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Nude, Michelangelo
In the days when the great collectors
had thousands of paintings, drawings, and prints, they
would put a stamp, a seal, or a mark on every piece in
their collection.
The same was done in the royal collections.
Sometimes, an inventory number, or collection number,
would be added.
These collection marks have been recorded. There are
thousands of them. Researchers such as Frits Lugt spent
decades copying, identifying, and listing these
collection stamps.
When a painting, a drawing, or a print bears one of these
marks, it means that at some point in time it was in an
important collection or in a royal household.
Many of these collections and royal holdings are well
documented in old archives and historic papers, and they
frequently provide information on where and when the
pieces were acquired, who executed them if they are not
signed, and sometimes additional information such as
title or date of creation.
These marks are proof that a work of art existed in the
past and can by themselves replace the need for
provenance research.
For these reasons, stamps, seals, and marks are extremely
useful because of all the additional information which
can be derived from them.
Even in the absence of old inventory records or royal
archives, it adds value to a work of art, if it used to
be in a prestigious collection, a royal collection, or
the household of a prominent or historic figure.
Many of these marks are small, rubbed off, discolored,
and difficult to read and identify precisely. Wax seals
are dried out, discolored, fractured and frequently have
missing parts. The way to deal with them is to take
close-up pictures and magnify them in super size. Image
processing software can then be used to enhance
contrast, brightness, intensity, or to draw outlines, in
an effort to decipher them.
Once this is done, it is a matter of locating the mark
or seal in reference books and then to research what is
known about the collection it used to belong to.
It is not always possible to identify the artist from a
stamp, mark, or seal, but at least it provides a solid
starting point with a date and a location for the
collection, if it is a recorded one. |
