Guess where this is?

[Brian Ellis]

Under the 24 hour rule, I'm taking over from Wombat!

This picture I took in an important museum in a city, whose name I want. If you can give details of the painting, as well, so much the better. I'll just say that it is priceless in value; if it were to come up in auction, it would beat all records, probably by a factor of at least ten.

[Jammrock]

It's one of Michelangelo's lesser know pieces of art called, "The Evil Bitch Whore!"

[Fat Tone]

a.k.a. "Miserable cross-eyed cow"

[Brian Ellis]

Didn't ask for the artist - anyway, it ain't him. Where is this painting?

[lecter]

It looks very much like a German or Flemish work, but it can't be as famous as you say it is, Brian. It ain't Rembrandt, or Holbein...

[Brian Ellis]

Neither German nor Flemish. It is perhaps not as famous as some other works by that artist, but all his works fetch exorbitant prices on the very rare occasions that one reaches the market, and this particular item is one of only two of its type known to exist. That should give the game away as to the artist, but where is it....?

[Brian Ellis]

A better reproduction from the Internet (my photo has reflections because it is behind glass)

[Jammrock]

The background says "tropical" to me. The woman looks, at least to me, white ... so I would guess a painter from the European Imperialist age. Countries with tropical territories were mainly British, French and Dutch. Maybe Italian?

Italian was the answer:

Leonardo da Vinci's "Ginevra de' Benci" at the Washington D.C. National Gallery of Art!

I don't have any of my personal pics here at work (besides of the kid) so I'll post one tonight.

Jammrock

[Jammrock]

All righty then! I'll stick with Italian art, from a lesser known painter. Though this isn't my picture, it's in a museum in my area. Name the museum and the person in the picture. Bonus points if you can say why it's so unique compared to other painting of the period.



Jammrock

[Brian Ellis]

Jammrock

I have a feeling I've seen this picture. You wouldn't happen to live within a stone's throw of Pasadena and would it happen to have any relation to soft drinks?

Of course, you were right about Leonardo's Ginevra. The almost unique feature I was on about is that there is only one other extant portrait that he painted using the technique of home-mixed oils on a thin wood panel, making it extremely delicate. That is La Gioconda aka Mona Lisa. This particular one isn't quite as valuable as Mona because a) she isn't as charismatic and b) someone, about 400 years ago, sawed off the bottom, making the aspect ratio look most unlike LdV's usual work. Even so, it's worth a few cents.

[Jammrock]

I have a feeling that this one will stump a lot of people, as I don't come from a very ... tourist popular area. Think, Kansas City...

Jammrock

[Brian Ellis]

The Nelso-Atkins Museum,
Michelangelo Merisi, called Caravaggio, Italian (Lombard), 1571-1610

Saint John the Baptist in the Wilderness
1604-05

Oil on canvas
68 x 52 inches (172.7 x 132.1 cm)

Purchase: Nelson Trust [52-25]

This small altarpiece is one of a handful of original works by Caravaggio in the United States. Painted toward the end of the artist's career in Rome, it was almost certainly commissioned by Ottavio Costa, the papal banker, for a small oratory in the Costa fiefdom of Conscente (a village near Albenga, on the Italian Riviera). The conception of the image is itself remarkable, for the Baptist had hardly ever before been portrayed as an isolated, seated figure who lacks, moreover, his usual attributes of halo, lamb and banderole. Stark contrasts of light and dark accentuate the perception that the figure leans forward, out of the deep shadows of the background and into the lighter realm of the viewer's own space.

The brooding melancholy of the Nelson-Atkins Baptist has attracted the attention of almost every commentator. It seems, indeed, as if Caravaggio instilled in this image an element of the essential pessimism of the Baptist's preaching, of the senseless tragedy of his early martyrdom, and perhaps even some measure of the artist's own troubled psyche. The saint's gravity is at least partly explained, too, by the painting's function as the focal point of the meeting place of a confraternity whose mission was to care for the sick and dying and to bury the corpses of plague victims.

Will that do?

OK, I cheated, so have another go!

[Jammrock]

lol, I guess that was a bit easy when I said I lived in KC ...

This one will probably be easy, too, but I'm not going to give any clues This is another "been there, don't have a scan of the pictures I took so I'm stealing one from online."



Name the castle and country.

[agallag]

Is it the castle AAAAAARRRRGGGGGHHH?

[Tjalfe]

Duntulm Castle, Skye , Scotland?

closest I could find to castle in the sky