First Prehistoric Monument Found

A team of French archaeologists have discovered a prehistoric site in the commune of Marliens, just 12 miles southeast of Dijon—the first of its kind to be found in France.

Researchers from the National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research (Inrap) excavated a 15-acre site with the remnants of numerous enclosures, all scattered with relics dating to disparate eras, from prehistory through the early Iron Age (1200–500 B.C.E.) “This type of monument seems unprecedented and currently no comparison has been possible,” Inrap said in a statement.

Excavations concluded in February. The most visually compelling subject the team is examining is a potentially prehistoric network of interlocking enclosures. The circular one in the center measures over 36 feet in diameter. It has a horseshoe-shaped enclosure jutting off over 26 feet to the north, as well as an open-ended southern appendage.       READ MORE...

Faberge Eggs

During the Easter celebrations of 1887, Russian emperor Alexander III presented his wife Marie Feodorovna with a jewel-covered Easter egg containing a ruby pendant. 

The egg, designed by the renowned jeweler Peter Carl Fabergé, was such a success with the imperial family that Fabergé went on to produce dozens more. By the turn of the century, his creation had become a symbol of Russian autocracy itself.

That same period also saw various revolutionary groups struggling to overthrow that autocracy. When one of these groups, Vladimir Lenin’s Bolsheviks, took over the country in 1917, most of the Romanovs’ gold, jewels, and other treasure was confiscated and placed inside the Kremlin Armory. 

Although Lenin had authorized the doing away of the czar and his family, his appreciation for fine art prevented him from pawning or destroying their inheritance.   READ MORE...

Artist Dale Chihuly’s Stunning Seattle Studio

You may think you know all there is to know about Dale Chihuly, master of glass, whose delicate handblown creations take the medium to the realm of fine art.

But stepping inside the Boathouse, the former Seattle boatbuilding workshop on Lake Union that has served as the headquarters of his artistic production since 1989, reveals a museum-like space that celebrates not only Chihuly’s curvaceous, colorful glass forms, but the artist’s many decades of collecting both art and antiques. 

And while you can’t visit, you can get a taste of the space in a new book, The Boathouse: The Artist’s Studio of Dale Chihuly, from the University of Washington Press.  From the street, the Boathouse is a nondescript 25,000-square-foot box with gray corrugated metal siding. 

Inside, Chihuly has filled every nook and cranny of the space with a cornucopia of visual delights, from an 85-foot-long banquet table made from a single slab of a 500-year-old Douglas fir set beneath his signature Murano-inspired glass chandeliers to the floor-to-ceiling shelving in the downstairs bathrooms that display the covers of vintage children’s books like The Hardy Boys.

Something of a collector of collections, Chihuly has—in one room alone—antique cast-iron dog doorstops, Edward S. Curtis photogravure portraits of Native American women, some 300 Pendleton blankets, and floor-to-ceiling shelves filled with Native American baskets, as well as glass forms by the artist that they’ve inspired. 

And that’s just a few of the untold treasures that await around every corner.     READ MORE...

Mayan Deity Statue

Archaeologists excavating construction sites along the new Maya Train route in Mexico have found a rare statue of the Mayan god K’awiil. The work is part of a recovery mission ahead of the railroad’s construction to ensure that the area’s ancient artifacts and monuments are not accidentally damaged.

The stone idol is dedicated to the Maya god of power, abundance, and prosperity, and is typically identified by his large eyes, upturned snout and a stone celt sticking out of his forehead.

Though this particular pre-Hispanic deity has more often been seen represented in paintings, relief sculpture, and the Dresden and Maya codices of Mexico, in this case his rare three-dimensional image was found on top of an urn.

“This finding is very important because there are few sculptural representations of the god K’awiil so far. We only know three in Tikal, Guatemala, and this is one of the first to appear in Mexican territory,” said Diego Prieto Hernández, general director of Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History.

The discovery was made in section 7 of the Maya Train, an intercity railroad that loops around the Yucatán Peninsula and is expected to be completed next year. It has not been without its critics who say it is disruptive to the local environment, culture, and communities.

Other finds that have been made on the archaeologists’ previous rescue missions in sections 1-5 of the railroad include vessels, pottery fragments, bones, and the foundations of ancient structures belonging to Mesoamerican Mayan civilization. These objects are now being cleaned and classified in a dedicated lab in Chetumal.

“All this work should give rise to the analysis of the vast information, the preparation of academic reports and a great international research symposium on the Mayan civilization, which will be organized for this year,” said Prieto Hernández, who has also promised the construction of a new museum in Mérida to house the precious discoveries.  READ MORE...

Galileo Manuscript for the 17th-Century

For more than 80 years, a manuscript drafted by Galileo Galilei was considered “one of the great treasures” of the University of Michigan’s library. That is, until recently, when an expert on the 17th-century astronomer discovered that the document is a 20th-century fake.

Acquired by the school in 1938, the top half of the single-leaf letter finds Galileo reflecting on the potential uses of a telescope he built in 1609. On the lower part, the Italian scientist demonstrates one of the first observations he made with the instrument: glowing objects around Jupiter that appeared to move position nightly—the planet’s moons.

Galileo’s revelation would, in due time, have profound implications on our understanding of the universe. And the document, according to the university, was thought to be among the first pieces of “observational data that showed objects orbiting a body other than the earth.”

But in May, Georgia State University historian Nick Wilding made his own important observation: the Galileo letter had a few suspicious peculiarities.

The researcher, who is working on a book about Galileo, found there was no record of the manuscript in Italian archives. In fact, there was no record of the document at all before 1934, when it was acquired at auction by a Detroit businessman. (The owner donated the letter to the university upon his death, four years later.)

Wilding also noticed that, even though the two sections of the letter were written months apart, the ink appeared consistent across both.

“It just kind of jumps out as weird,” he told the New York Times this week. “This is supposedly two different documents that happen to be on one sheet of paper. Why is it all exactly the same color brown?”

The catalogue for the auction at which the manuscript first appeared further inspired doubt in the historian’s mind. It claimed that a former archbishop of Pisa had authenticated the letter by comparing it to two other Galileo documents that had been given to him by Tobia Nicotra—an infamous counterfeiter from Milan.

Wilding reached out to the University of Michigan library with his evidence, and after conducting its own investigation into the provenance of the piece, the institution came to the same conclusion: The manuscript was a forgery. The school announced the news this week.  READ MORE...

$30 Turns Into $50 Million

The Virgin and Child with a Flower on a Grassy Bank (c. 1503), believed to have been created by Albrecht Dürer. Courtesy of Agnews, London.


A man in Massachusetts attended a routine estate sale four years ago, where a small drawing of a woman and child caught his eye. At the bottom was one of art history’s most recognizable monograms: “A.D.” On a lark, he bought it for $30. At the very least, it was “a wonderfully rendered piece of old art, which justified purchasing it,” he recalled.

As it turns out, the drawing is very likely worth much more—maybe up to $50 million. At least that’s what Agnews Gallery in London is asking for the piece, believing that the “A.D.” behind the artwork is indeed German Renaissance master Albrecht Dürer.

The gallery has good reason to think it’s an original drawing by Dürer. After analysis, Christof Metzger, head curator at the Albertina Museum in Vienna and a leading authority on the artist, declared the work to be genuine. Metzger has even included it in his forthcoming catalogue raisonné on the Old Master. Giulia Bartrum, a former curator of German Prints and Drawings at The British Museum, also believes the drawing is authentic and has organized an exhibition around it on view at Agnews now.

Both experts suspect the work was created around 1503 as a preliminary study for Dürer’s well-known watercolor, The Virgin with a Multitude of Animals, which was finished roughly three years later. (The painting is now in the collection of the Albertina.)

For the consigner, who wishes to remain anonymous, getting to this point of recognition—and the payday that may come with it—has not been easy. After he acquired the artwork in 2017, he brought it to several experts for authentication or potential sale, only to be denied in each instance, according to Agnews.  READ MORE...