(1467 - 1516)
Milan, Lombardia
While discussing the restoration and reattribution of Leonardo’s Salvator Mundi with
a distinguished art restorer (married to an equally admired painter and
critic,) I was asked by her friend, a well known film maker (married to
an even better known director and screenwriter,) who (or what)
Boltraffio was. I was able to tell her that he was Leonardo da Vinci’s
student, arguably his finest, and a toiler in his studio, to whom works
that were sometimes attributed to Leonardo were more often than not
assigned to him. Such was the fate of the Salvator Mundi before
its recent cleaning and restoration, after which it was definitively
placed among the canonical works of the Master. One can not say with
complete certainty that all of the paintings above were done by
Boltraffio, but they are most likely all his, though many of them suffer
from the poor restoration practices of earlier generations of
preservationists, repainted and varnished so that they may look like the
products of various hands; but these are all displayed with his name
beneath or to the side, and with good reason. As should be clear, he
was capable of some truly great work that doesn’t owe too much to his
most distinguished teacher.
Sunday, February 5, 2017
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