Word: francia
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Felice Orsini went to the guillotine in March 1858. crying "Viva l'Italia! Viva la Francia!" To show his love of Italy, Louis Napoleon would have liked to pardon him; instead, thirteen months later, he led an army of 200,000 over the Alps and defeated the Austrians at Solferino and Magenta. It was the beginning of the end of foreign rule in Italy. The new Kingdom of Italy, established seven years later, would have to decide whether Felice Orsini was a hero or an inept killer, or both. As to his bomb-throwing predilections, he might have answered...
...hands. Last week Sir Philip Hendy, director of London's august National Gallery, woke up to find that for him the dream had come true. A London art dealer had proved that the National Gallery's Virgin with Angel and Child by the 15th century Italian, Francesco Francia, was a fake...
...Dealer Leonard F. Koester, the matter of the false Virgin had been a 6,000-guinea ($18,000) question, the price he paid a year ago for a similar Francia. Koester lined up his own art experts, including one who noted: "Your picture shows the fine crisp craquelure [cracks in the varnish] characteristic of many Renaissance paintings," and "the anatomy, e.g., of the Virgin's eye socket ... is better understood and more determinedly modeled." When the British press turned the dispute into a guessing game, the National Gallery decided it was time to put its Francia through a threefold...
...results were conclusive. The X rays showed that the paint in the National Gallery's Francia did not have the heavy amounts of lead carbonate usual in most Renaissance paintings. Infra-red exposure for half a minute revealed black pencil lines under the paint (unknown in Francia's works). More important the pencil sketch was not in Francia's style. Under the microscope the painting's craquelure, instead of conforming to the regular pattern, spidered over the painting...