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| News & Scoreboards |
Vermeer Immortal
Kasey Wehrum
06/01/2004
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Formal investigation of the work began in 1993, when
the painting’s current owner, Belgian art dealer and collector Baron Frederic
Rolin, brought the painting to Rubinstein’s attention. Since then, the painting
has been scrutinized by an elite team of eight conservators and academics who
revealed that the paint and pigment used on the piece matched exactly with the
paint and pigment on similar works from Vermeer. Microscopic examinations of the
canvas showed that the thread count was consistent with the thread count of a
similarly sized Vermeer, The Lacemaker, now hanging in the Louvre. Scientists
concluded that the two canvases were most likely cut from the same bolt of
cloth. Slightly less scientific methods of dating the painting included the
determination that the subject’s hairstyle was in vogue for only a few short
years around 1670.
| Microscopic examinations of the canvas showed that the thread count was
consistent with the thread count of a similarly sized Vermeer. |
Late last year, the committee reached the unanimous
conclusion that the painting was authentic. Young Woman Seated at the Virginals
now stands as the latest addition to Vermeer’s body of work, which consists of
only 35 other accredited paintings.
The Sotheby’s auction takes place
July 8. Sotheby’s currently holds the record for the most expensive Old Master
painting ever sold. Massacre of the Innocents by Peter Paul Rubens was auctioned
for $76.7 million in July 2002.
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