Lists and Pictures of Hidden Paintings, Painters, Galleries To Visit, and Researchers: Brontes to Mona Lisa and Picasso

The Brontë Sisters by Patrick Branwell, their brother, in 1834. He sketched himself, then covered his face with the painting of a pillar. To see it go to The National Portrait Gallery, London, England, UK. The Gallery is easy to reach, just behind Trafalgar Square and near an underground 'tube' station.

Branwell is not the only artist who may have started to paint himself and then decided against it. Another is Rembrandt, whose supposed portrait was found under Old Man In Miliary Costume in the Getty Museum, Southern California, USA.

Old Man in Military Costume, in Getty Museum, Southern California, USA. Picture in public domain from Wikipedia.

Problem
Which painting has one hidden underneath, which gallery can I visit to see it, and which researchers at other galleries near me or places I might visit have researched and made comments on this?

It can get quite confusing. Painters move from one place to another. The Mona Lisa is in Paris, France but Leonardo da Vinci painted it of a woman in Florence, Italy.

I have made myself this list so that I can plan a holiday to see one of these paintings, or see one of these paintings whilst I am on a holiday or business trips to one of these countries and ask if one of the speakers on the subject is on video or at the gallery so I can speak to them. I thought you would also be interested so you can do the same.

It takes a lot of time to track down every painting and its gallery. I've already spent four house, so I've put it up online for you to read but there's more to add so come back later to see if I've added anything else. By dividing it up this way it's easier to find the current location of a painting, and its history on the internet.

Mona Lisa. To see it visit Museé de Louvre, Paris, France. Another lady is painted behind her.

Painters (Alphabetically by artist)
Branwell, Patrick, (The Brontë Sisters. London, UK.)
Degas, Edgar. (Portrait of Femme. Art Institute of Chicago. USA)
Goya, Francisco de
Leonardo da Vinci. (Mona Lisa, France; Sforza Castle museum, Milan, Italy.)
Picasso, Pablo
Seurat, Georges-Pierre (Courtauld Institute of Art, London, England.)

Paintings (Alphabetically by subject)
Brontë Sisters (1834) with sketch of painter, brother Branwell, hidden behind overpainted pillar.
Dobigny, Emma (Degas painting).
Mona Lisa, France.

Painting Name
The Brontë Sisters. UK.
Crouching Woman. (La Misereuse Accroupie by Picasso. Blue Period. Germany)
Mona Lisa. (La Jioconda in Italian by Leonardo da Vinci.) France.
Portrait Of A Woman. (Portrait de Femme by Degas. Chicago.)

Galleries And Museums To Visit, by country and continent.
Courtauld Institite of Art, London, England.
The Louvre, Paris, France. (Mona Lisa.) Europe.
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia. (Degas.)
The National Portrait Gallery, London, England, UK. (Brontë Sisters.) Europe.
The Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Holland, The Netherlands. Europe.
Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart, Germany. Europe. (Picasso.)
Sforza Castle museum, Milan, Italy. (Leonardo Da Vinci.)

In the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, England, Seurat's picture shows a seated women. Behind her on the wall is a vase of flowers. It was originally a mirror showing Seurat watching the model, (rather like the painting of Las Meninas, with the royal family, and the painter at the back, and the Arnolfini marriage). However Seurat's picture did not show royalty, or even a marrried couple but the woman who was his secret mistress, Madeline Knoblock. (Her suranme has unfortunate humorous  associations in English.) Having second thoughts, to avoid scandal, Seurat painted himself out of the picture. You might not know this painting, but if you know about art, you will recognize the term pointillisem, and you'll probably lean forward when you see his other better known paintings, The Bathers, featuring a rather round-shouldered boy, and Sunday afternoon on the grass, a jolly crowd.

I have mentioned Europe in case any travellers such as the British or Americans or Europeans or Asians as individual or groups want to do a multi-centre art tour of Europe.

A painting by Leonardo Da Vinci, showing trees, was discovered under twenty layers of whitewash inside Sforza castle in Milan, Northen Italy. Yes, you can visit the castle, which is a museum. Also see their website for details of the painting and opening hours. The website also has a video, although I could not get it to play the day I tried.

Places To Visit (alphabetically by country)
Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (Degas).
France, Paris, The Louvre (Mona Lisa).
Germany, Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart. (Picasso, Crouching Woman.)
Italy, Sforza Castle museum, Milan. (Painted over mural by da Vinci discovered.)
The Netherlands, Amsterdam, Holland, The Rijksmuseum.
UK - London, England, National Portrait Gallery. (The Brontë Sisters by brother Patrick.)
UK - National Gallery, London (Woman At A Window by Palma Vecchio.) By the Portrait Gallery.
USA - Art Institute of Chicago. (Degas. Portrait of a Woman.)
USA - Getty Museum, S California. (Old Man In Military Costume. Rembrandt.)
USA - Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. (Madame X by John Singer Sargent.)

Magazines and Journals

Method of Investigation
Australian Synchroton
x-ray

Researchers of Art (Art historians and gallery officials)
Kenneth Brummel, curator, Art Institute of Chicago, USA.
Dr Daryl Howard, National Gallery of Victoria, Australia.
Michael Varcoe-Cocks, National Gallery of Victoria, Australia.

Scientific Methods
Producers, sellers or distributors of methods for seeing what's underneath
Australian Synchroton

Website Stories
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-15018174
https://artlawandmore.com/2015/12/21/london-national-portrait-gallery-to-find-out-true-story-behind-bronte-sisters-portrait/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-news/12057053/National-Portrait-Gallery-to-reveal-mysteries-of-shadowy-Bronte-brother.html
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/13/russia-malevich-black-square-hidden-paintings
https://www.tretyakovgallery.ru/en/for-visitors/museums/novaya-tretyakovka/
https://listverse.com/2016/03/06/10-hidden-images-discovered-beneath-famous-classic-paintings/
https://www.milanocastello.it/en (Sforza castle.)
http://blog.courtauld.ac.uk/gallery/2014/03/28/seurats-secret-self-portrait-2/
https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/research/woman-at-a-window
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/12127 (A rather censored account.)

If you Google the words hidden paintings you will come up with the stories. In Wikipedia I tried typing hidden paintings and found nothing, but when I went to the Brontë page, I came straight to the story and the picture of The Brontë Sisters. Wikipedia is a good place to go to find public domain pictures and discussion about whether a picture is in public domain, why and in which country.

I went from 10 hidden images, which reveals all the racy details, to the art galleries' websites, which sound more like family reading. For example, the Met describing Singer Sergant's portrait, Madame X, of Madame Pierre Gautreau, says she was born in Louisiana, which sounds very factual. The other website describes her strap falling off her shoulder in the original of the picture and specified she went to Paris from New Orleans, a detail which has altogether more exciting connotations. I have been to New Orleans, which has a lively night life.

I loved the side by side pictures of the earlier and repainted version of the woman at the window.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.
If you know of any more, please let me know. My two previous posts are on the same subject. You can find me on Facebook or leave a comment on this article. If you ever need a talk on this subject, or wish to quote me, please get in touch. Meanwhile, please share links to your favourite posts.

The Painting You Don't See Under Mona Lisa In The Louvre in Paris

The Mona Lisa, by Leonardo Da Vinci, in the Louvre, Paris, France - hiding a secret. 

The Mona Lisa is famous for her enigmatic smile. Why was she smiling? Is becuase she knows her portrait is being pianted over another face?

Problems
Who is the woman - or man - in the Mona Lisa?
What are the paintings underneath?
Can we prove it?
How do they see paintings underneath?
How many more paintings are under famous paintings?
How does this help you and me and our local art class?

Why would anybody paint over a painting? It's quite common.
1 An amateur does not like his or her first attempt and being ashamed of the painting or just disappointed thinks a better painting of the same subject, or a new subject is today's inspiration, wants to conceal it, and short of money, re-uses the canvas.
2 A professional painter does a painting and whoever is paying the painting wants to change the whole thing, or add somebody, or remove somebody
3 You can paint over as a trompe l'oeil. Turn the woman's body into a mountain. This has been deliberately simply as a trompe l'oeil, or in the case of a Picasso painting, to re-use the canvas without having to repaint or having the underpainting show through.

Which Paintings Have Underpaintings
Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci, Louvre, Paris, France.
Picasso. Crouching Woman.
The Bronte sister painted by their brother, National Portrait Gallery, London, England.
Goya, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Art
 - a very popular classic painting.
She was a high-class lady whose husband was a wealthy man who could afford to have her painted by a renowned painter.

We know a rich family, a named man, a silk merchant in Florence, Italy, yes, a silk merchant, whose wife, Lisa Gherardini, could be the one in the painting.

Popular
Various theories, verging on conspiracy theories, have been put forward over the years about the Mona Lisa.

Science
Her body (the lady named Lisa who was supposed to have been painted) has now been found in a church - with the possibility that forensic reconstruction of her face could fit the picture in the painting.
The painting underneath shows somebody else. What does this mean?

Social and Psychology
Her smile reveals a relationship with the painter.

Alternative theory:
Social and Psychology
She was the boyfriend and model for the gay painter. (Two assumptions in this sentence, one about the painter and one about the model. I just thought of the third implication. That the male model was dressing as a woman, either because male buyers like to look at women or because the model was a younger man who liked to dress up as a woman to please the older male painter.
The suppressed smile reveals their current relationship.

Truth and Censorship
As you get further and further into this, you think is this suitable for a family publication and art gallery. Then it becomes politically correct for everybody to be gay and it's legal and children in some countries are supposed to accept the legal situation while others with access to the net have a different legal system or are reading in another era.
All this, at first sight, seems mere speculation, either to further a political agenda, or sell a book, or simply another of many possibilities, your choice as a reader to pick your favourite.

Science
Now, along comes science to settle the matter, and provide more interest in the paintings chosen for analysis, for gallery owners, researchers, writers, and the viewing public, whether paying to enter an art gallery, go in to free days, or read in the newspapers before planning potential visits.

Where can I see these paintings?
Please check which paintings are on show, where, on the day you are are visiting. Also check when the gallery is open. Also check prices. The painting you want might be in the exhibition for which there is a charge. It might be in a separate area for which there is no charge.
I read the BBC article three times. The first time I thought the Mona Lisa was still in Paris.
 The second time I thought the painting was on tour and in China.
The third time I thought the painting was still in the Louvre but the X-ray type analysis was on tour.

Where To See Paintings And Discuss Analysis
Mona Lisa, Louvre, Paris, France.
Light Technology Exhibition on tour. In Shanghai, China, in Feb 2018.
Picasso.
The Bronte Sisters, National Portrait Gallery, London, England.

Goya, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Travel Websites
France:
http://us.france.fr
UK
visitbritain.com
visitbritain.org
Holland

Websites With Info On Paintings
Article on the Mona Lisa underpainting being revealed by French Scientist, in Shanghai in 2018.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-35031997 
Article on the Goya painting, revealed in the USA.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-15018174
Article on the Picasso Painting
BBC

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. See my next two posts on this subject. Please share links to your favourite posts.

Etruscans in Paris, Perugia and Rome - and Christmas vie Etruscan Perugia and Francis's Assisi

Rome and Exciting Etruscans
As I said in my previous post, I just discovered that Rome has Etruscan ruins. I'd never understood who the Etruscans were, nor cared about them, until I went to Perugia and saw the giant cliffside gateway which is the entrance to the city.

The gateway looks like tunnelling into the cliffside, but huge! In addition to the impressive gateway, in Perugia there's an atmospheric underground city. The underground tunnels were filled with rubble for many years, only in recent times restored and now you can walk around the area, which has an escalator down to the lower level, and shops in the nooks and crannies, with high arched ceilings overhead.

The Etruscans are the natives who fought the encroaching Romans. Either the Romans were more ruthless or better organized or both. Anyway, modern Rome also has underground catacombs, like Paris, as well as Etruscan remains.

But what did the Etruscans look like? A long time ago I wondered what the Philistines looked like. You read so much about the Philistines in the Bible, called the Old Testament by Christians after they introduced the New Testament. I looked up the Philistines and found that they had receding chins, which would not be considered beautiful today. Ideas of beauty are different in each era and to each group. Titian painted buxom women who were considered cuddly and voluptuous, whilst thin models are favoured on the catwalk in the late 20th century and early 21st century.

Let's go back to the Etruscans. What did they look like?

Etruscan mother and child. From Wikipedia article on the Etruscans.

Etruscan couple. From Wikipedia article on the Etruscans.

If these are typical Etruscans, they had square or oval jaws, heavy faces with large lips, noses and eyes, with large eyebrows, and were well-built or well-fed. I shall look out for the Etruscans in statues and paintings on trips to the Louvre in Paris, to Rome and Perugia. 

In Perugia, one of the guides told me that her ancestors were Etruscan. I thought that was very exciting, as I had assumed the Etruscans had been wiped out massacred by the Romans, completely disappeared with no descendants.

 Alas, she did not look particularly Etruscan, more like typically Italian. She explained that she resembled the other side of her family, the Italian, Roman side. 

The Etruscans were the link between the Greeks and the Romans. The Etruscans gave Rome its name. 

The Etruscan legacy to the Romans, what the Romans kept or copied, included polytheism, slavery, human sacrifice of prisoners of war, reading omens from scarified animals' body parts, and gladiator fights of the captured. (I am beginning to go off the Etruscans. Not that our era with terrorism is going to look much more civilised to people in future eras. Let's just look at the Etruscan art and sculpture.)

Umbria and its Capital City Perugia
Just a reminder about Umbria and one of my favourite cities, Perugia. The links are
 @UmbriaTourism and #loveUmbriastianity to their battles to overcome the Etruscans.

Etruscan gateway in Perugia. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

Websites and links:
 @UmbriaTourism and #loveUmbria
See my other travel website:
www.luxurytravelforless.co.uk

Author
Angela Lansbury
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