[HN Gopher] Missing Henry VIII portrait found after random X post
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Missing Henry VIII portrait found after random X post
Author : Archelaos
Score : 121 points
Date : 2024-07-30 01:10 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| GauntletWizard wrote:
| I think "Missing" is a pretty poor choice of word for this;
| "Presumed lost to history" would better explain what's happened -
| Which is both incredible and terribly dull at the same time!
| Somebody connected the dots on the provenance of a quite old
| painting that was venerated, but perhaps not as much as it should
| have been, not far from it's last known location - At least in
| distance, if not time. Great detective work, and far more
| interesting than if it'd been lost or stolen and people were
| looking for it - This was a piece that people knew existed, but
| nobody was looking for.
| addaon wrote:
| "Random" is also a pretty bad word for this. But hey, English
| is hard, and neither word usage impedes understanding of the
| article itself.
| mike-the-mikado wrote:
| As in Random Access Memory? (I'm not sure of an application
| for memory that can only be accessed randomly).
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I dont know if it is fair to assume nobody was looking for it
| or wondering where it was.
|
| 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.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| _edit_ I was wrong, in my defense I went down a Wikipedia
| rabbit hole of related topics.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Is it? It was made for a tapestry maker but the wikipedia
| pages and a close look at them say they're paintings. Oil on
| panel like a lot of other paintings of the period. I think
| you're misreading "for tapestry maker Ralph Sheldon", he
| didn't paint them and the artist is not officially known.
|
| https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Henry_VIII_(1491%E2%.
| ..
| lazide wrote:
| I always read stuff like this as 'someone hung it up at home
| and didn't want random people bothering them about how it
| should be in a museum instead'. And/or stole it. Hah.
| adolph wrote:
| It's that fourth quadrant of "don't know that you know."
|
| 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.
| rurp wrote:
| > This was a piece that people knew existed
|
| 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?
| bobwolf wrote:
| Apparently was part of a set of 22 portraits commissioned in the
| 1590s by tapestry maker Ralph Sheldon and not the only one
| missing.
|
| 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.
| simlevesque wrote:
| > Apparently was part of a set of 22 portraits commissioned in
| the 1590s by tapestry maker Ralph Sheldon and not the only one
| missing.
|
| Yes, that's what the article says.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Other Sheldon tapestries if you're interested,
| https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Sheldon_Portrait...
| rtkwe wrote:
| They are paintings not tapestries. Sheldon made tapestries but
| these were painting for him not made by him. The description of
| all of those in that page are either sketches or oil on panel
| paintings.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| My mistake. Thanks!
| qingcharles wrote:
| When you're an expert at something and you spend all your days
| looking at these things, you can pick out remarkable details from
| nothing. Any regular person looking at the original photo (below)
| would have seen nothing!
|
| https://x.com/Warkslieutenant/status/1808884139585610231/pho...
|
| (it's the picture with the curved frame on the left)
| VikingCoder wrote:
| Yeah, I worked with radiologists... What they can see in x-ray,
| CT, MR, PET, ultrasound... it's mind-boggling.
| Flop7331 wrote:
| An article from Smithsonian shows that there's a drawing
| showing what the gallery had looked like.
|
| 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.
| arrowsmith wrote:
| Reminds me of the "lost" painting that was rediscovered via the
| movie _Stuart Little_ :
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Little_(film)#Lost_pain...
| lawlessone wrote:
| I was thinking Vigo from Ghostbusters.
| playingalong wrote:
| Is there some list of "missing" artwork some hobby OSINTers could
| try to find?
|
| Surely this wasn't the first public photo of this painting posted
| to internet, was it?
| stereo wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_stolen_paintings
| twodave wrote:
| Huh. I share a surname with the original owner (Sheldon) and once
| researched Henry XIII for a people fair. I think that means I'm
| the rightful owner...
| throwup238 wrote:
| By British rules if you can smuggle it out of the country, it's
| legally yours.
|
| That's how they filled the British Museum.
| markdown wrote:
| British? Isn't that just a human rule until about 1946.
| throwup238 wrote:
| This Henry VIII portrait is under UK jurisdiction at the
| moment.
| Flop7331 wrote:
| You'd have to travel into the future to research Henry XIII
| twodave wrote:
| Ha, good catch
| xeromal wrote:
| Is it common in British English to use "for" instead of "by" when
| talking about the creator?
|
| ''' 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.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| I don't think Sheldon made these portraits? They were
| commissioned as mentioned in other comments.
| jaaaack wrote:
| "The artist of the series remains unknown, although his
| distinct hand is recognised by the title of 'The Sheldon
| Master'."
|
| 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-...
| xeromal wrote:
| Got you. I was just confused as to why a guy would commission
| paintings of a king for his own use but I didn't live in that
| era so maybe it was in vogue.
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(page generated 2024-07-30 23:00 UTC)