Missing Henry VIII portrait found after random X post
bbc.com
bbc.com
https://x.com/Warkslieutenant/status/1808884139585610231/pho...
(it's the picture with the curved frame on the left)
There is really a lesson to be learned here in our age when data-based everything is en vogue. Our decision-making shouldn’t be data-driven, it should be data-informed.
> Despite the many interesting discoveries in pathology AI, translation to routine clinical use remains rare and there are many questions and challenges around the evidence quality, risk of bias and robustness of the medical AI tools in general
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/art-historian-disc...
So somewhere in his brain he must have had "missing rounded-top portraits of 16th century VIPs, including one of Henry VIII posed kind of like this" filed away.
"if the door handles are straight - S, together - X, hockey sticks - 3 or Y. No handles? cybertruck" :)
It's intentional and serves purpose. Anyone paying attention should find patterns/stylistic choice.
Saturn cars from decades past had very distinct looks, as did a Toyota. One is forgiven overlooking this in a world of "Nearly Everything Looks Like an Overweight Camry".
“Wetten dass” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wetten,_dass..%3F) also once had a contestant who could recognize cars by the sound their doors make when closing them.
Just seeing the outline of the frame could probably highlighted it was part of the missing series, assuming that is there are very few other paintings with an arched frame.
I also think this XKCD is relevant to the subject. You'll eventually become an expert on darn near anything you spend enough time on. https://xkcd.com/915/
Yeah there are some things you probably will never be a master of, but if you have the motivation to spend enough time at it, and not give up due to discouragement and reversals, you pretty much will become much better at it than you ever though possible.
According to https://adamfineart.wordpress.com/2024/07/04/ralph-sheldons-...
The 1781 sale at Christie’s of the Weston portraits show that the group included portraits of Henry IV, Henry V, Edward IV, Richard III, Henry VII, Queen Elizabeth, Charles V, Prince Arthur, Henry VIII, Francis King of France, Edward VI, Queen Mother of France, Henry of Bourbon, King of France, Cardinal Wolsey, L. Cromwell Earl of Essex, Sir Thomas Moore, Duke of Alva, Comte Eglemont, Duke of Guise, Duke of Parma and the Earl of Essex.
Yes, that's what the article says.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Little_(film)#Lost_pain...
https://triviahappy.com/articles/what-happened-to-the-vigo-t...
That's how they filled the British Museum.
Laws were created to resolve/fix/prevent things happening. You can’t blame people for shit that happened before someone decided it’s wrong.
(I grant that the whole scope of modern Western European history and law is a immense and complex topic, but the prior poster, like my snark above, is addressing a very valid topic: using a lax regulatory system to become a dominant player, then imposing rules that protect the established players and make it very difficult for new entrants to match them is something that occurs on many scales and not automatically a good thing, nor is questioning it "dumb".)
Pilfering a nation is often times legal , but it's rarely right.
If you are on the losing side you might sometimes have to return things (see looted nazi stuff), but if you are on the winning side you probably won’t (see pretty much all of the Americas).
'Museum attendance might drop a bit so the British Museum of History regrets to inform you and your country that the exhibit is just too popular to return to Tuva. Sorry.'
"Better luck next conquest!" -- is it okay to be that petty with regards to stuff that doesn't necessarily even have 'a winning side', aside from the vultures that profited from the museum work?
That isn't a conundrum, it's a hassle.
Britain did the work to plunder the world, they can do the work to return the plunder, or pay rent to the countries they stole from if those countries choose to have their property remain in British custody.
>If you are on the losing side you might sometimes have to return things (see looted nazi stuff), but if you are on the winning side you probably won’t (see pretty much all of the Americas).
The sun set on the British empire ages ago, and it's starting to set on the American empire. In the long term, both will end up on the losing side of history, as all empires do.
[citation-needed]
The US is the only first world country with demographic numbers that look not-apocalyptic.
I'm imagining a local yokel telling that to the police, as they go through his garage cataloguing the stolen copper wire & stolen porch packages.
we're not talking about a bogus modern concept here, we're talking about cultural theft on a global scale -- and we're pretending that the British did so without ever realizing that stealing artifacts from other nations around the world is A Bad Thing, until of course they produced modern rules to apply to their cultural theft so that the world stage doesn't think too poorly of them (now that they're no longer the king of the world).
Could it be that ancient peoples knew right-from-wrong but didn't care as long as it wasn't their shit disappearing, and as long as it wasn't their natives dying from foreign-borne disease during 'excavations'? As long as it was their museums profiting, and bolstering their professionals?
And how can we presume all this shit is bogus theater in order to have it both ways?
Well, how many artifacts has Britain given back to the world at large that they previously stole?
It's really a shame that those British laws you mentioned don't have any kind of retroactive clauses -- but that might spur actual justice to occur; I'm sure certain law makers may wish to avoid that...
Pretty much all countries are now governed in some form of another and have some laws protecting these things and/or preventing them from being removed from the country.
Yes we can debate if the British should return a lot of this stuff. But that’s a completely different topic.
But you cannot fly a single banner and call it 100% looting/stealing when that is not true.
There's even a living one who was in the news not all that long ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_XIII_Prinz_Reuss
Surely this wasn't the first public photo of this painting posted to internet, was it?
As long as you can request all of it at once, it's useful.
It is not uncommon in the art world for paintings to go missing, only to be found again. There are people that actively hunt for them, and don't just presume they are lost.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Henry_VIII_(1491%E2%...
I suppose that people in different fields are already using ambient or latent information from public websites for arbitrage opportunities. Glad it was a Sotheby’s provenanceer in this case rather than an art thief.
How did people know it existed and hadn't been destroyed at some point if no one knew where it was for so many years?
This is pretty amazing that such an offhanded catch led to a recovery of something assumed lost to history though.
''' After inspecting it personally to test his theory, he confirmed the artwork was created *for* tapestry maker Ralph Sheldon and dated back to the 1590s.
It was one of a collection of 22 portraits made *for* Sheldon, but the whereabouts of only a handful were known.
'''
I'm confused whether Sheldon is the painter or the commissioner.
Corroborated by the original blog post. Odd that the article isn't clear on this point.
https://historicalportraits.com/artworks/82-the-sheldon-mast...
https://adamfineart.wordpress.com/2024/07/04/ralph-sheldons-...
It makes me curious about this specific example if the painter copied another painting of the king or he managed to somehow get time with the king in order to know what he looks like for the commission.
That is unlikely for all kind of reasons. Chiefly among them that when the painting was painted the King was long dead.
The painting is dated to around 1590 while Henry VIII died in 1547.
In exchange there are flags and political posters and signs on lawns, and religious representations in some religious households.
I recently read a longform interview of someone who married into the Pelosi family. Apparently, at least at those levels, a "vanity wall" with pictures of yourself/your family with famous folk (in this case: former presidents, perhaps foreign statesmen) is common.
I tried googling for that phrase... it matches a piece of bathroom furniture, instead of a wall of photos showing off you know famous folk in your expertise.