Can you help discover who painted the Linder Gallery? Much evidence has been uncovered about the origins of the Linder Gallery over the past fifteen years. We now know with reasonable certainty that the painting was commissioned by German merchant Peter Linder and that it involved significant intellectual input from Urbino mathematician Mutio Oddi. It appears to have been painted …
Who painted the Linder Gallery Interior? Considerations by Ron Cordover
Given the multiple styles presented in the paintings on the walls within the Linder Gallery, it seems possible that more than one hand was involved in its creation. The series of four paintings called the “Senses” in the Prado Museum in Madrid, for example, are well known collaborations between Jan Brueghel the Elder and Peter Paul Rubens. While some comments …
New book on Mutio Oddi published
Alexander Marr’s new book on Mutio Oddi, Between Raphael and Galileo: Mutio Oddi and the Mathematical Culture of Late Renaissance Italy has been published by the University of Chicago Press. The first full account of Oddi’s like and work, it includes a chapter on the Linder Gallery Interior as well as extensive discussion of Oddi’s activities in mathematics, the visual …
Review of A Mysterious Masterpiece in Leonardo
Amy Ione has published a review of A Mysterious Masterpiece in Leonardo. Here’s an excerpt: “A Mysterious Masterpiece. The World of the Linder Gallery introduces the Linder Gallery painting to a broad audience through an in situ conversation of six specialists and generalists who discuss the work in the owner’s (Ron Cordover’s) living room. Thus, it is an unusual book …
New publication on gallery interiors
Just published, a special issue of Intellectual History Review, edited by Alexander Marr, on the topic of seventeenth-century gallery interiors: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=g919679010
New high res images of the Linder Gallery now live
We are delighted to announce the publication of new ultra-high resolution images of the Linder Gallery, which have been shot by art photographer Tim Nighswander of www.imaging4art.com and allow the painting to be seen in even more minute detail. Here’s Tim’s description of how he created the new images, which I hope you’ll agree, are spectacular: The camera used to …
Rubens and the Linder Gallery, excerpt from A Mysterious Masterpiece
Who are the three conversing figures shown in the Windsor Drawing, almost certainly a preparatory drawing for the Linder Gallery? The excerpt below from A Mysterious Masterpiece: The World of the Linder Gallery proposes a hypothesis:
The Linder Gallery to be featured in Season 6 of LOST?
Will the Linder Gallery feature in the final season of the popular TV show LOST? A bizarre teaser video just released for the series features a very quick flash of the painting at around 47 seconds in: Here’s an excerpt from an email I received about this a couple of days ago: I should probably start out by asking if …
Others See it Yet Otherwise: The Cosmic Systems
At the front of the green octagonal table in the Linder Gallery, very prominently positioned in the painting, is a scrap of paper bearing three competing systems of the universe: the Ptolemaic earth-centred system at the top left, the sun-centred Copernican system (prohibited by the Inquisition since 1616) and the compromise system of the Danish astronomer, Kepler’s mentor Tycho Brahe, …
Obelisks
A quick note on obelisks, as I see the one in the background of the painting is described as an ‘unlikely architectural feature’. I don’t think this is quite right. Obelisks were, in fact, rather common in northern architecture of the period, featuring regularly in formal gardens. For example, Robert Dudley’s garden at Kenilworth(visited by Elizabeth I in 1575) was …