Blogs

The Photoarchive allows researchers to trace the history of a work of art. The image of St. Lawrence by Niccolò di Buonaccorso of Siena, recovered from a later overpainting, offers an instructive example of this crucial aspect of our collection.

Stephen J. Bury is the Andrew W. Mellon Chief Librarian, Frick Art Reference Library, and the author of this blog.

In 1932 Juliana Force, the director of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, commissioned Thomas Hart Benton (1889–1975) to create a series of eight murals for the library of the museum. While six panels from this series survive, two ceiling panels are unlocated. It is feared that they have been destroyed.

This detailed sketch, based on George Wheeler’s topographical drawing of 1667, documents the appearance of the Parthenon just a few years before Venetian forces shelled the Acropolis during the Republic’s struggle to take the city from the Ottomans in 1687.