep on the lap of that old man—something crying out to be seen not just as a symbol, but as a relationship between two human beings. Thirty years from here you’ll be getting Vermeer with his insistence on the substantive presence of the sitter as a person and not as a genre and not as a symbol, not as a puzzle — not as anything other than a person.
And I think that’s already beginning to happen in a time like this. Read more…

Disegno from the Linder Gallery

It is by no means clear whether the figure of Disegno in the Linder gallery is intended to be generic or a specific portrait.  Michael John has suggested Kepler as a possible candidate – which is certainly plausible, although I have yet to be convinced of the similarity between known portraits of Kepler and the features of the Linder gallery figure, and (frustratingly) there is no evidence that either Oddi or Linder was especially interested in Kepler and his works. An alternative possibility is that the figure of Disegno is in fact modelled on Mutio Oddi’s first tutor in the visual arts, the famous painter Federico Barocci of Urbino.  Barocci’s features, as depicted in his self-portrait of ca. 1600 are close to those of Disegno in the Linder gallery, if we imagine Barocci 20-30 years older (for the gallery was painted in the late 1620s).  Barocci would have been an ideal model for Disegno – he was internationally renowned as a master of design and  was the brother of the celebrated mathematical instrument maker, Simone Barocci, whose works Oddi distributed in Milan to patrons and friends – including Linder.  In fact, as Ian Verstegen has shown in a recent article, Federico used his brother’s instruments (notably the reduction compass) in making his drawings and paintings.  Thus, Barocci could be thought of as a figure for whom mathematics underpinned drawing, and the arts in general.  Oddi – who was exiled from Urbino – was always eager to promote his homeland (indeed, he circulated Barocci drawings in Milan).  What better way of doing this than by incorporating one of its greatest (but recently deceased) artists into the painting he helped to devise?  Just a thought…

Federico Barocci, Self-portrait (ca. 1600)

Tamara Schlesinger’s photographs of the conversation about the Linder Gallery, 12 December 2008, New York.