✣ It’s a long way from Venice to Sydney. But that seems to have been the journey taken by a hugely important 16th-century drawing of Our Lady.
Kim Wilson, a Sydney University librarian, found the sketch by the painter Giorgione on the back page of a 1497 copy of Dante’s Divine Comedy.
“Giorgione is as important an artist as Leonardo da Vinci but only a fraction of works are known to be in his hand,” the art historian Jaynie Anderson told the Sydney University website. “This discovery will have a transformative effect on the way Venetian art history is written.” A note attached to the sketch is especially significant because it appears to reveal the artist’s hitherto unknown dates.
