Word: ginevra
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...work of art. The expensive transaction eclipsed both the previous public-auction record, $2.3 million in 1961 for Rembrandt's Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer, and the record for a private sale, an estimated $5,000,000 that was paid in 1967 for Leonardo's Ginevra dei Bend, by Washington's National Gallery of Art. The buyer of the Velásquez, Alec Wildenstein, 30, vice president of the New York firm of Wildenstein, firmly denied that he was acting on behalf of any art collector. Said he: "To buy this painting at that price...
That sounded like excitable rhetoric, but in fact Brown's words were hedged. "Impact" has never been a criterion of quality in art and if scale was one, all billboards might be masterpieces. The fact that the Cezanne, next to Leonardo da Vinci's Ginevra de' Bend (which cost about $5,000,000) is the costliest new picture in Washington does not mean it can be "put up against" Bellini's Feast of the Gods, Raphael's Alba Madonna, or even the museum's other and better Cezannes. Its interest is mainly historical. Cezannes...